Posts from — December 2010

Lowe sprinkles Arugula seeds on the fabric which will be harvested in 18 days. David Lowe of EcoVeggies and Ed Harwood of AeroFarms are looking to bring fresh vegetables to Newark by growing fresh vegetables year round at St. Philip’s Academy in Newark. Photo by Ed Murray.

“The interest in locally grown pesticide free produce is huge.”

By Ed Murray
The Star-Ledger
December 02, 2010

Excerpt:

NEWARK — Seeds are sprinkled from a pizza shaker, the kind you’d normally see filled with red pepper flakes or parmesan cheese.

Tiny granules of arugula are in one. Komatsuna and fun jen, an Asian variety that produces a crunchy like cabbage in each leafy bite, pour out of another. Every 18 days or so, they get doused over a soft, white cloth fabric neatly attached to eight metal trays on two levels of a mechanical contraption at St. Philip’s Academy in Newark.

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David Selig of Red Hook, Brooklyn, a restaurant owner and amateur beekeeper, was disappointed that instead of honey his bees had produced a red concoction more reminiscent of maraschino cherries, or of cough syrup. Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times.

The Mystery of the Red Bees of Red Hook

By Susan Dominus
New York Times
November 29, 2010

Excerpt:

Where there should have been a touch of gentle amber showing through the membrane of their honey stomachs was instead a garish bright red. The honeycombs, too, were an alarming shade of Robitussin.

“I thought maybe it was coming from some kind of weird tree, maybe a sumac,” said Ms. Mayo, who tends seven hives for Added Value, an education nonprofit in Red Hook. “We were at a loss.”

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By Urban Architecture Project

About 50 community-run green areas have been mapped: little urban gardens, play yards, edible gardens and areas for walking, resting, or simply talking. Citizens and associations acting together to reclaim the abandoned areas in Rome.

More than 100 sites together with the 65 spontaneous gardens are registered in the municipality of Rome.

There are urban farms too and other interesting destinations such as Participation Houses, “Punti Verdi Qualità” and green areas maintained by established associations.

See the map here.

J.P. Swanson and Roy Finny plant carrot seeds at Growing Hope. Photo by Tom Perkins for AnnArbor.com

“Are we returning to an agrarian society?”

By: Rick Haglund
Ann Arbor.com
Dec 2, 2010

Excerpt:

Michigan farm output of $5.5 billion last year represented little more than 1 percent of the state’s gross domestic product of $368.4 billion.

But the state’s economic destruction over the past decade has put a new twist on agriculture-related issues.

For example, Michigan passed a right-to-farm law in 1981 designed to protect farming from urban sprawl that was creeping into lightly populated rural areas of the state.

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Compromiso Social: Huertas Comunitarias

Complete paper in Spanish.
Licenciatura en Administración Agropecuaria y Agronegocios
Orientación en Gestión de Agronegocios. Sede: Rosario.
Alumnos:
Campodimontti, Marcos.
Carrasco, Danisa.
Del Greco, Damián.
Sarjanovich, Juan Pablo.
Junio de 2007

El presente trabajo, uno de nuestros últimos pasos en nuestra formación profesional, surge de la necesidad de conocer un poco mas nuestro entorno. Concientes ya de que lo que vemos y percibimos no es todo lo que nos rodea. Necesitados de un panorama mas amplio de visión, es que hoy nos encontramos desarrollando una pequeña investigación sobre las Huertas de la Ciudad de Rosario.

Este trabajo no pretender dar cuenta de todo lo que el Programa de AU (agricultura urbana) significa, ni entrar en los detalles de sus actividades teóricas o practicas.

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K. Rashid Nuri. Photo by Joeff Davis.

Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture to break ground – Urban Farm in Old Fourth Ward

Old Fourth Ward is getting a neighborhood, organic vegetable garden on 4-acres leased from Wheat Street Baptist Church! The project will also be a marketplace and serve as a training center for budding urban gardeners.

With the help of District 2 City Councilmember Kwanza Hall and generous investments by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation, Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward will soon be the site of a new four-acre organic urban garden.

The historic Wheat Street Baptist Church, one of the nation’s oldest African American churches, has leased four acres of inner city land to Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture (TLW) to build an organic vegetable garden, which will also serve as a market place and training center for Atlantans interested in urban agriculture.

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North Vancouver gardeners.

“If we have to wait until we are in a food crisis and then we start digging up our front yards, I think we’ll have eaten each other’s livers and legs by that time.”

By Benjamin Alldritt
North Shore News
November 26, 2010

Excerpt:

“I’m quite astounded at the estimated time it would take to come up with a comprehensive report,” said Coun. Pam Bookham, who said while residents are free to cultivate fruits and vegetables, the city should focus its time and money on other issues. “If food security becomes an issue, we will be plowing up every available space, just as we did in the Second World War with the victory gardens,” she said. “But at the moment we have grocery stores; we have Whole Foods bringing in foods from far away.”

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The Bathgate Urban Food Industry Center is a business whose primary objective is to leverage through sustainable redevelopment and green building, the urban industrial site as a resource to:

1. Grow healthy food, primarily produce, in proximity to a large urban population that is presently underserved.
2. Grow food economically and sustainably.
3. Distribute food products to the neighborhood at a lower cost by eliminating the high embedded cost of transportation and spoilage from long distance supply sources.
4. Utilize available technologies for on-site electrical power generation (OSG) to provide low cost green power to the food production, wholesale food and retail grocery tenants.
5. Provide on-site parking and a farmers market to make BUFIC a destination food resource for the surrounding community.

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Link to Sembradores Urbanos.

Mexico City is one of the biggest urban centers in the world

By Pablo Torres-Lima, Alfonso Chávez-Muñoz, Gerardo Ávila-Jiménez and Sergio Contreras-Prado
The Journal of Feild Actions
Field Actions Sceince Reports
Special Issue 1, 2010, Urban Agriculture

Abstract

Planning land use processes are indispensable for designing policies and activities in peri-urban areas, above all because of the impact of the conversion of agricultural land for urban purposes and the possibility of reducing poverty and assuring the food supply. In Latin America, there are a limited number of studies which discuss institutional involvement and proposals for participative and multi-sector planning with the aim of generating viable conditions for urban agriculture in megacities, within the framework of sustainable development. This article analyzes the principal components of a planning process which promotes the development of agricultural production zones in Xochimilco-Tlahuac, Mexico City.

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Edible gardens are appearing on other parking strips

By Janaia Donaldson
Janaia’s Journal
Peak Moment TV 185
Nov 16, 2010

Excerpts:

Rainey Hopewell’s crazy idea has ended up feeding a neighborhood and creating community. She and Margot Johnston planted vegetables in the parking strip in front of their house. They offer them free for the taking — to anyone, anytime — with messages chalked on the sidewalk noting when particular veggies are ready to pick. Neighboring children and adults are joining in to work on the garden, harvesting fun along with food, and even handing fresh-picked veggies to passers-by.

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