Category — Canada

Michael Levenston, executive director of City Farmer, is happy that Vancouver city council has passed a motion that as of April 22 will allow residents to dump fruit and vegetables into their yard waste bins for composting. Levenston is pictured at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden on Thursday. Photo by Jenelle Schneider, Province.

Fruits, Vegetables: Just Phase 1 of project

By Frank Luba
The Province
5 Mar 2010

Vancouver has made it easier for residents to be nice to the Earth on April 22 — which just happens to be Earth Day.

Starting then, people that live in single-family residences can start pitching their fruit and vegetable waste into their yard waste bins so it can be composted.

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Bite-It

February 2010
A C.I.P. Film

A group of Katimavik youth volunteers set out into North Vancouver and Vancouver to find out some answers about environmental initiatives on the subject of food security. They interviewed Mark Bomford, UBC Farm; Emanuel Langlois, Katimivik Participant; Heather Johnstone, Edible Gardens; Michael Levenston and Sharon Slack, City Farmer; Chef Scott Rowe, Salvation Army; Nicole Robbins, Organics@Home; Melanie ter Borg and Karen Morton, ecourbia.

Sharon and Michael, of Vancouver’s Compost Demonstration Garden, take us on a tour of their site, including the various new technologies that make composting, gardening and greening more urban home friendly.

Positively Green

By Katrina Prescott
W2CommunityTV
February 23, 2010

Through W2 we will be broadcasting shows focused on the environment during the Olympics (and hopefully beyond).

Our vision is to create a daily broadcast in which we will shine a positive light on the environmental movement of visions and solutions. We are looking to send out a positive empowering message of how people are taking initiatives into their own hands to tackle their concerns and create their visions. We want to leave the viewers empowered about how easy it is to be green, what they can do/change in their daily lives to have lower their carbon footprint.

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Forthcoming May 2010

By: Lorraine Johnson
Greystone Books
Forthcoming May 2010
(Note: This book is not about our organization, “City Farmer”.)

City Farmer celebrates the new ways that urban dwellers are getting closer to their food. Not only are backyard vegetable plots popping up in places long reserved for lawns, but some renegades are even planting their front yards with food. People in apartments are filling their balconies with pots of tomatoes, beans, and basil, while others are gazing skyward and “greening” their rooftops with food plants. Still others are colonizing public spaces, staking out territory in parks for community gardens and orchards, or convincing school boards to turn asphalt school grounds into “growing” grounds.

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Micro-farming – algae, plankton, insects

By Jakub Dzamba
University of Toronto
Nov, 2009
Email: k.dzamba@utoronto.ca

Excerpts:

The purpose of this living document is to add clarity and factual depth to a concept called micro-farming; where the remarkable ability of micro-organisms and insects to rapidly reproduce is harnessed for the production of food.

Third Millennium Farming (3MF) is about using species of micro-organisms (algae and plankton) that are much better converters of sunlight into plant biomass than even our fastest growing crops, and similarly using species of micro-livestock (insects) that are much better converters of plant biomass into edible meat than even our fastest growing livestock.

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Sketchbook image by Anthony Zierhut. The Monterey Road Eco-Community Garden opening. Larger image here.

By Alex Chisholm
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts of Leadership
2008 – 150 pages
Email: alex.1chisholm@gmail.com

Abstract

Community gardens and other forms of urban agriculture (UA) make vital contributions to the environmental sustainability, food security, and economic prosperity of urban life. Community gardens also improve cities’ social, recreational, and aesthetic qualities. Yet growers continue to struggle for access to land and mechanisms to expand agriculture within cities. An umbrella organization that advocates and negotiates for land access and favourable government policies on behalf of growers could be an effective tool for increasing UA within the City of Vancouver.

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Permaculture Cuba! An Immersion Experience in Sustainable Urban Agriculture in the Heart of Cuba

For seven weeks in May and June of 2010, ten Canadians will have the opportunity to experience first hand the thriving urban agriculture and permaculture movements in Cuba. Based in the beautiful city of Sancti Spiritus, participants will work hand-in-hand with local leaders and practioners on a variety of fascinating projects producing food in the heart of the urban setting. Grounded in a model of partnership and collaborative learning, the program will include:

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Spreading Seeds from Alex Burr on Vimeo.

