“Edel was interested in ways of bringing back manufacturing jobs to the city,” explains Melanie Hoekstra, director of operations at The Plant. The building is uniquely suited to food production; it contains food-grade materials (these allow for legal and safe food preparation) because of its meatpacking history. Instead of combining farming with other types of manufacturing, The Plant is sticking entirely to food—and lots of it.
I think we posted something about this project last year, emphasizing aspects that are recurring Unconsumption topics: adaptive reuse — the conversion of existing buildings to new uses — and urban farming. (Though I’m not finding an earlier post about it in the Unconsumption archive. Ah, thanks, Tumblr search.) Anyway, it’s great to see that the project’s progressing nicely.
Reposting my unconsumption post:
Grocery Getters: The Farm Proper Plants Real Food in Shopping Carts — FastCompany.com
Alissa Walker writes:
Urban farms are sprouting in vacant lots and forgotten walls all over the country. But a farm in San Diego, California employs another type of abandoned real estate: The shopping cart. Firms Set & Drift and mi-workshop have used a signature blight on the urban landscape to create a mobile garden concept called The Farm Proper in the city’s Barrio Logan neighborhood.
Abandoned carts gathered from the neighborhood have been lined with burlap sacks donated by a local coffee retailer and packed with plants. Carts deemed inoperable have been anchored permanently at the space, and in this case, planted into a kind of bean pole teepee. The image of the supermarket staple serving as a planter for fresh food serves up some pretty nice symbolism as well.
It’s the meals-on-wheels element that really makes this kind of gardening exciting. One can imagine how banged-up carts could be collected from the streets, brought here for planting and then be wheeled away to permanently park at the homes of deserving families. Another idea, which was already demonstrated at a Farm Proper potluck, could bring healthy lunches to local workers: With the proper combination of crops, these mobile carts could roam the streets as super-fresh, pick-your-own salad bars.