Urban Farming With A Business Case in Rotterdam

Earlier on Labkultur I wrote an article about the plans for 'Uit Je Eigen Stad', an urban farming initiative in the city of Rotterdam. The statement I dropped was that urban farming is getting professional with this initiative. Now, six months later, I owe you an update. Uit Je Eigen Stad  (From Your Own City) opened doors only a couple of weeks ago and became a huge success in Rotterdam immediately.

 

Urban Farming

Urban Farming is hot these days, even a little bit too hot perhaps. Everywhere in the world small agricultural initiatives pop-up at all kinds of urban waste lands trying to improve the city from the bottom up. And although the ecological spirit behind these projects is catching, the actual initiatives are hardly contributing to the city, local community or consumption patterns. When studying urban farms one would see that planting urban gardens apparently is the fun part of it. Weeding mostly only happens once and when it’s time to harvest in the end of the summer most of the amateur farmers seem to have already forgotten about their effort in spring. This results in rotting pumpkins and passed broccoli adorning the urban neighbourhoods. 

 

 

'Uit Je Eigen Stad'

'Uit Je Eigen Stad', the urban farm in Rotterdam, is different. It’s an initiative that actually produces food on larger scale and has a serious business model, like any other (not urban) farm. The founders of 'Uit Je 

Eigen Stad' are Bas de Groot, Johan Bosman and Huibert de Leede. Bas is the farmer, Johan is the concept guy and Huibert has experience in management. All three share the ambition to change current patterns in food chains, but all three have a different role, like in any organization.

 

Farming for Business

The main elements in their business model are a shop and a restaurant on the spot that serve the city with local food produced on their own fields. Doing so, the farm has the whole chain from production to consumption under control. In addition lots of activities like markets, workshops and festivals are organized to make people aware of local food and enthusiastic about the concept. Altogether this turns out to be the right recipe for successful urban farming.