Urban Agriculture in Vancouver

Interviews with former city councillor Peter Ladner, a fellow at the SFU Centre for Dialogue, and Janine de la Salle, the director of food systems planning at the Vancouver office of HB Lanarc.
Business in Vancouver
March 3, 2010

Excerpt:

The new City of Vancouver administration raised some eyebrows last spring when one of its first moves was to tear up a swath of lawn at city hall and replace it with a vegetable patch. For many this was easily dismissed as a symbolic gesture: farmer Robertson staking his claim.

Not so easy to dismiss are the dozens of garden plots that have sprung up all over the city or the fact that developers and urban planners now have entire departments devoted to planning patches of city farmland.

While some dismiss the “eat-local” movement as a passing fad, for others it’s serious business. Take Ward Teulon, for example: the proprietor of City Farm Boy has carved out a business tilling west side backyards and selling the produce. Or consider Sole Food Inner City Farm on East Hastings Street: the half-acre city plot has 12 part-time staff on its payroll, and its founders claim it will contribute to feeding Downtown Eastside residents.

The city-farmer faction has clearly gained traction, and, equally clearly, it’s not just a bunch of back-to-nature freaks who are behind the movement. To help make sense of the growing trend toward city farming, BCBusiness sat down with two experts. Janine de la Salle is the director of food systems planning at the Vancouver office of HB Lanarc, urban planning and design consultants. Former city councillor Peter Ladner is a fellow at the SFU Centre for Dialogue and is working on a project called Planning Cities as if Food Mattered.

To the average Vancouverite, agriculture is out of sight and out of mind. Why do we need more agriculture in the city?

LADNER: The first issue people have to be aware of is the fragility of our food supply. It’s coming mostly from out of province, and given a number of major issues in the world right now, that supply is increasingly threatened. There’s the growing number of people in China and India who are starting to eat meat and consume more of the world’s grains. There’s global warming, which is causing drought in some areas and flooding in others. There’s a shortage of water; agriculture uses 70 per cent of the water in the U.S., and that water’s running out. Then there’s the rising price of fossil fuels, and that affects not just the cost of transportation but the cost of fuels used in producing food in a factory setting, as we do now for most of our food.

See the rest of the article here.

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.

The initiative, passed by council Thursday, is still dependent on negotiations with Metro Vancouver and Fraser Richmond Soil and Fibre over use of the company’s composting facility.

That negotiation is subject to confidentiality, but Coun. Andrea Reimer said there will be a “marginal increase” over the cost of landfilling the waste.

Long-term, Reimer said, “the financial arguments are quite compelling.”

Kitchen waste represents about 35 per cent of waste. Composted instead of buried in the landfill, the diverted waste could extend the life of the landfill by as much as 35 per cent.

Because Vancouver has its own landfill in Delta, it only charges $30 per tonne to cover its costs.

When the landfill is full, Vancouverites will be charged what commercial operators pay — currently, $80 per tonne.

Composting fruits and vegetables is just Phase 1 of the plan. Phase 2, in 2011, will allow residents to put all their waste in with yard trimmings — including meat, dairy, cereal products and food-soiled paper like pizza boxes.

If 85 per cent of residents participate in the program, a staff report suggests that composting fruits and vegetables will reduce landfilled waste by 6,100 tonnes annually.

Composting all food waste will divert an additional 9,600 tonnes.

The plan makes a lot of sense to Michael Levenston, executive director of the City Farmer non-profit urban-agriculture group.

“Anything that turns something that would otherwise be buried in a landfill into a useful product is a good thing,” said Levenston.

The first phase of the project carries a $230,000 cost for communication and promotion. Another $75,000 is allocated for Phase 2 communication and $240,000 is being set aside to fund additional local-scale or backyard composting this year.

Metro Vancouver is currently running test projects for composting of the full range of kitchen waste in neighbourhoods in Coquitlam, Delta, the Township of Langley and West Vancouver.

Port Coquitlam began diverting food waste on its own and has seen a significant reduction in garbage.

Comparing a five-week period in January and February 2009 with the same period this year, the reduction was 231 tonnes.

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.

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.

