New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'

No one is under the illusion that growing beets can stop the bullets

by Jason Mark
change.org
September 07, 2010

Jason Mark is a columnist for Change.org’s Sustainable Food cause. He is a co-author of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots and the editor of Earth Island Journal. When he’s not writing, he co-manages San Francisco’s Alemany Farm, a four-acre organic fruit and vegetable garden in the city.

Excerpts:

The fourth anniversary of her son Travis’ shooting had just passed, so it felt especially hard to Vivian Irving when Ray Twine was killed in front of her apartment two weeks ago. Irving, a resident of the Alemany Public Housing complex in San Francisco, was enjoying a quiet Friday night at home when someone approached Twine from behind as he was walking across the basketball court in the middle of the projects and put five bullets in the back of his head.

[Read more →]

Convert blight to gardens

By: Stephen Clark
ABC 7
Sept. 6, 2010

Excerpt:

DETROIT (WXYZ) – It looks like a farm somewhere in the Midwest; row after row of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and corn. Butterflies flit among the flowers. Somewhere a cricket chirps. But this isn’t Kansas; it’s the heart of Detroit.

An urban farm is carved into a row of empty lots at Linwood and Gladstone . It’s an island of green, red and orange in a sea of abandoned and burned out buildings.

“They got all kinds of vegetables, lettuce and tomatoes.” Andre McCullough tells us, “I mean what more could you ask for? We have fresh vegetables right at your hands.”

[Read more →]

“We need industrialization, not farming.”

By Michael Winter
USA Today
Sept. 7, 2010

With Detroit Mayor Dave Bing considering turning acres of abandoned land into vegetable gardens, the Rev. Jesse Jackson today spurned the idea of urban farming, calling it “cute but foolish.”

“The governor, a Democrat, brags about Michigan getting a battery plant, built north of Grand Rapids, as opposed to Detroit, the engine that drives the state,” Jackson told the city council, the Detroit News reports. “We need industrialization, not farming. Detroit needs the battery plant. Let farmers farm. … We are not offering a farming plan for Baghdad.”

[Read more →]

Naps Williams gets to grips with a pony at Butts Farm during a work experience day with the Young City Farmer programme. Photograph by Sam Frost.

Farmers for a fortnight

By Louise Tickle
The Guardian
7 September 2010

Excerpt:

The Royal Agricultural College (RAC) in the leafy Cotswolds isn’t where you’d expect to find urban youngsters from areas of disadvantage around the UK, but these are here for the RAC’s Young City Farmer two-week summer school .

Agricultural settings are dangerous places, Thomasin-Foster, a lecturer in farm mechanisation, explains. So, if an accident happens in the countryside, how long does the group reckon it’ll take for an ambulance to arrive?

[Read more →]

The Wealth of Waste – The economics of wastewater use in agriculture

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Rome, 2010

Excerpt:

6 September 2010, Stockholm/Rome – Recycling urban wastewater and using it to grow food crops can help mitigate water scarcity problems and reduce water pollution, but the practice is not being as widely implemented as it should, according to a new FAO report.

Use of reclaimed wastewater in agriculture has been reported in around 50 countries on what amounts to 10 percent of the world’s irrigated land, according to “The Wealth of Waste: The Economics of Wastewater Use in Agriculture,” published today at the start of World Water Week (Stockholm, 5-11 September).

[Read more →]

August 2010 – Policy Brief from the FAO Economic and Social Development Department

Towns and cities are growing rapidly in developing countries. This process is often accompanied by high levels of poverty and hunger, leading many urban dwellers to engage in farming activities to help satisfy their food needs. Policy makers need to recognize this reality and actively seize the opportunities offered by urban agriculture.

Hunger – a growing concern in urban areas
The recent spike of world hunger disproportionately affected the urban poor. As a large share of their disposable income is spent on food, the 2007-08 food price crisis was particularly hard on them. The urban poor also suffered from the consequences of last year’s global economic downturn, which reduced their employment opportunities and income.

[Read more →]

PARK(ing) Day Twin Cities 2009. Photo by Photo Troy Gallas.

Parking Day – September 17

PARK(ing) Day is a annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public places. The project began in 2005 when Rebar, a San Francisco art and design studio, converted a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in downtown San Francisco. Since 2005, PARK(ing) Day has evolved into a global movement, with organizations and individuals (operating independently of Rebar but following an established set of guidelines) creating new forms of temporary public space in urban contexts around the world.

[Read more →]

J-garden, Kitchen Garden Installations, Susapta Garden at Bank Colony, Bangalore.

J-garden, Kitchen Garden Installations

By Vinita
Citizen Matters
06 Sept. 2010

Excerpt:

Having understood the basic principles of urban farming, he started his own research and experimented with various models which has now taken shape as J-garden, a social enterprise. J-Garden provides kitchen garden installations and related equipment.

