New Website Aimed At Helping Urban Agriculture

By Dan Moser
IANR News Service
May 31, 2011

Excerpt:

Ask five people to define “urban agriculture,” and you’ll likely get five different answers. It’s community gardening, economic development and an interest in locally grown foods. It’s education, green-thumb therapy and family togetherness. And more.

However one defines it, urban agriculture has emerged as a movement in American cities. It has a special place in a state such as Nebraska, where agriculture is still the number one industry even though increasing numbers of people have no direct tie to it, say University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension experts.

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Yan Zong Wang on his allotment on the outskirts of Beijing. Photo by Adam Dean.

China goes organic after years of ‘glow in the dark pork’ and ‘exploding watermelons’

After years of nerve-racking food scares from “melamine milk” to “glow-in-the-dark” pork and “exploding watermelons” urban China is starting to embrace the shoots of a new, green revolution and is going organic.

By Peter Foster
The Telegraph
29 May 2011

Excerpts:

From a runner-bean spotted spiralling along the balcony balustrade of a Beijing apartment, to long waiting-lists for allotments, a plethora of gardening websites and a mushrooming of organic farms and shops, Chinese families are increasingly looking to “grow their own”.

In recent years China has been hit by a number of food scandals and fears about safety have lingered. In 2008, 300,000 babies became seriously ill and six babies died after being given formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine.

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