Farmers,
As you may know we have been getting many answers to our
questionnaires from our City Council and Mayoral candidates.
Here is the first official response we've received from a Park's
Commissioner. These answers come from Commissioner Vreeland.
Minneapolis Urban Farmers Collaborative
Parks Board Candidate Questionnaire: 2013
(<<<<<Scott Vreeland- my answers look like this. >>>>>)
The nutritional needs of many Minneapolis residents are not being met while the
demand for locally grown food is surging. More people are turning to agricultural heritage
activities for recreation as is evidenced by expanding community gardens in
neighborhoods throughout the city. A diverse array of cultures in Minneapolis
traditionally practice community agriculture, and need access to community space and
educational opportunities in order to feel at home. The parks have a unique opportunity
to provide a growing space for urban agricultural activities in doing so grow public health,
increase culturally specific educational opportunities, and build a more sustainable urban
environment.
Do you as a candidate for Minneapolis Park Board support the following initiatives and
rule changes in order to promote local food production in Minneapolis?
Urban farms are growing in response to an expanding demand for locally produced food
in the Twin Cities. MPRB has the opportunity to nourish public health while informing
Minneapolis residents about sustainable food choices by opening up use of some
parkland and resources for urban food production. Do you as a candidate support urban
agriculture in Minneapolis Parks?
<<<<<The Park Board can and will support urban agriculture. This is an important
initiative for a healthy city. We currently provide classes, workshops, summer camps,
city-wide events celebrating local foods and pollinators. We manage gardens and grow
food for instructional/educational purposes with kids.
We support community gardens, healthy food initiatives, and composting, and we are
working with our vendors to use local foods and to compost.
We are currently working on an urban agriculture policy for our parks that will address all
these questions more fully, but because we are in the middle of an extensive policy
review that will need to be vetted further, I am still listening and learning about how to
best craft the details of this policy.>>>>>
<<<<< I don't think that current parks should not be viewed as cheap land to be given
away for private farming.
One of the reasons that we are spending considerable time on an urban agriculture
policy is the need to be clear about public access to public land. Turning a neighborhood
park into a community garden for individuals, privatizes that public space and can
directly compete with other park users and other activities.>>>>>
<<<<<Who benefits...where...and why...need to be addressed carefully.
I think acquiring land specifically for gardens as "agriparks" may be a structural way of
establishing additional garden space for individuals.
I have been working on a vegetative management plan for the entire system that would
address what we grow, where, how, and why.
Urban agriculture is a subset of this work that also focuses on ecological services,
habitat, water quality, resiliency, and integrated permaculture.
Here is the model I would like to use for our parks:
http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_about/sustainable_parks/design_guidelines.pdf
Trees, bushes, and vines, can also be important food sources on public land that need
to be included in an urban agriculture policy and we may want to identify certain places
as edible landscapes.>>>>>
Urban farmers in Minneapolis focus on food justice, sustainability, education, and
equity. Small urban farming businesses have lead the way in demonstrating how to
incorporate agriculture into Minneapolis in an environmentally and socially responsible
manor. Will you as a candidate collaborate with existing urban farm businesses to create
food production space and hands on farm learning opportunities for Minneapolis
residents?
<<<<< This is the issue that we are working on, establishing a policy about the public
benefit of our partnerships. Food production space and farm learning are things we can
support, but the devil is in the details of who, where, and why, we would establish
partnerships.>>>>>
Urban land is priced too high for urban farming to be financially sustainable. Parks
departments in many other cities have played a connecting role in opening up land for
urban farming to help reduce market barriers, recognizing that urban farming is
educational, recreational, and grows public health. Do you as a candidate support
creating a pilot program for allocating parklands for urban farming?
<<<<<We have pilot programs now and those will help inform the work we are doing
now on a city wide policy.>>>>>
Minneapolis residents are hungry for opportunities to learn about and practice food
preservation. Food preservation plays a vital role in the local food system during our
long winter. Urban farms, community gardeners, and back yard food producers all have
a need to store excess produce in order to extend the local food season, and all need
access to food preservation classes and commercially licensed kitchens. Will you as a
candidate support urban agriculture by licensing commercial and educational kitchen
space to provide food preservation education opportunities for community gardeners,
urban farmers, and backyard food growers?
<<<<<That is part of the park facilities work we are doing system wide and part of some
of the current programing that is happening in our parks.>>>>>
Wood chips are a major source of soil nutrition, because composting transforms wood
chips into soil for growing food. Minneapolis Parks Dept. currently gives many of the
wood chips they produce away to area residents, which is a just and sustainable practice
that captures nutrients in the wood chips in local soils. MPRB also sells many tons of
wood chips to be burned at area energy plants. Burning wood chips for energy is an
unjust use of neighborhood nutritional resources. Once burned, the nutrients from these
wood chips are forever lost to the neighborhoods they came from. Composting wood
chips is the best way to capture these nutrients and return them to the soil in a
sustainable way. Will you as a candidate work to build a sustainable composting system
within MPRB so that all the nutrients that the Parks gathers are justly returned to the
neighborhoods of Minneapolis?
<<<<< I am with you on the importance of hydrology and healthy soils and the role of
composting in soil science, but currently trees are a valuable commodity that can be
used for a variety of uses that have benefit to the parks. It seems like a narrow view to
say that Wood from the Hood shouldn't be harvesting lumber for bread boards, furniture
or flooring and that is an unjust use of wood waste.
If we are looking at a systematic process for better soils, harvesting organic waste from
households and commercial operations would be, for me, a higher priority than trying to
process all our wood for urban woodchips. Wood chips are used to inhibit growth and
their decomposition takes nitrogen from competing plants. So how they would be used is
an important detail.
http://www.klickitatcounty.org/solidwaste/ContentROne.asp?fCategoryIdSelected=96510
5457&fContentIdSelected=178631264
<<<<<Wood chips can certainly be part of systematic composting, but it seems wasteful
to restrict the use of something that has a commercial value when there is large amount
of commercial and household waste that should be composted that is currently very
expensive to get rid of.
I think it is great that we can provide free wood chips to residents. But in the big picture,
it is really important that we have the infrastructure and partnerships that can handle the
complexities of tornados and Emerald Ash Borer and the logistics of an efficient forestry
operation. I realize there are many opinions about the best strategies about energy
production. Koda Energy is a tribal owned biomass power plant that uses renewable
resources to efficiently produce energy. They process some of our wood (not wood
chips) and pay us $125,000 to rent space at Fort Snelling.
I am sure Stan Ellison, Director of Land and Natural Resources, Shakopee
Mdewakanton Sioux Community would be glad to discuss the merits of this particular
operation.>>>>>
Broad vision question: As a candidate for public office, what would you like the food local
food landscape of Minneapolis to look like in 2017?
<<<<<I would like to see more eggplant Parmesan. There would be goats eating
buckthorn sprouts and it would be hard to find garlic mustard because of many makers
of garlic mustard pesto. There would be fruits, berries and nuts that could be harvested
in parks and a network of community gardens. Healthy food choices would be in
abundance and the most affordable.
Our children would be healthy and happy and have a knowledge of food sources and
preparation. Our yards and gardens would be an extension of our natural areas and
support birds, butterflies and pollinators. Social status would not be what kind of car you
drive, but what kinds of butterflies come visit you. More Restaurants will serve family
style where you pass the peas, and my neighbors would give me their extra eggplants
because they have had such a great crop.
Minneapolis would be known for its pragmatic permaculture, plant diversity, food forest,
and its swimmable and fishable lakes and river.>>>>>
Thanks,
Scott Vreeland
Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board
Commissioner District # 3
(612) 721-7892