Posts from — January 2011

Growing Home, Inc. via Urban Food Policy.

See “Chicago’s Urban Agriculture Zoning Proposal” by Nevin Cohen in Urban Food policy, Jan 6, 2011 and “A step forward for urban agriculture” by Harry Rhodes in The Chicago Tribune, Jan 12, 2011.

Excerpt from Nevin Cohen:

Treatment of Agriculture as an Interim Use

Another concern raised about Chicago’s proposed zoning ordinance changes is that urban agriculture projects that are meant to temporarily occupy vacant land slated for development would be disadvantaged by requirements for fencing and landscaping that apply to other businesses. Entrepreneurs throughout North America are experimenting with growing food in Earth Boxes, bags, and other mobile planters. A growing number of non-profit organizations would like to be able to farm sites on a temporary basis. Chicago’s own City Farm is designed to be relocated once the site it occupies is developed (although it has been in place for a decade).

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(This photo is not from Zimbabwe.)

Position of Harare councillors on the barbaric slashing of maize

Written by MDC Information & Publicity Department
The Zimbabwean
12 January, 2011

Harare councillors held an emergency caucus meeting on 11 January 2011 at Harvest House following the slashing of maize in the city and came out with the following position;

Harare City councillors dissociate themselves and condemn the ongoing barbaric destruction of the staple maize crop in the high density areas of the city. Council has never made such a resolution. The MDC is a pro-poor political party and is fully behind all livelihood support programmes among them urban agriculture.

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Urban Agriculture with Job Ebenezer – part 1

Wading Pool Gardens

The president (Dr. Job Ebenezer) of the organization, Technology for the Poor, explains his vision for the spread of urban agriculture.

In 1993, Dr. Job Ebenezer, former Director of Environmental Stewardship and Hunger Education at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) established a container garden on the roof of the parking garage of the ELCA offices in Chicago. The hope was that the roof top garden would serve as a role model for creative use of urban space throughout the country. Dr. Ebenezer proved the feasibility of growing vegetables in plastic wading pools, used tires and feed sacks.

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Activist Eli Zigas on the Challenges of Urban Agriculture

By Allison Arieff
Editor at Large, GOOD, and “Opinionator” columnist for the New York Times
Good Food Magazine
Jan. 11, 2011

Excerpt:

With commitments to food security, programs like mandatory composting and the Urban Orchards Project, San Francisco has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the expansion of urban agriculture. With Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2009 Executive Directive on Food (PDF) which articulated a vision of a food system with nutritious food for all San Franciscans, the city demonstrated its commitment to scale up the amount of food that’s grown within city limits.

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Harvest time: Seventy-year-old Lewis Sharpe manages the Duncan Street Miracle Garden. Photo by J. M. Giordano.

Farm City

By Heather Dewar
Urbanite Baltimore Magazine
Nov. 1, 2010

Excerpt:

Baltimore’s Board of Estimates approved a policy last December allowing community groups that have been using a plot of city-owned land for five years or more to lay claim to it. Under the policy, administered by the Planning Department and the Department of Housing and Community Development, the city does not sell the land directly to the community group; it sells the land for $1 per lot to a land trust, which in turn draws up an agreement allowing the group to use it for free.

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Len Gratto on his property in Mission. Len Gratto is ready to join an “imminent class action” law suit against Mission, for hitting him with a 5,200 grow op inspection fee. The 67 year old says he and his wife were growing cucumbers in the basement, he never grew pot, and he and many other Mission residents are being unfairly searched and fined.
Photograph by Les Bazso, PNG

Citizens planning class-action suit over municipal grow-op inspections

By Sam Cooper,
Postmedia News
January 10, 2011

Excerpt:

VANCOUVER — Len Gratto says there’s no way he is paying a $5,200 fine to Mission, B.C., for growing cucumbers in his basement.

Gratto — who has lived in the home for 30 years — says he’s raring to join an imminent class-action lawsuit attacking the municipality’s grow-op bylaw inspections. A number of citizens, led by Stacy Gowanlock, allege their homes were illegally searched for marijuana grow-ops resulting in them being slapped with fees and repair orders costing upward of $10,000 — all on questionable evidence.

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My year-long photo documentary of Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Rooftop Farm

By Scott Nyerges
2010

In a far-flung city, in a dispersed digital age, locally based agriculture and neighborhood gardens provide a tangible sense of community and a connection to the land. This project documents the passing seasons at one such community: Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Scott’s photo slideshows document the roof garden from August, 2009 to December 15, 2010

See them here.

Wal-Mart is the store that everyone loves to hate

By Richard C. Longworth
Good Food
January 7, 2011
Richard C. Longworth is a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the author of Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism.

Excerpt:

Residents of Detroit are digging up vacant lots in their emptying city and turning them into urban farms. These little plots are an important source for produce for Detroiters for one big reason: there aren’t many other sources.

Detroit lost its last chain grocery store three years ago when the last two Farmer Jack’s groceries closed. This seems incredible—a city of nearly 1 million people without a supermarket—but it’s true. No A&P. No Meijer’s. Not even a Wal-Mart. Any Detroiters who want fresh store-bought fruits and vegetables or wrapped meats have to get in their car and drive to the suburbs. That is, if they have a car.

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Urban farming blogs

By Mary and Paul Hench
MastersinPublicHealth.net
2011

Categories include:

Top Urban Farming Blogs by a Group
Top Urban Farming Blogs by an Individual
Top Urban Farming and Livestock Blogs
Top Farming Blogs
Top Urban Farming Vegetable Blogs
Top Urban Farming Gardening Blogs

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60 million FarmVille players in the world

By Shane Snow
Mashable
Sept. 2010

Excerpt:

With all those millions of Facebook and iPhone users tending to virtual crops and sharing them with friends, have you ever wondered how their toils stack up against actual real-life farmers?

