Beyond the noise of traffic in East New York, Brooklyn, the neighborhood landscape is taking on a new form. In newly reclaimed greenspaces, hands driving shovels and the scent of dark compost tell the story of a community fighting food insecurity, one harvest at a time.
“East New York has the highest concentration of community gardens in all five boroughs,” said Ariella Riapos, project manager of East New York Farms. “That’s a testament to community members who took burnt-out lots — after years of austerity and disinvestment — and turned them into spaces that sustain life and grow food. A neighborhood is more than your apartment; it’s where you go to exist, connect, and feed yourself. We must protect these spaces from real estate speculation.”
That space on Schenck Avenue is just one point in a movement that spans the entire city. You can take the #6 train to 138th Street and Grand Concourse in the South Bronx to meet Nancy Ortiz of La Finca del Sur (the Farm of the South); talk shop with Domingo Morales of Compost Power as he builds out composting in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments; then head to Flushing, Queens, to talk food scraps and wood chips with Lou Reyes at Queens Botanical Garden; or roll down to Staten Island’s Heritage Farm at Snug Harbor to see how all these hubs are building food sovereignty.
“Through our Share Table, local gardeners drop off produce, youth interns process and sell it at our market, and the gardeners keep 90% of the profits,” Riapos said. “Combined with our half-acre farm, we distributed and sold 10,000 pounds of fresh food in East New York last year. We intentionally price everything lower than grocery stores — we haven’t raised prices since 2019. Despite broader inflation, folks know they can rely on our rates.”
These leaders all point out that urban greenspaces are much more than just a nice neighborhood perk. They believe they are essential for environmental justice: reclaiming neglected land, building localized soil systems, and feeding communities that the system usually leaves behind.
New York City is one of the leading cities in the country, along with Detroit, San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta, that reportedly boasts more than 700 community gardens and farms, including rooftop farms, controlled environments, and learning gardens. However, this is more than just a local movement. Urban farming is a global trend in which city spaces are turned into usable land that does everything from reducing the carbon footprint caused by transporting produce to teaching locals how to grow sustainable food and sell it at market. It also provides solutions to food insecurity in areas that had once been food deserts — something that farm organizers say affects people of color in New York communities.
“East New York is Caribbean, Black, Latino, and South Asian,” said Riapos. “We grow crops like callaloo, scotch bonnets, bitter melon, and pigeon peas so residents can buy food they actually eat and identify with. To remove financial barriers, we accept SNAP, WIC, and Health Bucks, offering matching incentives so fresh produce stays affordable for everyone.”
Beyond serving as a place to get fresh food and a shield against gentrification, East New York Farms is investing directly in the future by training neighborhood teenagers in farm management and market sales. For Riapos, this is just as important as the crops they pick.
“Our tiered internship for ages 14 to 20 is a core pillar. First-years learn farming, composting, and market operations, while senior interns function as junior staff, leading workdays and managing operations,” Riapos said. “It’s a paid opportunity that invests in them monetarily while giving them the tools to manage projects from start to finish.”
In the Bronx, La Finca del Sur Co-founder Ortiz views urban farming through the lens of public health, neighborhood preservation, and gender equity. In a neighborhood dealing with health disparities and fast-moving economic changes, growing food on local soil becomes a direct defense against being pushed out.
“La Finca del Sur was envisioned by local residents — activists, educators, youth, and elders — concerned about our neighborhood’s historic health disparities,” Ortiz said. “Through youth-led canvassing in Mott Haven and Port Morris, it became clear our community needed fresh, affordable produce and green space. Our leadership evolved organically into a founding group of four women and my husband, Demetrio Surun. Having a majority women of color leadership team was vital: We wanted the development and stewardship of this farm to be driven by people who truly reflected the community that built it.”
Ortiz noted that at La Finca del Sur, local culture and community health needs determine what gets planted. The farm grows traditional cooking staples alongside medicinal plants, pairing fresh food access with real health education.
“From the beginning, our crops were chosen to be culturally relevant to the Bronx — staples like beans, collards, tomatoes, oregano, and papalo that mirror our culinary heritages — but it’s not just about nutrition; it’s also about wellness,” Ortiz said. “In an area plagued by asthma, we grow garlic and mullein for respiratory support, alongside mints and ginger for digestive health. We even keep beehives for local honey. It’s about merging beneficial crops with education so people feel empowered to grow and eat these foods.”
Closing the loop in public housing
When it comes to the basics of healthy soil, Morales sees recycling organic waste as not just an environmental goal, but something that belongs to the community. As founder of Compost Power, Morales approaches environmental justice through his own life story: Having grown up in foster care and lived in NYCHA housing himself, he uses micro-composting to link green equity with real job opportunities for local youth.
