InTeGrate Modules and Courses >Future of Food > Student Materials > Module 1.2: Food Systems combine Natural and Human Systems > Summative Assessment > 4. New York City Green Markets: Local to Regional Option 1
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These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
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4. New York City Green Markets: Local to Regional Option 1

Overview

A Regional Food-shed Direct Marketing of Local and Small Scale Farm Production: The New York City Green Markets

Many in the class will be familiar with the recent growth of farmers markets and other forms of direct marketing in which farmers sell more directly to consumers to capture a greater percentage of the final purchase price. This includes mail-order grass-fed beef from South Dakota, organic farms and other small farms selling at open-air markets in any given small and medium city, and medium to large scale farms that produce for multiple restaurant accounts in large cities. The New York City green markets (Fig. 1.2.10) are an excellent and long-standing example of this trend, starting with a few street corner vegetable markets and growing into an important hub of the Grow NYC sustainability movement in New York. The Grow NYC website Greenmarket Farmers Markets documents that over 30,000 acres of farmland as well as small fishing operations near New York City form a 'food-shed' (analogous to a watershed feeding to a larger water body) that has made important inroads towards greater access to locally or regionally produced food with more sustainable practices, including participation in food assistance programs that strive to provide greater access to lower income New Yorkers. Greenmarkets thus provide a growing, if small, proportion of New York City's food supply.

Vegetable and livestock producers in that participate in New York City green markets are in many ways sustaining and building on the legacy of small truck farms that for generations utilized fertile farmland surrounding many eastern cities (think of the sometimes mysterious identity of New Jersey as the 'Garden State'). Today these farms generally have land-sizes of 5 to 50 acres, much smaller than the farm sizes of Midwestern grain farms or California industrial vegetable production. They are comparatively diverse farms in terms of combining many different products (including eggs and meat) that can be sold for relatively advantageous prices together in a farmers market. Farms like those in the Hudson Valley North of New York City utilize flat, deep soils adjacent to river floodplains that are excellent for long-term production of crops if they are well cared for. These farms are also able to recycle relatively abundant urban wastes from dense urban and suburban populations (e.g. green wastes, manure from neighboring small livestock farms, city and county composting programs) that are used to keep soils extremely productive by global terms. In fact, some of these farms may face some the same problems of nutrient excesses presented in the case above on Pennsylvania dairy farming systems. They also are able to grow crops for the sole purpose of adding organic matter to soil and covering soil in the winter (cover crops) that help to keep soil quality high. Produce and animal products are trucked directly to green market sites in New York City or to pickup points for subscription-based Community-supported agriculture programs.


These materials are part of a collection of classroom-tested modules and courses developed by InTeGrate. The materials engage students in understanding the earth system as it intertwines with key societal issues. The collection is freely available and ready to be adapted by undergraduate educators across a range of courses including: general education or majors courses in Earth-focused disciplines such as geoscience or environmental science, social science, engineering, and other sciences, as well as courses for interdisciplinary programs.
Explore the Collection »