Category — Entrepreneurs

Urban Adamah fellows. From left: Robin, Aliza, Talia and Eric. Photo by Adam Berman.

We produced more than 3,000 pounds of produce and distributed it through our free farm stand, food banks, and community groups.

By Sarah Henry
Grist
Feb 2, 2012

Excerpt:

Urban Adamah, a one-acre urban farm on a vacant lot in a gritty stretch of Berkeley, has transformed an area better known for liquor stores and light industry into a thriving community gathering space and food hub.

Adam Berman founded the farm in the summer of 2010 with just such lofty goals. Urban Adamah (for the Hebrew word for “earth”) offers a fellowship program for young adults, dubbed The Jewish Sustainability Corps, that integrates organic farming, social justice outreach, leadership training, environmental education, and progressive Jewish spiritual practice. There’s yoga, meditation, and singing too.

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See Curtis and Luke discuss a potential piece of property for an urban farming business.

Curtis Stone wants to teach you how he makes $60,000/year in sales growing food on 3/4 of an acre.

Mission: To create a movement of urban farmers to build communities, resilient local food systems, and income to support their families.

Your Guides: Curtis Stone, owner and operator or Green City Acres, a 3/4 acre pedal-powered urban farm in Kelowna, BC ($60,000 sales in his second season) and Luke Miller Callahan, founder of GroAction, a hub for social entrepreneurs.

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Husher’s T-shirts.

Help publish the Urban Farm Manifesto

By Justin Husher
On Rockethub

The Urban Farm Manifesto is a 20-page comic-zine with essay elements that chronicles some of my surreal experiences during the last three years of growing in the wilds of western Cleveland; and then combines it with socio-cultural commentary on food sovereignty versus the corporate food system, the politics of local food, and other seemingly disparate topics like “the Small-Mart Revolution” and permits. It’s about the modern aesthetics of urban farming. I liken it to the Four Elements of Hip Hop.

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Richmond Heights, Ohio, resident Martinez Garcias has completed four comic books in his “Brink City: Green in the Ghetto” series and will soon begin work on the fifth instalment in the series. Photo by Andy Attina.

Brink City will be a 12-part comic book series when it’s completed.

By Andy Attina
Cleveland.com
January 27, 2012,

Excerpt:

He wrote the first of four comic books, titled “Brink City: Green in the Ghetto.” Brink is used as a generic name for similar cities all around the country.

The comics have dealt mostly with urban farming, as Rid-All runs greenhouses in Cleveland. They were geared toward inner-city youths, but Garcias wanted them to be more versatile and appeal to kids in the suburbs, as well.

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Smart Gardener Fund Raising from Smart Gardener on Vimeo.

Using technology in smart ways, we make this easier, and much more personalized, based on your location, household size, tastes, and growing conditions.

Smart Gardener is built with proprietary IP and delivers consumers highly personalized tools and garden plans based on key inputs including geo-location and household size. Our service is also differentiated by a complex weather mapping algorithm, an extremely rich database of over 500 plants, as well as ecommerce to purchase the best organic seeds available online.

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Michael Abelman from GroAction on Vimeo.

Luke Miller Callahan interviews Michael Abelman, a Leader in Sustainable Development

By Luke Miller Callahan
GroAction Interviews
01/18/2012

Synopsis

How do we catalyze a movement of urban farmers throughout the country throughout the developed world? Renowned speaker, activist, and urban farmer, Michael Abelman sits down with me to discuss the reasoning and strategy behind encouraging millions of people to become small plot farmers.

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Dafforn tending to her garden; she has created her own unique watering system reusing water bottles. Photo by Liz Nicol.

Fast Dinners From The Slow Cooker

By Cassie Johnston
Edible Indy
Winter 2011

Excerpt:

The Crock-Pot is often forgotten in the graveyard of unused kitchen appliances. But Cara Dafforn is a champion of the slow-and-steady style of cooking, so much so that she’s built her business on it.

For her company, called U-Relish Farm, Dafforn makes carefully prepackaged nutritious dinners of beans, peas and lentils that are designed for the slow cooker. Mesquite Three-Bean Chili, Pizza Lentils and Garlic Paprika Chickpea are a few of the dozen-plus varieties in the line.

Dehydrated herbs and vegetables from her own garden go into each packet that Dafforn sells from her stall at Indianapolis City Market.

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Compassionate Use Act of 1996 allows ill Californians who obtain a physician’s approval to use marijuana for medicinal purposes.

By Bryan M. Gold
Elk Grove Citizen
January 10, 2012

Excerpts:

The commission suggested changes to the proposed ordinance include limiting the indoor growing operation to 50 square feet, forbidding cultivation in bedrooms, and requiring ventilation and filtration systems for grow rooms.

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309 E. 8th Street, Los Angeles.

An organic green restaurant that utilizes the roof to grow its own vegatables

By Paul Aryeh
309 E. 8th Street
Los Angeles California 90014

Who we are:
We are the owners of a mid-rise building in the heart of the Fashion District of downtown LA. The area is slowly transforming into a very “Green” conscious location. Our building has about 10,000 sq ft of roof top space perfect for an organic farm, and there will be about 1900 sq ft of retail space on the ground floor available soon for a restaurant. This space is terrific for a restaurant, and has the necessary infrastructure to support a kitchen. Our desire is to find the perfect operator that can grow their own vegetables and use the ground floor to prepare, cook and serve all organic products.

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Marc Schutzbank makes produce deliveries for the Orchard Garden at the University of British Columbia.

The biggest barrier to farming in the city is the cost of land, which may preclude urban farming ever becoming competitive as a career choice.