“Mandatory citywide composting sounds great on paper, but DSNY (Department of Sanitation of New York) doesn’t service NYCHA developments — that’s one in 16 New Yorkers left out,” Morales said. “NYCHA is the city’s second-largest landowner, with 325 campuses completely skipped over.”
Compost Power builds small compost sites right on NYCHA property, taking in food scraps and turning them into rich soil onsite — with no foul odor and no pests. That compost goes right into community farms on campus that grow free food for the people living there.
“That’s the gap Compost Power fills,” Morales said. “We use the finished compost for on-campus farms that grow free food for residents. DSNY sends huge volumes of waste to anaerobic digesters; we prioritize making real compost to rebuild New York City’s soil.”
Keeping these programs running, though, is an uphill fight. Ever since the city cut community composting from its main budget, groups like his have had to scrape by on discretionary funding.
“We need policy that forces local processing — decentralized community hubs in every district rather than trucking waste across boroughs,” Morales said. “The funding environment is broken. Right now, community composting relies on a meager $6 million in discretionary funding for the entire city.”
Scaling soil across boroughs
Over in Queens, Reyes and the team at the Queens Botanical Garden (QBG) run the borough’s only mid-scale composting site. Operating as a hub for both processing and public distribution, QBG serves as an essential backbone for community growers who don’t have the space to store large shipments of materials.
“A community garden may not have the space or infrastructure to receive a large delivery of wood chips,” Reyes said. “QBG serves as a central resource, distributing carbon-rich ‘browns’ so neighborhood sites across Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx can keep processing local food scraps.”
For Reyes, handling hundreds of cubic yards of carbon and food scraps comes down to making sure local soil stays rich enough to produce healthy food. “Healthy food production doesn’t begin with planting a seed; it starts with healthy soil,” he said. “Composting closes the loop by turning what would be discarded into a high-quality soil amendment that goes right back into growing food in our own neighborhoods.”
Expanding the island network
Across the five boroughs, grassroots growers are doing much more than planting crops. They are building healthy soil, creating good work, and making neighborhoods stronger from the ground up.
According to farm apprentice Tate Torello, “The esthetics of a production farm are vastly different from a botanical garden. We are definitely the shaggier sibling who isn’t quite as well-groomed as the formal gardens on our site.”
Snug Harbor deals with a unique challenge: While many urban farms build their growing beds over concrete, Snug Harbor manages an untamed, living landscape.
“Our challenge is more about making room for human needs in balance with a well-established natural ecology,” said Susannah Abbate, senior director of community impact. “Much of our labor goes to fighting weeds and other natural forces … We’d argue that we have the best-fed groundhog family in NYC.”
Despite hungry wildlife and tough clay under the topsoil, Farm Manager Claudia Diaz-Pina manages more than 400 crop cycles a year. She lets the neighborhood’s tastes lead the way, growing everything from heirloom tomatoes to sea kale and cucamelons.
“Being culturally responsive in one of the most diverse parts of New York City means that we don’t prioritize historically local produce over human culinary traditions,” Diaz-Pina said.
The harvest goes directly back into Staten Island: 80% to local residents facing food apartheid, 15% to neighborhood pantries, and 5% sold to help fund operations.
Connecting that harvest to the community takes constant outreach, workshops, and partnerships with groups like the Cornell Cooperative Extension. For the team, every carrot pulled out of the ground is a quick lesson in teamwork and taking care of the land.
“We don’t just produce food; we provide experiences that illuminate the fragility of our food system,” Abbate said. “Soil, air, and water are vital resources [that] require active vigilance by every member of the community. People forget this when they live so far from where their food is produced.”
A cleaner, safer city from ground up
As New York City keeps debating top-down trash pickup and citywide environmental policy, community composters and urban growers maintain that real sustainability starts right on the block. For Morales, building local waste systems gets straight to the heart of everyday neighborhood life.
“If someone asks who cares about compost, my answer is simple: If you don’t care about composting, do you care about fresh produce in food deserts? Do you care about good green jobs? Do you care about rat control or absorbing stormwater so raw sewage stops flooding our rivers? Composting hits every single one of those issues simultaneously.”
Across the Five Boroughs, grassroots growers are doing much more than planting crops. They are building healthy soil, creating good work, and making neighborhoods stronger from the ground up.
As Reyes said, protecting the actual land where this work happens is the bottom line for New York’s food future.
“When we talk about expanding composting infrastructure in New York City, we also have to talk about protecting what already exists,” Reyes said. “Community composting takes years to build — you cannot simply replace decades of trust, trained staff, and neighborhood relationships by putting a new site somewhere else.”
