Posts from — December 2009

The Urban Farming and Agro Ecology program

The Urban Farming and Agro Ecology program provides practical hands-on training for urban and sustainable farming methods, and nursery and food production. Production of an organic and local sustainable food supply is the fastest growing sector of students for work in urban gardens, community-supported agriculture, food systems distribution, native plant growing, or management of food gardens. Most courses are offered at the Environmental Center Self Reliant House or the Landscape Horticulture facilities on campus.

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Video above: An in depth problem statement and call to action delivered by Astrid Haryati, the Greening Director for the Office of the Mayor of San Francisco. She explores the obstacles to, and overarching importance of Sustainable Urban Agriculture for education, health and community development in the context of personal, community and city wide scales.

Urban Agriculture Design Competition

All entries due by midnight Jan. 31st 2010

The SF Chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA) and the Interaction Designers Association (IxDA) would like to introduce you to this year’s Digging Deeper, Building Blocks for Sustainable Design – A multi-disciplinary design competition addressing real urban needs.

Problem Space:

Within San Francisco and many urban areas, the potential for using community gardens, backyard gardens, vacant or under-utilized lots, parks, greenhouses, and rooftops for food cultivation is significant. Urban agriculture is known to encourage community wide benefits in urban neighborhoods as well as wellness and business opportunities on an individual scale.

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Keeping Micro-flocks of Laying Hens as Garden Helpers, Compost Makers, Bio-recyclers and Local Food Suppliers

By Patricia Foreman
Good Earth Publications, Inc.
October 2009

Green city managers wanting to save money on solid waste management expenditures need only to encourage residents to keep laying hens. Why? Because one chicken eats about 7 pounds of food “waste” a month. A few hundred households keeping micro-flocks of laying hens can divert tons of yard and food biomass “waste” from trash collection saving municipalities thousands, even millions of tax payer dollars.

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Larger image here.

Zany Vision or Critical Solution?
Urban Greenhouses Aim to Help Cities Combat Climate Change

By Jess Smee
Spiegel Online
Dec 4, 2009

With its massive glass dome, the Plantagon Greenhouse wouldn’t look out of place in a sci-fi movie. And if all goes smoothly, one may soon crop up in a city near you. In these days of global warming, its creators argue, it’s not a question of if it will become reality but, rather, when.

Nestled among the skyscrapers is a gigantic glass sphere housing a mysterious spiral pathway. At first glance, the structure may look like an alien spaceship or a modernist architectural fantasy. But, in fact, it is an unusual response to climate change and the challenges of urbanization.

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by Elaine F. Weiss
Potomac Books Inc. 352 pages
December 31, 2008

“From 1917 to 1920 the Woman’s Land Army brought thousands of city workers, society women, artists, business professionals, and college students into rural America to take over the farm work after men were called to wartime service. These women wore military-style uniforms, lived in communal camps, and did what was considered “men’s work”– plowing fields, driving tractors, planting, harvesting, and hauling lumber. The Land Army insisted its “farmerettes” be paid wages equal to male farm laborers and protected by an eight-hour workday. These farmerettes were shocking at first and encountered skeptical farmers’ scorn, but as they proved themselves willing and capable, farmers began to rely upon the women workers and became their loudest champions.”

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Pupils of Mrs. Belmont’s Farm for Girls. Larger image here.

New York Times
March 5, 1911

Down at Mrs. Belmont’s place on Long Island there are 200 acres adjoining her house which she wants in time to turn over entirely to women farmers. Gardening, the care of lawns, raising vegetables, growing fruits, every side of work about a “big place” will be taught. And in a year or two the women will go out qualified to earn a good living, and, with thrift, to become owners of their own farms.

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Photo from Feed Denver

The Canary Stopped Singing

By Lisa Rogers
Feed Denver

Excerpts: Letter from the Executive Director

As city dwellers we have abdicated food production to “others” – other people, other places, other states and other countries. We live in trust that food is being produced and that it will show up at our local grocery store in time for our hunger. We live in false security that someone is taking care of our food needs and our city’s food shed.

Our city used to be surrounded by farms. Those farms became subdivisions. Our state used to produce a wide variety of foods. In last year’s census we now only have 354 farms that produce vegetables – most of those under 10 acres and producing revenues less than $10,000 per year. Only .2% (that’s POINT TWO percent) of the food we eat in the Metro area comes from our state.

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Link to larger map here.

High School Students To Spearhead Organic Farm
Students Will Tend To Garden Near Arlington High School

The Indy Channel
November 4, 2009

INDIANAPOLIS — Community, education and healthier food choices are at the center of a new urban garden planned for Indianapolis’ northeast side.

The Devington Green Acres Farm will occupy a 3.5-acre plot just east of Devington Shopping Center and Arlington High School, and will be the city’s largest sustainable urban organic farm, organizers said.

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National Emergency War Garden Commission. Sow The Seeds of Victory Posters in cigar store window. Circa 1914-1919.

Teaching With Documents: Sow the Seeds of Victory!
Posters from the Food Administration During World War I

Excerpt from the National Archives

“To achieve the results, the Food Administration combined an emphasis on patriotism with the lure of advertising created by its own Advertising Section. This section produced a wealth of posters for both outdoor and indoor display. One proclaimed: “Food is Ammunition-Don’t waste it.” Another featured a woman clothed in stars and stripes reaching out to embrace the message: “Be Patriotic sign your country’s pledge to save the food.” A third combined patriotism with a modern healthy diet message. At the top, the poster encouraged readers to: “Eat more corn, oats and rye products-fish and poultry-fruits, vegetables and potatoes, baked, boiled and broiled foods.”

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Figure 7: Modeling the Initiation of Urban Agriculture based on Vancouver and Montréal Case Studies

The Urban Agricultural Movement in Canada: A Comparative Analysis of Montréal and Vancouver

By Chandal Nolasco da Silva
Email: chandal.nds@gmail.com
A research essay submitted to the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, 16,000 words
Carleton University 2009

1. Introduction

Urban agriculture is a term used to describe both private and public agricultural activities that take place in urban and peri-urban areas. While regional examples practice urban agriculture differently, each will help to increase food security. Urban agriculture has the potential to increase a region’s food security by providing a local food supply system and successful examples of this situation have been documented in the Canadian cities of Montréal and Vancouver.

By documenting the birth of the urban agricultural movements in Montréal and Vancouver, this research has sought to understand how modern Canadian cities can adopt local food systems.

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Mark Holland, Janine de la Salle

Beyond urban agriculture and farm land preservation

by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland
November 25, 2009
CITinfoResource

Food and agriculture have finally caught the attention of the planning and other professions – perhaps for the first time in modern history. At least that’s what the 2009 summer issue of Plan Canada (Vol 49: No. 2) suggests.

This is a good thing. It shows that, as a profession, we are in a receptive mode, constantly learning how to balance the tools we have right now with the need to develop new ways to think about problems and their solutions. For example, urban agriculture and the protection of farmland are priority issues; but other opportunities and approaches are beginning to present themselves, and we must be quick to add them to the “food planning toolbox.”

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