Alas, the Urban Power Team’s involvement in the Berkeley Black Infant Health Program’s vegetable garden is no more. After a few meetings, with an excited City of Berkeley representative present, a series of progressively hostile emails indicated to Carl that the City was taking over.

This means a few things, notably that the group’s first project has been quashed, and also that the planting and renovation is not going to happen until next summer. There are positives in it - on the surface, the City has taken an interest in an urban farming, and they want to turn it the BIHP garden into a big event.

But, as Antonio Alcala from Alemany talked about, this is an example of some of the backwards thinking that often exemplifies bureaucratic policies. Instead of (a) working with Carl’s group and/or (b) removing roadblocks and obstacles from folks wanting to undertake such a project, they have instead taken over in an unkind manner and delayed the project by at least a year.

Why not make it as easy as possible to do this? This isn’t child adoption we’re talking about. It’s growing food in open and available areas, which is something that should be encouraged and made easy. The fact that this project turned into an odd power struggle is indicative of the fact that there is work to be done yet in governmental encouragement of urban farming practices.