Category — Articles

Britain’s BBC and Canada’s CBC report

CBC’s As It Happens March 16, 2010

The city of Detroit is in rough shape. With the American auto industry in shambles, the Motor City isn’t what it used to be. Which is why Mayor David Bing is taking some steps to downsize. Later this month, Mayor Bing will announce his strategy to shrink the city of Detroit, and that plan will include a transformation towards agriculture. Vacant lots will be converted to farmland.

Mark Dowie is an investigative historian. He spent some time in Detroit documenting the new urban landscape of that city for Guernica Magazine. We reached him at his home, in Point Reyes Station, California.

Listen here.

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Photo by Bronwyn Smyth

Jim Foort’s garden on 11th Avenue, Vancouver, BC

Voice of Jim in conversation with Bronwyn

Story by Bronwyn Smyth

A garden, like that of Eden, thrives on 11th Avenue in the neighbourhood of West Point Grey. It is lush and humming with life. The bamboo fencing morphs every so often as the beds change shape. A huge variety of vegetables and fruit are grown here, even in the winter. At the corner of the yard stands a clapboard frame with a wise quote or latest article on square foot gardening. The front door of the small yellow bungalow on the property is always wide open when the weather is good. James Foort, or as neighbours call him, Jim, with his wife Margaret, are the owners and garden extraordinaires of this piece of paradise.

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“The real danger is the skewed public perception of the danger of honeybees,” said Andrew Coté, of the New York City Beekeepers Association. Photo by Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Big Apple Lifts Beekeeper Ban

By MARIEL SMITH
Associated Press
Mar 16, 2010

Big Apple beekeepers are all a buzz with joy after the New York City’s Board of Health voted Tuesday reversed a long-standing ban on tending to honeybees.

Health officials had previously banned beekeeping because honeybees were considered just as dangerous as hyenas and poisonous snakes.

But the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene unanimously amended the law after research showed that honeybees, specifically the Apis mellifera, are not harmful to the public, citing few bee stings around the city, reported the New York Times.

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Erica Gillespie tends to lettuce growing in planter boxes at Mixt Greens in Los Angeles. (Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times)

Some are growing produce on site, buying from eco-conscious farmers, installing water filtration systems, recycling grease and more.

By Mary MacVean,
Los Angeles Times
March 9, 2010

Excerpt:

When Neal and Amy Knoll Fraser move their restaurant Grace downtown to the rectory of St. Vibiana’s later this year, diners will be hard-pressed to miss the earth-to-table connection.

Fraser intends to plant a garden — and not just a few containers of herbs, but 450 to 500 square feet, right outside, cater-corner from Los Angeles Police Department headquarters. It will be tended by the kitchen staff, and Fraser says it could yield as much as a quarter of the produce for his kitchen. He’s eyeing a parking lot for more garden space.

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City farming initiative at work providing biofuel for local governments

By John Daley
KLS news
March 15th, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY — An innovative collaboration in sustainability is gaining steam in Utah. The goal is to grow, on what was unused city land, a plant that can be used to make a biofuel, which in turn will be used in government fleets.

Near Salt Lake International Airport, KSL News watched Jason Heward steer a John Deere tractor around 20 acres of land that had been idle for years. The project site is located at approximately 500 South and 4500 West.

Heward is the church farm manager of the Urda Church Farm near Tooele. He was readying the land for seeds of safflower, which can be crushed to make oil — a biofuel.

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Handmade Garden in Athens, Georgia.

Editorial: ‘Urban farm’ bill now ready for some votes

Athens Banner-Herald
March 14, 2010

With a word-word here and a tweak-tweak there, the Georgia legislature’s House Committee on Agriculture and Consumer Affairs has managed to put together an “urban farming” bill that is worthy of the full Georgia General Assembly’s support.

In its original version, House Bill 842 – which is designed to pre-empt local ordinances restricting production of agricultural or farm products on residential or other urban property – virtually eliminated the ability of local governments to take any action against people raising chickens, rabbits, goats or food crops.

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Urban agriculture: Growing crops in the city

By Henrylito D. Tacio
Sun.Star Davao – source of Philippine community news
March 14, 2010

Farming is always associated with rural areas, rivers and mountains.

Unknowingly, farming can also be done right in the city. Experts call this practice as urban agriculture.

