Agropolis combines hydroponic, aeroponic and aquaponic farming

By Alyssa Danigelis
Discovery News
Sept. 1, 2010

Excerpt:

There’s a big push lately for eating local. Restaurants like to promote menus with ingredients harvested locally and grocery stores advertise produce grown on nearby farms.

A concept for a grocery store that actually grows its own fruits and vegetables on site is taking the “local” adage to an entirely new level.

The do-it-yourself grocery store concept called Agropolis combines hydroponic, aeroponic and aquaponic farming to grow vegetables without soil in an urban environment. Shoppers will come in and see all the produce growing on-site and point to what they want. Nutrients from fish in aquaculture tanks goes to feed the plants, and the whole place becomes an ecosystem. A restaurant there will also serve produce from the urban farm.

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Daina Mileris, of Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood, picks dead leaves off a tomato vine at the garden at Peterson and Campbell avenues on Sunday. The vibrant urban garden is something of a historical monument in Chicago, having once been the site of a World War II victory garden. Photo by Heather Charles.

Project re-cultivates urban agriculture in West Ridge

By Robert Channick,
Chicago Tribune
September 2, 2010

Excerpt:

A vacant lot at Peterson and Campbell avenues in Chicago’s West Ridge neighborhood has blossomed this summer into a vibrant urban garden — and something of a living historical monument. Once the site of a World War II victory garden, the long-fallow property near the northern edge of the city is blooming again with everything from tomatoes to corn.

Reviving the nearly 70-year-old wartime campaign to replenish scarce produce, the Peterson Garden Project is true to its roots, but also reflective of a growing trend toward localized, community-based agriculture.

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Urban farming continues to grow across Mid-Michigan

Marc Jacobson
ABC 12 News
August 31, 2010

Excerpt:

GENESEE TOWNSHIP – Locally grown organic tomatoes, corn, potatoes and peppers are coming from the city, not the country.

Urban farming continues to grow across Mid-Michigan and as ABC12′s Marc Jacobson shows us, the recent national egg recall has resulted in a big business boost at King Karate’s Harvesting Earth Farm.

Go green and go natural. In recent weeks, Jacky and Dora King, with the help of their 20 free-range chickens, have been producing and selling organic eggs priced at $3.50 a dozen.

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New book on African urban agriculture

Gordon Prain, Diana Lee-Smith, Nancy Karanja
300 pages
Publisher: Springer
1st Edition. edition (August 24, 2010)

How much does urban agriculture help feed and support the billions of people living in the world’s towns and cities? How could it do this better? Crop cultivation and livestock- raising have long histories in urban Africa, as in other areas of the world, but broad awareness among researchers and policy makers of either the history or the contemporary facts of life in African urban development is much more recent. With a majority of the continent’s population expected to be classified as urban in about 20 years, and its urban population spending as much as 80 percent of their household budgets on food, this book seeks to answer the two timely questions above with practical proposals for technical interventions and policy support.

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Ceasia Williams, 14, left, and Jayda Harden, 14, water newly planted seedlings in a raised bed for the Lots of Hope gardening project at The Pittsburgh Project on the North Side. Photo by Rebecca Droke/Post-Gazette.

“It helps people to have clarity about what’s allowed and what isn’t.”

By Rick Wills
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
September 1, 2010

Excerpt:

Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission gave its final approval to legislation that would regulate small-scale, urban agriculture.

The proposed legislation, which goes to City Council for action, applies to honeybees, poultry and community gardens, for which no permitting has been required. The commission passed the proposal 6-1, with Commissioner Monte Rabner voting against.

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