Posts from — January 2011

American Planning Association Book

By Kimberley Hodgson, Marcia Caton Campbell, Martin Bailkey
Published by APA Planning Advisory Service, 2010
Paperback, 148 pp.

Urban agriculture is rising steadily in popularity in the United States and Canada-there are stories in the popular press, it has an increasingly central place in the growing local food movement, and there is a palpable interest in changing cities to foster both healthier residents and more sustainable communities. The most popular form of urban agriculture, community gardening, contributes significantly to developing social connections, building capacity, and empowering communities in urban neighborhoods.

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The Dervaes harvested 7,030 pounds of organic produce on 1/10th acre in 2010 – a record since they started keeping track 10 years ago

Excerpt from the Urban Homestead site:

These last few days, I too have been anxiously waiting the final harvest tally from Justin who’s been going through the invoice books to tally the herbs and edible flower boxes that we harvested and sold (which came to 117 lbs for the year).

On a side note, we just couldn’t figure out how to calculate the weight of 100 plus flats of wheat grass that we grew last year, so we just left them out of the final tally. Oh well.

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AeroFarms will incorporate a water vapor harvester from AWG. It literally squeezes water from air.

By Susan Kraemer
Green Profit
January 24th, 2011

Excerpt:

AeroFarms, a company whose vertical skyscraper farming idea we have covered before, is now beginning to introduce a new way of farming to the Middle East that could have as radical an effect on the future of our food supply, as when we switched to farming from hunting and gathering. This will be a very major change.This week AeroFarm’s first unit has just been installed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, under the support and partnership of Saudi Arabia’s Sheikh Saleh Boqshan, who is spearheading the project.

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Hmong Farmer. Photo by Victor Bareng. Minority Farmers in America.

Before hipsters got rooftop gardens, my poor, refugee family ate that way because we had to. And we were ashamed.

By Pha Lo
Salon
Jan 6, 2011

Excerpt:

To me, the organic food movement has become dizzyingly, surreally chic. Farmers have become rock stars; the most exclusive restaurants name-check them so much you can almost see dirt on the menu. But before organic produce exploded into a $25 billion industry, before city gardening became cool, I grew up in a Hmong refugee community, living the urban organic lifestyle not because it was fashionable, but because we were poor. I couldn’t wait to leave it behind.

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“Urban agriculture is about revitalizing and transforming public spaces, connecting city residents with their neighborhoods in a new way and promoting healthier eating and living for everybody.”

By Neal Peirce
CitiwireNet
January 30, 2011
Washington Post Writers Group

Excerpt:

Lester R. Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, goes so far as to define “a food bubble economy — created by overpumping aquifers and overplowing and overgrazing land, and overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.” Like the U.S.-born housing bubble before it, Brown predicts bursting of the food bubble will ricochet worldwide with dire consequences including “survival itself” at stake for peoples living on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder.

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Pro-basketball player-turned farmer, Will Allen is involved in more than 70 urban agriculture projects and outreach programs around the world. Matthew Hoekstra photo.

Former basketball pro spreads urban farming seed

By Matthew Hoekstra
Richmond Review
January 27, 2011

Excerpt:

Born the son of a sharecropper, Allen became a standout basketball player in high school despite his father’s strict rule: no sports until farm chores were done. He earned a basketball scholarship and later played professionally in the U.S. and Europe, where he reconnected with his farming roots.

It was in Europe where he saw farmers use intensive methods on small plots. He started his own garden there, growing food for his family and teammates.

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Dimensions: 24″wide x 34.5″ high x 24″ deep. Urban Cultivator™ was conceived after many years in the hydroponic industry – an industry with an unwarranted bad reputation.

Both Kitchen Cultivator and Commercial Cultivator

Our goal is to take hydroponic growing where no company has gone before. From basements and backrooms to a focal point of any proud chefs kitchen. Local is the way to go. Now you can have an active hand in the food your loved ones eat no matter where you live. Connect to your food, connect to your family.

