Global Green partners with YSU

Staff report

youngstown

Global Green has partnered with Youngstown State University to incorporate an urban agriculture roundtable at YSU’s Sustainable Energy Forum.

Walker Wells, director of the organization’s Green Urbanism Program, will moderate the roundtable today.

Urban agriculture is emerging as an adaptive strategy/solution to blight and a creator of job opportunities.

It can take the form of community gardens, market gardens, and urban farms which include more traditionally rural pursuits such as bee keeping and maintaining chickens, livestock and aquaculture. Innovative zoning regulations, distribution and markets for fresh local foods help tie urban agriculture to broader vacant land reuse and sustainability goals.

This interactive program will feature key actors in the urban agriculture movement sharing lessons learned and effective practices for transforming blight into beautiful, useful and economically viable spaces.

The session will serve as the culmination of Global Green’s work in Youngstown with local government, nonprofits, and YSU.

Global Green will release its report, Youngstown Urban Agriculture: Opportunities for Food Production, Local Jobs, and Ecological Restoration, at the roundtable. Wells said, “The goal is for information shared during the program to result in greater collaboration and advancement of urban agriculture in the region.”

In addition to Wells as moderator, the event boasts a range of experts and notables including Jamael Tito Brown, Youngstown council president; Joy Johnson, Burten, Bell, Carr Development, Inc., of Cleveland; Jim Converse, Northside Farmer’s Market & Common Wealth Inc., Youngstown; Robert N. Brown, director of city planning, Cleveland; and Brad Masi, Oberlin College lecturer and co-founder of City Fresh, Oberlin.