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.

Berman, who directed a Jewish retreat center where he founded a similar fellowship in Connecticut before relocating to Berkeley, got a lucky break when landowner Wareham Development agreed to host the farm rent-free for two years. Hence, the portable feel to the project: The farm has dozens of raised, movable produce pallets, greenhouses, a cob oven, chicken coops on wheels, and large tents that serve as classrooms.

Read the complete article here.

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.

The details of the course:

This course is laid out for you to go through all the steps of creating a successful urban farm even if you’ve never grown a vegetable before.

Tasks – Each week we will give you tasks to complete for your urban farm.

Video Lesson – After you recieve the task, you’ll be sent a video where Curtis and Luke will go over Luke’s progress for that task to give you tips and clues of what you may run into and how to get through it

Submit your progress – After you have completed your task you will submit your progress to be reviewed by Curtis, Luke, and your peers. With the submissions, Curtis and Luke will review a sample of them in the weekly video lesson, talking about the good points and what can be improved.

Topics Covered: Market research, site selection, site negotiation, crop selection, bed layout, tools, planting, weeding, watering timers, harvesting, market prep & storage, restaurant, CSA, and much more!

Take the course here.

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.

Although Cleveland is my personal reference, the subject materials in the Manifesto are devoid of geographic area (with perhaps the exception of land prices in the Rust Belt as they pertain to the one single “budget” page of the Manifesto). This 1st edition will be hand numbered and limited to 500 copies.

Please note, the Urban Farm Manifesto is not a “how to” guide. Furthermore, the Manifesto does not promote socialism, communism, or fascism, and is very pro-small business instead.

Help raise funds here.

Visit Justin’s blog here.

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.

Brink City: Green in the Ghetto (Cleveland in disguise) is a city on the brink of destruction if conditions don’t improve. Luckily, a shape-shifting alien has arrived to help local scientists, kids and community groups and others working on the problem. A 12-episode run is planned.

“I wrote about issues such as the agricultural green movement, anger, unity and life problems humans have to deal with,” he said.

Last summer, Rid-All owner Damien Forshe suggested the books could be made into a play. Forshe sent copies of the comic books to a playwright in Los Angeles, who came out to Cleveland to meet with both men.

Read the complete article here.

Buy the comics here.

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.

Kristee Rosendahl, Founder, CEO and Product Designer

In 2006, Kristee moved to a 300 acre property in Sonoma County to enable her to pursue a more “hands on” lifestyle of sustainable food gardening, reviving an old orchard for hard cider and beekeeping. Her endeavors, Big Dream Ranch LLC, now provide fresh vegetables to local restaurants and honey to retail stores.

All this while trying to run a consulting business meant she wanted to both enjoy her time outdoors while being efficient and successful with the results.

Frustrated every weekend about what to do in the garden, she resorted to reading hundreds of gardening books, designing spreadsheets, and spending hours online. Further frustrated with those results, she began building the first prototype in 2006 of what would become Smart Gardener today. While refining it, she spent time with lots of gardeners and wanna be gardeners who confirmed to her that there was an eager market out there wanting to be successful at growing tasty healthy food.

See funding drive here.

See SmartGardener here.

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.

Michael Ableman is a farmer, author, and photographer and a recognized practitioner of sustainable agriculture and proponent of regional food systems. He has written several books and numerous essays and articles, and lectures extensively on food, culture, and sustainability worldwide. Michael is currently farming at the Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, home of The Center for Arts, Ecology & Agriculture.

See Luke’s website and many other interviews here.

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.

Other ingredients are regionally sourced. Each $6 mix contains three servings.

She has nicknamed the mixes “meals in a minute” because they are as easy to make as adding water or broth to the cooker and pressing the “on” button in the morning.

Read the complete article here.

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.

Cultivation also cannot occur within 1,000 feet of a school, day care center, or public park. That distance and those facilities are similar to the city’s sex offender ordinance. Also, a qualified patient or the primary caregiver must live on site.

Read the complete article here.

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.

Really the restaurant should be the leader to the surrounding communities of the power and possibility of providing sustainability in an urban environment. If we can demonstrate this concept, it is my feeling that we can create a breakthrough to a whole new way of growing and feeding people.

The Residential Area:
There are over 425 condominiums/apartments next door to us, and there is definitely a need to put a restaurant/farm like this in our area. All the residence and businesses around us are very trendy, young and open minded. Within a 7-10 block area, the demographics of condominiums and apartments that are there is extraordinarily high and is growing at a rapid rate.

The heart of the Fashion District:
Within a 2 block radius, there is a high density Fashion District and their showrooms located in the California Mart, New Mart, Cooper Building, Liberty Building and Geary Building all within a 1-2 blocks of our location. Gallery row located between Main & Spring street from 2nd to 9th street, is within 1-2 blocks. The Flower Mart which wholesales to the industry and retail foot traffic is 1/2 block away. Retail foot traffic of Maple Street is also 1 block distance. and ample parking for customers is located on 3 major lots next to our building.

The Retail Food Area:
The area is growing with plenty of Starbucks, Macdonalds, smaller restaurants, and fast food joints, and chain grocery stores, but no self sustained-organically grown farms and restaurants. I feel they will come soon……..very soon. There in lies the business and community supported opportunity I am looking for. Since all it needs is a lot of experience, hard work and I think this concept will grow very quickly.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my vision, and helping to create a significant change to the overall wellbeing of our community.
Regards

Contact Paul here: paul.aryeh@gmail.com

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.

