She got her start as a chef in New York City, then ran a wholesale vegetable business selling only locally grown vegetables in the New York area. Brown then went to graduate school to learn how city waste could be used to enrich soils on nearby farms.

Now a research associate professor in the UW’s , Brown and collaborators have published the most extensive compilation to date explaining how to grow urban agriculture, and how doing so could save American cities.

The compilation, titled “,” includes articles by academics, journalists, avid gardeners — and even a former White House who helped plant the vegetable garden on the White House lawn. The two-book series was published by Springer in April, with co-editors of the University of Alaska Anchorage and with .

UW Today sat down with Brown to learn more about the books, urban agriculture as a movement and what our cities could look like if they fully embraced urban farming.

You have an interesting background in food and cities. How did that influence your current work?

SB: Growing up in New York City, I realized that most people weren’t aware that there was commercial agriculture pretty close by. Having farms close to the city was a gift, something that I thought was important to preserve. I went back to graduate school as a way to see if we could use some of the waste from the city to make near-urban agriculture more permanent — and less likely to be lost to suburbia.

What brought urban agriculture front and center for you more recently?

SB: It was through my former graduate student Kristen McIvor’s work that I began to recognize, urban agriculture is something — this is not just a feel-good fad, or about who can grow the coolest variety of cherry tomato. This is potentially a really powerful movement on a number of different levels with a huge range of benefits. In order to reach its potential, it needs to be nurtured. Like a plant, you need to nurture it.

Can you give some examples of cities embracing urban farming?

SB: Tacoma, Washington, is my favorite example. You can read about it in the last chapter of the second book. The mayor of Tacoma, Marilyn Strickland, considers expanding urban agriculture as one of her missions while she is in office. She wants Tacoma to have more urban gardens per capita than any other city in the U.S. There are concerns about soil contamination in Tacoma from the former smelter. Most people garden in raised beds. The recycled cardboard from the city is used to cover ground in between the beds. Wood waste is chipped and used as mulch. The beds are filled with Tagro potting soil — the award-winning soil made from the solids from the city’s wastewater treatment plant. Tacoma also helps to support Harvest Pierce County, the organization that helps tend to the gardens as well as their gleaning program. Washington, D.C. and Chicago are just now starting to provide soil blends for their gardens, also from the solids from wastewater.

Where do these books fit in?

SB: Urban agriculture is many things to many people. It’s becoming recognized as an issue of scholarly importance, it’s starting to be integrated into different academic curricula and it’s something that municipal managers are starting to consider on some level as we now see farms and community gardens in every city. We are also seeing an increased emphasis on experiential learning with getting kids outside, and there’s the realization that diet and activity are critical for people’s health. There wasn’t any resource out there that addressed all of these aspects of urban agriculture.

Who are the books for?

SB: The writing is a mix of styles and isn’t purely academic. We wanted our books to be interesting and useful to people at organizations like Seattle Tilth, for people in master gardener programs and even as required reading for municipal managers.

What are the differences between the two volumes?

SB: The first book is more of a how-to manual for urban agriculture. The second one tells stories about what happens if you do it. We started the first book with exploring what life could look like if a city really adopted urban farming. We then began the second book with stories about why people are coming to urban agriculture and what are they getting from it.

You have many favorite chapters, but can you share a couple of highlights?

SB: In the first book, the McGoodwin family from Seattle describes lessons learned from tending their urban garden. Their story is just amazing, because they literally measured their entire annual produce yield, did taste tests and were so skilled in their advice. If you have a garden plot and you want to grow a lot of food, you need to read that chapter.

In the second book, the first chapter is a beautiful story about former White House pastry chef William Yosses­ who helped start Michelle Obama’s garden. It will make you cry. The last chapter in the book is about Tacoma, which is the only city I know that is really practicing urban agriculture with more of the pieces all tied in. That chapter starts with an interview with the city’s mayor saying, “I need to do this.” You will start this book with tears and end it with tears, but they’re all good tears.

What does the future look like for urban agriculture?

SB: Everybody now thinks, wow, cool, but it’s going to go through a lot of growing pains and changes. You can envision a situation where helping urban farms is an integral part of a city’s job, like police and fire. It fits because of the public health benefits, the crime reduction and the food security benefits. Climate change is a big threat to our largescale-production agriculture, so this can be a way to make our communities more resilient in the face of climate change. But will we get there? I don’t know. It’s a lot of communication and teaching people to take responsibility for the whole deal, ranging from growing a portion of their food to properly dealing with their food waste.

A number of UW-affiliated authors contributed to these books. McIvor and Andrew Trlica are former graduate students of Brown’s; is a professor in environmental and forest sciences; is a former faculty member in the School of Medicine; and is an associate professor in the College of Education. , whose interview appears in the final piece in the second volume, is one of Tacoma’s wastewater managers and received his doctorate in silviculture from the UW.

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For more information, contact Brown at slb@uw.edu.

Read more about Brown’s work in her for the Huffington Post.

That’s the main finding of a appearing this month in the Journal of Environmental Quality. The ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½-led study looked at potential risks associated with growing vegetables in urban gardens and determined that the benefits of locally produced vegetables in cities outweigh any risks from gardening in contaminated soils.

