Food And Water In New York City
New York City government officials, labor organizers, non-profits, community advocacy groups, and residents have fostered a strong relationship with rural farmers to develop New York City's Local food shed. The process of linking sustainable, rural agriculture with New York City’s urban markets has been largely built upon the fact that New York City's water supply comes from New York State, in the protected Catskill Mountains watershed. As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration process, New York is one of only five major cities in the United States with drinking water pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants.
With the largest surface storage and supply complex in the world, New York City's water supply system yields 1.2 billion US gallons (4,500,000 m3) of water daily, with most of this water originating upstate. This water is not filtered, since a filtration system would require $6 billion dollars in construction, and $300 million in annual maintenance. Instead, New York City's watershed is protected by severe New York City Department of Environmental Protection restrictions that prevent pathogens and nutrients from entering the water supply. These restrictions limit industrial development and restrict agricultural runoff. The implementation of such stringent regulations, however, threatened New York State farmers with utter devastation.
To protect the water supply from runoff and promote regional agriculture, rural and urban New Yorkers developed an alliance called the New York City Watershed Whole Farm Program, which promotes sustainable agriculture in New York State. Farmers upstate, with financial assistance from the city, work to reduce pathogen, nutrient, sediment, and pesticide runoff. Meanwhile, New York City’s urban population serves as a local market for upstate farmers, particularly through Greenmarket Farmers' markets, founded in 1976 by the Council on the Environment of New York City.
The program provides regional small family farmers with opportunities to sell their fruits, vegetables and other farm products at open-air markets in the city. The most famous is the Union Square Greenmarket, held Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays between 8 AM and 6 PM year round. 250,000 customers a week purchase 1,000 varieties of fruits and vegetables at the market.
Read more about Food And Water In New York City: International Model, Supermarket Crisis, Green Carts, School Lunches
Famous quotes containing the words food and, food, water, york and/or city:
“To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a credit system in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“For months it hasn’t known the taste of steel
Washed down with rusty water in a tin.
But standing outdoors hungry, in the cold,
Except in towns at night, is not a sin.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“To deny the need for comprehensive child care policies is to deny a reality—that there’s been a revolution in American life. Grandma doesn’t live next door anymore, Mom doesn’t work just because she’d like a few bucks for the sugar bowl.”
—Editorial, The New York Times (September 6, 1983)
“I don’t wanna live in a city where the only cultural advantage is that you can make a right turn on a red light.
Freedom from labor itself is not new; it once belonged among the most firmly established privileges of the few. In this instance, it seems as though scientific progress and technical developments had been only taken advantage of to achieve something about which all former ages dreamed but which none had been able to realize.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)