Peter Ladner – author of forthcoming book ‘The Urban Food Revolution’

Peter Ladner, in his yard that he converted into a food garden, has written a book that details the changes people and policymakers in Canada are making to regain control of our food. Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, PNG, Vancouver Sun.

Former Vancouver councillor offers ideas on how cities can gain control over what they eat

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
July 28, 2011

Excerpt:

What would a city approaching food self-sufficiency look like?

Peter Ladner’s soon-to-be released book The Urban Food Revolution offers tantalizing glimpses of urban environments that successfully integrate commercial enterprise, low-impact living spaces and agricultural productivity. Balcony gardens, urban market gardens, rooftop beehives, vertical greenhouses and aquaponics, and acres of lawn converted to high-value herb and vegetable production are all being employed with success somewhere. Why not everywhere?

“I didn’t want to make this a book about studies or proposals,” Ladner told The Sun. “I really wanted to focus on real things that people and cities are doing that actually work, things people and politicians could look at and say, ‘We could do that here.’ ”

Though Ladner comes from a farming family – a certain farming community south of Vancouver bears his family name – he is admittedly more a gardener and an idea man than he is a farmer.

Read the complete article here.

The Urban Food Revolution will be published in October, 2011. See here.