The Three Green Citizens

Three SFU Communication students aiming for social change in Vancouver through Urban Agriculture: Alex Burr, Jeremy Addleman and Isabelle Jacques. Our interest for Urban Agriculture grew out of a desire to engage Vancouverites in a grassroots movement supportive of food security and sustainability.

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City Farmer garden photos by Monalyn Gracia of Corbis Corporation

Earlier this year Corbis Corporation, the famous stock photography company, came to shoot at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden for a series of shots on ’sustainability’. Forty-one of those images are now on-line for sale. They feature shots of City Farmer’s roof garden, mason bee box, organic food garden, worm and backyard compost bins, and shiitake mushrooms.

From Wikipedia:

Corbis Corporation is an American company, based in Seattle, Washington, that sells and otherwise distributes photography and film footage and related rights. It has a collection of more than 100 million images and a footage library. Corbis is privately owned by Bill Gates, who founded the company in 1989 under the name Interactive Home Systems (a name currently held by an unrelated, slightly older company based in Concord, Massachusetts).

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Volunteers at the Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Project

Richmond Farm School – 2010

The Institute for Sustainable Horticulture, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, in cooperation with the Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Project, the Richmond Food Security Society, and the City of Richmond is pleased to announce that the inaugural session of the Richmond Farm School is scheduled to commence this spring.

Objectives and Program Features:

The purpose of the Farm School is to prepare people from all walks of life to engage in human scale, urban focused agriculture enterprises including production, processing, adding value, distribution, marketing and sales and build regional agri-food systems in, around and for municipalities. The program will focus on balancing theoretical (classroom) and applied (field/ practical) skill development studies with the express objective of teaching agriculture as the applied science and art that it is.

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Figure 7: Modeling the Initiation of Urban Agriculture based on Vancouver and Montréal Case Studies

The Urban Agricultural Movement in Canada: A Comparative Analysis of Montréal and Vancouver

By Chandal Nolasco da Silva
Email: chandal.nds@gmail.com
A research essay submitted to the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, 16,000 words
Carleton University 2009

1. Introduction

Urban agriculture is a term used to describe both private and public agricultural activities that take place in urban and peri-urban areas. While regional examples practice urban agriculture differently, each will help to increase food security. Urban agriculture has the potential to increase a region’s food security by providing a local food supply system and successful examples of this situation have been documented in the Canadian cities of Montréal and Vancouver.

By documenting the birth of the urban agricultural movements in Montréal and Vancouver, this research has sought to understand how modern Canadian cities can adopt local food systems.

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Mark Holland, Janine de la Salle

Beyond urban agriculture and farm land preservation

by Janine de la Salle and Mark Holland
November 25, 2009
CITinfoResource

Food and agriculture have finally caught the attention of the planning and other professions – perhaps for the first time in modern history. At least that’s what the 2009 summer issue of Plan Canada (Vol 49: No. 2) suggests.

This is a good thing. It shows that, as a profession, we are in a receptive mode, constantly learning how to balance the tools we have right now with the need to develop new ways to think about problems and their solutions. For example, urban agriculture and the protection of farmland are priority issues; but other opportunities and approaches are beginning to present themselves, and we must be quick to add them to the “food planning toolbox.”

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See larger image of the Farm plan here.

By sydneycityfarm
18th November 2009

Sydney siders are one step closer to having a City Farm and Sustainable Living Centre with the unanimous support of the City of Sydney Environment & Heritage Committee to fund an investigation into potential sites and models.

City of Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore spoke in support of the proposal which goes before a full sitting of Council on Monday November 23.

“City Farms provide real, hands-on experiences to teach residents, businesses and schools about sustainable living. City Farms demonstrate the simple ways that everyone can Live Green and give the community access to local organic produce.”

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An artist’s sketch illustrates the possibilities for rooftop urban agriculture and the rich potential for community connection. Credit: Durante Kreuk, 2009

The Challenge Series tells the story of Vancouver’s Olympic Village at Southeast False Creek: Millennium Water. Published in eight monthly installments, available on the web and in print, it focuses on the visioning, planning, design and construction processes and celebrates collaboration and sustainable innovation.