We are looking for individuals, grassroots organizations, community groups, etc. who are taking action during the Olympics and in their daily lives and who are able to inspire those who feel overwhelmed about what they can do.

Think of: any action taken during the Olympics concerning the environment, people who have formed grassroots groups to tackle local issues.

Communities and individuals who: are using energy and water efficiently, control waste, compost, reduce their GHG emissions, urban farming, etc.

See their Youtube website here.

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.

Popular author and gardening guru Lorraine Johnson shares her passion and enthusiasm for this cultural shift by telling humorous stories about her own experiences as a gardener, from creating the world’s lowest-maintenance rooftop tomato farm to raising three chickens in her downtown Toronto backyard. She also introduces us to her niece and nephew, who visit her from their home in Michigan, and first discover such fresh-food delights as “peas in a pod” in the company of their eccentric Canadian aunt.

Woven through the book are the stories of guerrilla urban farmers in various cities of North America who are tapping city trees for syrup, gleaning fruit from parks, foraging for greens in abandoned lots, planting heritage vegetables on the boulevard, and otherwise placing food production at the centre of the urban community. Additional stories describe the history of urban food production in North America, revealing the roots of our current hunger for more connection with our food, and the visionaries who have directed that hunger into action. Throughout the book, sidebars offer practical tips for how to compost, how to convert a lawn into a vegetable bed, and what edible plants are easy to grow with children, among other topics.

“Johnson offers some fresh insights into working with nature and ends with an alphabet of actions that we can take to help conserve, heal, and restore the earth.” —Canadian Living on Tending the Earth

Link to book website here.

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.

These organisms are not only vastly more efficient for farming food, but the actual processes that will be involved in this type of farming can play key roles in making the function of our cities more sustainable.

There are over 1400 known species of edible insects, and its estimated there are several times this amount of undiscovered edible insects. Many of these species can thrive under very different environmental and physiological conditions, but most importantly on a much more diverse range of food than traditional livestock. As a result several new strategies for farming feed for micro-livestock can now be considered. Micro-livestock’s ability to utilize alternate feeds is equally central to the idea of 3MF as is the farming micro-livestock itself, but is even more powerful in decreasing the end foodprint of 3MF.

Micro-livestock can be fed traditional fodder crops, the same ones we use to feed livestock (usually cereals). They can also be fed some plant species which posses an ability for achieving rapid growth rates like algae, sugarcane and phytoplankton; or they can be fed using industrial/agricultural waste products that aren’t ordinarily considered edible such as paper, wood pulp and non-usable lumber.

Industrial/City Waste: The wood and paper industry ends up with various types of waste products that have no other use than being incinerated for energy. Examples of this are wood pulp, recycled paper, and even lumber destroyed by pests such as the B.C. Mountain Pine Beetle. These waste products are could be used as feed for some species of insects.
Considering the above mentioned plant species and city wastes could be used to feed micro-livestock farming operations it becomes easier to picture how 3MF could integrate with our cities. Imagine algae-culture operations that harness both: waste water treatment plants, as a source for nutrients, and fossil fuel power plants, as a source of concentrated CO2. Or micro-livestock farms integrated into industrial operations, using the biomass waste as feed and converting it into a viable source of food and perhaps (using termites) hydrogen as well.

Maybe the antagonism between city and agriculture, core and periphery, would fade away, allowing for one to be grafted onto the other, while simultaneously allowing nature to creep back into our metropolises and daily lives. Farmers might return to the city transformed – a mix between engineer, biologist, botanist and scientist – managing high-tech farms integrated into our buildings’ systems and city infrastructure.

Read the complete document 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.

Acting as an intermediary, an umbrella organization could navigate the requirements of civic administrators and other land stewards on behalf of growers. This research engaged community garden and UA stakeholders, and the City of Vancouver Social Policy unit in an action research project to examine civic systems and the intermediary socio-political functions an umbrella garden organization could perform to increase agriculture in the City of Vancouver.

