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The Huffington Post excerpt:
March 10, 2010

Said Colbert: “Glenn’s advertisers know nothing moves product like the hot stink of fear.” Case in point: a commercial for a product called Survival Seed Bank, in which the spokesman claims nonhybrid seeds will be more valuable that silver and gold, and thus save you from the impending economic meltdown.

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By Aaron Newton
Powering Down
March 11, 2010

Excerpt:

Today we’re designing an urban farm. This one will become real if we can get the funding necessary to start the program. The specific location of the farm will have to remain a secret for now but it’s in Charlotte, NC near uptown. Todd Serdula did most of the excellent graphic work on this proposal.

To start with we break down the design considerations into 4 categories.

Physical Components
Programing Elements
Transition and Construction
Marketing and Distribution

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A Cabbage Patch for City Hall. Last year, Baltimore City Hall replaced its traditional flower gardens with vegetable beds to help serve a local soup kitchen. But not all went as planned. Anne Marie Chaker reports on lessons learned and plans for this year’s crop.

Attack of the Rotten Tomatoes

By Anne Marie Chaker
Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2010

Excerpt:

The city of Baltimore replaced its flower beds in front of city hall with vegetables last year. The goal, says designer Angela Treadwell-Palmer, was to show that vegetable gardens could be attractive and to grow harvests to donate to a local soup kitchen. But the local charity reported that some crops—particularly beets, kohlrabi and eggplant—weren’t appetizing to people.

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Goats from City Grazing trimmed the hillside behind Alemany Farm. Photo by Brian L. Frank

Fewer Farms to Feed ‘Local’ Appetite

By Justin Sheck
Wall Street Journal
San Francisco Bay Area
March 11, 2010

Pocket-size farms have sprung up in cities around the Bay Area in recent years, part of a movement to bring consumers closer to the sources of food they buy.

But even as these small farms show up in urban neighborhoods, bringing with them a sense of a local agricultural revival, the continuing decline in the availability of farmland in the Bay Area’s traditional growing areas threatens to leave consumers further away than ever from where their food is cultivated.

In recent years, the region has lost large tracts of farmland to housing and commercial development.

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Film by Dr. Shadi Hamadeh

American University of Beirut
In Arabic with English subtitles
2004
(Very interesting! Mike)

Animal husbandry remains the livelihoods of many communities, even in urban areas. This documentary film is a live witness of Arab Khaldeh families raising sheep in the suburbs of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, an integration of rural communities in urban areas.

Watch the film here.

Visit the Regional Website of Urban Agriculture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region here.