Over the last six months, Chandra has done eight installations for families in individual homes and apartments and one for a group of social engineers in a bank colony.

[Read more →]

Rhonda Teitel-Payne is a Green Hero

By Rhonda Teitel-Payne
Manager of urban agriculture at Stop Community Food Centre
Green Heroes
Sept. 4, 2010

Excerpt:

Knowing that there is nowhere near enough greenhouse space in the city to meet the demand for seedling production, The Stop built a 3,000 square foot greenhouse known as the Green Barn at St. Clair and Christie. The greenhouse keeps us growing organic produce year-round, and also allows us to start long-season seedlings such as tomatoes and peppers to share with community gardens across the city.

[Read more →]

Brandy Humes now enjoys a lush garden full of tomatoes, watermelon, peppers and raspberries, but it took replacing all the soil on her property to make her feel comfortable about growing food. Photo by Richard Lautens, Toronto Star.

Lead poisoning in children can cause neurological damage

By Theresa Boyle
Toronto Star
September 3, 2010

Excerpt:

“My neighbourhood has a long history of contamination,” Armstrong says of the south Junction Triangle, once a highly industrialized area. “We have a 2½-year-old and a 6-year-old and we don’t want them eating anything that is questionable.”

It is for residents like Armstrong that the city is developing a soil-contaminant protocol. To be released next year, the protocol will help urban gardeners determine if their soil is contaminant-free. If it’s not, the protocol will explain how they can still grow edible fruits and vegetable on their property. This might involve doing raised-bed gardening or having their soil remediated.

[Read more →]

US First Lady Michelle Obama harvests vegetables from her garden June 4, 2010 at the White House. The First Lady recruited chefs from across to join her anti-obesity campaign and help schools serve healthier, tastier meals. Mrs. Obama is calling on the chefs to partner with individual schools and work with teachers and parents to help educate kids about food and nutrition. She said healthy meals at schools are more important than ever because many children get most of their calories at school. AFP Photo by Paul J. Richards.

[Read more →]

Urban Farm – Fall 2010 – Voume 2 – Number 3

Contents:

Sustainable Communities
Is cohousing a fancy name for a hippie commune? Not at all. Read about the cooperation and sustainability moves that make these modern communities work.
by Jenise Aminoff

Bee Flys Into a Bar
Top bar beekeeping is taking flight as a low-maintenance, small-space beekeeping method.
by Cherie Langlois

Mix It Up
Seasonal crop rotation will make your garden grow right round, baby, right round, no matter the size of your garden plot.
by Jessica Walliser

[Read more →]

Gene Fredericks of Big Green Boxes imagines fish ponds, waterfalls, and racks and racks of edible greens and herbs in defunct spaces like this one. Photo by Bart Nagel.

Grist interviews Gene Fredericks of Big Green Boxes

By Bonnie Azab Powell
Grist
Sept 1, 2010

Excerpt:

Q. OK, so walk me through a Big Green Box.

A. We’ll take a freestanding vacant retail space or warehouse space, around 30,000 square feet, climate-control it, and set up some ponds and tanks for the fish — pleasant ones you can see, not unlike the goldfish and Koi ponds in an office-building lobby or a park. There’ll also be small waterfalls, which in addition to looking nice help aerate the water. The water from the ponds and tanks will go into settling tanks as well as a few bio-filtering tanks that will make sure no elements that might harm the plants or the fish get through. The nutrient-rich water then flows into the growing areas. The plants and growing area then filter the water, which gets recycled back to the fish.

[Read more →]

Some new crops being started, protected by shade cloth barriers to the west. The 1.5 acre parcel that City Farm sits on is owned by the City of Chicago and provided, rent-free, to this non-profit initiative. The property is valued at $8 million. (2008) Photo by Linda N.

How many “urban agriculturists” are there?

The Why Files
The Science Behind the News
Sept. 2, 2010

Excerpt:

There are many explanations for the dearth of data on urban agriculture:

Definitions: much of the new-found interest in urban agriculture concerns “local food,” but that is often grown in the countryside — even if the farmers live in the city.

Size: Urban farms are small and their output is diverse and hard to measure.

Age: Many urban farms are young, and any record of success would be short.

Motivation: Urban farms often aim beyond food to social and psychological benefits, which are not captured by the yield and profit measures used to evaluate farms.

[Read more →]

The Offshoots Farm is a multi-site urban and suburban agricultural enterprise that grows healthy food throughout our community inside the Capital Beltway in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

The Business of Sustainability

By Cheryl Kollin
Marc Gunther blog
Sept. 2, 2010

Excerpt:

Urban farming may sound like an oxymoron, but judging from the 375-person sell-out crowd at the first Urban Farm Summit in Washington, D.C., the idea is catching on like organics at Walmart.