Introduction Chapter Summary

UA and community gardens have an important, though perhaps still somewhat undervalued, role to play in the urban environment. Nonetheless, awareness of the environmental, recreational, social development, and food security benefits is generating a growing acceptance of community gardens. In order to stimulate the growth of new community garden developments, community organizers and other key stakeholders are rallying to find solutions. Creating an umbrella organization that can bridge the civic system with garden organizers is being considered by some groups. This umbrella organization could help spearhead the development of new community gardens. This research project took on the challenge to understand how an umbrella organization might work and how it might interface with the city. With the City of Vancouver’s Social Policy unit as the organization sponsoring this research, I engaged the community to help me understand what an umbrella organization might effectively do to help build new gardens. In support of this research a review of the literature on UA and community gardens follows.

See synopsis pdf here.

See complete thesis pdf here.

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:

• Orientations in Canada and Cuba

• Workshops and dialogue on a variety of urban agriculture and permaculture themes

• Placements in existing permaculture/urban agriculture projects

• The opportunity to work with local leaders in the design and implementation of a new project site

• Spanish language learning

• Immersion in the rich cultural life and natural beauty of the Sancti Spiritus region of Cuba

• Optional graduate level credit through the University of Alberta, Faculty of Extension

This project is a partnership of The Urban Farmer, The University of Alberta Faculty of Extension, and the Antonio Nunez Jimenez Foundation for Nature and Man. Space is limited and will be granted on a first come, first served basis. Please see the attached brochure and registration form for complete details.

Attached brochure. 7MB PDF

For more information, please contact:

Ron Berezan, The Urban Farmer, theurbanfarmer@shaw.ca, 780 221-4800
Dr. Mary Beckie, University of Alberta, Faculty of Extension, marybeckie@ualberta.ca

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.

With Spreading Seeds, we aim to get the people to re-think the urban landscape as an integral part of the public space which is for them to create, transform and inhabit in meaningful ways.

Their web site here.

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).

One major reason for starting the company was Gates’s belief that people would someday decorate their homes with a revolving display of digital artwork using digital frames.[1] The company’s name was changed to Continuum Productions in 1994 and to Corbis Corporation a year later. “Corbis” is Latin for “wicker basket”, which at the time referred to the company’s emerging view of itself as a receptacle or storehouse for visual media. Its Bettmann Archive (acquired in 1995) is stored 220 feet underground in a refrigerated cave in the Iron Mountain storage facility.

From Corbis:

Corbis is a creative resource for advertising, marketing and media professionals, providing a comprehensive selection of photography, illustration, footage, typefaces and rights clearance services. Through its branded web sites Corbis, Corbis Motion, Veer and GreenLight, the company helps the creative community make distinctive advertising and publishing for the Internet, magazines, newspapers, books, television and films. Corbis is based in Seattle, with offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia that serve more than 50 countries.

See all photos at Corbis here.

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.

Upon completion of a course, a compliment of courses or the complete program students will not just know about (urban) agriculture but will also have developed the skills to engage in it. Farm School students will learn by doing. Actual farming, processing, marketing, and sales learning experience are a defining feature of the program.

A second defining feature of the curriculum will be its focus on sustainability. In this we mean teaching about farming and an agri- food system that is economically viable, environmentally sound and socially responsive and just. We will also emphasize agriculture as an integral element of sustainable cities in compliment to existing agri-food systems elements.

Lastly but importantly, through our program students will have access to (at very reasonable rates) “incubator” farm land (up to one acre for three years) to begin their agricultural enterprises. Technical support and possibly shared equipment will be available to incubator farmers.

Program overview:

Core classes - The Farm School program will consist of the following core courses that will be delivered over the course of the season. All will have a field based component. We have assembled an excellent team of practical minded, experienced, skilled and dedicated teachers to support and guide your learning experience. Classes do not have exams or graded assignments. You can expect to be given readings. No grades are assigned or university credits awarded. Classes will be held at Terra Nova Rural Park facilities.

