Sanatan Dharm Cultural Society, which hopes to eventually build a Hindu temple, is offering five-year leases on its land for agricultural use

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
February 6, 2012

Excerpt:

A Burnaby-based religious group is negotiating with young urban farmers to put nearly three acres of unused agricultural land back under crops this spring.

The Sanatan Dharm Cultural Society is hoping to build a brand-new Hindu temple and seniors’ home amid the sprawling vegetable fields and industrial yards of south Burnaby, but that may not happen for years.

“I think we can start with a five-year lease [with the farmers] and then see,” said the group’s priest, Shiv Mishri. “We want to build a big temple here, but we are not ready to build.”

A dairy farmer in his native Fiji, Mishri looked into farming when he first arrived in this country but decided the expense of buying land and set-ting up infrastructure was too great.

Land and capital costs are the biggest impediments facing young farmers, particularly in the urban environment.

Read the complete article here.

Britain as a matter of urgency needs a million new farmers – about 10 times as many as it has now, which happens to be roughly the number of young people now out of work.

By Colin Tudge
The Guradian
6 February 2012

Excerpt:

So now we plot and ponder in the village hall – and we are witnessing what I hope will prove to be a seismic shift in public mood, in the economy, and in the balance of power. For more and more people are beginning to feel that “development” shouldn’t mean more of the same – more city-bound jobs and city-sprawl. Instead what we need is an agrarian renaissance: small-scale farming, including horticulture, integrated with the city, and of a kind that employs lots of people, preferably skilled, and often part-time.

A few brave souls in Wolvercote were voicing such thoughts five years ago – but were greeted with baffled silence. Now, everyone apart from the government feels in their bones that the neoliberal party is over; that the bubble based on debt has burst; that growth-growth-growth of a financial kind was always a daft idea and in an obviously finite world is self-immolation writ large. In short, those who say we need more and better farming, and control in the hands of people at large rather than banks and corporations and foreign speculators, are beginning to be listened to. Here are the main arguments.

Read the complete article here.

It’s easy to make fun of, but as more and more farming moves downtown, eating local is taking on a new flavor

By Will Doig
Salon
Jan 21, 2012

Excerpt:

With penny-farthings, handlebar mustaches and four-pocket vests back in fashion, the rise of urban farming should just about complete our fetish for the late 1800s. Today, you can find chicken coops on rooftops in Brooklyn, N.Y., goats in San Francisco backyards, and rows of crops sprouting across empty lots in Cleveland.

That it fits so snugly into the hipster-steampunk throwback trend is what makes urban farming ripe for ridicule. (“Portlandia” has taken a crack or two at it.) But could city-based agriculture ever make the leap from precious pastime to serious player in our cities’ food systems — not just for novelty seekers and committed locavores, but for the Safeway-shopping masses?

“I don’t want to make a statement like, ‘This is the future of farming,’” says Gotham Greens co-founder Viraj Puri, sitting at his laptop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, steps away from hundreds of rows of butter lettuce. “It’s probably never going to replace conventional farming. But it has a role to play.”

Read the complete article here.

Growing a Better Future

By Brent Rosen
OKRA Southern Food and Beverage Museum
Jan 18, 2012
Brent Rosen is a raconteur and pontoon boat captain on Lake Martin Alabama. He is interested in Southern food and Southern culture.

Excerpt:

Urban farming operations exist throughout the South, but their stories often go unreported. I’ve read newspaper articles about Brooklynites whose roosters annoy their neighbors, and I’ve read about Berkleyites who have dinner parties using only ingredients grown locally by the attendees, but local agriculture in the South does not make headlines. If I tell you people are growing things in Alabama, you’ll likely shrug, knowing that melons and peaches grow just as easily as peanuts and cotton, that greens thrive in our mild winters, that pecan trees are as commonplace in backyards as Labrador retrievers. Even in Birmingham, Alabama’s largest urban area, you need only drive 15 minutes in any direction to be surrounded by farm and field. Agriculture is everywhere, so it seems unnecessary to focus on the agriculture that now exists within city limits.

Because the stories of Southern urban farms often go untold, many people in the region do not realize they have urban farms in their backyards. The farms are an amazing resource for community supported agriculture (CSA) programs, where consumers purchase an up-front share or membership in the farm, and then receive a bag or basket of seasonal produce throughout the farming season. Southerners also don’t realize we have leading urban farmers living in Little Rock Arkansas, Atlanta, Georgia or, in the case of Alabama, Montgomery. For instance, Edwin Marty, a farmer, gardening writer and author of the recently published book Breaking Through Concrete, (which I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in urban farming and sustainable agriculture), lives in Montgomery serving as the Executive Director of the Hampstead Institute.