The recent one-day event called, Sowing Seeds Here and Now, was organized by Engaged Community Offshoots (ECO), a fledgling non-profit urban farm based just outside D.C. in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The summit agenda spotlighted the reasons why urban farms are sprouting up all over: They increase food security by growing food locally. They give under-served urban neighborhoods access to fresh foods. They strengthen local economies by keeping dollars circulating within the community. They engage consumers, who learn how food is grown. They reduce ‘food miles’ and fossil fuel use. And they create jobs.

[Read more →]

Montford Farmers: Bea McGahee, Larry Mahr, Norman McGahee, Aicha Mahr (L-R)

Montford in Asheville, North Carolina

by Hilary Drake
Montford
August 30th, 2010

Excerpt:

In March 2009, with Mrs. Hamilton’s go-ahead, E.V. began manually transforming the land. Once the trash was cleared, she began by buzzing everything down with a weed-eater, then digging out all of the unwanted seedlings by hand. She hand-dug rows for spring planting by May 1. The first full garden season brought strong yields of watermelon, cantaloupe, hot peppers, bell peppers, zucchini, squash, winter squash, corn, eggplant, cucumber, lima beans, green beans, tomatoes, garlic, spinach, turnips, lettuce, chard, kale, and potatoes.

Late that summer, after a smooth first season with strong yields and only minor glitches, tragedy struck at the garden’s edge. Amidst all of this new life and growth, Angela Hart was murdered in an act of domestic violence on Mrs. Hamilton’s property adjacent to the garden.

[Read more →]

Backyard Bounty garden growing in their front lawn in Guelph, Ontario.

Backyard Bounty

Backyard Bounty is a unique community-based agriculture project. We cooperate with participating community members to convert their yard space into productive vegetable gardens. We currently have over 40 lawns being cultivated throughout Guelph!

Meet the Backyard Bounty Team

Robert Orland, the founder of Backyard Bounty was inspired to create Backyard Bounty in response to lawns. He saw that lawns are detrimental to the environment and that they are very resource dependant. Lawns are essentially monocultures and a desert for biodiversity.

[Read more →]

Novella Carpenter turned her backyard in Oakland, California into a small farm to feed herself. Now she’s selling produce and trying to make a small profit. Photo by Mark Richards

Taking root in the city

Casey Miner
Ode Magazine
July/August 2010 issue

Excerpt:

If the ’60s was the decade when back-to-the-landers fled cities for farms, the ’10s is the decade when they—or, more likely, their offspring—are coming back. There is no official count of how many urban farms exist in America, but agricultural entities like the Bells’ have counterparts across the country. Urban farmers work in Houston, Dayton, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Detroit, Portland, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Seattle, to name just a few. Location matters, and the farms’ business models are different, but they have two things in common: They are committed to feeding their communities with fresh, sustainable food, and they insist on establishing themselves as normal features of city life.

[Read more →]

Seattle’s P-Patch garden management system, which oversees 73 P-Patches distributed throughout the city, equals approximately 23 acres and serves about 2,000 households.

Urban farming entrepreneurs spread their seeds

By Ashley Deforest
Sustainable Industries
Sept. 1, 2010
Ashley Deforest is Community Relations Planner at King County Department of Transportation and a Director at Woonerfs Consulting.

Excerpt:

Skeptics are quick to note that, in the current economic climate, where many developable properties remain fallow, urban agriculture presents itself as an attractive interim use. But, as Kalin of Virtually Green notes, as the economy improves urban farms may be dislocated and left to the wayside unless the green building movement can absorb these farms and produce a similar level of food.

Kalin is putting his energy toward what he considers a more sustainable solution. In nearby Concord, Calif., a city of about 125,000 people located just 31 miles east of San Francisco, Kalin, through the Sustainable Commercial Urban Farm Incubator (SCUFI), is trying to create a commercially viable urban farm model that can be replicated elsewhere.

[Read more →]

Sara Mullin waters the vegetable garden she and her fellow tenants at a Quebec Street apartment building set up in the rear parking lot — despite the protestations of their landlord.
Photo by Jessica Barrett

Renters and condo dwellers also want to be city farmers

By Jessica Barrett
West Ender – WE
09/01/2010

Excerpts:

I can’t help but laugh watching Sara Mullin water her crop of just-planted winter vegetables — beets, parsnips, and kale — in the parking-lot-turned-garden behind her Quebec Street apartment building, Quebec Mansions. Garden hose in one hand, iPhone in the other, the ringletted, Western-shirt-wearing 27-year-old sprays her plants to an indie-rock soundtrack, only it isn’t a recorded accompaniment — the local band Bend Sinister is practicing in one of the building’s suites.

It’s this classic East Van hipster cliché that makes me laugh, but I have to admit: I’m envious.

[Read more →]