Title – Hours
Soils and Water Management- 40 hrs
Plant Science- 40 hrs
Pest Management 20 hrs
Farm Production and Operations Planning 40 hrs
Market Crop Production- 50 hrs
Animal Husbandry 40 hrs
Fruit Production- 50 hrs
Composts and Composting 20 hrs
Farm Business Planning/Management 40 hrs
Total 350 hrs of formal class

Practicum – All Farm School students will also participate in a minimum of 350 hours of practical crop production and post-harvest experience under the direction and/ or supervision of Farm School staff and/ or Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Program farm staff. The majority of practical farming experience will occur at the Richmond Fruit Tree Sharing Project Farm at the Terra Nova Park and the Orchard (south end of Gilbert Rd.) in Richmond. Other sites may be utilized to enhance the practical learning experience. Note that students are responsible for transportation to practicum sites. Additional practical on farm experiences will likely be available as we want you to have the opportunity to gain as much real farming experience as possible.

Many topics such as sustainable agriculture, farm safety, mechanization, construction, cover crops, resources and certifications, farmscaping, habitat enhancement etc. will be integrated into core courses as appropriate.

Other courses (not part of the basic Farm School curriculum), such as Ecology, Apiculture, will be offered on an ad hoc basis throughout the year and available for an additional fee.

Additionally we plan to hold dinner seminars once or twice a month. Students will organize and lead these seminars (which may include a guest speaker, showing of a documentary film, a demonstration etc.). The public will be invited to these sessions.

Dates, days and times:

The Farm School will start March 4, 2010 and conclude November 12, 2010. We are scheduling courses and practicum on Thursday and Friday late afternoons/evenings and all day on Saturdays so that students can fit farming studies into their schedules. Expect this days and times to be occupied with Farm School classes, practicum and other and activities. Specific, seasonally adjusted schedules will be announced.

Fees:

The Farm School is not a profit generating endeavor, nor is it subsidized in any way and therefore must operate on a full cost recovery basis. This means that all fees you pay cover the costs of delivering the program; they are plowed back into the Farm School. We have checked into other similar programs and our cost/ fee structures are in line.

We have established two categories of students that will be subject to different fee structures for classes because they represent differing intents and levels of commitment. They are Cohort Students and A la carte Students.

Cohort Students are committed to and sign up for the full compliment of core classes and practicum. The cost to be a Cohort Student is $5,000. A non-refundable deposit of $300 is due to the Farm School by February 1 and the balance ($4,700) by March 4. Cohort Students are also eligible for incubator farming sites.

Students who complete all core classes and the practicum will be issued a Certificate of Completion.

A la carte Students are those that only want to study farming on a class by class basis and do not want to participate in the practicum component. Anyone is welcome to enroll in Farm School classes if space is available. Cost for individual class enrollments is $30 per class hour. So the fee to take an individual 40 hour class such as Soils, Vegetable Crop Production or Fruit Crop Production would be $1200. Enrolling in individual classes can be done at any time.

A student enrolling in individual classes can opt to become a Cohort Student at any time by paying the balance of the Cohort Rate (all fees paid to take individual classes will apply).

For Information or to Enroll:
Contact Kent Mullinix, Institute for Sustainable Horticulture
604-612-1252; kent.mullinix@kwantlen.ca

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.

Montréal was selected as a model city for urban agriculture in Canada because it is home to over 75 community garden sites and because the City of Montréal’s Department of Recreation and Community Development maintains over 6654 individual garden plots (Cosgrove 2001). According to Davidson and Krause (1999a), Montréal also has the most extensive gardening network in North America. Vancouver was selected as a model city for urban agriculture in Canada because 25% of British Columbia’s food is grown within a half hour of Vancouver, because 40% of the people living in Vancouver maintain gardens (e.g., on balconies or roof-tops, in yards or community gardens), and because Vancouver is home to over 1000-community garden plots (IDRC 2007). Montréal and Vancouver maintain these significant statistics with the help of different social actors who are involved in the urban agricultural movement in their respective jurisdictions. This research was interested in contacting those actors to discuss why the urban agricultural movement is successful, in each of their cities, and to discuss how other Canadian cities can learn from their existing examples.

This research project first explores the history of the urban agricultural movement by looking at what urban agriculture is, by looking at what its uses and forms are and then by discussing urban agriculture at an international scale. The next section looks at some existing initiatives in Canada. After a brief look at the history of urban agriculture and its Canadian context, this research begins to focus on the existing urban agricultural movements in Montréal and Vancouver separately before bringing the conclusions from each together in the last section. Although the section that compares Montréal and Vancouver could be framed from many different angles, the angle taken here intended to uncover what factors facilitated the urban agricultural movement in Montréal and Vancouver after the first projects were initiated.

