Posts from — September 2011

“The people who live here loved it,” Score says. “It was proof that this can be done in a way the city is proud of.”

By Sarah Schmid
Editor of Xconomy Detroit
9/19/11

Excerpt

The initial parcel will be 200 acres just east of the Indian Village neighborhood, with the company working to acquire an additional 300 concurrent acres. During that interim period, Hantz Farms says it would work with local businesses on a site plan. Score says the company would clear the land of brush and trash and get the farm planted within a year. Hantz plans to farm around infrastructure: sidewalks, plumbing, and homes.

Part of the deal, Score says, is that city would use federal dollars to demolish vacant structures, and they would have to do it in a certain timeframe.

“We’re bringing global industry to Detroit to get a new infusion of economic development into the city, but the city has to be willing to deal with dangerous infrastructure issues,” Score says.

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Inmates working at the farm. Photo by John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative.

“We need to be cautious about our expectations that any single intervention is going to work, is going to keep people from going back to prison.”

By Don Terry
New York Times
September 17, 2011

Excerpt:

Mr. Jones’s life in the street landed him in jail for 15 months beginning in early 2009 before a judge gave him a break and instead of sending him to prison for carjacking, sent him to the Cook County Sheriff’s military-style boot camp. There, behind the razor wire, he discovered a three-quarter-acre vegetable farm that produces tomatoes, kale, carrots, peppers and hope.

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An Algonquin Happy Book – No. 157

By Gladys Nelson Muter
Illustrated by F.Y. Cory
Algonquin Publishing Co.
1924

This charming, vintage book tells the story of some hungry bunnies and their love of vegetables.

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Adam Guerrero’s Garden.

Seeds of Discontent

By Hannah Sayle
Memphis Flyer
Sept 15, 2011

Excerpt:

Adam Guerrero and three kids from his neighborhood, Jovantae, Jarvis, and Shaquielle, hardly seem like lawbreakers as they turn over soil at Guerrero’s Nutbush home.

But the city’s code enforcement department has deemed their urban garden a nuisance, and a judge has ordered them to remove the small ecosystem they’ve been working on for the last two years.

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Will Allen, the Mayor Tom Barrett, Susie Firebaugh Falk, and the Wal-mart Foundation. Sept. 11, 2011

“Tainted” dollars?

By Michele Simon
Grist
Sept. 19, 2011

Excerpt:

Last week, retail behemoth Walmart announced a $1.01 million donation to Milwaukee-based Growing Power, a well-known urban farming nonprofit, whose founder Will Allen has gained many accolades for his hard work to bring local, healthy food to low-income areas.

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Forthcoming December 27, 2011

By Novella Carpenter, Willow Rosenthal
Publisher: Penguin
December 27, 2011
592 pages

From Ghost Town Farm blog – Novella Carpenter:
My new book is coming out December 27 (hmm, right around the baby coming)! Willow Rosenthal and I have been slaving on this giant how-to book for the past three years or something. It’s called “The Essential Urban Farmer”. It’s got everything a budding or experienced urban farmer might want to know about growing veggies and fruit, securing land, and raising livestock in the city.

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Photo by Daniel Shea.

Question by Peaches, Electronic Musician and Performance Artist, Berlin

By Smart-Urban-Stage
Sept. 2011

Excerpts:

Urban farming is an increasingly important part of sustaining our future and taking control of what and how we eat.

It is getting more and more difficult, especially in urban environments to obtain real fresh organic food. To motivate ourselves to carry through with this, it would be interesting to take part in the ongoing experiment about how and what specific music can help your plants grow.

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We’re chopped for hash and fixed for mash to make potato crust

Pictures by Florence Kate Upton
Verses by Bertha Upton
Longman’s. Green & Co.
1897

The Vege-men’s Revenge, first published in 1897, features Poppy, a little girl, who is coaxed by Don Tomato and Herr Carrot to Vege-men’s Land, where she is buried on the promise that this will make her grow. Poppy sleeps through a nightmare of all the chopping, boiling, etc., that makes vegetables edible and eventually awakes to take this same sort of revenge on the stuff in her garden.

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The Evolution of Urban Farming

By Evan Meikleham

Excerpts:

Cubic agriculture is defined as the use of a modular growing apparatus that can be stacked vertically or horizontally. Each module is identical, meaning that plants can be grown in any climate-controlled building, regardless of shape, floor plan, or ceiling height. Cubic agriculture has been developed with the increased focus on urban farming initiatives to supply food in large cities. Governments are worried about sustainability of the food supply, as current farming methods are resource-intensive. Cubic agriculture has been raised as an additional solution to issues of sustainability and food safety, food security and traceability.

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Maurice Small stands in the community garden he and others helped develop in Tremont near Lucky’s Cafe. Small is a pioneer in urban gardening and believes the gardens can help revitalize Cleveland’s blighted landscape. Photo by Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer.

This urban garden pied piper helps inner-city communities transform empty, blighted lots into green and growing nutritional and financial resources.

Excerpt:

Part farmer, part passionate activist and part teacher, Small is pioneering organic food security in Cleveland, Detroit, Louisville and other Ohio cities. We’re honoring Small as one of our Organic Pioneers on September 16th, but we caught up with him in advance to chat about how he found his passion and what he thinks we need to do to connect more people with good food.

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Half of a stereoview (ca. 1910) by an unidentified German amateur photographer from Rathenow (in the district of Havelland in Brandenburg, Germany).

