Posts from — June 2010

Cam Slocum digs holes to plant tomatoes on his backyard farm. Photo by Katie Falkenberg / For The Times.

Green-thumb entrepreneurs turn a grocery list of items they can grow, hunt or collect themselves into extra cash

By P.J. Huffstutter
Los Angeles Times
May 21, 2010

Excerpt:

Locking up his station wagon, the one with the scratched paint and unpaid bills covering the floor mats, Cam Slocum crossed the parking lot and stepped into the kitchen of the swanky French restaurant Mélissein Santa Monica.

A cook set down his knife and walked over to greet the stranger. Slocum held out a Ziploc bag filled with lettuce.

“Hi,” said Slocum, 50, his deep voice straining to be heard. “I grow Italian mache in my backyard. It’s really good, only $8 a pound. Would you like to buy some?”

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Elevated Courtyard — This second-story garden helped children grow 1,000 pounds of vegetables last year. Photo: Scott Shigley
Must see larger image here.

2010 Honor Award Winner – ASLA Professional Awards

Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, Chicago USA
Client: Gary Comer Youth Center

Project Statement

The Gary Comer Youth Center Roof Garden is an after-school learning space for youth and seniors in a neighborhood with little access to safe outdoor environments. Last year alone, it produced over 1,000 pounds of organic food used by students, local restaurants and the center’s café. Sleek and graphic, it turns the typical working vegetable garden into a place of beauty and respite.

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FAO International symposium – Dakar, Republic of Senegal, 5-9 December 2010

To help developing countries meet the challenges of massive and rapid urbanization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) launched in 2001 a multidisciplinary initiative, Food for the Cities, which aims at ensuring the access of urban populations to safe food and healthy and secure environments.

A major component of Food for the Cities is intensification of horticultural production in and around urban areas. Urban and peri-urban horticulture (UPH) cannot meet, by itself, cities’ exponentially growing demand for fresh vegetables, fruit and other horticultural produce, and should not divert resources from horticulture in rural areas. However, FAO experience indicates that, where farm-to-market systems are inadequate, it can fill critical gaps and make a significant contribution to urban food supply and livelihoods.

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Growing fruit and vegetables in and around cities increases the supply of fresh, nutritious produce and improves the urban poor’s economic access to food

FAO urban projects in: Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burundi, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Namibia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Senegal, Venezuela. Details here.

Excerpt:

Fruit and vegetables are the richest natural sources of micronutrients. But in developing countries, daily fruit and vegetable consumption is just 20-50 percent of FAO/World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. Urban meals rich in low-cost fats and sugars are also responsible for rising levels of obesity and overweight. In India, diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes, are a growing health problem, and mainly in urban areas.

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Urban Orchard

During the London Festival of Architecture and beyond, the site of 100 Union Street in SE1 will be transformed into an urban orchard and community garden.

85 trees make up the orchard as well as a whole host of wayward plants. The garden will last from 19 June – 19 August after which the garden will be dismantled and all the plants and trees will go out into Bankside to green this space and thus contribute to the Bankside Urban Forest vision.

It is envisaged that 4 to 5 orchards will be replanted on estates and other local community spaces to act as a lasting legacy of the 2010 London Festival of Architecture.

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Photo by Azby Brown

Efficient use of vertical space

By Azby Brown, the director of the KIT Future Design Institute in Tokyo, is the author of Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan.
The Atlantic
June 10, 2010

Excerpt:

My neighbors are farmers. They regularly bring us cabbages, cucumbers, bitter melon, tomatoes, eggplants, persimmons, and other local specialties, and their arrival on our doorstep with a box of fresh-picked produce is as much an announcement of the changing seasons as the color of the sky or warmth of the wind. Our conversations often turn to rain, mulch, tools for tilling, and fruit yields from the old but still-productive trees they tend. They offer advice on reviving my stunted tomatoes, and we debate the relative merits of baseball caps for working the fields under the hot sun as opposed to the traditional straw kasa.

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Changes will increase access to locally grown food

June 10, 2010
Greater Kansas City Food Policy Coalition
Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Members of the City Council of Kansas City this afternoon approved an ordinance updating the city’s zoning and development codes to reflect the changing needs of our community. The codes enable urban agriculture and the burgeoning local food movement to function more effectively in Kansas City.

