Reuters Video. Organic farms transform Nairobi slum. (Short advertisement at the start.)

Kibera (Nubian: Forest or Jungle) is a neighbourhood and province division of Nairobi, Kenya. It is the largest of Nairobi’s slums, and the second largest urban slum in Africa, with an estimated population of between 600,000 and 1.2 million inhabitants.

Kiberas Youth Reform Organic Farm – Nairobi, Kenya

By Public Radio Exchange
“The Kibera Youth Reform Organic Farm began on a 3 meter deep garbage dump in Africa’s largest slum. The transformation started in April 2008 and took three and a half months, prooving anything is possible. Claire Niala asked Su Kahumbu, Director of Green Dreams (the first locally certified organic farm in Kenya) to assist the Kibera Youth Reform Group comprising 70 young men and women who had decided to change their ways of crime. They wished to transform a garbage site into a farm, growing crops for their own consumption as well as for sale if possible.

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Jac Smit Passed Away Sunday, November 15

From Joe Nasr, co-author with Jac of Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities.

Jac Smit, often referred to as “the father of urban agriculture”, passed away on Sunday November 15th at his Washington, DC home, a few days after his 80th birthday. After working initially in the US (notably Chicago), Jac had a long career as a planner around the world, with assignments in Egypt, Iraq, Tanzania, and across South Asia, among others. Jac was a pioneer in advocating for the cause of urban agriculture, first publishing on it in the 1960s. He was the lead author on the seminal book on the subject: Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities (1996). Jac founded The Urban Agriculture Network (TUAN) in 1992; the unique library that he collected for TUAN will form the foundation of a new Urban Food and Agriculture Learning Centre in Toronto, to be managed by MetroAg – Alliance for Urban Agriculture. For more information on Jac’s contribution to the field of urban agriculture, see www.jacsmit.com. Jac is survived by his wife Elise Fiber Smith. He will be greatly missed.

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