Posts from — June 2011

Our 1/2 acre garden provides fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs to our household of twelve as well as the households of our friends and neighbors.

By Natasha Shapiro and Niambi McDonald
Philadelphia Neighbours
June 7, 2011

Excerpt:

Only a few years ago, 215 E. Penn St. was an abandoned lot, overrun by 15-foot bushes and weeds. Now it’s a half-acre farm in the city.

The Germantown Kitchen Garden practices local agriculture, supplying fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs to the Germantown community.

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Ladonna Redmond urged urban farmers to be politically active. “You can’t just sit on your duff in your garden,” she said.

The city of Richmond has produced a working draft assessment of local urban agriculture progress and opportunities for improvement.

By Robert Rogers
Richmond Confidential
June 6, 2011

Excerpt:

Addressing a crowd of government and business leaders, urban agriculture aficionados, commercial growers and others with interests in the growing niche of locally-grown foods, LaDonna Redmond told listeners that she took a different route to urban agriculture.

“I didn’t get into urban agriculture because I love trees,” Redmond said, adding that 20 years ago she didn’t know or care much about global warming or recycling either. “I came to urban agriculture because I had to feed my son.”

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“Essentially urban farming right now is illegal,” he says. “There’s no business license designation for it in the city and you can’t sell anything or deliver a service without having a business license.”

By Luke Brocki
The Dependent
June 6, 2011

Excerpt:

But today’s farmers and their allies don’t want to wait that long and are pushing for more leadership from City Hall. Among them is Arzeena Hamir, agronomist, co-ordinator of the Richmond Food Security Society and long a thorn in the side of local government officials and land use authorities.

“It is still not legal for you to grow and sell your products within Vancouver city limits. A backyard farm, or an empty lot farm, is not zoned for that in Vancouver. You can grow food for yourself, but as soon as you start brining in an economic component into it, you’re in that grey area. The climate at city hall is such right now that I think staff has been told to look the other way, which is great, because you won’t see anyone being prosecuted for farming. Unless someone complains.”

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Dr B.N.Viswanath conducting a workshop on Terrace Gardening at AME, Bangalore.

The Garden City Farmers

Nirmala Govindarajan,
The Times of India
Jun 4, 2011

Software professional S Laxminarayan, too, joined hand with the Garden City Farmers as treasurer to help increase the green cover of the city. “I am a mechanical engineer, and when I first met Dr Viswanath three years ago, I started out by fabricating boxes to grow greens. Now, our intention is to reach out to a wide spectrum of people in Bangalore who can help increase the green cover — the middle class population, children in government schools and in time, slum dwellers too, so they can grow veggies in the limited space in and around their homes,” says Laxminarayan adding, “We’re also exploring the possibility of growing organic veggies like tomatoes, brinjals and creepers instead of ornamental plants in public parks.

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“If you have a piece of land or even a large flower pot, you can grow a tomato or a row of lettuce. Just get your hands in the soil. Why wouldn’t you?” says Ethne Clarke, the editor in chief of Organic Gardening Magazine. Photo by Tammy Ljungblad, The Kansas City Star.

“One of the most exciting things to me is seeing good, healthy food being grown in neighborhoods that have no grocery stores.”

By Marty Ross
Kansas City Star
Jun 4, 2011

Excerpt:

It’s hard to miss the signs of urban farming these days. School-yard gardens and community gardens across the city promote the pleasure of growing your own peppers, beans, greens and other edibles. Farmers’ markets emphasize local crops and the gardeners who tend them.

“We’re riding a wave — there’s a food revolution going on,” says Janet Moss, coordinator for Cultivate Kansas City’s fourth biennial urban farm tour later this month. “People are talking about food gardening like I’ve never heard it before.”

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James Boatman, left, with his son Aaron, 12, who’s holding the family’s rooster. The Boatman family practices urban farming raising chickens and produce at their home within the city limits of Independence. Photo by Adam Vogler.

Independence, Missouri man graduates from new Entrepreneurship Project program

By Adrianne DeWeese
The Examiner
Jun 05, 2011

Excerpt:

He might be a small urban farmer to some, but James Boatman is still trying to run a business.

So, he went back to school, so to speak. Two weeks ago, Boatman, a western Independence resident, graduated from The Entrepreneurship Project, a new training program through the University of Missouri. Boatman was part of the project’s second graduating class, and now 40 program alumni across Missouri are developing a network to further their agricultural dreams.

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Proposed site.

A Food project in Philadelphia, PA

By Clare Hyre

Cloud 9 Urban Rooftop Farm is a burgeoning rooftop farm to be located on a warehouse roof in Southwest Philadelphia.  Inspired by successful rooftop farms in other major cities like Chicago and New York City, Cloud 9 believes rooftop farming can become a key component for produce regional food and for the city’s plan for sustainable development. While the city is home to hundreds of community gardens and several urban farms Cloud 9 provides a new research opportunity on urban growing.

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Words are the building blocks for new ideas. They have the power to activate change and transform societies.

By Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton
Directors of the Lexicon of Sustain Ability Project

For the past year we have conversed with the foremost practitioners of sustainability in food and farming. They have shared their insights and experiences … and contributed their words to our rapidly growing Lexicon of Sustain Ability. To spread their knowledge our photography project has grown to include short films, study guides, traveling shows, a book and lastly a website where people can add their own terms to this ever-evolving lexicon.