The municipal governments and the work of local non-governmental organizations (NGO) were sought as two important catalysts within urban agriculture in either Montréal or Vancouver. The City of Montréal and The City of Vancouver have facilitated the urban agricultural movements in their respective jurisdictions and this research explored the role played by municipal governments. Municipal governments are of interest because of by-laws that may facilitate urban agricultural projects and because of the role of the municipal planning department in approving agricultural development in the city. For example, if an individual wanted to convert their conventional roof to a green roof this new development would likely have to receive approval from the municipal planning department before it’s construction could begin and therefore the existence of urban agriculture may be interdependent with the approval of the municipal government.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were also of great interest in researching the urban agricultural movement within each city. For example, the role NGO’s play in facilitating individual participation in urban agriculture and in catalyzing the urban agricultural movements through the development of local food systems and associated processes, such as compost/worm distribution and winter greenhouses. It was hypothesized that the NGO’s in Montréal and Vancouver played a significant role in developing the urban agriculture in their respective jurisdictions.

The proposed research hoped to develop a comprehensive understanding of how Montréal and Vancouver adopted an urban agricultural movement. The research was intended to identify key individuals, organizations, actions or events that led to a successful urban agricultural discourse within the chosen cities and ideally, it will provide insights into the necessary components of urban agriculture in Canadian cities. Once the necessary components of urban agriculture are understood, this information could potentially be used to create a model to help Canadian cities promote greater use of urban agriculture.

Download the complete 16,000 word paper (4MB) here.

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.”

A comprehensive approach

The strategies for creating sustainable food systems in a city must take a comprehensive approach and consider the full range of elements of a food system – not just the current favourites like urban agriculture (eg: community gardens). Improving the food system has values beyond the production of food. We suggest that such improvement begins to give food the power to be an economic driver, a potent community building agent, and a key opportunity to decrease energy demands.

In order to capture these benefits, sustainability in food and agriculture must be approached with a systems perspective. This includes: addressing food processing, packaging, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, restaurants, procurement, education, culture, and food security. Easily 75% of the economic value and climate emissions associated with food come after its agricultural production. If we, as planners, fail to invest as much of our time looking at these other aspects of the food system as we spend on local food production and farmers markets, then we miss the biggest opportunity of all.

Agricultural Urbanism

A movement called Agricultural Urbanism is emerging based on planning cities and neighbourhoods around sustainable food systems. At it’s outset, 10 principles have been identified for this movement:

See the rest of this article here.

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.”

“It’s fantastic that the Environment & Heritage Committee is so supportive of having a City Farm where Sydney residents can grow healthy local food and learn about sustainability,” said Sydney City Farm President Andrew Jackson.

“A City Farm modelled on successful urban farms like CERES in Melbourne and Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane is a perfect fit with plans for a Sustainable Sydney by 2030 ,” said Mr Jackson.

The Sydney City Farm non-profit group proposed the idea to Council in August this year. The group was formed to create a vibrant centre of learning and community participation where Sydney residents will be inspired to learn to grow their own food, compost and recycle; as well find out about the latest water and energy saving technologies.

“Like Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden projects, the City Farm is an idea whose time is well and truly here. Wherever we hold information stalls people are super-keen to get involved,” said Mr Jackson.  “We are sure that when City of Sydney Council identifies a preferred site and begins the consultation process, there will be overwhelming community support for the idea.”

“Ultimately our vision is for a network of City Farms, including our original proposal for a 3 hectare City Farm inside Callan Park,” said Mr Jackson.

To find out more, visit www.sydneycityfarm.org

See the CITY FARM PROPOSAL proposal to the ENVIRONMENT AND HERITAGE COMMITTEE, 16 NOVEMBER 2009 here.

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.

