Category — Asia

Kadoorie Farm

Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden (KFBG) spreads over 148 hectares of land and is located on the northern slopes and foothills of Hong Kong’s highest mountain – Tai Mo Shan.

Vegetables are produced on a one hectare hillside area at KFBG and there are over 60 varieties of vegetables and herbs grown in our farmland. We have 17 hectares of terraced orchards producing over 25 different varieties of fruit crops, herbs and tea, as well as honey. Our eco-garden displays organic farming practices compatible to urban settings for visitors to learn how to grow their own food.

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Shiho Fujita, 24, established the “Nogyaru” (farm gals) Project

by Elizah Leigh
Green Wala
March 03 2010

Excerpt:

Working the earth with your own two hands isn’t exactly the type of activity that many of us would choose to don our Sunday best for. It probably wouldn’t even occur to most people to bother primping or preening because it’s not as if the crops really care how you look. Farming is a dirty business after all, with dust swirling in the air, the sun beating down on your neck and endless acres to plow, fertilize, weed, water and harvest. Breaking a sweat is just part of the process but Japanese model, singer and fashionista farm girl pioneer Shiho Fujita is intent on proving that you don’t have to be schlumpy to show the land who’s boss. Why would a twenty-something have any interest in digging in the dirt? Her motivation happens to be one part damage control, one part fresh green entrepreneurial spirit.

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Photo by Chris Steele-Perkins, 1999

Photo by Bruno Barbey, 1995

Photo by Jared Braiterman PhD

Reported by Jared Braiterman PhD
in Tokyo Green

I visited Odakyu’s Agris Seijo rental farm in Seijogakuenmae in Setagaya and was prepared to be charmed by a community vegetable farm built by a rail company above their tracks. Three years ago, the Odakyu corporation rebuilt the station, undergrounded the railway, and used some of the new land to promote urban farming. But I left feeling somewhat strange that reclaimed land could be gated and restricted. Although it is the rail company’s property, I think they missed a huge opportunity to create a great space for the neighborhood.

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Philippines News Agency
September 1, 2009
LEGAZPI CITY

The Aquinas University of Legazpi (AUL) has implemented a project dubbed “Urban Agriculture through the High-Value Commercial Crops Techno-Demo Farm” within its expansive campus here.

The project features 60-square-meter greenhouse where vegetables highly sensitive to rain and changes in temperature like broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower and honeydew melon are being propagated.

Gardens for more hardy vegetables such as squash, eggplant and watermelon were also established in an open area of 1,000 square meters whose perimeters were planted to rootcrops like ubi and sweet potato.

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Bangalore urban agriculture.

In this bulletin you will find information on:

1. RUAF From Seed to Table Programme

2. Other Urban Agriculture activities by the RUAF Partners

Food, Agriculture and Cities: challenges and way forward

Workshop on influencing and assisting national policy processes

Increasing recognition for urban agriculture in China

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by Rock Portrait Photography. Urban-rural Vietnam. “Fish, shrimp and rice farms from my balcony.” Larger image here.

Developing urban agriculture is one of the targets for Ho Chi Minh City.

Oct 1, 2009
Vietnam News

HCM CITY — Switching from traditional crops to urban farming is an inevitable process due to the rapid urbanisation taking place in HCM City, an expert has said.

Speaking at a conference in the city’s Binh Chanh District yesterday, Truong Hoang, deputy director of the municipal Steering Committee for Agriculture and Rural Development, said farmlands have been shrinking by an average of 1,176 ha every year since 2000 and what is left is not enough for normal agriculture.

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See larger image here.
Lydia Williams feeding chickens in the garden of her cottage at Carlyle Street, Napier, [ca 1889]

Photographer William Williams.
Glass negative
Photographic Archive, Alexander Turnbull Library

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Photo by Jared Braiterman, PhD

Ginza rice farm

By Jared Braiterman, PhD.
Tokyo Green Space examines the potential for micro-green spaces to transform the world’s largest city into an urban forest that supports bio-diversity, the environment and human community.

Excerpt:

On a side street in Ginza, I noticed a rice farm and met Ginza Farm’s CEO Iimura Kazuki and his assistant who were tending the rice and two cute ducklings. Shop clerks and construction clerks stopped by to admire the rice in its mid-summer glory.

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The new publication Women Feeding Cities – Mainstreaming gender in urban agriculture and food security is now available online. This publication analyses the roles of women and men in urban food production, processing and marketing in case studies from 3 development regions and includes field tested guidelines and tools for gender mainstreaming.