“You have to bear in mind that these are new businesses, most less than three years old, so the farmers are still learning how to be productive and how to be a business,” said the report’s author Marc Schutzbank, a master of science candidate at the University of British Columbia.

Urban farms in Vancouver are a mixed bag of small-space plots on agricultural land, donated front yard space, land leased cheaply from municipalities and donated land farmed by non-profit groups. Only one property was owned outright by the farmer.

Read the complete article here.

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.

The program is supported by Bold Leaders—a Denver-based non-profit that provides training services for young leaders around the world—in partnership with Growing Power, Mazingira Institute, and Environmental Alert. It aims to foster collaboration among farmers, activists, and educators, working in the field of urban agriculture and encourages them to share ideas of what’s working on the ground.

Read the complete article here.

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.

They come by once a week to tend the garden and put a basket of homegrown vegetables at the front door.

Although Winograd has long been a patron of the local Farmers Markets’, bringing the production home was a new experience for her.

Read the complete article here.

“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.

Our menus reflect an emphasis on Northwest, sustainable ingredients and simple, straightforward preparations. We offer a range of beef options including grass-fed Oregon beef, pasture-raised, grain-finished beef, as well as corn-fed beef. Our beverage program extends the theme of local and sustainable with a 350-bottle wine list, beer selections from the Portland city limits and cocktails made with Oregon spirits. Focusing on sustainable practices, Urban Farmer creates a connection between the diner and our local farmers, ranchers, distillers and winemakers.

Visit their website here.

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.

Our allotment pop up PostCarden will brighten any desktop, windowsill or sideboard. It is enjoyable for all ages all year round. Once opened and unfolded into its garden plot, simply sow the enclosed seeds and add water. In a few days your card will start to grow and will keep for 2 – 3 weeks.

See it here.

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.

From The Ground Up!

The From the Ground UP! Apprenticeship program offers at-risk youth training and mentorship in farming, gardening and entrepreneurial skills and leadership development. Apprentices assist with maintaining CSU’s five mini-urban farm sites learning how to harvest, dry, package and market herbs grown at our sites, run a community farm stand where produced from the mini-farm’s and local farmers is sold and in the future will help plan for and operate a for-profit business that distributes produce from our mini-farms sites to area restaurants and markets. Along with farming and marketing skills apprentices learn leadership skills while training other youth and adults through the Growing Healthy program, where they assist staff and pass on what they have learned to others.

Visit their website here.

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,

examining the soil before planting each seed and choosing the best variety for that spot. This would maximizing the productivity of each acre, allow less land to be converted to farm land, feed more people, and provide a higher standard of living for those people because they would spend less of their money on food.?

Prospero is the working prototype of an Autonomous Micro Planter (AMP) that uses a combination of swarm and game theory and is the first of four steps. It is meant to be deployed as a group or “swarm”. The other three steps involve autonomous robots that tend the crops, harvest them, and finally one robot that can plant, tend, and harvest–autonomously transitioning from one phase to another.

See the inventor’s website here.

This is a short video that lays out the new concept of swarm farming and demonstrates the first phase with Prospero, the robot farmer. For more information about Prospero and swarm robotics in farming visit www.DorhoutRD.com or see the featured article about Prospero in the 2012 January/February issue of ROBOT Magazine.

See more videos here.

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.

Three years later he’s the co-founder and director of the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture. The organization has taken off in Columbia — establishing a working farm, selling at the local farmers markets and providing educational workshops on how to grow your own food.

So what did he manage to say about local, urban farming in just seven minutes?

Read the complete article here.

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.”

Lay Htoo is one of 18 farmers enrolled in the Farm Business Development Program at Cultivate Kansas City. She is one of 16 refugees in Catholic Charities’ New Roots for Refugees program.

Read the complete article here.

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.

The plants are grown in small pots that are stacked on top of one another, and that means there’s more to harvest than if the plants were grown in the ground.

“It’s all vertical. It’s a spin environment where people can pick easily,” Alexon said, spinning a post full of potted strawberry plants.

And in those vertical buckets, there’s more than just big red strawberries.

Read the complete article here.

Also see “Vertical Food Gardens in the Urban Core” here.

The Farm here.

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.

Air ventilation and an air conditioning system will be integrated into the back wall of the container, adding a minor addition to the length of the unit. Outfitting the unit with an electrical panel and standard outlets will allow further equipment to be used for different stages throughout the harvest cycle.

Interior Growing system:
Our first unit will be able to produce lettuce and herb varieties. We will be using a modified design of a multi-channel NFT system. Our system adds a filtration component to the reservoir to extend the water that each harvest requires. LED Grow lights will provide plants with the right color light that is essential for plant growth. Using less power than other grow lights, the LED lights are also more efficient by not adding unnecessary heat to the plant and to the climate.

Environmental Controllers:
Our system includes monitoring equipment to allow the most novice gardener to manage a full harvest. By notifying the grower of what the system needs, each unit can be configured to keep you on point to reach your desired harvest. The use of beneficial bugs like ladybugs can make maintaining a pesticide and herbicide free climate an easy task.

See more here.