The Kitchen Cultivator is an all in one indoor home garden. You get 365 days of perfect growing conditions for all of your favorite herbs and veggies. No more soggy super market herbs going bad in your fridge… just fresh crisp herbs from your very own garden.

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TCS, the pioneer of software services in India, attends urban farming workshop in Mumbai

Urban Leaves blog
Jan. 27, 2011

Excerpt:

After a brief introduction of the activities of Urban Leaves by Shri Uday Acharya, Preeti started explaining the fundamentals of Natueco science agriculture, city farming and its importance in our daily life – as a source of fresh home grown produce, assurance of being organic as also being a refreshing activity involving community bonding. The demonstration of available cultivable land with the help of an Apple was an eye opener for everyone to know how little amount of cultivable land is actually available for feeding the entire worlds population.

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By a Canadian in Kobe
Jan 27, 2011

Excerpt:

“Many people in Japan’s urban centers live in pretty cramped quarters. Even owning your own house doesn’t guarantee you will have enough space for a lawn or garden. It is actually quite rare to see a home in the city that has a front or back yard. Of course many people, especially seniors, come from more rural backgrounds and have a desire to keep their thumbs green. How do they do it? They maintain their desire for gardening by creating small garden plots wherever they can find the space.

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Picture image above. See video here.

Video report

January 27, 2011

CNN’s Richard Quest reports on Mexico City’s example of growing your own food in small city space.

See video here.

Monkey going after fruit at breakfast buffet. Photo by JakeChalkley.

“The snakes death of course was the signal for the most joyous chatterings and gambols.”

From a very old, undated, New York Times article

“The gentleman had a garden where he grew delicious fruit. The sacred monkeys easily scaled the walls and helped themselves. They were not content with simply eating, but amused themselves with throwing half-munched fruit at each other. To shoot these pests was out of the question, and to hit them with stones was impossible, as they easily dodged any missile that might be thrown at them.

An idea struck the Englishman one day, and he at once proceeded to carry it into effect with great success. He got a large basket of the largest potatoes that were to be found and had them boiled.

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“There’s something about working with your hands, to make what you need, that’s so much better than just going out and buying something,”

By Elizabeth Millard
The Line Media
Jan. 26, 2011

Excerpt:

Matson started the store in April 2010, after growing weary of driving to far-flung feed stores to feed her small flock of backyard chickens.

She was familiar with retail operations, having managed bookstores in the past, but left that profession to stay home with her kids. She’d pondered a shift to garden design, and earned a Master of Agriculture in Horticulture at the University of Minnesota, while working at a garden center.

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Forthcoming March 2011

by Kurt Michael Friese, Kraig Kraft, Gary Nabhan
Chelsea Green Publishing Company

Chasing Chiles looks at both the future of place-based foods and the effects of climate change on agriculture through the lens of the chile pepper—from the farmers who cultivate this iconic crop to the cuisines and cultural traditions in which peppers play a huge role.

Why chile peppers? Both a spice and a vegetable, chile peppers have captivated imaginations and taste buds for thousands of years. Native to Mesoamerica and the New World, chiles are currently grown on every continent, since their relatively recent introduction to Europe (in the early 1500s via Christopher Columbus).

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In the spring of 1915, The Vacant Lots Cultivation Association in conjunction with the Toronto Rotary Club established over 80 garden allotments across the City of Toronto in under-utilized and vacant spaces.

From Soiled and Seeded Magazine
Issue 2 – Winter 2011

Excerpt:

Below is an article reproduced from The Rotarian, Volume VII, No. 5 November 1915, describing the success of the project’s inaugural year. The accompanying photos, not appearing in the original publication, are located in the City of Toronto Archives.

Vacant Lot Cultivation Yields $5,700
By B. A. Trestrail, Toronto Rotary Club

The land donated by citizens for public use for this purpose was divided into approximately one-eighth acre lots. A supply of ten varieties of vegetable seeds, a peck of seed potatoes, two dozen tomato plants and fifty cabbage plants were furnished free with each allotment.