“This has been a long process, but we feel like the compromise that has been developed is an important first step toward increasing access to fresh, healthy food and improving the economic vitality of our community,” said Katherine Kelly, director of the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture. “This ordinance will help Kansas City become a greener and healthier community, which is something that I think everyone can agree is a positive move forward.”

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A Holistic Approach to Building Sustainable and Healthy Communities: The Choice is Yours

This urban agriculture organization has been running as long as City Farmer and has inspired many to get out and grow food in cities. Mike

Excerpt:

Our Keynote Speaker

Dr. Yvonne Butler
Creator of the Sugar-Free School Lunch Program
The results of Dr. Butler’s ‘sugar-free’ school have soared to new heights with higher test scores, fewer disciplinary programs, and fewer weight problems among students.

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The Growing Solution to Urban Food Deserts from Conscious Living TV on Vimeo.

Urban agriculture in Chicago

by Conscious Living TV/Soul of Green
Correspondent: Bianca Alexander
Executive Producer: Michael Alexander

Excellent video! Mike

With the near epidemic of type-2 diabetes, breast cancer and other degenerative diseases in communities of color particularly relative to non-hispanic white communities, this episode of Soul of Green examines the link between these growing health disparities and the lack of basic access to fresh healthy food and produce.

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Urbandale Farm Project

By Emily Fox
mlive.com
June 07, 2010

Laura DeLind from Michigan State University’s Department of Anthropology and retired MSU teacher-education professor Linda Anderson, are reaching out to a community on the east side of Lansing through urban farming.

DeLind and Anderson recently started the Urbandale Farm Project. One of the hopes for the project is to create access to healthy food in the community. The neighborhood where the farm is located is called a “food desert.”

“A food desert is primarily in a neighborhood where people have limited incomes, there’s no easy access to places to buy healthy food like fresh fruits and vegetables, unless you have transportation and many low income families don’t have easy transportation. Therefore their sources of food are often fast food restaurants, liquor stores, corner grocery stores—not a lot of fresh produce,” Anderson says.

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A woman tends her 1/4-acre plot at the New Roots for Refugees Farm, Kansas City. Photo by Michael Hanson

Must-see new website – Breaking Through Concrete – stories from the American Urban Farm

Excellent writing, photography, video, all brought together by great web design make this site a pleasure to visit! Beautiful! Mike

Excerpt from visit to Kansas:

Seven women in ankle-length floral dresses bend at the waist in rows of kale or arugula or kohlrabi. Their dark-chocolate hands effortlessly scoop and pick and cut the stems and pull the weeds. The low sun is already hot coming through the hazy white sky that makes the Kansas City downtown in the distance look like a mirage.

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How we compost at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden

Sharon Slack, head gardener at our Demo Garden, explains briefly what you need to do to make excellent compost at home. Using just your fruit and veggie scraps, some leaves and some garden waste, you can have great finished compost in 5-8 months. This cold composting method lets you use whatever organic waste you have on hand.

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Two days before the city gave final approval for keeping backyard chickens in Vancouver, a Charles Street resident was ticketed by a bylaw enforcement officer for doing just that. Photo Dan Toulgoet, Vancouver Courier. See Courier story here.

Chickens walk proud and free in Vancouver

June 9, 2010
The Province

Chickens will be coming to Vancouver yards after council passed a bylaw today permitting the fowl in backyards across the city.

A maximum of four hens, which should at least be four months old, are permitted per coop. Other poultry — roosters, ducks, turkeys or pheasants — remain banned, and the hens will not allowed in front yards or highrise apartment balconies.

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Daniel Chavez, 13, waters some of the vegetables being grown with the help of Feed Denver, the Urban Farm and the city of Denver. (Judy DeHaas, The Denver Post)

Denver’s urban farms

By Karen Auge and Annette Espinoza
The Denver Post
June 9, 2010

Excerpt:

Daniel Chavez isn’t big on salads. The 13-year-old will, however, nibble on flowers.

“This isn’t so bad,” Daniel said last week, munching on nasturtium leaves. Flower tasting was just one of Daniel’s rewards for showing up at the inauguration of the Urban Agriculture Project in the Globeville, Elyria and Swansea neighborhoods. The project is a joint one involving Feed Denver, the Urban Farm and the city of Denver.

