Category — Education

Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Urban farming: A growing field

By V.L. Hendrickson
am New York
March 7, 2010

The Queens County Farm Museum’s history dates back to 1697; it occupies New York City’s largest remaining tract of undisturbed farmland and is the only working historical farm in the City. The farm encompasses a 47-acre parcel that is the longest continuously farmed site in New York State. The site includes historic farm buildings, a greenhouse complex, livestock, farm vehicles and implements, planting fields, an orchard and herb garden.

Early morning livestock feedings and cultivating the herb garden aren’t on the daily list of duties for most New Yorkers, but for Leah Retherford, they’re business as usual. As farm manager of Queens County Farm Museum, she oversees 47-acres.

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Urban Farming Summit: Panel Discussion

Panel: February 19, 2010, The University of Michigan – Dearborn

Ashley Atkinson, The Greening of Detroit

Oran Hesterman, Fair Food Network

Susan Schmidt, The Henry Ford

Kami Pothukuchi, SEED Wayne

Malik Yakini, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

Moderated by Bruce Pietrykowski, Professor of Economics, UM-Dearborn

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A Cabbage Patch for City Hall. Last year, Baltimore City Hall replaced its traditional flower gardens with vegetable beds to help serve a local soup kitchen. But not all went as planned. Anne Marie Chaker reports on lessons learned and plans for this year’s crop.

Attack of the Rotten Tomatoes

By Anne Marie Chaker
Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2010

Excerpt:

The city of Baltimore replaced its flower beds in front of city hall with vegetables last year. The goal, says designer Angela Treadwell-Palmer, was to show that vegetable gardens could be attractive and to grow harvests to donate to a local soup kitchen. But the local charity reported that some crops—particularly beets, kohlrabi and eggplant—weren’t appetizing to people.

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13 – 2 X100 ft rows of growing power.

By jnicholl
Center for a Livable Future
March 8, 2010

Excerpt:

This past weekend, I witnessed hundreds of volunteers working in a very tangible way to take back the food system for a community. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” This was a stride. Two high schools in Richmond, Calif in the span of one weekend built urban school farms at their respective school sites. Supported by Urban Tilth http://www.urbantilth.org, those students, teachers, parents and community volunteers laid the infrastructure and built the capacity to grow significant amounts of local produce in Richmond.

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BK Farmyards: Developing a 1-Acre Youth Farm – achieves funding goal

NEW YORK
Associated Press
February 28, 2010

NEW YORK – Students at one Brooklyn high school won’t learn about farming from textbooks in the near future. They’ll learn directly from the soil. Students at the High School for Public Service in East Flatbush plan to break ground in April on a 10,000-square-foot vegetable farm on their campus’ front lawn. The first crop of vegetables could be harvested in June.

Principal Ben Shuldiner says the goal is to teach the skills and science behind farming. Fresh produce will also be offered to the community. Senior Elliot Bowman says it’s difficult to find fresh produce in the neighborhood.

Urban farming collective BK Farmyards will design and operate the farm, which is expected to cover the school’s entire 1-acre yard in four years.

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Let’s Come Back Offline

from Learning from Farmville
by Stephanie Smith
Jan 29, 2010

Excerpt

Let’s come back offline and bring our new social networking toolkit with us. Why don’t we create an urban farm that integrates everything we’re learning about community-based sharing from both the physical and the virtual realms? This farm would be an online/offline mash-up of social and community infrastructures that could act as a model for how our 21st century ‘commons’ will work. Sounds to me like the kind of utopia Stewart Brand and “the hippies who built the internet” first imagined, and that can finally be realized today.

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Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

TED Talk
February 2010

Transcript:

Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead from the food that they eat.

My name’s Jamie Oliver. I’m 34 years old. I’m from Essex in England and for the last seven years I’ve worked fairly tirelessly to save lives in my own way. I’m not a doctor. I’m a chef; I don’t have expensive equipment or medicine. I use information, education.