Rooftop + Grade Food Growing Gardens

With the requirement of fifty percent of the site area having to be green, grade (street-level) growing and rooftop gardens became key. Every Millennium Water parcel includes opportunities for urban agriculture except Parcel 4, which has patios well over 100 square feet. The city’s formula for urban agriculture is that there must be 24 square feet of gardening space for 30 percent of the units whose balcony or patio is under 100 square feet. This means approximately 1,000-1,500 square feet of urban agriculture per parcel (and more for non-market parcels), which translates into approximately 20-30 twenty-four square foot plots per parcel.

Each building’s strata council will manage how gardening plots will be allocated to residents. In non-market urban agriculture areas, there are communal crops where plots are not delineated and where everyone can harvest. The grade (street level) growing gardens are owned by the strata corporations but are publicly accessible.

“There needs to be an attitudinal shift,” says Peter Kreuk. Initially, the developers were concerned about how urban agriculture would look. “The perception of urban agricultural areas as being ‘weed patches’ with timber retaining walls is changing. Developers are realizing that urban agriculture can be beautifully integrated into a garden’s design.”

Growing Veggies On Your Roof

Unlike growing produce in your backyard where there is at least a few feet of dirt, the soil depth on the roof gardens of the Olympic Village is 18 inches. “This soil depth should be plenty to grow your carrots,” says Jennifer Stamp. However, it is important to note that the soil heats up faster when you have planting on roofs, due to a thinner soil profile and the concrete underneath.

There is no irrigation system in the SEFC urban agricultural areas in part due to plumbing and health bylaws not allowing non-potable water for edible plant irrigation and in part because many gardeners are particular about watering their veggies. For each urban agricultural area, there are compost bins, hose bibs with potable water and a potting bench.

See Chapter 6 ‘Green Amenities’ here. Urban Agriculture + Community Gardens, Rooftop + Food-Growing Gardens, Urban Agriculture in SEFC.

See the complete Challenge Series here.

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.

La Ferme Pousse Menu – only building in Montreal with farm status
Length: 8 min 59 sec
Year of Production: 2009
Director: Tamar Kozlov

See the video here.

Link to La Ferme Pousse Menu website – in French.

Santropol’s Rooftop Gardens

Length: 11 min 20 sec
Year of Production: 2009
Director: Tamar Kozlov

Santropol Roulant, known for their meals on wheels program, recently started producing their own local and organic produce. Meet some of the leaders and volunteers involved in this year’s Santopol Edible Rooftop Garden. See what they think about the agriculture industry and what types of solutions there are to the current unsustainable food production system. See how urban agriculture helps urbanites reconnect with nature, eat healthier and contribute to a sustainable future.

See the video here.

See the Santropol Roulant web site here.

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.

Why study farming in cities? “Food is a fundamental issue,” says Landman. “We all need it, and food is the basis of culture because people gather together around food. But increasingly, we have concerns about issues such as food safety, food security and the impact of food transportation on the environment. Urban agriculture may be a solution to some of these concerns, and that makes it important on many levels.”

Layered on the concerns that consumers have about food are worries about the future of farming in rural areas.

Landman says it’s tough to get young people interested in farming because those raised on a farm know about the economic challenges and those raised in the city don’t know where to begin.

In Milwaukee, she spent time with Will Allen, whose Growing Power organization was established to tackle the problem of “food deserts” in that city. Food deserts are low-income areas in large cities where people have no access to grocery stores and usually end up having to buy expensive processed foods at corner stores.

Allen’s solution was to turn a two-acre plot of land in a neighbourhood in northern Milwaukee into a farm. There, he grows fruit and vegetables and raises goats, turkeys, chickens and honeybees. There’s also an aquaponics system housing thousands of tilapia and perch. In total, the farm produces $250,000 worth of food each year.

Allen has a store on site that provides fresh food to the community at reasonable prices. He also sells to local restaurants.

“Some of the middle-aged people in that community are eating fresh vegetables for the first time in their lives,” says Landman.

To make the operation work, Allen uses interns and volunteers to help with the intensive farming. He also offers tours of the facility six days a week to give people, especially children, a chance to see where their food comes from.

“Farmers want people to understand them and what they do,” says Landman. “This is a beginning.”

She recalls one young boy on a tour who had never seen a chicken before and didn’t know where eggs came from.

