Best Practices in Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Development

To be included in JAFSCD Vol. 1 Issue 2
Deadline: June 5, 2010

JAFSCD welcomes research or policy briefs, and case studies (up to 2,500 words) and full articles (up to 8,500 words) on best community-development practices related to:

Urban livestock management and regulation
Urban market gardening and backyard gardening
Marketing and value-adding
Waste management and reuse
Urban farming by immigrant or other special populations
Farming on the fringe

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By Russ White
February 02, 2010
Written by Lauren Talley
Michigan Live

Hamm is the CS Mott Chair for Sustainable Agriculture and leads the CS Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems at Michigan State University. He’s been working on a way to use that land to develop an urban agriculture system in Detroit.

Excerpts:

Hamm works with Kathryn Colasanti, a graduate student who analyzed Detroit’s publically-owned space. Colasanti’s study focused on open land where buildings had already been torn down. She didn’t include parks or right of ways.

Colasanti discovered about nine square miles of empty available land within the city limits. If her study included land with abandoned buildings, that space would be doubled or tripled, Hamm said. Hamm and Colasanti determined with just 2,000 acres Detroit could produce up to 75 percent of the vegetables needs and about 50 percent of the fruit needs for 900,000 people.

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Promoting community agriculture efforts and increased access to locally grown food

“2010: The Year of Urban Agriculture” was organized by Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Department of Planning and Development, and the Seattle City Council.

The site includes:

City Initiatives & Programs:

Street Use Permits: Gardening in Planting Strips
Seattle’s P-Patch Program
What’s new at P-Patch
P-Patch Program Evaluation (2009)
Seattle’s Market Gardening program

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Photo by Mike Siegel, The Seattle Times. Jake Harris, left, with his Cascadian Edible Landscapes partner Michael Seliga, grows chives, basil, zucchini and other vegetables in a parking strip outside his home in the University District

The Seattle City Council is working to increase availability of affordable, locally grown food. One approach: allowing folks to grow vegetable gardens in parking strips — the no man’s land between sidewalk and curb

By Maureen O’Hagan
Seattle Times
July 25, 2009

We’ve all heard the foodie mantra: Eat Local.

It’s going gangbusters in grocery stores that increasingly tout local produce. Now, area government has gotten involved, too.

No, the City Council isn’t pushing expensive arugula. Instead, it’s trying to increase the availability of locally grown food, especially for those least able to afford it.

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