“People are terrified of soils in urban areas. They always think it’s a mystery brew of toxins in the soil, but in vast majority of cases, the contamination is lead,” said lead author , a UW research associate professor of environmental and forest sciences.

“We’ve shown that lead is harmful by eating the dirt, not from eating the lettuce grown in the dirt.”

Previous studies have found that lead contamination and elevated levels in the bloodstream are more common in people who live in urbans areas than in rural or suburban neighborhoods. Lead can be absorbed directly from breathing in or inadvertently consuming contaminated soil or dust. Alternatively, in the , residents ingested lead through their water.

The soil around older homes and under roof drip lines is most likely to have higher concentrations of lead from paint and other building materials used on older structures. These areas unfortunately often double as playgrounds, backyards and vegetable gardens in cities across the country.

A common assumption is that soil contaminated with lead is unsafe for gardening, Brown said. But with the exception of some root vegetables — carrots, turnips, radishes and beets — plants actually take up very little lead in their stems and leaves, and are safe to eat, the researchers found. It’s important to carefully wash the excess dirt from leafy vegetables and also wash your hands before eating.

Additionally, adding compost or other regulated soil amendments like biosolids will dilute any lead in the soil and may also make whatever lead that is present less likely to do harm. These products also help nourish the soil and improve the growing conditions for plants.

With carrots and these other root vegetables, there doesn’t appear to be a proportional relationship between the amount of lead in the soil and how much gets taken up by the vegetable, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid carrots. Lead is most hazardous when it enters an empty stomach, so the effects are minimal when eating these root vegetables because food is already in the stomach, Brown said.

“If you have a kid eating a carrot, that is a better-nourished kid,” she said. “Urban agriculture is just such a wonderful thing, and you shouldn’t let the fear of the soil put the kibosh on it.”

The researchers also recommend putting a layer of compost on top of lead-contaminated soil, which significantly dilutes the lead concentration, according to several previous studies. In some instances, compost will actually render the lead insoluble, meaning it’s unlikely to be absorbed into the bloodstream if eaten.

Building a raised bed and using tested soil and compost from an outside source is another good option for urban gardening, the researchers said. As cities continue to grow and more of the U.S. population than ever before is considered food insecure (as many as 93 million people), urban gardening is a viable option to address that growing need.

Other co-authors are of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and of Kansas State University.

The study was funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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For more information, contact Brown at slb@uw.edu or 206-755-1396.

A new ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½ confirms that sentiment, and also calculates the environmental benefits associated with keeping these organic materials out of landfills.

The biggest takeaway for residents of Seattle, San Francisco and other places that offer curbside compost pickup is to take advantage of that service — and pat yourself on the back for using it.

“You should definitely pay attention to where you put your food waste, and you should feel good you live in a place where compost is an option,” said paper author , a UW research associate professor of environmental and forest sciences.

Food waste in particular generates a significant amount of the greenhouse gas methane when it’s buried in landfills, but not so when composted. U.S. cities and counties that offer composting prevent otherwise trash-bound food scraps from decomposing in landfills and generating methane — and they get a significant carbon credit as a result.

“That gives municipalities a big incentive to do this,” Brown added.

Brown’s , appearing in the January 2016 issue of , analyzes new changes to a U.S. that helps solid waste planners estimate greenhouse gas emission reductions based on whether materials are composted, recycled, burned or thrown away.

With compost, the model calculates how much methane is produced over time in landfills as organic materials decay. It also considers how much methane from landfills is currently captured in collection systems verses being released into the atmosphere.

The results are overwhelmingly in support of composting food waste rather than sending it to landfills.

“Putting your food waste in the compost bin can really help reduce methane emissions from landfills, so it’s an easy thing to do that can have a big impact,” Brown said.

In the U.S., about 95 percent of food scraps are still thrown away and eventually end up in landfills. The scenario is better for yard waste — grass clippings, leaves and branches — with more than half diverted to compost facilities instead of landfills.

Brown’s analysis found that the benefits of composting yard trimmings is less clear on paper, because the speed that the material decomposes depends on location and season. For example, yard waste in Florida in December will likely break down a lot quicker in landfills and create more methane gas than the same amount of yard waste in Minnesota during the same month.

Food scraps, alternatively, decay and start producing methane at about the same rate in all regions. The content of food waste is relatively consistent across seasons and locations, and the same can be said for conditions in landfills. While it may be snowing in Minnesota, the temperature within the landfills is likely to be over 70 F.

The variation for yard trimmings makes it hard for the Environmental Protection Agency model to cast a broad generalization of the material’s methane production, and thus the overall environmental cost and benefit of composting verses landfilling, Brown said.

But composting food scraps and woody yard materials together makes sense because dryer, high-carbon, yard trimmings mix with soggy food scraps to create ideal conditions for the , she added.

Seattle and King County were among the first municipalities nationwide to adopt food waste composting and curbside pickup. Other leaders include San Francisco, New York City and the states of Vermont and Massachusetts.

The study was funded by the King County Wastewater Treatment Division and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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For more information, contact Brown at slb@uw.edu or 206-755-1396.