Category — China

Image by Guillermo Munro, Visual Graphics Editor at China Daily

“Moving to the cities, we are told not to grow vegetables, not to raise chickens in the community, not to leave things in the corridors, and so on and so forth because these habits may annoy our neighbors. But it’s not that easy to change.”

By Liu Yujie
China Daily
2011-12-18

Excerpt:

Zhang Guichun, a 55-year-old Beijinger, has astonished the local community with his organic “hanging garden” on the roof of his traditional courtyard home north of Tian Tan, or the Temple of Heaven in southern Beijing.

“Even if we don’t have enough land in the city, agriculture can go vertical, up to roof and balcony,” Zhang notes.

Zhang, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, began creating his “hanging garden” five years ago, and now it is home to some 30 kinds of vegetables and fruit, including tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet bell peppers, melons and watermelons – all enough to feed his family.

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http://www.chinacityfarmer.com/

www.ChinaCityFarmer.com

Shelley Xu, a visitor to our Compost Garden in Vancouver, looked at some Chinese language websites for information on urban agriculture.

I did some searching on the web and found a Chinese site named “CityFarmer” and some other sources, most of which have information for the public at a grassroots level. Since there’s limited residential space in urban areas, most gardeners utilize their balcony spaces. Community gardens can also be found, and there are some privately owned farms open to the public for recreational/educational visits.

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See the video here.

Gardens of Beijing – Video

By DJ Clark
China Daily
Part of a series on the Food Crisis in Asia
July 20, 2011
(Very interesting! Must see. Mike)

About three years ago Tom Huang found himself in increasing pain from a bad stomach and went to the hospital for a diagnosis. The doctors told him it was the food he was eating that caused the problem and he needed to change to a healthier diet. Tom could not afford the expensive organic food offered in the Beijing supermarkets so he joined the increasing army of urban farmers tending small plots of land on the outskirts of the city.

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We now have about 100 plots of land rented out.

NTD Television
2011-07-13 09:03

Residents in Beijing pluck their own vegetables straight from the soil in urban farm plots that have sprung up on the outskirts of the city.

A recent string of food safety scandals have prompted some health-conscious citizens to boycott the markets and grow their own produce by renting their own plots on a local farm.

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Yan Zong Wang on his allotment on the outskirts of Beijing. Photo by Adam Dean.

China goes organic after years of ‘glow in the dark pork’ and ‘exploding watermelons’

After years of nerve-racking food scares from “melamine milk” to “glow-in-the-dark” pork and “exploding watermelons” urban China is starting to embrace the shoots of a new, green revolution and is going organic.

By Peter Foster
The Telegraph
29 May 2011

Excerpts:

From a runner-bean spotted spiralling along the balcony balustrade of a Beijing apartment, to long waiting-lists for allotments, a plethora of gardening websites and a mushrooming of organic farms and shops, Chinese families are increasingly looking to “grow their own”.

In recent years China has been hit by a number of food scandals and fears about safety have lingered. In 2008, 300,000 babies became seriously ill and six babies died after being given formula contaminated with the industrial chemical melamine.

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Photo by Sue Anne.

Vegetables from a tiny space of land on what had been rubble

By Sue Anne
Shanghain Street Stories
Nov 22, 2010

Excerpt:

I recently returned to Dongjiadu (upon learning that westward demolition has resumed with the intention to completely flatten the north part of Old Town (which also hangs blocks away from the Huangpu River by early next year.

In the sole structure that has been spared for refurbishment – the Shangchuan Huiguan or Merchant Shipping Hall – lives a family from Anhui who are responsible for organizing the razing. Nearby, another crumbling structure housed workers from Chongqing, also involved in scrapping and demolition.

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Peng Qiugen’s neighbors harvest rice on his 120-square-metre roof paddy Photo: Feature China/Barcroft Media.

A Chinese man has grown rice on the roof of his house because his city lacked the open space he needed

By Charlotte Bailey
The Telegraph
30 Oct 2008

Excerpt:

Peng Qiugen decided to plant rice on the roof of his four storey house in Shaoxing in east China’s Zhejiang province as a novel way to farm in the overcrowded city.

Mr Qiugen planted the rice back in May on his 120-square-metre roof paddy and his crop is now ready to be harvested.

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A pumpkin grown by a family in Nanluoguxiang. Photo: Courtesy of the Nanluoguxiang community.

“Things that you grow yourself are extra tasty.”

By Li Shuang and Chen Jing
Global Times
September 14 2010

Excerpt:

The Beijing Agricultural Bureau is trying to encourage the cultivation of mini-farms on balconies and in yards by offering residents free seeds and farming equipment. Growing one’s own greens can help to reduce carbon emissions, clean the air and release stress.

Starting this Saturday, Beijingers can go to their residence committees to receive a limited number of seeds and fertilizer offered by the bureau.

