The Vertical Farm, Despommier’s new book

“The time is at hand for us to learn how to safely grow our food inside environmentally controlled multistory buildings within urban centers. If we do not, then in just another 50 years, the next 3 billion people will surely go hungry, and the world will become a much more unpleasant place in which to live.” – The Vertical Farm.

Link here.

Victoriano de Costa Elementary School’s students. Farmers in their ‘fields’. Photo by David Hagerman

School gardens in the Philippines

By Robyn Eckhardt and David Hagerman
Eating Asia
2010.09.03
Wonderful website – wonderful photos. Mike

Excerpt:

Long before Alice Waters introduced the concept of students growing their own food in Berkeley kids were putting hoe to soil at schools in the Philippines. School farms in the island nation go back at least to World War II. Many were, and still are, born of necessity. Others are started not only to feed kids but to teach them life skills and engender a respect for farming.

Didn’t know about this? I’m not surprised. We wouldn’t know about the Philippines’ own ‘edible schoolyards’ either had we not stumbled upon the farm at Victoriano de Castro Elementary School in Santa Rita, Pampanga province while on assignment there in December 2007 for Saveur magazine.

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