Gene Fredericks of Big Green Boxes imagines fish ponds, waterfalls, and racks and racks of edible greens and herbs in defunct spaces like this one. Photo by Bart Nagel.

Grist interviews Gene Fredericks of Big Green Boxes

By Bonnie Azab Powell
Grist
Sept 1, 2010

Excerpt:

Q. OK, so walk me through a Big Green Box.

A. We’ll take a freestanding vacant retail space or warehouse space, around 30,000 square feet, climate-control it, and set up some ponds and tanks for the fish — pleasant ones you can see, not unlike the goldfish and Koi ponds in an office-building lobby or a park. There’ll also be small waterfalls, which in addition to looking nice help aerate the water. The water from the ponds and tanks will go into settling tanks as well as a few bio-filtering tanks that will make sure no elements that might harm the plants or the fish get through. The nutrient-rich water then flows into the growing areas. The plants and growing area then filter the water, which gets recycled back to the fish.

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Some new crops being started, protected by shade cloth barriers to the west. The 1.5 acre parcel that City Farm sits on is owned by the City of Chicago and provided, rent-free, to this non-profit initiative. The property is valued at $8 million. (2008) Photo by Linda N.

How many “urban agriculturists” are there?

The Why Files
The Science Behind the News
Sept. 2, 2010

Excerpt:

There are many explanations for the dearth of data on urban agriculture:

Definitions: much of the new-found interest in urban agriculture concerns “local food,” but that is often grown in the countryside — even if the farmers live in the city.

Size: Urban farms are small and their output is diverse and hard to measure.

Age: Many urban farms are young, and any record of success would be short.

Motivation: Urban farms often aim beyond food to social and psychological benefits, which are not captured by the yield and profit measures used to evaluate farms.

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The Offshoots Farm is a multi-site urban and suburban agricultural enterprise that grows healthy food throughout our community inside the Capital Beltway in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

The Business of Sustainability

By Cheryl Kollin
Marc Gunther blog
Sept. 2, 2010

Excerpt:

Urban farming may sound like an oxymoron, but judging from the 375-person sell-out crowd at the first Urban Farm Summit in Washington, D.C., the idea is catching on like organics at Walmart.

The recent one-day event called, Sowing Seeds Here and Now, was organized by Engaged Community Offshoots (ECO), a fledgling non-profit urban farm based just outside D.C. in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The summit agenda spotlighted the reasons why urban farms are sprouting up all over: They increase food security by growing food locally. They give under-served urban neighborhoods access to fresh foods. They strengthen local economies by keeping dollars circulating within the community. They engage consumers, who learn how food is grown. They reduce ‘food miles’ and fossil fuel use. And they create jobs.

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Montford Farmers: Bea McGahee, Larry Mahr, Norman McGahee, Aicha Mahr (L-R)

Montford in Asheville, North Carolina

by Hilary Drake
Montford
August 30th, 2010

Excerpt:

In March 2009, with Mrs. Hamilton’s go-ahead, E.V. began manually transforming the land. Once the trash was cleared, she began by buzzing everything down with a weed-eater, then digging out all of the unwanted seedlings by hand. She hand-dug rows for spring planting by May 1. The first full garden season brought strong yields of watermelon, cantaloupe, hot peppers, bell peppers, zucchini, squash, winter squash, corn, eggplant, cucumber, lima beans, green beans, tomatoes, garlic, spinach, turnips, lettuce, chard, kale, and potatoes.

Late that summer, after a smooth first season with strong yields and only minor glitches, tragedy struck at the garden’s edge. Amidst all of this new life and growth, Angela Hart was murdered in an act of domestic violence on Mrs. Hamilton’s property adjacent to the garden.

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Backyard Bounty garden growing in their front lawn in Guelph, Ontario.

Backyard Bounty

Backyard Bounty is a unique community-based agriculture project. We cooperate with participating community members to convert their yard space into productive vegetable gardens. We currently have over 40 lawns being cultivated throughout Guelph!

Meet the Backyard Bounty Team

Robert Orland, the founder of Backyard Bounty was inspired to create Backyard Bounty in response to lawns. He saw that lawns are detrimental to the environment and that they are very resource dependant. Lawns are essentially monocultures and a desert for biodiversity.

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Novella Carpenter turned her backyard in Oakland, California into a small farm to feed herself. Now she’s selling produce and trying to make a small profit. Photo by Mark Richards

Taking root in the city

Casey Miner
Ode Magazine
July/August 2010 issue

Excerpt:

If the ’60s was the decade when back-to-the-landers fled cities for farms, the ’10s is the decade when they—or, more likely, their offspring—are coming back. There is no official count of how many urban farms exist in America, but agricultural entities like the Bells’ have counterparts across the country. Urban farmers work in Houston, Dayton, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Detroit, Portland, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Seattle, to name just a few. Location matters, and the farms’ business models are different, but they have two things in common: They are committed to feeding their communities with fresh, sustainable food, and they insist on establishing themselves as normal features of city life.

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