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The author describes how cities are bringing food production home

Forthcoming October 2011

By Peter Ladner
New Society Publishers
Oct 11, 2011

Peter Ladner has served two terms as a Vancouver City Councilor. With more than 35 years of journalistic experience, he is a frequent speaker on community issues and has a special interest in the intersection of food policy and city planning.

Producing food locally makes people healthier, alleviates poverty, creates jobs, and makes cities safer and more beautiful. The Urban Food Revolution is an essential resource for anyone who has lost confidence in the global industrial food system and wants practical advice on how to join the local food revolution.

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Andrew Fleming, one of the founding members of Inner City Farms. Image by Adam Blasberg.

Photo Essay by Adam Blasberg

By Adam Blasberg
BCBusiness
June 6, 2011

Excerpt:

Inner City Farms is an agriculture collective that aims to turn the backyards of Vancouver into productive farmland. It’s a social enterprise whose goal is not only to put food on tables, but to put people in touch with the food they eat. As manicured lawns give way to rows of turnips, lettuce and radishes, and as urban farmhands spread out across the city, we’re reminded that tomatoes aren’t born in plastic six-packs. The next time you sit down to tuck into a meal, ask yourself, Where was this grown? How did it get here?

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Summer Camp at the Wasatch Community Gardens.

A total of 4 parcels totaling 50 acres were leased for the 2011 growing season.

By: Olsen, S.H., Extension Professor, Utah State University Extension
Peck-Dabling, J., Open Space & Urban Farming Program Manager, Salt Lake County Mayor’s Operations

Journal of the National Association of
County Agricultural Agents
Volume 4, Issue 1

Abstract:

In the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in local food, including rapid growth in farmers’ markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. In many urban settings, a scarcity of farmland is a major barrier to increasing local food production. In 2009, Salt Lake County started an urban farming program to lease unused parcels of land to farmers. Some goals of the program were to preserve agricultural land near cities, support local farmers, and provide agricultural based economic development.

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Assessing composted conifer bark as a growing media for tomato production and reducing waste disposal costs at Stockbridge.

A facility for LED lighting for investigating potential yield gains from vertical farming

Horticulture Week
03 June 2011

Centre’s tenth anniversary event issues rallying call to build on research into food production in face of Government cuts.

Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC) is working with industry partners to develop an applied research and development facility for LED lighting in the UK for investigating potential yield gains from vertical farming.

The facility will compare conventional production systems with tiered glasshouse production using LEDs as well as tiered production using an insulated warehouse to assess the economics of an “urban farming” scenario.

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To find workers to pick, pack and ship peaches, Lane Packing participates in a U.S. Department of Labor guest worker program.

To address unemployment, Georgia governor proposes farm work

By John Sepulvado,
CNN Radio
June 2, 2011

Excerpt:

In Colorado, 1,799 U.S. citizens applied for farm jobs in 2009, according to the state’s Department of Labor and Employment. That was up from 39 in 2008, although state officials say the number again fell in 2010 to the “low hundreds.”

With a 9.6% unemployment rate in Georgia, University of Georgia Economist Jeff Humphries thinks the governor’s plan could work.

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“His resolve to become more self-sustainable has grown since he first began farming.”

By Autumn Thatcher
In This Week
2011-06-01

Excerpt:

In a neighborhood in downtown Salt Lake, there is a two-bedroom house surrounded by a chain-link fence. Across from the fence, in the area nearest the street, you will notice a carefully tilled and cared-for vegetable garden. Behind the fence, on any given day, you may encounter a fuzzy-footed chicken walking through the yard, a white duck quacking by, or even more entertaining, a beautiful Nigerian Dwarf goat jumping around and reaching up to eat leaves from the trees that grow in the yard.

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Teacher Gord Trousdell. Photograph by Wayne Leidenfrost, PNG.

The course will consist of practical education in growing crops sustainably, soil science and biology

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
June 1, 2011

Excerpt:

WEST VANCOUVER — Twenty-two students at West Vancouver secondary will be getting their hands dirty next September in the school’s first for-credit course in urban agriculture.

Physics and math teacher Gord Trousdell designed the course himself based on a framework for sustainability studies developed last year by the Ministry of Education.

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Youth Agricultural Ambassadors (YAA).

Wendy Tsotetsi, an authoritative voice in urban horticulture

By Kwanele Sosibo
Mail and Guardian
May 27, 2011

Excerpt:

Tsotetsi first met Tshediso Phahlane, YAA’s co-founder, through a pig farmer in the area named Anna Phosa, with whom they were both interested in working. They recruited other young people with an interest in horticulture, identified possible spaces and secured permission from the municipality to set up projects on the land. Initially, the projects were self-funded, but they managed to secure additional resources through the municipality’s extended public-works programme.

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A year-long research project that will measure the stormwater management potential of two urban farms.

Seeing Green: The Value of Urban Farms

Project by Tyler Caruso and Erik Facteau

Seeing Green: The Value of Urban Agriculture is a year-long research project that will measure the stormwater management potential of two urban farms; Brooklyn Grange (a rooftop farm) & Added Value (raised beds) in NYC.

Our aim is to create a model for future research that can be replicated anywhere, to help validate and support urban farms. We think policies should be based on scientific study and we want our work to encourage the adoption of supportive incentives and non-restrictive regulations for urban farming.

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