Posts from — November 2008

Caption: Familiar scene, more especially on Saturdays and Sundays, before the war.

Caption: What are we coming to now.

Cartoon by W.K. Haselden
Daily Mirror, 22 Mar 1917

PowerPoint presentation by Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe (See next page.)

Sri Lanka National Agriculture Policy Documents

Statement – 29 (2003)
Implement a special urban agriculture promotion
program designed to ensure supply of home
consumption needs and environmental protection.

Statement – 17 (2007)
17.1 Promote home-gardening and urban agriculture
to enhance household nutrition and income
17.2 Promote women’s participation in home-gardening.

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Photo from the Birmingham News: Casey Gustowarow and Daniel Bowman Simon are driving around the country in an eye-catching bus, topped with an organic garden, gathering signatures on a petition calling for President-Elect Obama to plant an organic farm on the White House Lawn.

By Thomas Spencer
Oct 14, 2008

Using the White House grounds to produce food is not a new idea. Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden during World War 2 to encourage American to increase food production.

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World War 2, blind gardener, piano tuner, Mr Sharper, is filmed kneeling down picking potatoes from his allotment in Manchester and wheeling a barrow round his garden.

Photo image by Seetwist. See larger image here.

This is the time for the Secretary of Agriculture to represent the majority of America’s farmers: [family, small and middle farms].

By Jac Smit, Prez TUAN
Phone: 301 565 3131
4701 Conn. Av. NW
W-DC 20008-5617

The vast majority, over three-quarters, of American farmers produce our food in metropolitan and metropolitan adjacent counties, defined as Urban Agriculture, Metropolitan Farming and Metropolitan Agriculture. Three quarters of our Representatives on Capitol Hill are elected by the residents of the same urban counties. The farm and farm jobs data is at USDA and at County data [see NACO, national assoc. of counties].

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First panel reads:
The garden (old time) and it’s resident fairy — “Mary, Mary, quite contrary”.

Second panel reads:
The garden (war time) and it’s fairy — “Marian, Marian, Utilitarian”. Signs in garden read Beetroot, Cabbages, Potatoes.

Cartoons by W.K. Haselden
Daily Mirror 1916
Note same message today. Landscapes move from ornamentals to food.

Photo: Staff of NTT Facilities, Junko Kariu (left) and Masahiro Nagata, check the roof-top potato farm in Tokyo, in October. Launched by two subsidiaries of Japan’s telecommunications giant NTT Corp., “Green Potato” project could help prevent overheating of Tokyo as well as harvest sweet potatoes in autumn. By TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/ AFP/

Crops planted on rooftops, underground create new jobs, lower temperatures

BY Harumi Ozawa
Agence France-Presse Nov 5, 2008

TOKYO — Tomohiro Kitazawa makes an unlikely farmer. He works neither under the sun nor in the fields, instead reporting for duty in the bustling heart of Tokyo.

As Japan’s capital city struggles with problems from food safety to global warming to unemployment, a growing number of people in the famously crowded metropolis are becoming city farmers, planting crops atop tall buildings or deep underground.

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See clips from the documentary film in this 24 minute video interview with the directors Robert Lughai and Tashai Lovington. Wisconsin Public Television, Director’s Cut.
Link to interview here. (Click on Watch Flash Video)

Witness if you will Gallus Domesticus … the backyard chicken. A mere few pounds of feather, bone, and muscle; a creature regarded by many as a rather humorous, though not so intelligent agent of food production. And yet, make note of a most singular phenomenon now taking shape across suburb and city.

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Redbook Magazine 1943
By Bob Hope for the Pepsodent Company

1. Of course, you know what a Victory Garden is. That’s a little garden where you go out and putter around for a while, and if you can straighten your back again it’s a victory. It’s fun, though. I have a beautiful patch — on my right hand where the blister broke!

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Song written in 1917
Composer: Brockman, James, 1886-1967
Lyrics: Jeff Branen

Out in our town everybody there,
Even tho the Mayor tries to do his share
Teachers, Preachers, digging everywhere
We’re as busy as can be
One old soldier close to ninety three,
With a shovel on his shoulder said to me.

I’ve been told I’m going to propose,
To a girl named Rose Little turnip nose,
Radish hair and freckles, I suppose,
I have bought a carrot ring.
Rosie, Rosie,
Just the proper thing,
I can cauliflower to breakfast, lettuce sing.

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REUTERS – Oct 28, 2008
Reuters video in Spanish, linked. The video doesn’t seem to have been picked up by a news outlet and there is no news commentary in the footage. A raw script, which accompanies the video, and translation of the comments by the Cubans who were interviewed, is attached below this article.

Cubans hope urban gardens will solve food shortages caused by hurricane damage.

In the face of its greatest food shortage since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba has fallen back on urban agriculture, which helped provide relief in the 1990′s during the Caribbean island’s “special period”.