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Upcoming book title – April 2011

By Renee Wilkinson
Fulcrum Publishing

Renee Wilkinson was raised as part of a long generation of homesteaders dating back to her great-grandparents in 1852. She calls herself a city girl at heart, and living in Portland, Oregon, has allowed her to straddle city and country life at the same time. Follow Renee as she shares the life of a city homesteader, or as she would say, “City chick gets her hands dirty on her urban homestead, planting an edible garden, raising backyard chickens, preserving the harvest, and working toward a greener future.”

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“Vertical gardens” helped Nairobi families survive when unrest after the 2008 elections shut down roads and prevented food from coming into the cities. Photo credit: Bernard Pollack.

Nourishing the Planet asks What Works?

By Mara Schechter
WorldWatch
2011-01-25

Excerpt:

Small urban gardens can help women, who compose the majority of urban farmers. Urban Harvest, an initiative to enhance urban agriculture’s potential and food security supports community farms and projects in Kenya. These help women improve their income and networks of information and skills. In Kibera, the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa, located in Nairobi, over 1,000, mainly female, farmers now grow food quickly and in small spaces by filling tall sacks with soil and poking holes on different levels to plant seeds.

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Treadle pumps have enabled more than 1.5 million Bangladeshi farmers grow marketable produce. Photo by Ecoagriculture Partners.

Public comments on the subject using Facebook

By Iqbal Hossain Shimul
Igenius
January 24, 2011

“Iqbal Hossain Shimul from Bangladesh has opened up a 10 day online public comments survey via Facebook 21-31 January 2011. The surver focuses on whether urban agriculture planning or rural agriculture planning is best for a country. After 3 days, the feedback generated clearly shows most are of the opinion that both are equally important, but rural agriculture planning is most important because of the space afforded. This is an important dialogue at a time in our globally collected lives where we are all looking for information on how to save money, but also live sustainable lives.”

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Brooklyn Grange from Damiano Beltrami on Vimeo.

Creating Urban Agriculture, One Roof At A Time

By Damiano Beltrami
Huffington Post
01/18/11

Traditionally, farmers take it easy in the winter. But urban farmer Ben Flanner has never been so busy. He is trying to get more New York rooftops ready to grow new shingles of Sun Gold tomatoes, salad greens, and carrots before the next season begins.

“We want to see a lot more roofs across the city covered with farms and growing healthy vegetables,” said Flanner, head farmer at Brooklyn Grange, New York’s biggest rooftop farm located (despite its name) in Long Island City, Queens.

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Malik Yakini, chair of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, at D-Town Farm. Photo by Catherine Porter.

Organic farming meeting learns communities can grow with good food

By Cathy Woodruff
The Times Unbion
January 23, 2011

Excerpt:

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Urban agriculture is about more than growing food, and growing food is about a lot more than farming and gardening, the leader of a Detroit coalition told a statewide organic farming conference on Saturday.

“We’re not just growing food. We are growing communities as well,” said Malik Yakini, who chairs the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. “We’re a post-industrial city that is struggling to find its way,” and “urban agriculture is playing a role in that.”

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Paul Smyth, co-founder of the FARM: shop, shows a friend some hydroponic basil.

FARM: shop in Dalston is a revolutionary new take on urban food self-sufficiency: a cafe and community hub with its own rooftop chicken coop, pigs and floating garden

By David Hawkins
The Ecologist
14th January, 2011

Excerpt:

As soon as you enter the building it’s clear that every corner has been thoroughly investigated for its growing potential; there are plants everywhere, sprouting from unlikely angles, twisting in the lights, floating on rafts. ‘The idea here is to grow the maximum amount of food as efficiently as possible, keeping the labour to minimum’, says Paul Smyth, one of the co-founders.

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