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
January 5, 2012

Excerpt:

Urban farmers in Vancouver are at that awkward in-between stage: They are gaining traction with growing public interest in fresh local food and farmers markets, but not quite making a living at it.

A report based on figures from 2010 found that eight urban farms with a total of 2.3 acres under crops earned $128,580, or $13,745 per growing season for each farmer. That’s an hourly rate of $8.64, based on a work day that varies seasonally.

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In 2011, 32 Fellows from Kenya and Uganda, and 21 from the U.S. collaborated with a coalition of organizations to engage the social, cultural, political, ecological, and economic factors of urban farming

By Janeen Madan
Nourishing the Planet
Dec 29, 2011

Excerpt:

Julius is one of 53 Professional Food Fellows in Food Security – an exchange program that brings together young leaders from the U.S. (Wisconsin, Colorado, and Indiana) and Africa (Uganda and Kenya), who are working to alleviate hunger in their home communities. They are involved in a wide range of agricultural projects, including expanding extension services, improving nutrition, and raising livestock and poultry in urban areas.

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Santa Monica resident Marcy Winograd’s front-yard garden. Photo by Brandon Wise.

With the help of a Los Angeles-based company called Farmscape, approximately 10 Santa Monicans brought the farm home to their front and back yards

By Ashley Archibald
Santa Monica Daily Press
Jan 5, 2012

Excerpt:

“Our house isn’t big, but the front yard is large,” Winograd said. “It seemed like it would be a waste not to use it for food production and greening the environment.”

She requested raised beds in her front yard, which workers planted with tomatoes, dill, sage, squash and string beans, amongst others.

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“Sophisticated Farm To Table Dining In Oregon”

From their website:

With emphasis on local, organic sourcing and simple straightforward presentations, Urban Farmer redefines the modern steakhouse in Portland. The ambiance is at once a tribute to the quaintness of a restored farmhouse and the aesthetic audacity of mid-20th century modernism. The country chic décor designed by David Ashen uses organic, reclaimed and modern materials such as a twenty-foot communal table sourced from an old-growth Douglas Fir.

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Contents – Instructions, cress seeds and waterproof tray
Materials – FSC Paperboard and APET tray

Escape to your allotment without ever leaving your desk and harvest your own crop in a matter of weeks (no wellies required!). Gardening is great for the soul and tending your own tiny patch will be rewarding and therapeutic.

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Community Services Unlimited Inc. in South Central Los Angeles.

Growing Healthy

The Growing Healthy program engages youth in urban farming and food based learning as a tool to help them adopt a healthier lifestyle and develop an awareness and political consciousness to the food access and environmental justice issues impacting their communities. The program currently operates at three sites: John Muir Middle School, Normandie Avenue Elementary School, and the Expo Center. We work youth and adults of all ages, from pre-school to seniors. We offer nutrition and gardening education and engage the youth in community research and projects aimed at understanding the food environment and improving access to healthy local food at their schools and in their community.

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Prospero Agricultural Swarmbots – The Future Of Farming?

By David Dorhout

Excerpt:

Today’s agricultural equipment has been designed around a person sitting in a chair. It cost a lot to employ a single person so the equipment grew larger in order to maximize the productivity of that one person. However, this method has its drawbacks. Farming decisions have to be made at the field level. Nature is chaotic and dynamic. Soil nutrients and moisture change from foot to foot. Having equipment that allows a single person to plant a thousand acres in a day comes at the cost of productivity per acre as a result of treating all those acres as the same. A swarm of small robots like Prospero would have the ability to farm inch by inch,

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A farmer’s food for thought in 7 minutes – Change starts in your own backyard

By Jessica Naudziunas
KBIA
Dec 16, 2011

Excerpt:

Soetaert’s talk began with a description of himself as a college-aged young man: pretty intense and wanting to change the world. The only problem was Soetaert didn’t have the tools to make much of any change, and eventually he felt like a naive young adult blowing a lot of hot air.

Then a friend of his showed him how to grow food in a backyard setting.

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Lay Htoo and family. From New Roots for Refugees.

After two years in the program, Lay Htoo was able to save enough money selling her produce at market to capitalize her own farm.

By Jill Erickson
Development and Communications Director for Cultivate Kansas City
Mother Earth News via Urban Grown Newsletter/Cultivate Kansas City
12/20/2011

Excerpt:

Three years ago, Lay Htoo (pronounced, TOO) took a courageous step. Born in Klay Thoo, a village in the jungles of Burma, she resettled in the United States. So while buying a home is an exciting and anxious time for anyone, it wasn’t something she had even imagined possible.

“Because the Burmese military came to our village to kill us, my family had to flee to Thailand,” Lay Htoo is quoted on the New Roots for Refugees blog, “we crossed the border and lived in the Tham Him refugee camp…for 10 years.”

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Creating a place where people can get fresh – really fresh – produce

By Jessica Clark
First Coast News
Nov 29, 2011

Excerpt:

“Really the goal was to create more of an attraction to the market,” Alexon explained.

So after a lot of research he built a one-acre hydroponic u-pick farm that grows about four acres of fruit, vegetables and herbs.

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The Plan

40′x8′ Recycled Shipping Container:
Fabrication of the unit begins by insulating the interior walls with high R-value to eliminate unwanted air flow and heat loss.
Constructing an entrance will include an environmental barrier, much like a spaceship, to keep the climate in the growing area at a constant temperature. The top of the container will be equipped with photovoltaic cells, additional panels can be added to the side of each unit to reach desired power requirements or to compensate for the location of the unit.

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