I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best bits of life. We have an awful, awful reality right now. America, you’re at the top of your game. This is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.

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Farming Heritage Project -‘Digging our Roots

Wellington-clad visitors to Heeley City Farm this weekend (Sunday 21 February 2010) can muck-in to help with the final stages of a long-running archaeology project in partnership with the University of Sheffield.

University of Sheffield´s Media Centre
19 February 2010

The Iron Age Roundhouse activity day will take place from 11am to 4pm and people will be encouraged to roll-up their sleeves and use a mixture of clay and straw to help finish the walls of the farm´s constructed Iron Age Roundhouse – a very early form of housing in Britain.

The reconstruction of the Iron Age Roundhouse forms part of a partnership with the University of Sheffield´s Department of Archaeology and the University´s Archaeology Society. Academics and students have offered advice throughout the project and will be on hand to give assistance, information and work on the Roundhouse.

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Sample Indicators from the map:

Local Foods

# Farms with direct sales
% Farms with direct sales
% Farm sales $ direct to consumer
$ Direct farm sales
$ Direct farm sales per capita
# Farmers’ markets
Farmers’ markets/1,000 pop
# Vegetable acres harvested
Vegetable acres harvested/1,000 pop
Farm to school program

Excerpt from the USDA Food Blog
Feb 12, 2010

USDA’s Your Food Environment Atlas is an online mapping tool that compares the food environment of U.S. counties—the mix of factors that together influence food choices, diet quality, and general fitness among residents.  The Atlas contains 90 food environment indicators—most at the county level—allowing Atlas users to visualize and compare on a map how counties fare on each of the indicators. This new online tool is designed to stimulate research and inform policymakers as they address the nexus between diet and public health.

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Reach and teach more kids about healthy food on and off our urban farm. Urban Roots, a program of YouthLaunch

Urban Roots is looking to expand our reach beyond our farm interns to more students in the Austin. We will hire youth outreach specialists to work with Urban Roots staff to create and facilitate educational activities in schools and for after-school field trips to our farm. We will train these youth to lead interactive activities on the farm that teach students about healthy living.

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Image: Lim Rosen

Cultivating Failure

by Caitlin Flanagan
the Atlantic Magazine
Jan/Feb 2010

Excerpt:

Imagine that as a young and desperately poor Mexican man, you had made the dangerous and illegal journey to California to work in the fields with other migrants. There, you performed stoop labor, picking lettuce and bell peppers and table grapes; what made such an existence bearable was the dream of a better life. You met a woman and had a child with her, and because that child was born in the U.S., he was made a citizen of this great country. He will lead a life entirely different from yours; he will be educated. Now that child is about to begin middle school in the American city whose name is synonymous with higher learning, as it is the home of one of the greatest universities in the world: Berkeley. On the first day of sixth grade, the boy walks though the imposing double doors of his new school, stows his backpack, and then heads out to the field, where he stoops under a hot sun and begins to pick lettuce.

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A rendering of what the Edible Schoolyard at P.S. 216 is to look like.

By KIM SEVERSON
Published: January 19, 2010
New York Times

THOSE who believe trends start on the West Coast and are perfected on the East Coast might add to their argument a garden planned for an elementary school in Brooklyn.

This summer, supporters will tear up a quarter-acre of asphalt parking lot behind P.S. 216 in the Gravesend neighborhood and start building the first New York affiliate of the Edible Schoolyard program, developed by the restaurateur Alice Waters of Chez Panisse.

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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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Taiwanese WWOOFers.

Network gives urban volunteers a taste of organic-farm living

A group that goes by the acronym WWOOF connects urban volunteers interested in natural food production with organic farms in need of help. Business is booming.

Author: Dany Mitzman
Deutsche Welle
25.01.2010

Ezster Matolcsi and her huband Fabrizio Romagnoli, a couple with two small children, run an organic farm called the Azienda Agricola Angirelle. It lies in the hills outside Bologna, Italy.

