Haddington Food Coop

The Urban Tree Connection is installing high tunnels (greenhouses) on its farm in the Haddington section of West Philadelphia (608 North 53^rd Street, 19131) in order to extend its growing season. This will increase the supply of fresh produce to the many families living in a low-income neighborhood that has been classified as a food desert that has resulted in an epidemic of childhood obesity, high blood pressure and diet related diabetes.

The Urban Tree Connection has taken a ¾ acre brown field and converted it into a highly productive urban farm in the middle of a crime-ridden welfare neighborhood. Penn State Agricultural Extension Service gifted us a high tunnel (similar to a greenhouse, but is designed to retain and use more heat from the sun) which has accelerated our farm production. We are going to install additional high tunnels that we need to purchase at $2,000 for a 17 foot x 36 foot unit and $4,000 for the larger 17 foot x 96 foot unit. The units are being disassembled at Penn State as their program is shrinking and represents a one-time opportunity to expand UTC’s farming operation in Haddington. Once delivered, our farm crew and volunteers will install these units to be ready for our 2013 growing season.

Over the last 12 years, UTC has fundamentally transformed the landscape of Philadelphia’s low-income Haddington neighborhood and catalyzed resident demand for and production of fresh food. Vacant lots that had been dangerous crime incubators and overgrown trash-strewn eyesores, which had been avoided by everyone in the community for decades, are now bursting with tomatoes, arugula, squash, chard – and throngs of neighbors who have been learning how to grow, market, and sell Haddington-produced food.

What was once a neighborhood where residents were isolated and living in fear, is now one where neighbors are developing a food growing and distribution cooperative that, once it is efficient and sustainable, will make affordable, healthy, Haddington-grown food available to every community resident. Said differently, they have created a promising food system within one of Philadelphia’s most significant food deserts.