Posts from — August 2010

Great Kids Farm has greenhouses for growing well, greens — along with several acres for warmer-weather crops, goats, and bees. Photo by Christine Shenot.

Baltimore’s urban agriculture movement has quietly taken off in the past couple of years

By Christine Shenot
Grist
9 August, 2010

Excerpt:

For many Americans, any mention of Baltimore conjures up images from two popular TV dramas set in the city: NBC’s Homicide: Life on the Street and HBO’s The Wire. For nearly two decades, those glimpses of Baltimore’s drug trade and violent crime helped define the city.

But that era is fading. In some circles, there’s now a lot more talk of sustainability and green living than of the murder rate, and it’s an agenda that goes beyond the traditional focus on parks, transit, affordable housing, and other longstanding goals.

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In New York City, senior gardener Abu Talib oversees the Bronx’s Taqwa Community Farm and its 13 chickens. “Just get a few chickens and you can feed yourself,” says Abu Talib. “He who controls your breadbasket controls your destiny.” Photo by Ira Block

Taqwa Farms is definitely an oasis

Michelle Knapik,
Environment Program Director
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Blog
Aug 9, 2010

Excerpts:

The explosion of interest around urban ag is undeniable. It is little wonder as it serves as a portal to community building, local pride, skill building, the knitting of relationships across perceived cultural and age divides, the physical and psychological transformation of vacant lots, the growing of food, and the feeding of people, body and soul. Funders large and small are clamoring to learn more about the social change mechanisms presented in urban ag. The Sustainable Ag and Food System funders dedicated a number of sessions and field visits to urban ag during its 2010 annual conference.

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The growing interest in urban agriculture means we need to think about the city in a whole new way.

By Dorothée Imbert
Architecture Boston
Published by the Boston Society of Architects
Vol 13 No 3
August 4, 2010

Dorothée Imbert is the chair of the Master in Landscape Architecture program at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University. She is the author of Between Garden and City: Jean Canneel-Claes and Landscape Modernism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010)

Excerpt:

The contemporary enthusiasm for urban agriculture presents a paradox: zoning regulation, olfactory and sound control, and moral opprobrium have erased almost all traces of food production within most Western cities. This contradiction reveals the difficulty of integrating agriculture into urban systems and the need for landscape architects, planners, and community activists to tackle policy. The perception of urban agriculture as a temporary land use for disenfranchised inner-city populations is also likely to hinder its potential to form a new type of open space.

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Rice on the roof

By zenrainman
July 2008

The rice was planted in mid-April and watered with treated greywater and rainwater alone. It was harvested in mid-July. The green roof keeps the house cool. It has two layers of a lining named Silpaulin, which prevent moisture getting through the roof. Mother and daughter harvest the paddy with a sickle each.

The stalks are cut and the grains are collected on a dry surface. Then the women remove the grains with their feet. The grains need to be dried and later husked. The paddy stalk is an excellent fodder for cows.

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Image from thesis by James Richardson.

Foodshed Vancouver – envisioning a sustainable foodshed for Greater Vancouver

By Richardson, James M.
Degree – Master of Advanced Studies in Landscape Architecture – MASLA
University of British Columbia
2010

Abstract:

This study explored assessment methods for sustainable foodshed design. A sustainable foodshed was defined as a regional form that meets local food needs, is energetically productive, and is ecologically and socially resilient. Food system energy inputs were measured through a life-cycle assessment of production, distribution, processing, and nutrient cycling inputs to determine the food system energy balance for Greater Vancouver’s hypothetical foodshed. The model accounted for embedded variables such as dietary habits, circulation allotments and distribution chains, ultimately requiring the integration of qualitative and quantitative indicators at a regional, municipal and farm scale.

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Seed to Plate: A Garden Story from Riley Hooper on Vimeo.

Seed to Plate: A Garden Story

A film by Riley Hooper

Portland, Oregon–home to bike riding, book reading, flannel wearing, farmer’s market shopping, local coffee drinking, forward-thinking, eco-conscious citizens. The folks at Noble Rot are just an example of the many Portlanders who are taking a different approach in order to preserve the beautiful place they call home–and to change the world.

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The two city gardeners: Robert Shaw (left) and Mark Clausen.

Wenn Städter Wurzeln schlagen

Junge Leute wollen sich erden. Am liebsten in Nachbarschaftsgärten mitten in der Großstadt. Der Kreuzberger Prinzessinnengarten ist einer davon.