The two have been hosting volunteers from the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farm, or WWOOF, for the past four years.

The WWOOF network was set up in England in 1971 by a London secretary named Sue Coppard; she wanted to create a way for city people to experience the countryside and support the organic farming movement at the same time. Volunteers – called wwoofers – offer their services in exchange for free board and lodging.

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Independence High School’s Agriculture Department

By Jane Coaston
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
01/17/2010

ST. LOUIS — Kara Dalton is attempting to control chaos. It’s Monday at the teacher’s pre-veterinary science class at Gateway Institute of Technology high school, and that means baths for the dogs, cats, bunnies, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs and one elusive ferret named Riley.

On one side of the room, three students are grooming a terrier named Shadow. In the walk-in shower room for larger animals, two students hose down a black Labrador retriever. Other students are attempting to corral and bathe a large black cat. Fluffy the bunny has his cage cleaned and his toenails trimmed.

Gateway Institute of Technology, 5101 McRee Avenue, is among a growing number of suburban and urban high schools nationwide offering agricultural and animal science classes. Such classes are also offered at Clyde C. Miller Career Academy in St. Louis and Edwardsville High School, among others in the region.

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See larger image of the plan here.

A project that will transform a vacant school building on Madison’s Southside into a state-of-the art urban agriculture and community center campus.

The exterior areas of the site will include the following components:

Community Gardens serving the local neighborhood

Education Gardens serving as an outdoor classroom for students from around Dane County

Edible Landscape including perennials such as nut and fruit trees and berries

Innovative Storm Water Management that views stormwater as a resource

Rain Gardens for infiltration of stormwater

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Started in 1979, Nottingham urban farm needs help

The Petition

Stonebridge City Farm being pressured by the city council to give up of 10% of the farms land as a condition of renewing the lease for the farm. The council wants the land to be used by the farms neighbours to park cars in front of their houses.

After a “consultation” with 31 neighbours next to the farm it is said that 15 neighbours wanted this parking scheme. Were the 10,000 visitors to the farm last year consulted? It appears not.

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Dirt! The Movie introduces viewers to dirt’s fascinating history. Four billion years of evolution have created the dirt that recycles our water, gives us food, provides us shelter, and that can be used as a source of medicine, beauty and culture.

Dirt! The Movie proves that times are changing. Brown is the new green. More than 25 renowned global visionaries in countries around the world are discovering new ways of thinking as they come together to repair this natural resource with practical, viable solutions. These participants include Paul Stamets: Mycologist; Andy Lipkis: President, Founder of TreePeople; Vandana Shiva: Physicist, Environmental Activist; Wes Jackson: President, The Land Institute; Majora Carter: Founder, Sustainable South Bronx; Alice Waters: Founder, The Edible Schoolyard; and John Todd: Biologist, Ecological Designer.

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Urban Growth Bounty 2010

“Portland residents know that growing and preserving their own food is great for our personal, environmental and community health,” says Portland Mayor Sam Adams. “The Urban Growth Bounty classes are a great value. There’s always more to learn about how to grow, preserve and eat sustainably on a budget.”

From urban chickens and beekeeping to year-round food gardening, fermentation and preservation, City of Portland’s Urban Growth Bounty triples 2010 class offerings.

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Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl’s Interview with Urban Ag High School Student, Ana Araujo

Center for Livable Future
Dec 18, 2009

Excerpt:

In October 2009, Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl sat down with Ana Araujo to discuss the Urban Agriculture and Food Systems class she participated in at Richmond High School in 2008/2009. The class was a pilot program, which gave the students graduation credit and was centered around the creation of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and direct sale of produce from a middle school farm and the school garden at Richmond High. 10 families received a bi-weekly box of produce for $5, which was planted, tended and grown completely by Richmond High students.

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