Posts from — November 2009

Carlos Avrard, strategic program director for Community enCompass, works on affixing the metal supports for a hoop house that is being assembled behind the Goodwill Industries of West Michigan’s corporate headquarters. Photo: Chronicle/Kendra Stanley-Mills

By Dave Alexander | Muskegon Chronicle
November 29, 2009

Community enCompass is taking the concept of the urban garden to the next level. Officials call it urban farming.

Playing off the successful half-acre garden plot that grew last summer on a vacant lot owned by Goodwill Industries, the Christian community development organization in Muskegon’s McLaughlin Neighborhood has created the McLaughlin Grows Urban Farm at Iona and Sophia streets.

With the help of the Community Foundation for Muskegon County and its Richard and Marilyn Witham Fund, the urban farm is adding “hoop houses” to extend the growing season year-round. The idea is to create business opportunities during economically tough times.

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Linking the 1931 Thrift Gardens with the 1894 Potato Patch Plan through Mrs. Hazel Pingree Depew, the former Mayor’s daughter

Mayor Frank Murphy – the Detroit Years
By Sidney Fine
1984 Vol 3

Excerpt:

The outstanding popular success of the Mayor’s Unemployment Committee (MUC) and, in the opinion of the mayor, “perhaps” its “most important undertaking,” was the Detroit thrift-garden program. The suggestion that the MUC undertake this activity came from Murphy himself, who had been reading George Catlin’s The Story of Detroit and had been impressed with the account of Hazen Pingree’s famous “potato patch plan” and the manner in which a substantial number of welfare families in Detroit during the depression years 1894-1896 had grown a portion of their food on vacant lots donated to the city for that purpose. The MUC decided in March, 1931, to undertake a similar program of “vacant lot gardening.”

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Poster showing a cartoon from the Chicago Evening Post of a farmer waving a banner “War Gardens” as his cannon made from a bushel basket fires produce and a German figure sky high.

Chicago: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 1918

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Photo by Chris Steele-Perkins, 1999

Photo by Bruno Barbey, 1995

Detroit Mayor Hazen S. Pingree

From Reform in Detroit – Hazen S. Pingree and Urban Politics
By Melvin G. Holli
1969

Excerpt Page 70:

During the second summer of the depression (1894) Pingree launched his “potato patch plan,” which, as a work relief measure, has been described as one of the original contributions of the nineties. The Mayor’s scheme envisioned the cultivation of vacant lots by the city’s unfortunate, who were, in many cases, but a few years removed from a peasant agricultural economy of Europe. Since Detroit’s poor commission was near insolvency and the city treasury almost empty, Pingree called upon the churches to contribute funds for the purchase of ploes, implements, and seed. “the Mayor proposes to find out if those elegant churches are only for show or for doing some real good,” a Pingree aide told a reporter.

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Photo by Shelley Neuman/The Daily Texan. Larry Butler, owner and proprietor of Boggy Creek Farm, stands in front of the patch of arugula and mustard seed plants that makes up just a small portion of the Five-acre urban farm located in east Austin.

Big City Farm Life – Resolution encourages Austin residents to start their own organic farms

By Priscilla Totiyapungprasert

Daily Texan Staff

November 23, 2009

On a chilly Saturday morning, a steady stream of Austin residents lured by the promise of fresh organic vegetables trickled into east Austin’s Boggy Creek Farm, where tables of butternut squash and bell peppers greeted them.

A dirt path led visitors behind the market stand, where they found a three-acre plot of winter crops including beets, arugula, carrots and leeks.

Farms in the middle of major cities are not a common sight, but a recent City Council decision could make it easier for Austin residents to start their own farm like Boggy Creek.

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A Food Revolution – Urban Communities Growing Fresh Food

November 24, 2009

Fresh vegetables and fruit can be hard to find in the inner cities, but one man is trying to change that.

Excerpts from AmpleHarvest’s FAQ

Q. What exactly is the AmpleHarvest.org campaign?

A. It is a nationwide effort to diminish hunger in America by making it easy for millions of backyard gardeners across the country to quickly find local food pantries eager to receive freshly picked crops for their clients. AmpleHarvest.org enables gardeners to find food pantries within a specified distance of their home and then view the pantries desired day/time for receiving donations.

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The 10 x 10 project, comprising modular food production units distributed to schools, community centers, and Boys and Girls Clubs, would provide children with a hands-on, direct food production experience, as well as appreciation of fresh foods.

From of a report by Urban Design Labs (MIT and Columbia University researchers) called Curbing Childhood Obesity: Searching for Comprehensive Solutions.

MIT researchers think America’s obesity epidemic can be reversed via ‘foodsheds,’ in which healthier, more affordable food is produced and consumed regionally.
Excerpt From: Good food nation
Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

In a report finished this October after meetings with food-industry leaders, the MIT and Columbia researchers propose a solution: America should increase its regional food consumption. Each metropolitan area, the researchers say, should obtain most of its nutrition from its own “foodshed,” a term akin to “watershed” meaning the area that naturally supplies its kitchens.

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This paper explores the growth of urban farming across the United States, and highlights three different case studies.