“Urban agriculture refers not merely to the growing of food crops and fruit trees but that it also encompasses the raising of animals, poultry, fish, bees, rabbits, guinea pigs, or other livestock considered edible locally,” explains Dr. Irene Tinker, an American professor in the department of city and regional planning at the University of California.

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The Ritchay family’s garden.

15Thousand Farmers – Planting A Seed To Feed Ourselves – Louisville, Ky

by Greg & Michelle Vittitow,
Impact Dash
March 11th, 2010

The Vision:

15Thousand Farmers helps create, empower, and inspire 15,000 new, organic, neighborhood backyard/front yard farmers in Louisville, KY to feed their families and themselves and to give away! How? By using simple and easy instructions, checklists and materials and ongoing support provided through local organic growers and resources that will provide everything needed to start Easy Farms in our yards, on decks or in community gardens.

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Urban Farm Hub tries to answer the question

Urban Farm Hub is launching a series of articles addressing the long-term economic viability of urban agriculture. We know commercial agriculture enterprises pencil in shrinking midwest cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but what about thriving metropolitan areas such as Seattle where there’s a shortage of developable land?

We’ll be interviewing small business owners, design professionals, urban farm entrepreneurs, and commercial developers in rapidly growing metropolitan areas to see what they have to say about reaping the green from urban agriculture.

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E. Duchemin, F. Wegmuller, and A.-M. Legault
Institut des sciences de l’environnement, Université du Québec à Montréal, Succ. Centre-Ville, C.P. 8888, Montréal, Québec, Canada
2009

Abstract.

For over 30 years, different urban agriculture (UA) experiments have been undertaken in Montreal (Quebec, Canada). The Community Gardening Program, managed by the City, and 6 collective gardens, managed by community organizations, are discussed in this article. These experiments have different objectives, including food security, socialization and education. Although these have changed over time, they have also differed depending on geographic location (neighbourhood).

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A Cabbage Patch for City Hall. Last year, Baltimore City Hall replaced its traditional flower gardens with vegetable beds to help serve a local soup kitchen. But not all went as planned. Anne Marie Chaker reports on lessons learned and plans for this year’s crop.

Attack of the Rotten Tomatoes

By Anne Marie Chaker
Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2010

Excerpt:

The city of Baltimore replaced its flower beds in front of city hall with vegetables last year. The goal, says designer Angela Treadwell-Palmer, was to show that vegetable gardens could be attractive and to grow harvests to donate to a local soup kitchen. But the local charity reported that some crops—particularly beets, kohlrabi and eggplant—weren’t appetizing to people.

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Goats from City Grazing trimmed the hillside behind Alemany Farm. Photo by Brian L. Frank

Fewer Farms to Feed ‘Local’ Appetite

By Justin Sheck
Wall Street Journal
San Francisco Bay Area
March 11, 2010

Pocket-size farms have sprung up in cities around the Bay Area in recent years, part of a movement to bring consumers closer to the sources of food they buy.

But even as these small farms show up in urban neighborhoods, bringing with them a sense of a local agricultural revival, the continuing decline in the availability of farmland in the Bay Area’s traditional growing areas threatens to leave consumers further away than ever from where their food is cultivated.

In recent years, the region has lost large tracts of farmland to housing and commercial development.

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Photo credit: Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Studios

Deborah Netburn
LA Times
December 31, 2009

Ever since “It’s Complicated” was released in theaters last week the online garden community has been buzzing about Jane’s (Meryl Streep) vegetable garden, above. Its lushness, colorfulness, perkiness … well, it’s almost pornographic. One doesn’t know whether to envy it, or to be concerned about anyone that eats from it.

“The idea was it was meant to look like a real cook’s garden,” said Jon Hutman, the film’s production designer, speaking on the phone from a hotel room in Italy. “We try to make the movies look real, but a very delicious version of real.”

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This ad was aired on controversial TV program, the Glen Beck show.

Survival Seed Bank

Excerpt from Survival Seed Bank website.

You don’t have to be an Old Testament prophet to see what’s going on all around us. A belligerent lower class demanding handouts. A rapidly diminishing middle class crippled by police state bureaucracy. An aloof, ruling elite that has introduced us to an emerging totalitarianism which seeks control over every aspect of our lives.

