Posts from — November 2011

Mayor Gregor Robertson debates with NPA mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton.

The urban agriculture movement is gaining strength across B.C., enthusiastically adapted by everyone from businesses to backyard growers to pot-growers. So why is it being used as a wedge issue in Vancouver’s latest election?

By Peter Ladner
Crosscut
Nov 7, 2011
Peter Ladner is the founder of “Business in Vancouver” newspaper and a former Vancouver City Councillor. He is currently a Fellow at the Simon Fraser University Centre for Dialogue. His new book is named: The Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Cities.

Excerpt:

As the Nov. 19 municipal election deadline nears, the struggling right-of-center Non-Partisan Association (NPA) has been challenging the ruling Vision Vancouver party’s misspending through its Greenest City Action Plan. The one project singled out for high profile ridicule is the “wheat fields” — a modest $5,000 grant to the Environmental Youth Alliance dedicated to planting enough wheat in numerous front yards to harvest 100 pounds, redefine the notion of the “city farm,” and teach young people how bread is made. It’s definitely a stretch of taxpayer dollars, but hardly significant for a city with a $1 billion budget.

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New York City – “They are pretty sustainable and make us breakfast.”

By Clare Trapasso
Daily News Writer
October 02, 2011

Excerpts:

In a city where the local food movement is growing despite the scarcity of arable green space, one Queens couple has come up with a creative way to ensure they have a ready supply of fresh eggs.

Robert McMinn, 45 and Jules Corkery, 45, are raising three hens inside their one-bedroom apartment in Astoria.

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Will Robb of Burlington, head of the city’s urban agriculture task force, is photographed Thursday beside a garden on South Winooski Avenue. Photo by Joel Banner Baird, Free Press

Our recommendations will reach the City Council and the new mayor’s desk in March 2012.

By Will Robb
Burlington Free Press
Nov. 4, 2011

Excerpt:

Farmers, small-scale food enterprise and backyard growers of all kinds are putting together programs, cultivating land and growing and serving food in a number of innovative ways. The city should be prepared to listen, to step in with support, help practitioners negotiate a maze of state, federal and local regulation, and to facilitate connections to resources and land.

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Sweden, which is the the home of garden schools, takes the lead and has 2,000 of them.

Scientific American Magazine
Oct 27, 1900
Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in America, began life on August 28, 1845.

From a Department of State pamphlet:

In France school farms increased rapidly, and in 1852 there were seventy, the number allowed by law.

The following are some of the advantages of the system: The children obtain an intimate knowledge and intercourse with nature, they learn about the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. It educates boys beyond the tendency to pilfer fruits and flowers in orchards, and instills in children a fondness of rural life.

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Eddie Miller is the founder of Heritage Lawn Mowing, a company that rents out sheep as a landscaping aid. Pictured, Mr. Miller and two of his Jacob sheep, Panda and Nerd, walk to their truck after a job mowing a lawn. Photo by Randy Harris.

“Building a new America will require an understanding of farming,”

By Kevin Roose
New York Times
November 2, 2011
Oberlin, Ohio

Excerpt:

In this verdant lawn-filled college town, most people keep their lawn mowers tuned up by oiling the motor and sharpening the blades. Eddie Miller keeps his in shape with salt licks and shearing scissors.

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“There’s a lot of interest out there,” he said. “We’re very open to selling all the lots we have for useful purposes.” Otis Williams, deputy executive director with the St. Louis Development Corp.

By Georgina Gustin
St Louis Today
Nov 4, 2011

Excerpts:

The couple, both 35, have secured city approval to buy a derelict one-third-acre lot at 4539 Delmar Boulevard and start farming it next year. They plan to take on trainees who will eventually do the same thing on other properties throughout the city, transforming vacant eyesores while providing jobs and healthful produce in the process.

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DYRK Nørrebro – First rooftop garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo by Nathali Lehmann Schumann.

By Nathali Lehmann Schumann
Prepared for AgroTech. This report is the outcome of a 13-week internship, as part of the study ‘Bachelor’s Degree in Global Nutrition and Health’ – Metropolitan University College Copenhagen
August 2011

Excerpts from Abstract:

A literature review, four semi-structured interviews, meetings, and a single field visit were conducted in order to investigate the current situation of the phenomenon urban rooftop agriculture(URA) including benefits and challenges. How URA is and can be implemented in order to promote a sustainable food system were also examined.

Examples from Copenhagen, London, New York and Vancouver are included.

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Doing Time in the Garden

By James Jiler
New Village Press
2006

In his book, Doing Time in the Garden, James Jiler combines an engaging personal account of running a highly successful horticultural vocation program at the largest jail complex in the United States with a practical guide to starting and managing prison and re-entry gardening programs.

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By Sharon Gamson Danks
New Village Press
Nov 2010

Sharon Gamson Danks, environmental planner and founding partner of Bay Tree Design, Inc. in Berkeley, California, has visited and documented over 175 green schoolyards in North America, Europe and Japan, and has shaped and facilitated the master planning process for dozens of ecological schoolyards.

Asphalt to Ecosystems is a compelling color guidebook for designing and building natural schoolyard environments that enhance childhood learning and play experiences while providing connection with the natural world.

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Troy Barrie in Ghana. Photo by Shifting Growth via This City Life.

