Farming in the Middle of a City

Bay Curious

KQED

History, Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.9 • 999 Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2023

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The greater Bay Area is surrounded by a lot of commercial farmland, whether it's vineyards in Napa or strawberries in Watsonville. But there are also a number of urban farms—plots of land, or even rooftop gardens, that lie within big cities. With land at a premium, how can these small growers afford to grow food in an urban environment? Reporter Dana Cronin visits a few to find out. Additional Reading: Bay Area Land Is So Expensive. How Do Urban Farms Survive? Read a transcript of this episode here Get tickets for the Bay Curious book launch! This episode was reported by Dana Cronin. Bay Curious is made by Olivia-Allen Price, Amanda Font, Christopher Beale, Katherine Monahan and Brendan Willard. Additional support from Paul Lancour, Cesar Saldaña, Jen Chien, Jasmine Garnett, Carly Severn, Jenny Pritchett and Holly Kernan.

Transcript

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0:00.0	from K-QED. I'm Olivia Alan Price and this is Bay Curious, the podcast that answers
0:07.5	listener questions about the Bay Area. This week we're starting down in San Jose.
0:15.0	Carlos Urbina used to ride the light rail to work every day.
0:19.0	As he looked out the train window, he'd passed through Silicon Valley,
0:22.0	seeing big buildings and busy intersections, offices
0:25.8	and apartment complexes. But in the middle of all that, every day he'd also pass an orange
0:32.0	orchard, a pretty sizable farm with rows and rows of orange trees and
0:37.2	wildflowers.
0:38.2	It's odd to me to have like a, to see a like farm work in the middle of the city.
0:44.0	But that's not the only reason it stood out to Carlos.
0:47.0	This orange orchard also looked familiar to him.
0:50.0	Carlos grew up in Mexico City,
0:52.0	but his grandma lived in a tiny rural community in
0:55.1	Flaxcala, a small state just east of the city where he'd go to visit in the summer.
0:59.3	I loved to build a
1:05.0	a child. And this place kind of remind me that because we have like a small lot of land
1:06.8	with the view of the mountains.
1:08.7	Yeah, I guess I guess I'm like a little nostalgic for that.
1:13.0	Nastalgic. I guess I'm not like a little nostalgic for that.
1:17.0	Nastologic and confused. This is Silicon Valley after all, where land costs a pretty penny.
1:21.0	It was weird to me to see a farm in the middle of what it seems like super valuable real estate.
1:28.4	I found it very curious. Farmland is all over the state, of course, in our more rural communities, but given the demand
	...

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