Posts from — February 2010

FoodNYC – A Blueprint for a Sustainable Food System

Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer
February 2010

GOAL: Establish urban food production as a priority in New York City for personal, community, or commercial use by the year 2030

Recommendations:

1. Assess Land Availability and Suitability for Urban Agriculture:

The New York City Council should pass legislation mandating that City agencies conduct an annual assessment of City-owned property and nominate suitable sites for urban agriculture. This effort is similar to the “Diggable City” project in Portland, Oregon that integrated urban agriculture into planning and policymaking. Based on a preliminary analysis of data provided by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 2008, there are 454 total vacant lots above 110th Street in Manhattan. Of those, over 100 are owned by the City and many have no development plans. In 2008, the Manhattan Borough President’s office also identified significant amounts of open land on New York City Housing Authority properties which should be evaluated as possible garden sites. Where appropriate and following a public review process,
City and State parkland should also be considered for urban agriculture.

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By David D. Mkwambisi , Evan D. G. Fraser , Andy J. Dougill

Journal of International Development
Published Online: 17 Feb 2010

Abstract

Support of urban agriculture can be used as a route to reducing urban poverty across Sub-Saharan Africa. However policy makers require more precise information on how it contributes to alleviating food insecurity and poverty problems. This study in Malawi’s two main cities (Lilongwe and Blantyre) revealed two predominant types of urban farmers: (i) low-income, less educated, often female-headed households, who use urban agriculture as an insurance against income losses and who can employ skilled workers to support their livestock activities; and (ii) middle- and high-income, often male-headed households, that undertake urban agriculture for personal consumption and hire significant numbers of unskilled workers.

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Incredible Edible Todmorden: Introducing Britain’s greenest town

By Joanna Moorhead
The Independent
29 November 2009

It’s an ordinary small town in England, but its residents claim they’ve discovered the secret that could save the planet. And with world leaders preparing to gather in Copenhagen in just over a week’s time to debate how to do just that, the people of Todmorden in the Pennines this week issued an invitation: come to our town and see what we’ve done.

In under two years, Todmorden has transformed the way it produces its food and the way residents think about the environment. Compared with 18 months ago, a third more townspeople now grow their own veg; almost seven in 10 now buy local produce regularly, and 15 times as many people are keeping chickens.

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From Muslimness
Feb 17, 2010

Excerpts:

Earlier this year I interviewed sister Asiila Rasool an Eco-Muslim from SE San Diego, about the community garden she and her locals successfully grew from scratch. Check out why Asiila was inspired to grow organic, how she roped her community in, and why home-grown produce is worth all that effort.

Whose idea was it to start a community garden?

Our community garden idea began as a jam’ah (congregational) effort of mostly mine and my two nieces during a homeschool project meeting.

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Grow Your Own

By Heather Gray and K. Rashid Nuri
Counterpunch – “America’s Best Political Newsletter”
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
February 17, 2010

Excerpt:

It seems everyone is questioning the implications of the most recent economic downturn. Then, of course, we’ve seen corporate America reap the benefits of its own disgrace with our tax dollars and, therefore, at the expense of all of us. Corporate America along with government support just keeps hitting us over the head. It’s too much! While, there’s been criticism of Wall Street and huge bonuses to the likes of AIG, one sector that’s not been the focus of attention lately is corporate agribusiness and it also should be intensely scrutinized. It seems, however, we’ve gone through a transition economically but we’re beginning to see some changes locally that are encouraging, perhaps partly in response to all this. The interest in urban agriculture and more attention to food issues in America is a case in point and a counterpoint to corporate agribusiness.

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FFA member Cierra Fierce, 16, tends to plants in the greenhouse behind Clyde C. Miller Career Academy in St. Louis.

Founded in 1928, the National FFA Organization — it dropped “Future Farmers” from its name in 1988 — isn’t just for farm kids anymore. About 34% of its more than 500,000 members live in cities or suburbs.

By Judy Keen
USA TODAY
Feb 17, 2010

ST. LOUIS — Andre Hall lives in the city and has never plowed a field or fed a hog, but he proudly wears the blue jacket long associated with the organization once called Future Farmers of America.

Hall, 18, is among 30 high-school students who belong to the FFA chapter at Clyde C. Miller Career Academy here. FFA is part of the curriculum in the school’s biotechnology “pathway” that’s preparing him for a job in the agriculture industry.

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Sample Indicators from the map:

Local Foods

# Farms with direct sales
% Farms with direct sales
% Farm sales $ direct to consumer
$ Direct farm sales
$ Direct farm sales per capita
# Farmers’ markets
Farmers’ markets/1,000 pop
# Vegetable acres harvested
Vegetable acres harvested/1,000 pop
Farm to school program

Excerpt from the USDA Food Blog
Feb 12, 2010

USDA’s Your Food Environment Atlas is an online mapping tool that compares the food environment of U.S. counties—the mix of factors that together influence food choices, diet quality, and general fitness among residents.  The Atlas contains 90 food environment indicators—most at the county level—allowing Atlas users to visualize and compare on a map how counties fare on each of the indicators. This new online tool is designed to stimulate research and inform policymakers as they address the nexus between diet and public health.

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Access to fresh produce such as that sold on this mobile farmers’ market is limited in some urban areas. See the video here.

The healthy approach to meals on wheels

By Philippa Thomas
9 February 2010
BBC News, Richmond, Virginia

America’s First Lady, Michelle Obama, has launched a campaign to improve the way families eat, encouraging Americans to face the fact that one in three children is overweight or obese.

As part of her initiative, she stressed the need to make healthy food more accessible. I met one couple who are trying to do just that, by running a mobile farmers’ market in Virginia.

It is a sight that makes people stop and stare.