An Overview of Urban Farming
A Report from Green For All’s Capital Access Program

Excerpt:

III. Urban Farming as a Business

Urban farms come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Almost all, however, share some basic startup costs. Assuming a plot of land of at least half an acre, a list of such costs would likely include:

• Rototiller ($4,500): a motorized plow that uses rotating tines or blades to cultivate the soil and get the land ready for planting. This is the only mechanized equipment necessary.
• Coolers ($4,000): Two upright produce coolers used to store fresh vegetables and prevent spoilage.
• Other equipment ($1,000): garden seeder, wheel hoe, standard-issue tools, harvesting bins, hoses, and sprinklers
• Sales & Marketing ($500): farmers market tables, display baskets, digital scale, signage
• TOTAL: $10,000

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Forthcoming (mid/late February 2010) – Special issue: Urban agriculture: Diverse Activities and Benefits for City Society (Craig Pearson)

Editor in Chief: Jules Pretty OBE, University of Essex, UK
The International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (IJAS) is a cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to advancing the understanding of sustainability in agricultural and food systems

Most of us live in cities. These are becoming increasingly complex and removed from broad-scale agriculture. Yet within cities there are many examples of greenspaces and local food production that bring multiple benefits that often go unnoticed. This book presents a collection of the latest thinking on the multiple dimensions of sustainable greenspace and food production within cities. It describes the diversity of “urban agriculture” and seeks a balanced representation between the biophysical and social : agriculturists, environmental scientists and social scientists: planners, landscape architects and community development specialists dealing with issues such as resource use, aesthetics and social cohesion. It deals with urban agriculture across scales -from indoor plants to farm-scale filtration of greywater – although it does not include greenhouse production.

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Photo by Jared Braiterman PhD

Reported by Jared Braiterman PhD
in Tokyo Green

I visited Odakyu’s Agris Seijo rental farm in Seijogakuenmae in Setagaya and was prepared to be charmed by a community vegetable farm built by a rail company above their tracks. Three years ago, the Odakyu corporation rebuilt the station, undergrounded the railway, and used some of the new land to promote urban farming. But I left feeling somewhat strange that reclaimed land could be gated and restricted. Although it is the rail company’s property, I think they missed a huge opportunity to create a great space for the neighborhood.

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BRITISH COLUMBIA
Marketwire
November 13, 2009

“Real estate – the one thing we’re not making any more of,” reports Time Magazine. “That might be good news for landlords but not for the world’s farmers, who have finite cropland to feed a growing global population. The answer: build up by farming vertically. Valcent is pioneering a hydroponic-farming system that grows plants in rotating rows, one on top of another. The rotation gives the plants the precise amount of light and nutrients they need, while the vertical stacking enables the use of far less water than conventional farming. But best of all, by growing upward instead of outward, vertical farming can expand food supplies without using more land.”

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FAO/UN film (in Spanish) about urban agriculture in Bolivia involving young people. This film shows an FAO initiative which is improving city dwellers’ lives by helping them grow their own food.

Because of the toxins in her urban soil, Susan Carpenter had to build raised beds to contain her plantings. (Los Angeles Times photo by Ken Hively.)

In Los Angeles, an urban gardener with dreams of farming in the city found that her soil was too polluted with lead and zinc to grow vegetables in the ground. But she didn’t let that stop her.

By Susan Carpenter
Los Angeles Times Writer
November 18, 2009

LOS ANGELES
There are certain phrases I never expected to utter in my lifetime. Things like, “Excuse me if I don’t shake your hand. Mine’s covered in horse urine.” Or, to my son, “When you’re finished with dinner, clear your plate and feed the scraps to the worms.”

Yet those are exactly the sorts of things I’ve found myself saying in the months I’ve been an urban farmer.

A year ago, I didn’t have a vegetable garden. I had a couple of lemon trees, but I’d given up on potted plants, having killed every rooted thing I’d attempted to nurture on my back deck. I didn’t just have a black thumb. I had a black hand.

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GOING VERTICAL. Brad Zizmor, left, had edible walls installed on the deck of his Manhattan apartment with the help of Kari Elwell Katzander, a landscape designer, and two workers. Photo by Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times. See more photos here.

The Rooftop Garden Climbs Down a Wall

By KEN BELSON
New York Times
November 18, 2009

IN most ways, the Barthelmes Manufacturing Company is a typical sheet metal fabricator. Five days a week, machines here stamp out thousands of computer cases, electrical patch panels and other items for companies like United Technologies.

Yet a growing part of the company’s business is being devoted to something decidedly unindustrial: edible walls — metal panels filled with soil and seeds and hung vertically.

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See larger image of the Farm plan here.

By sydneycityfarm
18th November 2009

Sydney siders are one step closer to having a City Farm and Sustainable Living Centre with the unanimous support of the City of Sydney Environment & Heritage Committee to fund an investigation into potential sites and models.

City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore spoke in support of the proposal which goes before a full sitting of Council on Monday November 23.

“City Farms provide real, hands-on experiences to teach residents, businesses and schools about sustainable living. City Farms demonstrate the simple ways that everyone can Live Green and give the community access to local organic produce.”

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See the tour video above.
Nov 19. City and State policy makers had a chance to eyeball some of Chicago’s premier urban farms. From Chicago Tonight.

Illinois policy makers take urban agriculture tour

Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA)
Posted: Nov 18, 2009

Chicago, IL (IDOA Release)–Policy makers will see and hear about the impact urban farms have on the communities that support them when they join the Urban Agriculture Tour from 8:30 AM to 1 PM on November 19, 2009. Approximately 50 members of the Illinois General Assembly, Chicago aldermen, Cook County Board members, metropolitan mayors, legislative staff, and funders are expected to participate in the bus tour.

The group will visit three Chicago farms: Resource Center’s City Farm on the Near North Side, Windy City Harvest in South Lawndale, and Growing Home’s Wood Street Farm in Englewood.

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“Sow and Grow” poster, Cleveland Public Schools Horticulture program.

Feeding Cleveland: Urban Agriculture

Cleveland State University Libraries presents The Cleveland Memory Project

A recurring theme in 20th century Cleveland that continues to the present day is that during difficult economic periods communities of people have come together to  raise food crops on city land. The working men’s farms during the Great Depression, the victory gardens during World War II, community gardens established during the years of urban renewal, and the present day market gardeners of the local food movement, all provide examples of revivals of urban agriculture as a response to economic difficulties. 

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