Project Overview
Commodities
Practices
- Education and Training: farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research, technical assistance, workshop
- Farm Business Management: budgets/cost and returns
- Soil Management: composting, green manures, organic matter, soil analysis, soil quality/health, toxic status mitigation
- Sustainable Communities: community services, local and regional food systems, urban agriculture
Proposal abstract:
The Pittsburgh area has extremely high amounts of vacant land, but community interest in increasing urban agriculture, to address culturally significant nutritional needs, environmental challenges, and to bolster community economic activity, is challenged by soil health. High levels of lead and poor growing conditions make successful urban farming operations risky.
Allegheny County Conservation District (ACCD) will partner with two urban farmers in Pittsburgh to remediate urban farm sites and grow non-edible and edible marketable crop products. ACCD will provide heavy metal testing before and after urban soil improvements to understand lead level reduction results. High carbon, compost, soil health, and non-food crops will be tested as soil amendment strategies. Financial analysis will also be included to determine if non-food crops increase revenue enough to offset some site remediation costs. This research will help ACCD, urban farmers, and partner organizations better understand how municipalities and farmers can scale vacant lot soil remediation for increased urban agriculture and healthy food production.
ACCD intends to offer meaningful, detailed information to inform, inspire, and grow the scale of investment in urban agriculture, particularly within predominantly Black communities and/or those areas that have historically experienced disproportionate shares of adverse environmental impacts, by and for the benefit of residents. Doing so will help create more functional connectivity between land and water and the people and wildlife depending on them. This in turn will increase Pittsburgh’s climate resilience, economic sustainability, and overall quality of life for residents.
Project objectives from proposal:
Objective 1: This project seeks to reduce soil lead concentration on two urban farm sites using a standardized remediation plan that prioritizes soil health Best Management Practices (BMPs); progress analysis through a combination of traditional laboratory testing and field based monitoring techniques; and on-going direct support to the urban farmers throughout implementation via the Technical Assistance Team.
Objective 2: This project seeks to better understand the true cost of building soil health and reducing risk of soil lead exposure through enterprise budgeting, exploring viability for non-edible crop sales to support a portion of this work, and compensating farmers through stipends for the labor and ecosystem services their farm sites provide.
Objective 3: This project seeks to highlight challenges and viable solutions for growers working with urban soils through comprehensive outreach efforts that center farmer expertise and experiences in order to successfully scale vacant lot remediation for urban agriculture expansion.