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Photo by By Brian Hutchinson

By Brian Hutchinson
National Post
June 8, 2010

Excerpt:

On Monday The Woodward’s Project looked at a majordomo in the Downtown Eastside and the pivotal, controversial role he played in the making of this $400 million piece of urban renewal, where I am writing from right now. The headline is “The greening of Woodwards,” a little play on words; the subject is Jim Green, a local fixture and power figure. But the greening of the DTES is quite literal.

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Photo from Stiftung Interkultur.

Integrating cultures and provide healing spaces.

A garden in Kassel, Germany, provides a place for immigrant women to put down roots and cultivate the taste of home. Across the country, such intercultural gardens are helping to integrate cultures and provide healing spaces.

By Angela Boskovitch
WeNews correspondent
October 9, 2007

Excerpt:

KASSEL, Germany (WOMENSENEWS)–Fall is yielding its usual pumpkins, squash and wine grapes and the women stand side by side inspecting their harvest under a typically German sky of fluffy clouds.

Each one has her own small piece of the nearly 11,000-square-foot plot. The apple and pear trees and black currant bushes are considered communal property.

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The Breaking Through Concrete bus on the way to Oregon. Photo by Michael Hanson.

The Breaking Through Concrete team

The Breaking Through Concrete team — David Hanson, Michael Hanson, Charles Hoxie, and Edwin Marty — is taking a 21st century road trip to document the American urban farm movement. Driving across the country and back in a biodiesel-fueled, Internet-enabled short bus they’ve nicknamed Lewis Lewis, they’ll visit 14 diverse projects that are, in distinct ways, transforming our built environments and creating jobs, training opportunities, local economies, and healthy food in our nation’s biggest cities. Along the way, David will post stories for Grist (and for one of the team’s sponsors, WHYHunger), illustrated by his and Michael’s stunning images — material that will ultimately be collected into a book — and Charles’ short video snippets.

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The University of Guelph, in partnership with the Royal Botanical Gardens, will be offering two new online certificate programs, beginning September 2010.

Sustainable Urban Agriculture (SUA) and Sustainable Urban Horticulture (SUH) consist of five online courses each. Courses run for 12 weeks and are based in the online environment – all that is required to participate is a computer and access to the web.

Study at home or at work; there is no need to travel to the University of Guelph campus. A course facilitator provides insight, expertise and feedback during the course. Courses are designed for adult learners with busy work and family lives. We want you to succeed!

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Ein Berliner Stadtgarten will Gemüseanbau mit Sozialgefühl verbinden. Landwirtschaft zieht in die Metropole – und bleibt mobil: “Nomadisch Grün” heißt das Konzept. Photo by Marco Clausen.

New York and Cuba do it first, Urban Farming has now arrived in Germany

By Von Daniela Schröder, Berlin
Der Spiegel
07.06.2010

Article in German – Excerpt:
Translate it using Google here.

Hinter den Bürotürmen wandert die Frühlingssonne über den wolkenlosen Himmel, die Luft ist erfüllt vom Lärm des Feierabendverkehrs, es riecht nach Abgasen. Unter den Füßen spürt man das Vibrieren einer vorbeifahrenden U-Bahn.

Nur wenige Schritte entfernt rauschen Pappelbäume leise im Wind, der Duft frischer Kräuter hängt in der Luft, Kinder spielen zwischen Sträuchern und Pflanzenbeeten. Ein entspannter Nachmittag auf dem Land – und das mitten in der Metropole.

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Part 1 of A detailed tour of the Organic Urban Demonstration garden by Michigan State University graduate, Crop and Soil Scientist Ryan Rowinski at the Michigan State Fair Sept, 2009.

Urban Farming at the Michigan State Fair

Anonymous poster
September 4th, 2009

We did our yearly caravan to the Michigan State Fair over the weekend. Myself, my husband, the four kids, my mother-in-law, and my brother-in-law go every year together, and Sunday could not have been a more perfect day. It was in the mid 60’s, partly sunny, and just generally beautiful outside.

While my favorite things have traditionally been the livestock and the agricultural exhibits, this year I was enthralled by the Great Lakes Gardens, an example of urban farming installed right on the Michigan State Fairgrounds. It was the creation of Ryan Rowinski, who is a graduate of the Michigan State soil science program, and donated his time, experience, and obvious green thumb to the Fair this year.

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