News & Analysis on Urban Sustainability, Green Building & Sustainable Cities | Sustainable Cities Collective. How a city farm became the heart of a community. You might wonder what an all weather football pitch has to do with a community green space project. But it’s one of the most popular features at Bristol’s Windmill Hill City Farm. Eric Booth, a volunteer committee member at this community-led farm, displays an obvious pride as he points out this particular bit of open space that is anything but green. It brings in visitors who wouldn’t come to see the animals or grow vegetables - and the four and a half acre farm in one of south Bristol’s poorer suburbs now attracts more than a quarter of a million visits a year. It isn’t just the football pitch.
There’s an adventure playground, handy for the families who come to see the animals. There’s a nursery, offering affordable childcare for local parents. If you thought city farms were all about chickens and rare breed sheep, think again. ‘Projects like this are like icebergs,’ Eric explains. ‘Less than a fifth of it is the animals and the green space.
But neither is it just a small business. AMSv1. Local Foods Case Studies : The Food Industry Center : College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences : University of Minnesota. Despite increasing consumer interest in locally grown and processed food, little is known about the supply chains that move local foods from farms to consumers. Nor is the economic, human health, environmental, and social performance of local food supply chains well understood. With funding from USDA's Economic Research Service, a team of researchers (including TFIC Research Affiliate Dr. Robert King) conducted a coordinated series of case studies on supply chains for local food products. The objective of this study was to improve understanding of the way in which local food products are being introduced or reintroduced into the broader food system and potential barriers to expansion of markets for local foods.
Case studies were conducted in five metropolitan areas, with a different product focus in each location. The five product-place combinations were: Apples in Syracuse, NYBlueberries in Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WASpring mix in Sacaramento, CABeef in Minneapolis-St. Study: Food hubs' support for local economy is mixed. Robert Barker/University Photography A vendor at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market interacts with a customer. Interest in local foods is on the rise, and a Cornell study found that regional food hubs can provide economic benefits to communities. As the consumer appetite for locally sourced food products increases, so has interest in “food hubs” that facilitate the purchase, marketing and distribution of agricultural products within a region. But what is their economic value? A three-year study by Cornell researchers suggests that growth in these local farm aggregation and distribution businesses may provide economic benefits to local communities, but that some other businesses may suffer.
In a report released in December through the U.S. Those businesses, in turn, were more likely than commodity-oriented farms to spend their money in the local economy, and that had important “multiplier” impacts. Trumansburg food hub Regional Access was used as the case study.