As the meltdown progresses, one of the first things to be affected will be our nation’s food supply. Expect soaring prices along with moderate to severe shortages by spring. If you don’t have the ability to grow your own food next year, your life may be in danger. Supply lines for food distribution in this country are about three days, meaning a dependence on “just in time” distribution systems, which will leave store shelves empty in the event of even the smallest crisis.

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Urban Agriculture issue of Zoning Practice

by Nina Mukherji and Alfonso Morales
Zoning Practice – American Planning Association
March 2010
Nina Mukherji received her master’s degree in conservation biology and sustainable development from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Alfonso Morales is assistant professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

As sustainability moves up the municipal agenda, cities have begun to take an interest in urban agriculture as a way to promote health, to support economic and community development, and to improve the urban environment. This article places urban agriculture in a historical context, examines regulatory approaches, and makes recommendations for planning and zoning practice.

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On a visit to King’s Cross, in London, John Denham and Hilary Benn saw the way in which local charity Global Generation is using a temporary lease to create portable allotments in a series of construction skips, located on one of the capital’s largest regeneration schemes

Grow your own revolution gets major land boost

Communities and Local Government
Great Britain
3 March, 2010

Plans to bring under-used and uncared for land back into use so that local communities and keen would-be fruit and vegetable growers have somewhere to get digging, were announced today by Communities Secretary John Denham and Environment Secretary Hilary Benn.

There is a huge interest in ‘growing your own’ with people wanting to get more in touch with where their food comes from, as well as staying active and spending more time outdoors.

About 300,000 gardeners in England already have allotments but demand still outstrips supply and the Government is therefore announcing new ways of meeting people’s desire to dig in.

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Reclaiming our agrarian heritage

By K. Rashid Nuri
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 5, 2010

In his State of the Union address, President Obama enumerated ongoing problems requiring his attention: health care, the economy, job creation, environmental issues and lack of renewable fuels. In doing so, he suggested that increasing agricultural exports would help solve some of these problems.

While export agriculture might indeed help some corporations, it is unlikely to resolve issues directly affecting the public. One thing that would, however, is urban agriculture. While not a panacea, urban agriculture can allay many of the concerns mentioned by the president, and it can do so in several critical ways.

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Plus: How to cook it, and how to raise your own.

By Adam Starr
GOOD Blog
March 2, 2010

Excerpt:

By now we all know that eating a lot of meat—especially factory-farmed meat—isn’t very good for the planet. Fortunately for meat eaters, some meats are more sustainable than others. And as it turns out, rabbit is one of the healthiest, leanest, and most environmentally friendly meats you can eat.

There are many reasons for this. Mark Pasternak of the famed Devil’s Gulch Ranch explains, “The biggest reason that rabbits are a sustainable meat choice is that they eat forage, which is not useful for humans. This means that rabbits don’t compete with us for food calories.” Rabbits are also, as Meatpaper editor and co-founder Sasha Wizansky points out, an ideal choice for urban farmers.

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Photo by Erika Schultz/ The Seattle Times
Becky Warner (center, with tiller), a former software engineer, works with Alleycat Acres volunteers at a plot of land the group is developing into a neighborhood-focused urban farm on Beacon Hill. Warner is pursuing a career change into agriculture.

Alleycat Acres, a new urban-farming collective that ultimately hopes to turn bits of unused land into food sources for needy Seattle residents, kicked off its efforts on a plot across from Beacon Hill’s Jefferson Golf Course.

By Marc Ramirez
Feb 28, 2010
Seattle Times

Excerpt:

The seeds were planted with enthusiasm, sweat and bright-eyed optimism. Task by task on a sunny springlike Sunday, volunteers stepped up on a plot of land across from Beacon Hill’s Jefferson Golf Course.

Someone to help build a retaining wall? Check. Someone to smooth over beds of composted soil? Check.

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In the garden with Christie Brinkley

Newsday
Interview with Jessica Damiano
August 14, 2009

How did you become interested in gardening?

I grew up on the beach in Malibu, and we didn’t have gardens there. My house was on a pile of sand. My mom had a couple of ice plants in a container on the deck, so, for me to get my hands in the soil, I was so intimidated. I thought I had to be an expert.

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