Brief Interviews on Local Farms: Feedback Farms

Feedback Farms was founded in 2011 by four people: Tom Hallaran, Clare Sullivan, Kallie Weinkle, and Gregory Sogorka, with the idea of turning vacant lots into farms and offering results to the public from various urban agricultural research projects they conduct. They currently have two lots that are working farms, both located in Brooklyn.

Following is my interview with two of the founding partners, Gregory and Tom.

Monica Johnson: Tell me what Feedback Farms is all about.

Gregory Sogorka: “Feedback started in late fall of 2011. My friend Tom and I were sitting in a car, we both work in the software industry, and we started a conversation about life in New York City, access to green space, and how we thought sitting in an office every all day, every day in front of a glowing blue screen of digital technology is soul sucking in some ways. Not soul sucking but limited human experience.

We wanted to put something together where we could have a place to go and be around plants and work on growing vegetables. The obvious answer for that is a community garden, which we considered, but then broader ideas emerged and we decided to start and urban farm research project. That became Feedback Farms, after we had a talk with Tom’s wife Claire, who is also a founding member of the project, and another lady, Kallie, who is no longer working on the project but was fundamental is putting it together.”

Feedback Farms
[Monica Johnson]

GS: “We are using these sub-irrigated planters and that technology creates a reservoir of water underneath the bed. This sub-irrigation technique is what we studied in our research project last year. We studied different bed designs using sub-irrigation as well as different soil mixtures and mediums and found pretty conclusively that sub-irrigation leads to much higher yields than just growing in a normal container bed. We are using a food safe plastic liner that holds the soil. Underneath the soils is a flexible drain pipe that is coiled and that is what creates the reservoir for water. You have a contained system where water can sit beneath the soil and there’s an exit flow if it becomes too full.”

“We studied this system of growing and get pretty meticulous yield counts and last year we submitted an abstract proposal to a journal published out of Cambridge. It will be one of many our studies that will be published. There’s not too much material out there right now. I hope there’s going to be quite a bit more.”

Signage outside of Feedback Farms
[Monica Johnson]

GS: “One thing we are doing this year is a working share CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where the management of these beds, taking care of the plants, watering, suckering the tomatoes, and harvesting can be worked on by individuals who want to learn about gardening. That allows people to come in and become more educated about the food system, nutrition, have a nice time gardening and working in the soil with their hands, and then take home some really tasty food.”

MJ: You all are associated with 596 Acres, an organization that  provides online tools for people to access community land easier. Tell me a little bit about that and how they helped you.

Tom Hallaran: “I moved to Boreum Hill three years ago and there was a vacant lot a block from my new place that I walked by frequently, but didn’t really notice until there was a 596 Acres sign on it (advertising that the lot was vacant and available). The 596 website was critical in that I registered my interest in the lot and got connected with someone who had been organizing in the community for years around trying to get a vacant lot. We collaborated and reached out to everyone we could reach out to about it. 596 made those two connections. That’s their model. 596 is there to help people organize but it’s not there to be an organizer. They facilitate organizers.”

“The first lot we were trying to organize on was a really strange lot in that it is one privately owned lot in the middle and then two city owned lots on the side. The city said they’d support it as a community garden, if we could get the private owner to agree. My gut says that they thought there was zero chance of that happening but we did it. We have a license with Greenthumb (city) and a use agreement with the owner (private). It was a lot of paperwork but now we just have to get a renewal signature every 8 months from the private owner and I think every two years from the city.”

Growing systems in place at Feedback Farms
[Monica Johnson]

TH: “The initial idea was to work on systems that facilitate temporary agricultural use of vacant space. In many ways, that is contradictory and tough to do. We haven’t lost any of our spaces yet, but when it happens, it will be a tough thing to deal with.”

“The first season was successful. We grew a ton of produce on 200 square feet and made about $5000.00 selling produce. We’re doing a few things differently this year. We have a working share CSA, we have a farm manager, and we’re working on a few other lots.  There’s a mayors initiative to fight childhood obesity and they’re funding the development of a few city-owned parcels for food production, so we have a few horses in the running on that one, specifically we’re really interested in a couple big lots in the Rocakways. So we’re growing and it’s exciting that all these people want to come out and help out.”

“We really focused on our research project last year but this year we are behind on our follow-up. That citizen/science element really helps differentiate the project but also helps to get people who might not be interested in the project, get interested in it, specifically academic institutions. Small-scale agriculture, people don’t pay attention to and it’s really needed. A body of knowledge about techniques and concerns specific to urban agriculture just isn’t there, so part of what we’re trying to do is contribute to that.

One big concern here is and the reason we are growing in these bags is that you can’t grow in the ground because most likely you are standing on something that’s bordering hazardous waste. We do want to look into what heavy metal content does to microbial activity, which has not been studied.

To learn more about Feedback Farms, visit them online.

-Monica Johnso