The information hotline 12316, which used to only serve Beijing’s rural population, is now prepared to field any questions posed by urban farmers.

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At work in an Alleycat Acres garden. Photo by Alleycat Acres.

Farming in the City: Joys of Growing Food

by Ann Dornfeld
This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report
July 5, 2010

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts approximately 1,500 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of 125 million people.

The short article is about Seattle’s Alleycat Acres. Sean Conroe and Amber Banks are interviewed. Following the story, 42 people from around the world used their limited English to comment on the story and speak about urban agriculture.

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An urban community garden in central Vancouver, Canada. This project shows that food can be grown in densely populated areas. Photo by Michael Levenston

By Thair Shaikh
CNN
April 8, 2010

Excerpts:

London, England (CNN) — As the world’s urban population continues to grow at a rapid rate, communities around the world are increasingly turning to “city agriculture” to produce cheap, locally grown fruit and vegetables.

Among skyscrapers and housing estates, previously vacant lots are being used to produce millions of tons of organically grown food that experts say are “greener” and cheaper than commercially grown produce.

But while many countries are in the early stages of their urban agriculture development, China, Japan and Cuba have had successful city farms for decades.

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Photo by Dezeen.

Landgrab City

By Joseph Grima, Jeffrey Johnson, José Esparza
December 2009 – January 2010
2009 Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism

From the China-lab site:

Landgrab City is an installation commissioned by the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture/Urbanism and located on Shenzhenwan Avenue (Nanshan), a busy shopping district in the city of Shenzhen. Conceived as an experimental investigation into the full extent of Shenzhen’s spatial footprint, the installation is comprised of two parts: an aerial photograph of one of the city’s densest areas, home to approximately 4.5m people, and a plot of cultivated land divided into small lots. This land is a representation, at the same scale as the city itself, of the amount of territory necessary to provide the food consumed by the inhabitants of the portion of city sampled in the map, projected to 2027 (the year China is expected to overtake the US as the world’s leading economy). Each lot represents the extent of a single food group’s footprint: vegetables, cereals, fruit, pasture (for livestock), and so on.

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2007 – Winner of the 2nd International Competition for Sustainable Housing by Knafo Klimor Architects and Town Planners, Israel

Excerpts from Living Steels’ competition design website.

Agro-housing, the winning design for construction in China, blends urban and rural living by creating vertical greenhouse space within high-rise apartments. Designed by Knafo Klimor Architects, the Agro-housing concept allows tenants to produce their own food, reducing commuting needs and providing a green neighbourhood.

Knafo Klimor Architects developed this concept with concern for predictions that 50% of China’s one billion people will live in its cities, a trend mirrored in many developing countries in the world. The architects observe that massive urbanisation displaces communities, dissipating existing traditions and heritage, as well as placing a strain on energy resources and infrastructure.

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An estimated 15 million urban white-collars spend more than five hours a day on Happy Farm, according to data from the game’s creator.

China’s growing addiction: online farming games

Elliott Ng
Venture Beat
October 29, 2009

A new agrarian revolution has occurred in China, but only in the virtual worlds of social games. Social farm games now dominate all major Chinese social networking sites — RenRen (formerly Xiaonei), Kaixin001, 51.com, and QQ’s QZone. The May launch and 2H 2009 adoption of QQ Farm — a version of China’s already popular Happy Farm game built to run on Tencent’s estimated 228 million active-user QZone platform — may very well have transformed China into the leading country of online farmers.

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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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Jin Meisheng
1959, February
The vegetables are green, the cucumbers plumb, the yield is abundant
Cailü guafei chanliang duo

Great Leap Forward (1956-1960)

In the three years of crop failures and famine following the Great Leap Forward, this poster with its abundant food is reprinted over and over again. The total number of copies runs to over a million.
From Chinese Posters Net.

The RUAF Foundation, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Development Research Centre, Urban Harvest (CGIAR), the Chinese Urban Agriculture Association and the Nanjing Agriculture and Forestry Bureau are organizing a networking event “Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture for Resilient Cities (Green, Productive and Socially Inclusive)” to take place on Wednesday, November 5th, 14.00-16.00 hours, in the Auditorium, at the World Urban Forum in Nanjing, China. There will also be a booth at the Exhibition and a tour to some urban and peri-urban agricultural sites.

See program flyer here.

“Farm plots amidst apartment blocks in Chaozhou. A beautiful addition to an otherwise drab urban scene.” Photo from Flickr by JesseWarren.

Chaozhou, literally “Tide Prefecture”; (usually spelled Chiu Chow in the US and Hong Kong), also widely known by its Postal map spelling Teochew, is a prefecture-level city in eastern Guangdong province, People’s Republic of China.

Link to larger photo.>