After her stay in Milwaukee, Landman went to San Francisco, then headed up the coast to Vancouver. She also travelled to Edmonton, where she visited the Visser farms, which are two large tracts of farmland within city limits.

“The land has excellent soil and a good microclimate,” she says. “People don’t think there is good land in cities, but there is. We’re urbanizing onto the best soil.”

Read the complete article here.

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.

The symposium aims to explore key issues and help people make connections to advance the urban agriculture movement.

“It’s an opportunity to bring people together to share ideas and experiences, identify common barriers, seek feasible solutions and inspire action,” said organizer Shannon Lee Stirling, who is Backyard Bounty’s project co-ordinator.

The symposium kicks off with a keynote presentation by U of G’s Karen Landman, a landscape architecture professor in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development. Landman will discuss her recent tour of urban agriculture projects across the western United States and Canada.

“People have always grown food in cities and still do, particularly in the developing world, but it’s quite new in North America,” she said. “And for someone to try to make a living as a farmer in a city, that’s certainly something new.”

Landman said urban agriculture is one way to address growing public concerns about food security and safety, and the environmental impacts of transporting huge volumes of food over long distances, by making it easier for people to grow food in everything from backyard and rooftop gardens to community plots and large tracts of open land within city limits. It also plays a role in community development by putting people in touch with farmers and providing access to locally grown, nutritious and affordable food, she said.

The symposium will also feature panel discussions, a lunch made from urban- and organically-grown produce, and a facilitated workshop to explore the barriers facing urban agriculture and the opportunities for encouraging it. For example, some discussions might focus on figuring out ways to help municipal planners incorporate the concept into their processes, Landman said.

For more information or to register, visit Backyard Bounty’s symposium website here.

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.

Where once there was garbage and discarded needles, today there are lettuces and beets, swiss chard and potatoes. This year’s harvest includes kale, corn, tomatoes, squash and pumpkins.

Fragrant basil, mint and chives flourish among the brick-cobbled beds and winding paths. Along the perimeter, pear, apple, fig and cherry trees grow against a backdrop of blueberry bushes and kiwi-fruit vines. Red and pink blooms and sunflowers pop out against the green.

“Some people lived here. Some people got beat up here. It was just kind of an eyesore. I thought we should make it into something for people in the neighbourhood,” says LaGrand, manager of the Roosevelt Hotel and garden co-ordinator.

“The thing that planted the seed was residents of the Sunrise [Hotel] were talking about growing up in the country and how there’s no green space in the Downtown Eastside.”

So LaGrand decided to create one, although one day he may have to give it up if Concord Pacific wants to develop the plot.

“It was always the vision to have a place that was growing food but was also sort of an oasis,” he says, pointing to seating areas and flowers.
“Although you can still hear Hastings, you can still see the alley, you’re also in a place that’s green. This is one thing people haven’t had. And they love that this is here. If you’re standing in here, they’ll yell, ‘Good job!’ I think it gives people hope. It’s something positive.”

During the growing season, the garden gates are open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The plot is tended by volunteers from singleroom-occupancy hotels, the Salvation Army and clients in the OnSite detox program.
James Oickle was among those attracted to the garden and it’s helped change his life.

“I was wandering around the streets homeless and wanted something to do to kill time,” he recalls, eating a fresh tomato. “I didn’t think I had a healing process I needed, but it did become that,” says Oickle, who had a large garden in Fredericton before ending up broke here.
He’s now back on his feet with a place to stay and work to do.
PHS partnered with the Environmental Youth Alliance’s Vancouver Community Agriculture Network, which provided seeds, soil and expertise. Simon Fraser University students built a compost bin and some other students are working on a new shed.

See complete article in the Province here.

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.

The urban agriculture exhibit will be going on the road due to popular demand. Locations for showings include Royal Agricultural Winter Fair (Toronto) November 6, 2009, The New School (New York City) Fall 2010, and possible venues in Montreal, Washington, London, the Hague and Doha (Qatar).

See the 11 page Travelling Exhibition general overview here.

See City Farmer’s display board, number 41, here.

See the Carrot City website here.

From City Farmer’s board at Carrot City.