By Anne Haeming
Zeit
6.8.2010
In German – translate here.

Excerpt:

Man könnte hier die Bienen summen hören, horchen, wie die Grillen zirpen. Prinzessinnengarten, märchenhaft klingt das. Doch der Presslufthammer schrillt, hinterm Zaun dröhnt der zweispurige Kreisverkehr. Berlin, Kreuzberg. Ein 1000 Quadratmeter-Areal am Moritzplatz, Ecke Prinzenstraße. Hier liegt der Prinzessinnengarten. Beet fügt sich an Beet, ein paar Bäume, in der Ecke ein Bienenstock. Knoblauch wächst hier, Kornblumen, und Kartoffeln über Kartoffeln. Landwirtschaft mitten in der Stadt.

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The woes of the auto industry have decimated Detroit, leaving behind miles of waste land and abandoned homes. Now one of the area’s richest men is hoping to revive the region with a farm centred in the urban environment. Katty Kay has been to meet John Hantz who hopes his $30m (£18.9m) investment will improve the neighbourhood and spur development. Watch Katty Kay talks to John Hantz here.

The city was built for two million but now has a population of only 800,00

By Katty Kay
BBC World News America, Detroit
Aug. 5, 2010

Excerpt:

John Hantz is soft spoken, meticulously polite and ferociously ambitious. For his latest plan, he has to be. This multi-millionaire, financial tycoon wants to turn destitute Detroit into the world’s largest urban farm.

Drive through Detroit and immediately you see the scale of this city’s problems. There are burnt out houses, piles of rubbish and empty lots on every block. Anyone who can seems to have fled.

The city was built for two million but now has a population of only 800,000. So 40,000 acres of Detroit now stand unused, home to weeds, broken glass, even pheasants.

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Volunteers plant a median in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle with edible landscaping. Photo by Darrin Nordahl

Food not flowers

By Darrin Nordahl
Grist
Aug 5, 2010
Darrin Nordahl is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center, a division of the Community & Economic Development Department of the City of Davenport, Iowa. He has taught in the planning program at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of My Kind of Transit and Public Produce, which makes a case for local government involvement in shaping food policy.

Excerpt:

There’s a new breed of urban agriculture germinating throughout the country, one whose seeds come from an unlikely source.

Local government officials from Baltimore, Md., to Bainbridge Island, Wash. are plowing under the ubiquitous hydrangeas, petunias, daylilies, and turf grass around public buildings, and planting fruits and vegetables instead — as well as in underutilized spaces in our parks, plazas, street medians, and even parking lots.

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Featured in Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America’s Farmers

By Dov Hirsch
Crop to Cuisine
Aug 2, 2010

Farming has long been a “country thing”. Yet more and more people are reintroducing farms in urban areas. Not gardens, but actual farms.

The people at Sur La Table have taken notice of this phenomenon. The cookware retail giant recently released its’ own Farm To Table Cookbook, entitled, Eating Local: The Cookbook Inspired by America’s Farmers. Today we get out of the studio and into the field, on one of the farms featured in this cookbook.

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Above is the visual and audio track of a story we covered a month ago.

Voice of America learning English

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report

Excerpt:

For many years, people in American cities have depended on farmers in rural areas to grow fruits and vegetables. But now a new generation of farmers is planting crops in urban areas. Sean Conroe is a college student. Amber Banks is a teacher. They both grew up farming and gardening.

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Amy Brzuchalski with tomatoes, snow peas, and chives, just some of the vegetables in her backyard. Photo by Jetta Fraser

Findley, Ohio city farmer

By Tahree Lane
Toledo Blade
Aug. 4, 2010

Excerpt

Name: Amy Brzuchalski, stay-at-home mom and urban farmer, living in downtown Findlay.

Garden specs: Urban farming is done in our own and others’ yards. We have around 3,500 square feet of veggie beds in five sites. It’s amazing how many people have let us come into their yards — we have four this year and turned down three others. People want to learn and be part of it! In return for their space, they receive produce.

