Posts from — November 2009

The Organic Gardens at Manatawna Farm in early spring.

Community Gardening in Philadelphia – 2008 Harvest Report

Domenic Vitiello and Michael Nairn
Penn Planning and Urban Studies, University of Pennsylvania
October 2009

Overview

This report summarizes research on the state of community and squatter gardens in Philadelphia, with a focus on the production and distribution of food. The specific aims of this project were to measure the amount of food grown in community gardens and to trace its distribution. The broader goal of this ongoing research is to understand the roles and impacts of community gardens in building food security for households and communities.

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Watch the Video

Michelle Obama appeared on Sesame Street, as part of the 40th anniversary of America’s longest-running children’s TV series.

During the first lady’s visit, she was interrogated by Elmo and Big Bird, two of the characters who have starred in the iconic series since it launched in 1969.

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The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, 1954

“For fourteen successive years the gardens at Bilignin were my joy, working in them during the summers and planning and dreaming of them during the winters. The summers frequently commenced early in April with the planting, and ended late in October with the last gathering of the winter vegetables.
Bilignin surrounded by mountains and not far from the French Alps —”

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Author Steven McFadden Releases “An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century”

Lincoln, NE – “Food and farms are involved in a blitzkrieg of changes,” writes veteran journalist Steven McFadden in The Call of the Land, published this month by NorLightsPress. The book joins a growing chorus voicing a new vision for food and agriculture. Picking up where Food Inc., the recent documentary on industrial agriculture, leaves off, the volume presents dozens of creative responses to the crisis.

Dubbed “An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century,” the sourcebook documents a range of positive pathways to food security, economic stability, environmental health, and cultural renewal. To McFadden and others, the call of the land now is an SOS. The responses—from individuals, communities, cities, and institutions—are both imaginative and practical.

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See FAO’s Food For The Cities brochure here.

Invitation to participate in the FAO Forum on Food, agriculture and cities: challenges and priorities:

More and more of the world’s population is becoming concentrated in and around large cities. Ensuring that the billions of people living in cities have their rightful access to adequate amounts of safe and nutritious food represents a global development challenge of the highest order. Promoting sustainable agricultural production in urban and peri-urban areas and developing food systems capable of meeting urban consumer demand will become increasingly important to global food security. Currently however, the important relationship between food security, agriculture and urbanization is often not sufficiently recognized.

In order to pursue the work, broaden the approaches, bring new insights, for cities both of developing, intermediate or developed countries, FAO proposes a discussion on the forum http://km.fao.org/fsn/fsn-home/en/ . The Forum is open from this week onwards and will run for the coming 3 weeks.

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Part 1. The Sweet Water Organics fish vegetable farm is in a 10,000 sq. ft. old Milwaukee factory building.

Sweet Water Organics

“Sweet Water Organics is the first major commercial upgrading of MacArthur genius Will Allen’s aquaculture methodologies, i.e. a three-tiered, aquaponic, bio-intensive fish-vegetable garden. Sweet Water is the anchor project in the transformation of a massive industrial building in an “industrial slum” into a show-case of the potential of living technologies and high-value added urban agriculture.

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Urban Farming Advocates

Formed in June 2009, Urban Farming Advocates (UFA) is a group of individuals, small business owners and organizations seeking to legalize urban farming in the City of L.A. We respectfully challenge outdated ordinances that restrict people’s freedom to use residential land for urban agriculture and self-reliance, practiced in a sustainable and responsible way, and in a manner that is directly related to the city’s efforts to green Los Angeles.

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Mirabelle restaurant’s garden

By Jenn Harris
LAmag.com,
October 19, 2009

Just feet from the 110 freeway’s Academy exit and behind a tall iron gate, a garden oasis is hiding. The Solano Community Garden in Angelino Heights is home to Mirabelle restaurant’s new edible garden, where the West Hollywood establishment grows 100 percent organic produce on a four-and-a-half-acre plot.

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Photo by Shane Keyser. Currently in Kansas City, urban farmer Steve Mann is not permitted to sell produce from a residential property he does not own.

Urban farming yields a harvest of hassles

By LYNN HORSLEY
The Kansas City Star
Nov. 06, 2009

Steve Mann doesn’t look like an outlaw as he cheerfully harvests giant rutabagas and luscious lettuce bunches from a friend’s garden in Kansas City, North.

But technically he is violating Kansas City ordinances as he prepares to sell the produce.

Brooke Salvaggio never dreamed that she and her husband, Dan Heryer, were running afoul of city codes when they used a few apprentices in their backyard garden business in south Kansas City.

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Urban farming – County preparing to break ground

Tribune Editorial
The Salt Lake Tribune
Nov. 04, 2009

As they sow, so shall they reap. With a progressive and expansive urban farming initiative, Salt Lake County officials are wisely planting the seeds of community, economy and healthful, sustainable living.

After getting the green light from the County Council in August, county staffers identified dozens of sites that may prove suitable for agricultural use, everything from tiny plots for public vegetable gardens to sprawling expanses suitable for biofuels production projects.

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Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times

A Bountiful Buzz – From the south lawn, a sweet smell of honey

By ELISABETH GOODRIDGE
November 4, 2009, 3:49 PM
The New York Times
The Politics and Government Blog

A new type of visitor came to the National Mall this year, flitting past monuments and museums in favor of trees, flowers and plants. But this wasn’t just some horticultural tour; no, this was work. Each day they were abuzz, gathering and pollinating before returning home to modest quarters with tremendous security near Lafayette Park.