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Tiffany Tarpley
FOX Toledo News weekend anchor
Updated: Tuesday, 16 Feb 2010

TOLEDO, Ohio (WUPW) — Urban agriculture is growing across the area.

In fact when Toledo Grows began 12 years ago there were about a handful of the small community gardens. Now there are more than 80 and the goal is to create at least 100 by next year.

The urban gardens are a way to turn empty fields into beautiful additions to neighborhoods.

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The video has no sound.

Food Print Manhattan

A research project conducted by The Why Factory, MVRDV.
By Winy Maas, Ulf Hackauf, Pirjo Haikola, Bas Kalmeijer, Tihamer Hazarja Salij. Animation: WielandandGouwens

How much food do I consume? How much land is needed to grow it? Could we grow our food in the city? Could we feed all Manhattanites by growing food on Manhattan island?

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Robbie McClam and his wife Sue show off seedlings in the City Roots greenhouse.

Urban Entrants Changing Face of Agriculture

By Eve Moore
Columbia’s Free Times
02/01/2010

Excerpt:

Robbie McClam of City Roots is also a man of many trades. An architect and builder, McClam once headed the Columbia Development Corporation. Now he’s turned his attention to farming.

All the municipal government and planning experience has come in handy. When he wanted to start City Roots, he discovered the city’s industrial zoning classification didn’t allow farms, so he worked with the city’s planning department and City Council to change the zoning ordinance. Future urban farmers of Columbia: Thank Robbie McClam.

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By ProjectHDesign

Release Date: September 2010
Cintia Cabib Video Productions

See the trailer here.

An outdoor classroom, an oasis of peace in an inner-city neighborhood, a link to an immigrant’s homeland: the roles of seven Washington, D.C. community gardens are as varied as the gardeners themselves. Meet them and visit their plots in “A Community of Gardeners,” a new documentary currently in production.

Throughout Washington, D.C., people of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities are gardening side by side, growing vegetables, fruits and flowers in community gardens. Some are looking for basic sustenance, others for a way to remember their homelands, still others for a place to find a respite from their troubles.

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Image from the Carrot City Slide Presentation w/Mark Gorgolewski.(Fairmont Hotel) See here.

Farming in the City XIII

by Jon Steinman – Deconstructing Dinner
Radio show broadcast
February 4, 2010

In November 2009, a panel discussion on urban agriculture was hosted by Backyard Bounty and the University of Guelph. The event was called Opportunities for Action: An Urban Agriculture Symposium and Deconstructing Dinner partner station CFRU recorded the panel. This episode hears from two of the panelists who both share innovative urban agriculture projects: the Carrot City exhibition – a collection of conceptual and realized ideas for sustainable urban food production, and the Diggable Communities Collaborative – a community garden initiative that demonstrates the importance of partnerships and the ways in which regional health authorities and local governments can support and implement local food system and urban agriculture planning.

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By designboom

Bacsac was born when french designer Godefroy de Virieu met landscapers Louis de Fleurieu and Virgile Desurmont. Together they searched for an alternative solution to avoid the constraints of creating a roof garden in town (taking into consideration difficulties of transport, excessive weight, etc).

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Micro-farming – algae, plankton, insects

By Jakub Dzamba
University of Toronto
Nov, 2009
Email: k.dzamba@utoronto.ca

Excerpts:

The purpose of this living document is to add clarity and factual depth to a concept called micro-farming; where the remarkable ability of micro-organisms and insects to rapidly reproduce is harnessed for the production of food.

Third Millennium Farming (3MF) is about using species of micro-organisms (algae and plankton) that are much better converters of sunlight into plant biomass than even our fastest growing crops, and similarly using species of micro-livestock (insects) that are much better converters of plant biomass into edible meat than even our fastest growing livestock.

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Photo by Michael Levenston. Larger photo here.

Olympic Edibles

Maria planted this garlic last fall and it’s come up in the shape of the Olympic rings – ‘surprisingly’. Beneath the rings are some baby carrots pulled from the garden this week – they’ve overwintered. The vegetables are growing in City compost made from residents’ yard waste.

On the next page see more Olympic garden fever including:

Singer Sarah McLachlan with the Olympic Torch

France’s National TV crew at our garden.

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To be published April 2010

by Manny Howard
Scribner (April 27 2010)

“With My Empire of Dirt, Manny Howard has created a new job category, gonzo agriculturalist. The squeamish and the vegan-hearted shall enter at their own risk, for this is no gentle Farmer’s Almanac. It’s more like war reportage—on one side, angry rabbits, crazed chickens, and a patch of backyard clay so dry it makes concrete seem loamy; on the other, a Brooklyn-raised City Boy, who won’t take crop failure for an answer. Howard takes living off the land to an urban extreme that will make people think even harder about where their food comes from. Ultimately, though, as tornadoes come and fig trees nearly go, he discovers a marriage that needs tending to, proving that when it comes to love, at least, you shall definitely reap what you sow.”
—Robert Sullivan, author of Rats and Cross Country

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Published by Local Government Association (LGA)

The LGA has revised this best-selling resource for allotment officers and associations, to provide an update on the policy framework, legislation and practice affecting allotment gardening.

1 The second edition of this guide was commissioned by the LGA in September 2006, and substantially updates the original which was published in June 2001. The preparation of the guide has been managed by the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens.

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Integration of urban farming within the future city

Student project by Jack O’Reilly
graduate Ba(Hons) Architecture from the University of Manchester

“My project tried to push the boundaries of the hybrid building by combining an urban farm with a television studio as an attempt at broadcasting the need for sustainability both physically and in the media.”

Student Statement

The programme proposed provides for the sustainable Manchester. It is centred around food cultures and media networks. Sustainability can be improved by the production of food in urban spaces, sourcing local foods and selling the produce of local farmers.

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