There’s a handwritten caption on the backside: “Sonntags in der Laubenkolonie bei Rathenow” [Sunday in the allotment gardens near Rathenow]

Link here.

Current Initiatives include TRCA-FarmStart McVean New Farmers Project, Toronto Urban Farm, Permaculture Design Course

The McVean New Farmers project is a partnership between Toronto and Region Conservation (TRCA) and FarmStart. The New Farmers project is based on the historic McVean property located within the Claireville Conservation Area, in the City of Brampton which is owned by TRCA. The project is the first of its kind in Canada, leading the way towards sustainable, local agriculture that serves the needs of growing urban and peri-urban communities and protects the local greenspace and ecosystems.

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Brothers and co-directors of Matthew 25, Courtney Ball (left) and Clint Twedt-Ball, walk down G Avenue NW as they discuss their proposed Ellis Urban Village in the Time Check neighborhood. Taken on Wednesday , June 8, 2011. Photo by Cliff Jette/SourceMedia Group.

Brothers proposed plan for “small plot intensive farming” in Cedar Rapids

By Rick Smith
The Gazette
15 September 2011

Excerpt:

CEDAR RAPIDS — Urban farming has gotten a boost from the City Planning Commission.

On Thursday, the commission endorsed a proposal to amend the city’s zoning ordinance to allow urban farms in every zoning category in the city.

The City Council will take up the matter next.

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Raising Vegetables and Fish Together

by Sylvia Bernstein
New Society Publishers
Oct 1, 2011

Aquaponics is a revolutionary system for growing plants by fertilizing them with the waste water from fish in a sustainable closed system. A combination of the best of aquaculture and hydroponics, aquaponic gardening is an amazinglyproductive way to grow organic vegetables, greens, herbs and fruits, while providing the added benefits of fresh fish as a safe, healthy source of protein. On a larger scale, it is a key solution to mitigating food insecurity, climate change, groundwater pollution and the impacts of overfishing on our oceans.

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Peter Ladner.

Successful politicians will be out in front of this parade, not jeering from the sidelines.

By Peter Ladner
This column originally appeared in the Sept. 20, 2011 issue of Business in Vancouver.
Peter Ladner’s book, The Urban Food Revolution, Changing the Way We Feed Cities, will be published by New Society in October, 2011.

Politicians and candidates be warned: ridiculing urban farming is a no-win strategy. Food security is marching up the priority list in cities around the world, and Vancouver should be leading, not resisting, this movement.

Growing more food in our cities harms no one, and spins off myriad benefits: better diet, lower health care costs, beautification, safer neighbourhoods, safer food, inter-cultural and inter-generational integration, increased food security, exercise, increased property values near community gardens, less hunger, and, yes, commercial enterprises.

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Family Guy chicken fight.

Urban farming’s growing political power

Listen to anti urban farming political ad here:

NPA Ad by Sunciviclee

By Doug Ward
Vancouver Sun
September 15, 2011

Excerpt:

Peter Ladner, the previous mayoral candidate for the Non-Partisan Association, isn’t happy with his party’s campaign decision to mock Mayor Gregor Robertson’s promotion of urban agriculture.

“Politicians and candidates be warned: Ridiculing urban farming is a no-win strategy,” wrote Ladner in a column this week in Business In Vancouver.

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Future Lufa Farms greenhouses will measure 80,000-120,000 square feet, and will sit atop LEED-certified industrial buildings. Above, an architect’s concept.

“Projects like those envisioned by Le Groupe Montoni and Lufa Farms, can be an important step to a more energy-effective and food-independent Montreal.”

Sept. 12, 2011, Montreal

Excerpt:

Lufa Farms Inc., creator of the world’s first commercial-scale rooftop greenhouse, yesterday announced a co-operative agreement with green industrial-park specialist Le Groupe Montoni of Laval to develop LEED-certified industrial buildings capable of supporting commercial greenhouses.

The agreement is expected to result in several new rooftop farms in and around Montreal, beginning next year.

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“We need to ask more questions of our food supply, both urban and rural.”

By Eli Zigas
Grist
13 Sept 2011

Excerpt:

As someone who works on urban agricultural policy, I’m often asked, “Is city-grown food safe?” The question comes from aspiring urban gardeners and concerned eaters alike. And it seems to stem from both a fear of the known and a fear of the unknown.

First, the fear of the known: Common urban contaminants include lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals leaked into soil from old paint, leaded gasoline, modern car exhaust, and industrial land-use.

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40 urban agriculture projects, created by designers from the United States and around the world

By Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr
The Monacelli Press
Hardcover Available September 20, 2011

Appealing to both design professionals and individuals curious about current ideas and initiatives for growing food in close proximity to the point of consumption, CARROT CITY: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture by Mark Gorgolewski, June Komisar, and Joe Nasr presents 40 projects, created by designers from the United States and around the world, that explore innovative approaches to making space for urban food production.

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“For urban gardeners, you really have to do it for the fun of it.”

By May Jeong
Globe and Mail
Sep. 13, 2011

“In the summer, my garden gives me 80 per cent of my produce. Whatever I have as leftovers, I am able to freeze.”

The yield is impressive. Ms. Lee-Macaraig counts two pints of cherry tomatoes, at least three cucumbers, an eggplant, some cabbage, blueberries, a zucchini and an endless array of herbs. And that’s just one recent week’s harvest.

[Read more →]