GRAND RAPIDS — As one group of volunteers poured the cement bases for a pergola, another shoveled soil into wooden beds. A child sprayed water from a hose at raspberry bushes. Others spread mulch from a wheelbarrow with a “Who’s your farmer?” sticker on one side and a “good things grow locally” label on the other.

“Want to help out, buddy?” a woman asked a child as she erected a trellis. “We need about four more (branches) of that size.”

Welcome to the Fourth Street Garden Oasis, one of several gardens sprouting in Grand Rapids as part of a growing urban farming trend sweeping the nation. In the process, it is confronting municipalities with zoning dilemmas and harboring the prospect of grassroots economic renewal.

In some cases — as in Detroit, where the CEO of a financial services firm aspires to create the world's largest urban farm — a vision of fresh local food dovetails with job creation and profit.

At the Fourth Street garden, initiated by parents of children who attend the nearby Grand Rapids Child Discovery Center, the work is decidedly anti-capitalist.

“It’s a communal garden,” said Chrysta Coronado, who is working at the garden west of Stocking Avenue NW. “This food doesn’t belong to any one person. This food is all of ours.”

It’s also about creating an oasis in what some claim has become an urban food desert.

“It’s not just about growing carrots. It’s about doing it together,” Coronado said. “It’s about bringing power back to ourselves and doing it in a way that’s more just.”

The sentiment is similar at The Barefoot Victory, where everyone is invited to help turn a vacant lot at 1350 Wealthy St. SE into a kind of old-school social network centered on growing and eating fresh local food.

And in the parking lot at Fuller Avenue Christian Reformed Church, 1239 Fuller Ave. SE, a new nonprofit venture called Green Sprawl Neighborhood Farms Inc. has planted tomatoes, peppers, radishes, turnips, peas and greens in seven 4-foot by 24-foot raised beds and several bucket containers.

The plan is to sell the harvest and use proceeds to fund gardens in other neighborhoods. Ultimately, Green Sprawl aspires to equip urban residents with know-how to grow nutritious local food.

“Our mission is to teach people these gardening methods and hope that they will do the same at their own house,” said Paige Waldron, 23, a Calvin College alum who started Green Sprawl with her husband, Ben.

“In this particular neighborhood, there’s no grocery store nearby and, since it’s a lower income area, not everyone has cars.”

An innovative market force

Urban gardens are symptoms of a broader local food movement that is developing into an innovative market force, may have the capacity to feed many people and be a salve for the local economy, according to one advocate who makes his living in the field.

"We ought to ask that question and pursue it and test it before we write it off," said Tom Cary, treasurer of the Greater Grand Rapids Food Systems Council.

Cary, who helps run a subscription-based community supported agriculture, or CSA, farm near Zeeland, claims small-scale farming in West Michigan could create as many as 200,000 jobs to serve 1.5 million consumers who increasingly seek locally sourced food.

Local CSAs, for example, have gone from a novelty to a network of more than 20 in the past decade. Farm markets and community gardens also continue to proliferate.

Still, less than 10 percent of food consumed in West Michigan is raised locally, Cary said.

“The potential is there,” he said. “It has to pass the litmus test of being economically viable. The thing that’s potent about this is they are. It’s working.”

Selling local goods

On one hand, consumers are placing more value on fresh local food they perceive as healthier for themselves and the environment. On the other hand, “mission-driven” producers sense a calling for an enterprise that matches their desire for sustainability and social justice, said Deb Steketee, associate professor of sustainable business at Aquinas College.

The market is responding in many ways, so “we’re going to need to rethink public policy and accommodate some of the innovation that’s occurring,” she said.

Nationwide, Seattle has loosened its rules for backyard goats and New York City’s health department is taking steps to legalize beekeeping. Urban farmers in Los Angeles are lobbying to allow cultivation and sale of flowers, fruits, nuts or vegetables in residential neighborhoods.

Closer to home, Zeeland and some other Michigan cities are facing demand for backyard chickens, and a Jamestown Township man has made a business of renting egg-laying hens and coops.

“What we’re seeing is a lot of trends coalescing around this,” Steketee said. “At the bottom of it all is that food is the one thing that we all want to have control over, and it feels good to know what you’re putting into your body is healthy, fresh food.

“Today, we’ve got the ‘economic victory’ motivation. I can make a small investment in plants and basically feed our family for the summer from the vegetable garden.”

In Wyoming, the local Moose Lodge has tilled its street frontage at 2630 Burlingame Ave. SW into a garden of flowers and vegetables including cabbage, beans, carrots, lettuce, peas and onions.

The primary motivation?

“Nobody wanted to mow it,” said Joe O’Neill, chairman of the lodge’s gardening committee.

But, especially in this economy, why not plant a garden that can supplement people’s food supply?

“You’ve got fresh vegetables that taste good, and there’s some community spirit,” O’Neill said. “We’re going to distribute them to the membership by just setting out baskets, first-come-first-served. What’s not used is going to go to a God’s Kitchen (or similar charitable organization).”

Some local businesses and several area churches have planted gardens to feed employees and those in need. In some cases, urban residents are replacing their lawns with gardens.

“People are just understanding that it’s kind of fun and enjoyable,” said Cynthia Price, chairwoman of the food systems council.

“It’s also, for a lot of people, a health concern. They think ‘Well, I need to eat fresh, healthy food, and what easier way to get it?’ You can just go out and pick a tomato or pick a zucchini.”

— The Associated Press contributed to this report