This week, Mayor Boris Johnson of London announced a plan to convert more than 2000 parcels of land around the city into green spaces for growing food. The Capital Growth project will identify suitable land and provide support to individuals and organizations who wish to grow food for themselves and the local community.

Organizations such as hospitals, schools, and utility companies are expected to participate in the program, opening up land to grow food. Government housing estate, park, and borough council lands will also be included.

Project backers say the program will make economic sense by increasing the availability of locally grown, nutritious food in a time of rising prices, as well as provide significant environmental and health benefits.

Capital Growth is a project of London Food Link, itself part of Sustain, a nonprofit which “works for better food and farming to enhance people’s health and welfare and the environment”.

The project is being funded in the pilot stage, in which the first 50 spaces will be identified and supported, by the London Development Agency, at a cost of about £85,000, or $135,000. Sustain is seeking funding for the project to continue beyond March 2009.

In a statement, Mayor Johnson said: “Linking up currently unloved patches of land with people who want to discover the wonders of growing their own food, delivers massive benefits  It will help to make London a greener, more pleasant place to live whilst providing healthy and affordable food. This will aid people to reconnect with where their fruit and veg comes from and cut the congestion and carbon emissions associated with the transportation of food from miles away”.

Among the first organizations pledging land to the project are: The Blenheim Gardens housing estate in Brixton, a privately owned residential garden in Morden, and the Latchmere House resettlement prison in Richmond.