Read the complete article here.

The city is going country — 215 community gardens, 36 for-profit farms, and growing.

Editorial
January 14, 2012

Excerpt:

Cleveland is growing, and what it grows should gain it more attention.

The oft-maligned buckle of the rust belt is becoming a green belt, as weed-spiked wastelands are turned into verdant community gardens.

U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, describes the transformation as “one of Cleveland’s best kept secrets.”

The city ranks second in the nation, after Minneapolis, in “local food and agriculture,” according to a 2008 SustainLane study.

Read the complete article here.

‘There’s a nobility to growing food and allowing people to share it. There’s a feeling we’re doing something significant rather than just moaning that the state can’t take care of us.

By Vincent Graff
The Daily Mail
10th December 2011

Excerpt:

Today, hundreds of townspeople who began by helping themselves to the communal veg are now well on the way to self-sufficiency.

But out on the street, what gets planted where? There’s kindness even in that.

‘The ticket man at the railway station, who was very much loved, was unwell. Before he died, we asked him: “What’s your favourite vegetable, Reg?” It was broccoli. So we planted memorial beds with broccoli at the station. One stop up the line, at Hebden Bridge, they loved Reg, too — and they’ve also planted broccoli in his memory.’

Not that all the plots are — how does one put this delicately? — ‘official’.

Take the herb bushes by the canal. Owners British Waterways had no idea locals had been sowing plants there until an official inspected the area ahead of a visit by the Prince of Wales last year (Charles is a huge Incredible Edible fan).

Read the complete article here.

Backhaus estimates that Podponics will turn out 40-50 tons of green per year

By Sara Rich
The Atlantic
Oct 26, 2011

Excerpts:

The six containers, or “pods,” represent a trial-and-error process through which Podponics found their way to a cost-effective means of production. They’re still iterating toward a better way to enter the boxes without disrupting the interior environment. For now, Backhaus pulls open the door they same way a dock worker would, and we stand in an aisle between floor-to-ceiling rows of lettuce, growing through holes in white PVC pipe. The hydroponic lights illuminate the greens like a food styling set.

“Our ultimate vision is to get 80-100 pods next to the Publix distribution center in Florida or the Walmart distribution center,” says Backhaus, “so that we can harvest right there in the morning and plug it directly into their supply chain. We’re mainlining fresh produce into the regional distribution network.”

Read the complete article here.

“He’s an inspiration, but even though he is 75 he can still out-dig us any day.”

By Debbie Waite
Oxford Times
20th October 2011

Excerpt:

The former Pressed Steel worker, from Brambling Way, Blackbird Leys, said: “I’ve had an allotment for more than 40 years. It’s lovely to know my grandchildren who live locally are all enjoying fresh veg.

“Keeping an allotment is hard work and commitment is key, but without this patch of ground and my vegetables I would just be sitting indoors, watching TV. This keeps me fit and in the fresh air and I can deliver fresh fruit and veg to the family every week.”

Widower Mr Curnock has three sons and three daughters and 14 grandchildren, eight in Oxford, six living nearby in Blackbird Leys.

He said: “You name it, I grow it, everything from potatoes, peas and beans to apples, blackberries and chilli peppers. At this time of year my family are also waiting for the pumpkins I’ve been growing for their Halloween parties.”

Read the complete article here.

“Nibble on a begonia petal and it will blow your mind, they are so delicious,” Kort raved.

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
October 21, 2011

Excerpt:

Foraging is becoming popular with local young chefs as a way to find unique and truly seasonal ingredients for their diners, Kort said, rattling off the names of a half dozen chefs-slash-friends who like a free meal as much as she does.

Her backyard in East Vancouver is planted with indigenous berries and herbs, from Saskatoon and salmon berries to huckleberries and sorrel.

“Being a chef, I love working with ingredients that you can’t actually buy in the store,” said Kort. “There are 500 different species of mushrooms that are edible in British Columbia at different times of the year and you won’t find them in the store — and even if you did they’d be super-expensive, dry and crappy.”

Lobster mushrooms, cauliflower mushrooms and at least 10 varieties of hedgehog mushroom are easy to find in forests from the North Shore to Manning Park. You can find chanterelles a few feet into the woods off nearly any road on Vancouver Island.

Read the complete article here.

Working on the food chain

By Jason Mark
Gastronomica via Utne Reader
10/21/11

Excerpt:

The new agrarians are seeking a way to refashion the relationships—ecological, emotional—that have been eroded by work without meaning and food without substance. They are trying to accomplish a kind of restoration of the world…. The farm’s gift is the confirmation of our common need for sustenance, for cooperation, achievement, and creativity, and for a visceral connection to the biological systems on which we depend. The farm reminds us of how, when we join together in the spirit of collective action, we fulfill our individual selves.

