Roxanne Christensen wrote @ July 21, 2008 at 3:56 pm

What has held back urban farming has been the lack of an economically viable system that can be deployed rapidly and on a broad scal.e That is the concept behind SPIN-Farming. Developed by Canadian farmer Wally Satzewich, SPIN is a franchise-ready vegetable farming system that makes it possible to earn $50,000+ from a half acre. SPIN farmers utilize relay cropping to increase yield and achieve good economic returns by growing only the most profitable food crops tailored to local markets. SPIN’s growing techniques are not, in themselves, breakthrough. What is novel is the way a SPIN farm business is run. SPIN provides everything you’d expect from a good franchise: a business plan, marketing advice, and a detailed day-to-day workflow. In standardizing the system and creating a reproducible process it really isn’t any different from McDonalds.

By offering a non-technical, easy-to-understand and inexpensive-to-implement farming system, SPIN allows many more people to farm, wherever they live, as long as there are nearby markets to support them, and it removes the two big barriers to entry – sizeable acreage and significant start-up capital. By utilizing backyards and front lawns and neighborhood lots as their land base, SPIN farmers are recasting farming as a small business in cities and towns and helping to make local food production a viable business proposition once again. Most importantly, this is happening without significant policy changes or government supports. You can see some of these entrepreneurial sub-acre farmers in action at http://www.spinfarming.com