Farming in the City of Vancouver

By Jillian Glover
This City Life
Nov 2, 2011

Excerpt:

Do you think Vancouver has a thriving urban farming/local food scene? What more needs to be done? What is missing?

The focus on the community gardens aspect of urban farming is strong, but there is a growing movement pushing for urban farms to contribute to food security. This is where there can be improvements. The city has definitions for what a park or community garden should look like, but not many guidelines for urban farms. It’s unclear how produce can be sold. It’s unclear what the tax system is for urban farms that are not on Agricultural Land Reserves. It isn’t a problem. Urban agriculture is new, so there is a little lack of awareness about the need and benefits.

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The youth of Kibera are keeping poultry as an income generating project.

Kibera is a division of Nairobi Area, Kenya, and a province and neighbourhood of the city of Nairobi, located 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the city centre. Kibera is the largest slum in Nairobi, and the second largest urban slum in Africa. The 2009 Kenya Population and Housing Census reports Kibera’s population as 170,070, contrary to previous estimates of one or two million people. (Wikipeida)

By Kiberia TV
KiberaTV is citizen journalism like you have never before seen it: the story of one of Africa’s largest and most controversial slums told by those who know it the best.

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Essays about the founding and management of fifteen of the most influential student farms in North America.

Edited By Laura Sayre, Sean Clark
University Press of Kentucky
2011

Where will the next generation of farmers come from? What will their farms look like? Fields of Learning: The Student Farm Movement in North America provides a concrete set of answers to these urgent questions, describing how, at a wide range of colleges and universities across the United States and Canada, students, faculty, and staff have joined together to establish on-campus farms as outdoor laboratories for agricultural and cultural education. From one-acre gardens to five-hundred-acre crop and livestock farms, student farms foster hands-on food-system literacy in a world where the shortcomings of input-intensive conventional agriculture have become increasingly apparent. They provide a context in which disciplinary boundaries are bridged, intellectual and manual skills are cultivated together, and abstract ideas about sustainability are put to the test.

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Spud harvest: Mount Allison students pick potatoes at the school’s 9.7 – hectare farm. Photo by Andrew Tolson.

“People need to learn self-reliance and how to grow their own food responsibly—for themselves, their families and their communities.”

By Jason McBride
Macleans
November 2 2011

Excerpts:

This past September, New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University held an event unprecedented in its 172-year-long history: a you-pick potato harvest. For the first five Saturdays of the new school year, students and Sackville residents were able to pick Russet and Superior potatoes from a boggy, 9.7-hectare farm in the heart of the campus. The rest of the spud harvest—a yield of 30,000 pounds—was transformed, to the delight of many ravenous undergrads, into fresh, hand-cut french fries and mashed potatoes in the kitchen at Jennings Hall.

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Agrowculture wants to foster the urban agriculture movement by empowering the 21st century farmer to leverage social networking sites

New York, NY, November 1, 2011 – agrowculture, New York City’s newest food-tech startup, is trying to alter the way people grow, buy and sell their food. While the company has only just launched in alpha, it aims to help neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs develop sustainable, fresh local food networks.

In the advent of New York City Council’s Food Works legislations (Local Laws 50, 51, 52 and 49), agrowculture hopes to increase local food sourcing and stimulate local commerce through online markets and local sales networks. Backyard farmers, community gardeners, rooftop beekeepers, mycologist[s] and canners can create a Farmer Profile on agrowculture.org and have product listings.

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Green City Growers’ CEO Mary Donnell.

New Urban Farm Joins Cleveland’s Central Neighborhood

By Anne Glausser
Ideastream
Oct 17, 2011

Excerpt:

DONNELL: We’re looking at 10 acres of ground that has been assembled in the heart of Cleveland, in the Central neighborhood, where we’ll be building out a 3.25-acre greenhouse for year-round food production of leafy greens and herbs.

Right now they’re clearing and leveling the land–you can hear the backhoes in the distance. They’re prepping to pour the foundation for the greenhouse which the for-profit company is paying for through loans.

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Vertigo Farming – Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm

World Challenge 2011 is a competition organised by BBC World News Limited (“BBC World News”) and Newsweek, aimed at finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grassroots level

The winning project will receive a US$20,000 grant, while two runners up will each receive US$10,000 to help develop their initiatives.

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Greens from the aquaponics bed for lunch.

‘The Plant’ houses an aquaponics system, a beer brewery, a kombucha (fermented tea) brewery, a composting company, a company that creates vertical growing systems, and a mushroom farm.

By Cole Mellino
Think Progress
Oct 31, 2011

Excerpt:

John Edel built a mini-vertical farm, called The Plant, in a former meat-packing facility complete with an aquaponics farm and a food business incubator that offers low rent, low energy costs, and a licensed shared kitchen.

Located in the economically distressed Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago, the Plant was relatively cheap to buy. That solved the property cost problem.

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Your Street Cape Town Winners – Let Us Grow from Design Indaba on Vimeo.

Growing and greening the city – “Let Us Grow”

World Design Capital Bid 2014
Nov 1, 2011

Excerpt:

“Let Us Grow” is a project to beautify Cape Town and drive interest in urban agriculture as part of growing hyper-local produce on unused or derelict plots in the city,” explains Andrea. “We also plan to drive community interaction and create employment opportunities with the initiative. The inspiration for Let Us Grow comes from various urban greening initiatives around the world and the team’s interest in promoting sustainable living.”

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