How does our output of digital (and decidedly less tasty) tomatoes compare with our worldwide production of real tomatoes? And perhaps most importantly, who are these casual croppers, and are they anything like their plow-toting counterparts?

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“We’re basically just trying to cover the city’s costs.”

By Ken Leiviska,
Times-Press
January 8, 2011

An ordinance allowing limited agricultural use in residentially zoned areas was approved in November, but the fee to perform harvesting will not be discussed by the Reedsburg Common Council until Monday.

The new ordinance will allow developers to apply for an annual permit so they can harvest crops on undeveloped residential sites for one year. On Tuesday, the city Plan Commission decided to recommend that the fee should be set at $400.

“We’re basically just trying to cover the city’s costs,” said city engineer Steve Zibell. “It takes into account the staff’s time, the paperwork, making copies and mailing notifications.”

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Book to be published April 26, 2011

By Thomas Fox
Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Hobby Farm Press

It doesn’t take a farm to have the heart of a farmer. Now, due to a burgeoning sustainable-living movement, you don’t have to own acreage to fulfill your dream of raising your own food. Hobby Farms Urban Farming, from Hobby Farm Press and the same people who bring you Hobby Farms and Hobby Farm Home magazine, will walk every city and suburban dweller down the path of self sustainability. Urban Farming will introduce readers to the concepts of gardening and farming from a high-rise apartment, participating in a community garden, vertical farming, and converting terraces and other small city spaces into fruitful, vegetableful real estate.

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Farmers Planting the Rice, 1890s. Hand-colored albumen print. Author: Kimbei Kusakabe.

Japanese government to subsidize neophyte farmers

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Jan. 6, 2011

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry has decided to offer 1 million yen annual grants to people who start farming after migrating from metropolitan areas to rural ones, the ministry said Wednesday.

Under the “U-turn, I-turn subsidy” program, the government aims to utilize uncultivated farmland and revitalize farming, which has been strained by declining numbers and advancing age.

“U-turn” is a name given to the phenomenon of people returning from metropolitan regions to their hometowns, and “I-turn” is the phenomenon of city-born people moving to rural areas in search of work.

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An Urban-Dweller’s Guide to Growing Food and Raising Animals

By Lisa Taylor and The Gardeners of Seattle Tilth
Paperback , 336 pages
Published by Black Dog & Leventhal
$18.95(US) Available Feb 23, 2011.

The Book:

The most complete book on urban farming, covering everything from growing organic produce and raising chickens, to running a small farm on a city lot or in a suburban backyard.

Eating locally and growing one’s own food is a rapidly evolving movement in urban settings – Hantz Farms in Detroit has transformed 70 acres of abandoned properties into energy-efficient gardens, and Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, a 6,000-foot vegetable farm in Brooklyn, New York, yields 30 different kinds of produce, while private square-foot farms are cropping up in cities all over the country.

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The Garden of Eden, December 30, 1978. Photo by Harvey Wang

Adam Purple and the Garden of Eden – Photographs by Harvey Wang

Harvey Wang, Photographer
January 4, 2011

NEW YORK: January 8, 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden, an earthwork created by Adam Purple that once spanned five city lots on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This selection of Harvey Wang’s photographs, for the most part unpublished and on display for the first time, documents the expansion of the Garden from 1978 to 1985. Rare prints of a few of Adam’s 1975-76 negatives will also be shown.

In 1975, Adam Purple set out to plant a garden behind his tenement building at a time when the Lower East Side was a crime-ridden wasteland. It was a massive undertaking – the site had been buried in rubble from the demolition of two other tenements. While clearing nearly 5,000 cubic feet of debris using only simple tools and raw muscle power, Adam began to create his own topsoil from materials he found at the site and around the city.

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Interactive map lets users look at each surveyed item spatially and compare two items at once – for example, gardens that compost AND partner with schools, or gardens that grow food in the Bronx. It also lets users add a few political borders.

Community Garden Survey: New York City Results 2009/2010

By Mara Gittleman, Lenny Librizzi, Edie Stone
Grow New York City and Green Thumb, NYC Dept. of Parks and Recreation
2010

• In 2009, there were at least 490 community gardens in NYC.
• Approximately 80% of community gardens in NYC grow food.
• 65.6% of community gardens in NYC compost, and 20 of these gardens will accept organic waste from the public.
• 43% of community gardens in NYC partner with at least one local school, and another 39% would like to.

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Using modern technology to modernize an ancient practice

By Diana Vergis Vinh
Urban Farm Hub
January 5th, 2011

Excerpt from letter from Lydia Strand:

We have in total 19 sheep at various locations in King County- Tukwila, Redmond, Renton – on land that has been generously offered up by private land owners. We take turns checking in on the sheep, using Google Calendar to choose our check on dates, we meet face to face monthly to talk about the status of the project and what is upcoming for our collective flock. We use email to give daily reports on the sheep and keep on task of our shepherding duties.

See Urban Farm Hub story here.

Planning and installing ten school gardens throughout the Springfield R-XII district

By Mark Miller
Drury University newsroom
January 4, 2011

Springfield, MO. Drury University and the Springfield Urban Agriculture Coalition (SUAC) have received a $300,000 grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health. The three-year grant will fund The Dig In R-Twelve (DIRT) Project, which will plan and install ten school gardens throughout the Springfield R-XII district. DIRT, in collaboration with the Drury School of Education, will also provide and teach curriculum to address core state education standards and use the gardens to complement classroom learning by teaching healthy habits in a fun, active, hands-on environment. The grant also includes funds to establish infrastructure for an urban farm in a low-income neighborhood.

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