Meet the White House honeybee.

Numbering more than 65,000 at one point, the bees produced a bumper crop of honey this year, the first time honey has ever been made on White House grounds. The hive, located on the South Lawn, is a key part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s organic kitchen garden project.

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First Lady Michelle Obama is shown in this undated publicity photograph as she plants a garden on “Sesame Street” with characters Big Bird and Elmo. “Sesame Street”, the world’s largest informal children’s educator, celebrates its 40th birthday on November 10, 2009 with Obama’s appearance on the show.

Michelle Obama and Sesame Street: 40th anniversary season

LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
Sep 29, 2009

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is to kick off the 40th anniversary season of the children’s TV show “Sesame Street” with a segment encouraging kids to plant gardens and eat healthy food.

Obama, who is planting a fruit and vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House, will appear in the November10 season debut of “Sesame Street” — the educational show for kids that is broadcast in more than 120 countries around the world.

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Urban agriculture in Cuba.

By Neeraja Havaligi
Doctoral Candidate (in natural resource management focusing on agrobiodiveristy conservation and climate change.)
AkamaiUniversity
diversityoflife@gmail.com
Paper for the KLIMA 2009 conference in Berlin

Abstract

Urban Agriculture has a definite role in food security in the cities. This paper will explore the extent to which urban agriculture contributes to food security in the cities with examples from different parts of the world. The paper will explore the potential of urban agriculture in biodiversity conservation in urban and periurban areas, its role in reducing the C foot print of agriculture, urban food needs and generation of organic waste. The potential for urban agriculture in securing C credits for the cities will also be explored here.

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Photo by ARLEN REDEKOP — The Province. James Oickle was attracted to the Hastings Folk Garden near Columbia Street. “I didn’t think I had a healing process I needed, but it did become that,’ he says.

Garden gets green thumbs up – Passers-by call out, ‘Good job!’ says its creator

BY ELAINE O’CONNOR
The Province
3 Nov 2009

It’s not hard to turn urban wasteland into urban farmland. You just have to plant the seed. PHS Community Services Society’s Peter LaGrand planted that seed in late 2007 when he had the idea of turning an abandoned lot owned by Concord Pacific into a vegetable garden for the residents of the Downtown Eastside.

Since then, the Hastings Folk Garden on Hastings Street near Columbia has grown into a gathering space for green thumbs.

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Photo by Andre van Wyk/allAfrica

South Africa: Urban Subsistence Farmers Spread Wings

All Africa
30 October 2009

Cape Town — A project which began as an effort to empower citizens of Cape Town’s poorest neighbourhoods to grow their own food has mushroomed into a scheme for selling vegetables for the city’s wealthier residents.

When AllAfrica first visited the project, operated under the banner Abalimi Bezekhaya (‘Planters of the Home’), nearly two years ago, its focus was on urban woman farmers practicing subsistence agriculture.

But when our reporters returned this week to one of the food gardens in the low-income suburbs spread around the edges of the city, tell-tale white markers were testimony to what community organizer Rob Small called “a big step forward.”

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Efforts by black, white farmers largely separate in city

By MINEHAHA FORMAN
October 30, 2009
The Michigan Messenger

DETROIT — The Motor City has been most famous for its past industrial endeavors. That’s why it’s still a bit surprising to some that within the city limits, there are more than 700 urban farms that yield more than 120 tons of produce each year. When harvest season comes around, the social aspect of urban farming shines through, with farmers coming together to celebrate the season at parties brimming with locally grown food and drink.

But to those paying attention, harvest time also highlights a less attractive facet of Detroit’s agricultural social scene: social divisions between black and white urban farming groups.

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By Darrin Nordahl
Island Press (September 23, 2009)
200 pages

Public Produce makes a uniquely contemporary case not for central government intervention, but for local government involvement in shaping food policy. In what Darrin Nordahl calls “municipal agriculture,” elected officials, municipal planners, local policymakers, and public space designers are turning to the abundance of land under public control (parks, plazas, streets, city squares, parking lots, as well as the grounds around libraries, schools, government offices, and even jails) to grow food.

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Photo from RUAF, Anglophone West Africa.

By Juliet Torome
The Daily Star
October 31, 2009

When I met Eunice Wangari at a Nairobi coffee shop recently, I was surprised to hear her on her mobile phone, insistently asking her mother about the progress of a corn field in her home village, hours away from the big city. A nurse, Wangari counts on income from farming to raise money to buy more land – for more farming.

Even though Wangari lives in Kenya’s capital, she is able to reap hundreds of dollars a year in profits from cash crops grown with the help of relatives. 

Her initial stake – drawn from her nursing wages of about $350 a month – has long since been recovered.

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Photo by Michael Levenston

Farm brings dirt without hurt to gritty Eastside

By CTV British Columbia’s Peter Grainger
Sat Oct. 31 2009

A pilot farming project in Canada’s poorest area code is bringing dirt – without the hurt – to Vancouver’s gritty Downtown Eastside.

Volunteers worked tirelessly Saturday to build a community garden. Although urban community gardens are becoming common sights across Metro Vancouver, the East Hastings Street location is quite different because it will be a fully functional farm once completed.

“They’ll be growing vegetables that will be sold to restaurants and the like in the Downtown Eastside,” Projects in Place Society’s Bryce Gauthier told CTV News.

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