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Compost making is what we do at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden in Vancouver, and it can’t be stressed enough, that fall leaves are the secret to making good compost at home. Collect enough leaves in bags NOW to last you through the next 12 months. Every time you add food scraps, grass clippings or plant waste to your bin, throw in a few handfuls of leaves. In that way you will have a good carbon/nitrogen ratio and you will get fine compost in 6-8 months.

Chris Olsen of CTV News visited us at our garden and also visited the Vancouver Landfill where they make compost on a large scale.

See his news video on this page.

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Video by Chad Kimball. Raising Chickens In The City – Chicago Police Say NO. “Is it legal to keep chickens in the city of Chicago? Listen to conflicting information I receive from the police, the city clerk, and the legal department.”

The ‘City Chicken’ website keeps a list of laws from various North American cities regarding the keeping of chickens.

See the list here.

29 Oct 1945, London
Film newsreel shows children growing vegetables and raising livestock in the rubble of bombed-out buildings in London just after World War 2.

Several night shots of blazing London during blitz.
Young boy riding small three wheeler through the street. Flowers growing on London blitz site. Young boy crosses blitz site. He arrives to a garden. Children working on allotments on blitz site. Various shots of the children working in garden. Several good shots of vegetables in allotment and after being dug up. Children keeping rabbits. Several good shots of the rabbits. Children taking their vegetables home.

By Michaela Cabrera, Reuters, May 28, 2008 – With prices of food items reaching record-highs in Philippines, residents in poor areas in Manila plant vegetables in their backyards to save on food expenses and harvest enough to sell at a local market. See video story here.

For green thumbs living in Manila, urban farming is the answer to soaring food prices. It may seem impossible to grow lettuce and eggplant in a crowded, humid environment, but city living has not stopped farmers like Bernabe Atenta from cultivating greens. He and his wife Virgie literally pick out their lunch from their backyard.

“This helps a lot, in securing your family’s welfare. You don’t need to buy vegetables in the market. If all people here in Manila planted vegetables even in pots, it will ease some expenses,” Atenta said.

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Please let me know what date was on the email when you received your user
name.

Sincerely,

Michael

On 05/11/08 10:06 AM, “WordPress” wrote:

> New user registration on your blog City Farmer News:
>
> Username: The Tone
>
> E-mail: clark_a_e@yahoo.ca
>

———————————————————-
Michael Levenston, Executive Director
City Farmer – Canada’s Office of Urban Agriculture
Box 74567 Kitsilano RPO, Vancouver, BC V6K 4P4 Canada
Phone: (604) 685-5832

http://www.cityfarmer.info

http://www.cityfarmer.org

————————————————————-
Now celebrating 30 years 1978-2008!

Editors: Gordon Prain, Nancy Karanja and Diana Lee-Smith
Publishers: CIP/Urban Harvest IDRC
Available: early 2009

Amid the multiple changes affecting sub-Saharan Africa in the last couple of decades, how has the demonstrated importance of urban agriculture in African cities changed, how far is farming better integrated into urban environmental management and city governance and what is its future role in addressing the needs of low-income urban households and modernizing cities in the region?

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Edited by Alice Hovorka, Henk de Zeeuw and Mary Njenga
The book (approx. 270 pages)
will be published by Practical Action Publishing, Rugby, UK.
Available: March 2009

Poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition have become critical urban problems. To confront this major challenge, food production in and around cities is an important strategy, contributing not only to food security and adequate nutrition but also stimulating supplementary income generation and social inclusion among low-income, vulnerable households in urban and peri-urban areas.

Women make up the majority of urban food producers in many cities around the world, especially predominating in household subsistence farming, with men playing a greater role in urban food production for commercial purposes.

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London’s Mayor Boris Johnson and mayoral food advisor Rosie Boycott speak to the press at the press launch of Capital Growth, at the Thrive herb garden in Battersea Park.

4 November 2008

Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Rosie Boycott, Chair of London Food, today launched an innovative scheme to turn 2,012 pieces of land into thriving green spaces to grow food by 2012.

Capital Growth – the first initiative delivered by Rosie Boycott in her capacity as Chair of London Food – aims to identify suitable patches of land around London and offer financial and practical support to groups of enthusiastic gardeners or organisations who want to grow food for themselves and for the local community.

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Paul Stamets, mushroom maven, from Maria Keating on Vimeo.
Also see alternative HD High Definition version on YouTube.
Paul Stamets at the Hollyhock workshop.

Maria Keating, our in-house bug lady, recently took a very inspirational five day mushroom identification course with mycologist Paul Stamets, at HollyHock, an education retreat center on Cortes Island, B.C.  The fall course, now an annual event, was packed with information on the many fungal innovations and products that Paul’s company, Fungi Perfecti, specializes in. Paul’s latest book is titled ‘Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World’.

Link to Paul Stamets’ website, Fungi Perfecti, here.

Link to Hollyhock website here.

Watch a talk by Paul Stamets on the website TED, titled ’6 ways mushrooms can save the world’.
18 minutes long.