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Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture (UA and UPA)
West Bengal State Agriculture Commission – Government of West Bengal
March 2009
Annexure Item 20, page 725

Preamble

With rapid urbanization in the past few decades, already half the world population lives in towns and cities. These occupy less than 2% of the earth’s surface, but use 75% of the earth’s resources. The per capita resource consumption of urban areas is thus 3 times that of rural areas. Considering the alarming rate of depletion and degradation of natural resources, the sustainability of the present path of urbanization, with its high ‘ecological footprint’, is questionable, even in the medium term.

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GreenMarket sustainable food production facility, United Arab Emerates

GreenMarket, UAE

The GreenMarket utilizes BrightFarm Systems pioneering rooftop and facade mounted, sustainable greenhouse designs, to integrate hydroponic food production into civic buildings. The layers of vegetation encased in the walls of the building provide shade for the building interior.

The interior of the building structure is designed to serve as marketplaces, recreation centers, meeting halls, or any function that can benefit from enclosed, naturally lit, shaded, conditioned or semi-conditioned space. In the Abu Dhabi climate, these spaces will be extremely appealing in the summer, but should also be very comfortable at all times of year.

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Vegetable Gardeners, 1496
By Shen Zhou, Chinese, 1427-1509
Link to image here.

The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom
by Simon Winchester

The great Sinologist Joseph Needham (1900-1995) is a legend for his Science and Civilization in China, an encyclopedic account of China’s achievements in science and technology. Presently there are 24 volumes in his classic series. On his first day in China in 1943, he saw a gardener at work and this set in motion his magnum opus.

Excerpt:

Needham wrote: “The old Chinese gardener in ragged blue coat and trousers with a wispy white beard who potters around smoking one of these long pipes with a tiny bowl — and a mongol cap, periodically performing elaborate grafting techniques on the plum tree.”

Winchester wrote “He (Needham) had evidently stopped to watch this old gardener, and not just because of the man’s exotic appearance. He realized that in following as closely as he could the manner in which the man was splicing, tying, and grafting the plum tree, he was actually witnessing something rather important.

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Lima, Peru; Community Garden on Former Soccer Field; Funded by CARE USA; 1991

These 26 photos are part of a larger collection of documents soon to be housed at Ryerson University in Toronto in the Jac Smit Memorial Library of Urban Agriculture.

“Under the merger arrangement, TUAN’s (The Urban Agriculture Network’s) comprehensive library of documents and materials on urban agriculture will be transferred to Toronto, Canada and supervised by Joe Nasr. Once it is re-established, the collection will be named the Jac Smit Memorial Library of Urban Agriculture and will be made available for use of researchers and practitioners worldwide.

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RUAF Update # 11
May 2009

1. THE RUAF-CITIES FARMING FOR THE FUTURE PROGRAMME

The RUAF Cities Farming for the Future programme ended in 2008 with very positive results. Activities of RUAF continued in most of the cities in the follow up programme From Seed to Table (see below). The final report, has been finalised and a summary can be found at www.ruaf.org soon.

Some of the overall results of the activities that have been implemented over the past period include:

- Twenty universities and other educational centres that were involved in RUAF-CFF have taken initiatives to include urban agriculture in their regular programme and are developing curricula and training modules, using the RUAF training materials as a starting point. In addition capacity has been built in urban agriculture of in total 206 trainers from 17 countries of which about one third are women.

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Link to larger image here.

Captured Japanese image shows city residents growing crops on their front lawn because of countrywide war-related food shortages.

Life Magazine
Location: Tokyo, Honshu, Japan
Date taken: March 1944

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Photo by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, National Geographic

Wasted space in the modern metropolis may become productive “farmland” thanks to advances in waterproofing green roofs. Some of the rice used to brew Japan’s popular Hakutsuru sake grows atop the company’s Tokyo office.

One of a series of beautiful Roof Garden photos in National Geographic magazine found here.

Visit Diane Cook and Len Jenshel website here.

Tokyo, Japan. A man tends a tomato plant in Pasona O2, an artificially lit and computer controlled greenhouse built in the basement of a high rise building in the business district of Tokyo on February 15, 2005 in Tokyo, Japan. Pasona Inc, a human resources service company, built the greenhouse in order to introduce the pleasure of agriculture also to train aspiring farmers in the city. The basement space was once used as a vault by Resona Bank Limited. Photo by Junko Kimura

Japanese Government to boost indoor cultivation

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Apr. 10, 2009

The government is set to launch full-scale efforts to promote indoor agricultural facilities to ensure stable cultivation of fruits and vegetables, government officials said.

As part of a three-year plan to boost the number of indoor growing facilities about fourfold, to 150, and raise production about fivefold, the government will offer incentives including low-interest financing and a capital investment tax credit, the officials said.

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By Asai Chu
Meiji Period, dated 1889.
Tokyo National Museum
Link to larger image here.