Tulane Helps Community Build an Urban Farm

December 13, 2007

Madeline Vann
newwave@tulane.edu

The Tulane City Center at the Tulane School of Architecture is helping make the urban farming dreams of New Orleans’ Vietnamese community a reality. A team has been working with the community leaders at Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corp. to plan a 20-acre farm along the eastern border of New Orleans.

Peter Nguyen, urban farm program manager with the development corporation, approached Dan Etheridge, assistant director of Tulane City Center, for help due to Tulane's track record of facilitating community partnerships and advancing community-based projects.

Etheridge partnered with Tulane student Art Terry and faculty from the School of Landscape Architecture at Louisiana State University to work on the farm plans, which include small-scale commercial farming, community garden plots, a chicken farm, a lagoon for water and a children's play area.

"They started talking about the type of trees they wanted to plant, so we knew they were happy with the basic plan," reports Etheridge, who says the final step of this stage of Tulane's involvement with the project is to prepare a 60-page booklet with all the details so the community can get started developing and raising funds.

"People often talk about community gardens, but they don't really get the scale of the project we are talking about with the Vietnamese community," says Etheridge, who refers to the project specifically as an urban farm.

The community has for years hosted an informal farmers' market each Saturday morning in a parking lot where residents gather not only to buy and sell food but to maintain the rich cultural practices brought with their community from Vietnam.

As part of the expanded urban farm vision, the community is negotiating to obtain another eight acres to house a more formal market that will sell fresh produce, seafood, meat and cooked foods.

Etheridge says he has been inspired by the commitment of the community to recover from Katrina stronger than before.

He believes the market could one day be on the list of tourist attractions for people visiting the city and a regional resource for people along the Gulf Coast seeking the traditional foods of Vietnam.

The land is on a flood plain, acknowledges Etheridge, but he believes the farm could be one of the first local resources to bounce back if the area is flooded again.

"If that area floods then there will be water sitting on that land. There is not a whole lot we can do about that. But remember, floodplain agriculture is something that is practiced all over the world," says Etheridge.