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Kindergarten students at work on their tiny victory garden plots at the Benjamin Franklin Elementary School Garden, Cleveland, May 1942

Urban Agriculture in Ohio

Posted City Club Podcasts
August 3, 2010

Speakers:
Robert J. Boggs, Director, Ohio Department of Agriculture;

Ifeoma Ezepue, Business Development Officer, Cleveland Department of Economic Development;

Graham Ford Veysey, Ohio City Near West Development Corporation;

Peter McDermott, Network Weaver, Entrepreneurs for Sustainability, “Local Food Cleveland;”

They speak about Growing Cleveland: Market Gardens, Urban Farms and Economic Development. Moderated by Dan Moulthrop.

Link to the one hour discussion here.

News video of three rooftops

Video courtesy of AFP
via the Wall Street Journal
8/3/2010

In a city crunched for space, New York residents and companies are transforming their rooftops into mini-farms where they grow vegetables, keep bees and raise plants to cleanse the air.

Link here.

Grist’s new comic series, My Intentional Life, features food-growing hipsters. See episodes here.

Building sustainable cities of the future

By Tom Philpott
Grist
August 3, 2010
Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

This is the first instalment in Grist’s Feeding the City series, which we’ll be running over the course of the next several weeks.

Excerpt:

“Few things scream ‘Hipster’ like an apartment garden.” Thus spake the New York City music magazine Death + Taxes, and it’s easy to see why. In trendy neighborhoods from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to San Francisco’s Mission district, urban youth are nurturing vegetables in window sills, fire escapes, and roofs. Down on the street, they tend flourishing garden plots, often including chickens and bees. Even Grist has launched a comic strip (left) devoted to the exploits of urban-hipster homesteaders.

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Photo by Jared Braiterman, Tokyo Green Space.

Pasona’s commitment to Japanese agriculture

Jared Braiterman
Tokyo Green Space Founder
Hiffington Post
July 30, 2010

Excerpt:

What roles can corporations play in transforming urban landscapes? This year Pasona, one of Japan’s top temporary staffing agencies, constructed a bold new headquarters building in Tokyo’s central business district that brings nature into the work environment and out to the street.

Pasona’s flashy interior farm and its elaborate yet less visible vertical garden activate normally dead spaces. While the results are uneven, the efforts to remake urban space and to use urban landscape to tell a new story about its corporate owner are remarkable.

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They share skills and share their problems

Christine Ottery
The Ecologist
30th July, 2010

Excerpt:

Estate community gardens are springing up in our cities – here’s how to transform a derelict urban space into a food growing hub

Urban agriculture is starting to take seed on social housing estates. Residents and volunteers are sprouting their fruit and veg on raised beds and in polytunnels on roof terraces, disused basketball courts and other derelict spots.
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Actresses Ali Larter, Amy Smart and Emmanuelle Chriqui attend the Environmental Media Association and Yes to Carrots Garden Luncheon at The Learning Garden at Venice High School on May 26, 2010 in Venice, California.

Environmental Media Association and Yes To Carrots teamed up for “The Garden Challenge”

By Sharonloves2garden
Garden Life Blog
May 27, 2010

My husband Bruce and I visited a very special school garden at Venice High School in western Los Angeles, California. We were invited as the guests of Kathy Kellogg. Her family’s company, Kellogg Garden Products, has had a long-standing commitment to introduce and encourage youngsters to garden. This past year, the Environmental Media Association (begun by concerned Hollywood celebrities), Yes to Carrots company and Kellogg Garden Products began an ongoing partnership to support organic gardens and greenery in urban schools.

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Learning about gardening at Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in Massachusetts.

PepsiCo has Organic Garden

By Kim Severson
New York Times
May 11, 2010

Excerpts:

Here at the world headquarters of PepsiCo, the masterminds behind $60 billion worth of Mountain Dew, Cheetos and Rice-A-Roni roam polished hallways.

But a five-minute walk away is the organic corporate vegetable garden, where spreadsheets and performance reviews give way to basil starts and black peppermint plants. Employees can sneak out for a quick lunchtime weeding session and cart home the harvest.

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Save Virginia Avenue Park from Roadside Organics on Vimeo.

Marine Barracks planned for site

The Marines have set forth a proposal to take the Virginia Avenue Park as a site for new barracks in lieu of other undeveloped area properties around Capitol Hill in SE Washington, DC.

Many who frequent Virginia Avenue Park in Washington, DC, including voting citizens and tax-paying property owners, have organized to save the Park. As invested constituents, members of Virginia Avenue Community Garden (VACG) and its neighbors strongly prefer the Park not be destroyed and the Community Garden within it not be relocated.

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