At the end of a workday, the most common sentiment I hear from volunteers is astonishment at how much they have done. They are delighted to witness the immediacy of their accomplishments. When the day started, the onions were a weedy, overgrown mess; by the close of the afternoon, the crop lines are clean and obvious. Most people’s regular jobs don’t provide such clear cause and effect.

See Utne Reader excerpts here. Gastronomica article is not on-line yet.

“I hope what I’m doing makes the neighborhood more attractive.”

By Jon Kalish
NPR
Oct 2, 2011

Excerpt:

“I farm about 10 acres in the city, and alfalfa’s my thing. I bale about a thousand bales a year,” he says.

That’s alfalfa grown within Detroit city limits. The 58-year-old public school teacher lives alone in a single-family house in the Farnsworth neighborhood.

There are a dozen chickens and 10 beehives on Weertz’s property that belong to a neighborhood honey co-op. An acre of land behind his house used to be occupied by other single-family homes but is now covered with fruit trees, vegetables and a pungent patch of basil.

Weertz has been buying abandoned homes and vacant parcels in his neighborhood, where lots go for as little as $300. He’s been encouraging young people who want to farm to move into the neighborhood. Weertz’s neighbor, Carolyn Leadley, runs Rising Pheasant Farms when she’s not caring for her 10-month-old son.

Compete story here.

“It has brought the community together for something positive.”

By Alison Kitchens
Capital News Service
Sept 29, 2011

Excerpt:

In Baltimore, urban agriculture has the potential to help improve conditions in some of the city’s “food deserts,” said Anne Palmer, program director of Eating for the Future at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.

The center defines “food deserts” as areas in cities where residents are below the poverty level and do not have easy access to healthy foods at supermarkets within walking distance, about a quarter of a mile.

Palmer said that how people get food and where they shop is a complicated question, but many residents are willing to go out of their way or to visit multiple stores to have better food options.

“In terms of urban agriculture it plays a really important role because lots of people are not necessarily happy or satisfied with the food that is available to them,” Palmer said. “And having these venues to purchase fresh food is really important, especially to the people who are willing to travel for their food.”

Read the complete article here.

“We value the importance of neighborhood revitalization”

By Maraline Kubik
Business Journal Daily
Sept. 29, 2011

Excerpt:

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. showcased its latest project — an urban farm and training center on the city’s southwest side — Wednesday morning during an unveiling ceremony for the new venture’s logo.

Iron Roots Urban Farm is located on a 2.5-acre homestead at the corner of Canfield Road and Reel Avenue on the city’s southwest side that had been vacant for years. By next spring, it will be transformed into a fully operational urban farm and training site for YNDC’s market gardener and green jobs training programs, reported Presley L. Gillespie, YNDC executive director.

Community garden education programs and other agricultural, horticultural and landscaping programs will also be offered. The goal, Gillespie explained, is to provide new opportunities for city residents to participate in the revitalization of their neighborhoods and the city at large through sustainable efforts that improve the appearance and desirability of neighborhoods by returning vacant and blighted properties to productive use, spur entrepreneurship, create jobs and improve access to healthful, locally grown food.

Read the complete article here.

Four questions

By Jonathan Bender
Pitch
Sep 28, 2011

Excerpt:

What’s in store for the season and the future of the farm?

This incredibly challenging season is wrapping up with a bang. We are currently laying out more vegetable plots and will begin the laborious construction of a deer fence in several weeks. The deer have destroyed an estimated $13,000 worth of crops this year.

Come October, we will plant garlic (one of our biggest crops) and continue the deconstruction of a 1940s barn that will be rebuilt on the property. All the while, we are keeping our fingers crossed for decent fall crops and a late “killing freeze” so that we will have product to sell into the end of November. This winter, we will focus on off-grid infrastructure. We hope to make progress on both the barn and a small personal dwelling (we are considering a yurt). Future plans include a grape vineyard, more apple trees, blueberries, dairy goats, and a solar-passive greenhouse.

Read the complete article here.

Urbavore Urban Farm.

“We would encourage everyone to start growing something”

By Bankole Thompson
Michigan Chronicle
28 September 2011

Excerpt:

Is urban farming the answer to an economy in Detroit that has left some jobless, homeless and others with no other means to make a living for their families?

Malik Yakini, a longtime Detroit advocate, entrepreneur, educator and pioneer of Africancentered education, said while urban farming is not the whole answer because “the situation we face is a very complex situation, it is part of the answer for the economy we are dealing with.”