By Roger Bayley Inc.

Excerpts below.

Community Demonstration Garden

Located west of Parcel 4, the community demonstration garden will be designed and constructed after the Olympics. “The idea isn’t to have little plots for people to garden, but rather a space that is programmed with the school, community centre and neighbourhood for all to use and to learn about urban agriculture,” says Robin Petri from the City of Vancouver. Specific designs and programming have not yet been determined. Because of the site’s historic industrial use, the City has begun investigating how to handle nearby contaminated soils. The garden will be separated by a membrane from the contaminated industrial soil that underlies Hinge Park.

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Films by Tamar Kozlov
Tamar Kozlov is an actress turned journalist turned filmmaker from Montreal. Her contributiions to the artistic community include hosting the Centre St. Ambroise Scene et Salon and the Blue Zula concert series.

In 1988 Philippe Robillard bought earth and started La Ferme Pousse Menu, the only building in Montreal with farm status. Through innovative and visionary practices, he still uses the same soil, now 21 years old. By manipulating indoor space, Robillard is able to produce one ton of highly nutritious, organic food every week right downtown.

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PHOTO BY KAREN LANDMAN. In Milwaukee, the Growing Power organization offers tours of its urban farm to give people, especially children, a chance to see where their food comes from.

Yes in My Backyard

Landscape architecture professor Karen Landman hits the road to see how people in Canada and the United States are bringing farming to the city

BY TERESA PITMAN
University of Guelph

Prof. Karen Landman, Environmental Design and Rural Development, grew up on a dairy farm, but she says her father wouldn’t recognize as farmers the people she met this summer when she travelled more than 18,000 kilometres across the western United States and Canada to study urban agriculture. They were growing food commercially in the city.

“I met with academics, social advocates, people who train others in the techniques of urban farming and, of course, urban farmers themselves,” she says.

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University of Guelph – Opportunities for Action: An Urban Agriculture Symposium

November 13, 2009

Academics, municipal planners, community activists, gardeners and farmers will gather at the University of Guelph next week to cultivate connections between city-dwellers and the food on their tables by encouraging farming in urban areas.

Opportunities for Action: An Urban Agriculture Symposium is a first for Guelph and takes place Nov. 20 at the Arboretum. The all-day event is hosted by the University and several local partners, including the Backyard Bounty project.

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Photo by ARLEN REDEKOP — The Province. James Oickle was attracted to the Hastings Folk Garden near Columbia Street. “I didn’t think I had a healing process I needed, but it did become that,’ he says.

Garden gets green thumbs up – Passers-by call out, ‘Good job!’ says its creator

BY ELAINE O’CONNOR
The Province
3 Nov 2009

It’s not hard to turn urban wasteland into urban farmland. You just have to plant the seed. PHS Community Services Society’s Peter LaGrand planted that seed in late 2007 when he had the idea of turning an abandoned lot owned by Concord Pacific into a vegetable garden for the residents of the Downtown Eastside.

Since then, the Hastings Folk Garden on Hastings Street near Columbia has grown into a gathering space for green thumbs.

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Carrot City: Designing for Urban Agriculture

Curators: June Komisar, Mark Gorgolewski and Joe Nasr

The exhibition Carrot City: Designing for Urban Agriculture, was shown at the Design Exchange (DX) in Toronto earlier this year. The exhibition explores the relationship of design and urban food systems as well as the impact that agricultural issues have on the design of urban spaces and buildings as society addresses the issues of a more sustainable pattern of living.

The exhibit generated a huge amount of interest, including press articles, blog entries, YouTube submissions, and thousands of visitors.

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This electric, indoor compost unit comes from Korea. Photo Michael Levenston

The Red Dragon

You plug it in and hook up the exhaust pipe so that it vents outdoors. Then add a sawdust/enzyme mix and 2 litres of water to the machine. That’s it. You can add any food waste AND DOG WASTE to the mix and it will decompose the organic material.

That’s the promise. We are presently testing the machine at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden to see if it lives up to that promise.

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