Category — Book

Along with the IDRC and the RUAF, Urban Harvest, headquartered in Lima, Peru, is a major centre for international urban agriculture development. This recent publication, 2007, is available for download as a 64 page PDF (3.2MB).

“Although many migrants move to cities in the
expectation of more and better-paid jobs than in the
country-side, we know that many cities have as much as
90% informal employment, meaning occasional and
precarious opportunities for earning income. Urban crop
production and livestock-keeping have been shown to be
complementary activities to casual non-farm work for
many families and improving their income-generating
potential can help them move out of poverty.

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Joe Nasr, one of the authors of the classic book ‘Urban Agriculture - Food Jobs and Sustainable Cities’, spoke about city farming on CBC’s ‘The Current’ today. The show can be heard as a podcast linked below. Joe Nasr, co-founder of the North American Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Alliance, teaches urban agriculture at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Hear the CBC show here (the second story).

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If you haven’t read this magazine, you can start right now because all issues are available on-line. It is the only scholarly magazine published on urban agriculture. Pictured above is the latest issue No. 19, dated December 2007. You are invited to contribute to the next issue No. 20 ‘Sustainable Use of Water in Urban Agriculture’ to be published July 2008.

All issues are on-line here.

“The RUAF (or in long form, Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security) has functioned since 1999 as a global network of 6 regional organisations that share a common vision on urban development and poverty reduction and together implement an international programme focussed on urban agriculture and food security.”

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My unsung hero of urban agriculture is the Canadian organization, the IDRC (International Development Research Centre) based in Ottawa.

“Through more than 90 research projects in 40 countries over the past decade, IDRC has helped the cities in the South develop urban agriculture policies and methods that are increasing the food supply, raising income levels, and protecting health — and at the same time improving management of urban waste, water, and land.”

And my unsung urban agriculture hero within that organization is Luc Mougeot. From the early 1990’s, he and others in his department have created and funded innovative projects that have literally changed the world.

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First printed in 1975, this wonderful book inspired City Farmer to take action in 1978 and start our work promoting urban agriculture. The authors, Helga and William Olkowski, visited us in Vancouver in those early years and introduced Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to many people in the city. They also motivated one of our founding directors to get her Ph.D. in entomology.
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“This book presents the results of a 3-year research project on the history and state of urban agriculture in Havana, Cuba. A multidisciplinary team of 15 professionals, coordinated by the authors, assess the long-term potential for including urban agriculture in the social economies of two areas of Havana, as well as in city-wide environmental management programs.”

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“Under pavement. Under a shimmering crust of broken glass and weeds, the dark earth endures. We are dispossessed of our most basic human right - to cultivate the land. But in cities across North America, people are taking back this right and resisting corporate control of food and livelihood. Here are some of their stories. From the Motor City to Cuba, Oakland to the Bronx, here are the tales of digging for revolution in the belly of the beast, and radical rural organizing, guerilla gardening and community development. All in a dense, oversized, copiously illustrated tome. A veritable feast. Now in a new, expanded and updated lavish second edition featuring the best of The Guerilla Graywater Girls Guide to Water, urban beekeeping, medicinal herbs, balcony gardening and an illustrated guide to urban permaculture. ”

Paperback: 120 pages. 2002

Link to: Urban Wilds: Gardener’s Stories Of The Struggle For Land And Justice

Booklet produced by the European ‘Office International
du Coin de Terre et des Jardins Familiaux’

“If we look back at the years following the end of the war, we remember that in the cities there were many hidden places and open areas where children could have direct contact with an untouched nature. There was, as well, enough space where children could give free way to their fantasy and experience nature. These adventure grounds have disappeared due to the spreading of the communes, the density of the housing developments and the efforts to plan completely all the open country. The allotment and leisure gardens represent now for our children a compensation for this lost paradise. In the allotment gardens they can have direct contact with nature and discover the numerous mysteries of plants and animals. In this way they can watch the ripening of fruit and vegetables and see the miracles of nature.”

Link to this booklet (31 page PDF)

“Terry Walton has kept an allotment for over 50 years - man and boy - in the Rhondda valley in South Wales. He started when he was 4, helping on his dad’s plot on the side of the mountain, when he was sent to cut bracken and collect sheep manure by the bucketful to feed the rows of vegetables. By the time he was 11 he had his own plot - the youngest ever to do so - and while still in his teens established an allotment empire to grow the vegetables and flowers he sold to local customers. He lovingly documents the changes over the years, the characters he meets and his own hearfelt conversion to organic gardening methods.”

Link to Amazon in the UK, bookseller.

“The garden offers a great many solutions, practical as well as philosophical, to the whole problem of eating well. My own vegetable garden is modest in scale - a densely planted patch in the front yard only about twenty feet by ten - but it yields an astonishing cornucopia of produce, so much so that during the summer months we discontinue our CSA box and buy little but fruit from the farmers’ market. And though we live on a postage-stamp city lot, there’s room enough for a couple of fruit trees too: a lemon, a fig and a persimmon. To the problem of being able to afford high-quality organic produce the garden offers the most straightforward solution: The food you grow yourself is fresher than any you can buy, and it costs nothing but an hour or two of work each week plus the price of a few packets of seed.”

Link to Michael Pollan’s website and book.