Yakini, whose brainchild, the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), has caught the attention of students from area colleges, including the University of Michigan who are studying models of transformation in urban centers like Detroit, said urban farming is critical for Detroit’s economic survival at this time.

“Food economy is the first economy of every society,” Yakini said. “If we are able to provide a significant amount of money from the food we produce, it can stimulate the economy because of the potential to hire more people to work on urban farming.”

Read the complete article here.

The rise of urban farming

By Kendra Nordin
The Christian Science Monitor
September 21, 2011

Excerpt:

Meet the urban homesteader. Slowly, across the past decade, more Americans like Peterson have been proving that growing and preserving food is possible in all kinds of populated settings. City dwellers are practicing sustainable living at new levels beyond shopping for organic carrots and recycling bottles. Whether it is a tilapia farm in garden tubs in Kansas City, Mo., beekeeping in Chicago, or jars of homemade pickles in an apartment pantry in Austin, Texas, urban homesteaders are rebelling against the industrial food system by shouldering more of the responsibility for producing their own food.

“There is a population and culture that is finally saying that all this processed stuff is not good and the only way we can guarantee that food we use is safe is to grow it ourselves,” says Joyce Miles, a family and consumer science expert in Maggie Valley, N.C., who traces the roots of modern urban homesteading back to the late 1880s.

Read the complete article here.

“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.

To prove the merit of the project to skeptics—which include a few in city hall—Hantz Farms has already closed on a deal with the city to establish a demonstration project. The city agreed to sell the company 20 parcels next door to its headquarters off Mt. Elliott on the east side. Before Hantz Farms closed on the project, it removed brush and garbage to the tune of 430 tires and 150 cubic yards of trash. The city then came out and hauled what Hantz had cleared to the dump.

Read the complete article here.

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.

According to the court summons, Guerrero, a math teacher at Raleigh-Egypt High School, was cited for violating city ordinances 48-38 and 48-87: He failed to “remove personal property” that is “unsightly” or a “nuisance,” and he failed to maintain “a clean and sanitary condition free from any accumulation of rubbish or garbage.”

Shelby County Environmental Court judge Larry Potter upheld the citation, ordering Guerrero to get rid of the “debris and personal property” stored outside his home and trim overgrown vegetation — including cutting down his 7-foot-tall sunflower plants.

Read the complete article here.

Visit “Save Adam Guerrero’s Garden” here.

Weertz has been buying up abandoned homes and vacant parcels of land in his neighborhood for years.

By Jon Kalish
Make Magazine
September, 2011

Excerpt:

I’ve seen terrible urban ghettos in my time, but nothing prepared me for the shock of driving through Detroit neighborhoods where so many houses were crumbling, boarded up or missing altogether. In the midst of that depressing landscape I met Paul Weertz, who lives alone in the Farnsworth neighborhood.

Well, not totally alone. The 58 year-old public school teacher has a dozen chickens and ten beehives that belong to a neighborhood “honey co-op.” He has about an acre of fruit trees and veggies growing on ten vacant lots behind his house. The day I came by, his working 1960 Ford tractor was parked a few paces away from a huge pungent patch of basil. Weertz’s sister was about to go pick peaches. The slim urban farmer walked over to his tractor and looked at a gauge that reported more than 2,000 hours of use since Weertz bought it 20 years ago.

“I farm about ten acres in the city,” Weertz tells me. “Alfalfa’s my thing. I bale about a thousand bales a year.” Some of that alfalfa is used to feed animals at the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a high school for pregnant and parenting young women. Weertz started an agriculture curriculum at the school and worked there for 20 years but now it’s a private charter school and this year he’s going to have to work elsewhere in Detroit’s public school system.

“So many people think you can’t do [farming] in a city,” he says in his Midwest twang. “And you can. It’s the same dirt and the same plants.”

Read the complete article here.

“When I go to my cellar and get my own green beans and potatoes, I know I won’t go hungry.”

By Sabrina Tavernise
New York Times
September 8, 2011

Excerpt:

“You see a lot more people turning up ground,” said Wanda Hamilton, 61, a lifelong gardener who sells her surplus vegetables at the farmers’ market in West Liberty, a small town in the Appalachian foothills. “It’s the economy. You just can’t afford to shop at the store anymore.”

It is not just eastern Kentucky. Vegetable gardening has been on the rise across the country, according to Bruce Butterfield, research director at the National Gardening Association, driven by rising food prices and a growing contingent of health-conscious consumers. Garden-store retailers have reported increased sales over the past two years, he said, and many community gardens have waiting lists.

“Our sales have skyrocketed,” said George Ball, chief executive of Burpee, one of the largest vegetable-seed retailers. The jump, he said, began around the time Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, when anxiety about money started to rise.

Complete story here.