Category — Entrepreneurs

Window Farming founder describes her project

Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles — researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.

Craigslist Los Angeles

2011-12-08
Craigslist
Reply to: kivicasting@gmail.com

Brownstone Entertainment is currently seeking an URBAN FARMING EXPERT for a new documentary-style project.

We’re looking for someone who knows how to plant and care for various fruit and vegetable plants, as well as being able to handle and care for small farm animals including chickens and pygmy goats. Also, a background in simple construction (i.e. chicken coops, planters) would be ideal.

Ideally, our urban farming expert will have a ranch-handy vibe to him. Someone with a sense of authority, but can still be a guy’s guy who kicks back and enjoys a beer after a hard day of urban gardening.

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Majora Carter talks to these young farmers about what the experience has taught them about a hard day’s work — and about eating hard-earned produce. By Thepromisedland 2004.

A Food project in Manhattan, NY by Juliette LaMontagne

BREAKER is a 12-week program that mobilizes interdisciplinary teams of young, creative collaborators to design solutions to big challenges – in this case, Urban Micro Agriculture. Community gardens, local organic farming, and rooftop farms are a more prevalent part of our lives as we become more conscious of the food industry’s impact on our health, the economy, and the environment. So far, these gardens and farms have been wonderful sources for connecting people to food and to each other, but their impact remains small-scale, benefiting those who can afford to pay a premium for fresh food.

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Bountiful Backyards is an edible landscaping cooperative

Excerpt from Kickstarters

Bountiful Backyards is an edible landscaping cooperative based in Durham, North Carolina. In the last 5 years we’ve planted more than 1,500 fruit trees and berry bushes, thousands of useful plants, and dozens of organic vegetable gardens. We work throughout the Triangle with people at their homes, schools, community centers, and parks. Our mission is to help people to grow more of their own food where they live, work, and play.

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Vegetable Vancouver 2010: An Urban Farming Census. See the two page flyer PDF here. (1.7 MB)

An Urban Farming Census – Project Description

By Marc Schutzbank, MSc. Candidate
University of British Columbia
November, 2010
Presented at the Vancouver Urban Farming Forum

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index is at the highest level ever recorded. Wheat crops have failed in Russia and in China due to severe heat and draught. International food access issues are stirring local public and private responses, one of which is urban farming. To ascertain the community impacts of urban farming, I propose the development of an urban farming census to measure the economic, social and environmental outcomes of urban farming.

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He informed the crowd that he added another $5,000 into the business to top the season at over $65,000 in sales

By Javan
Permaculture BC
2011-11-24

Excerpt:

Victoria, BC. – Over 80 people came out to listen and ask questions of Curtis Stone, a Kelowna urban SPIN farming.

Curtis has been a practicing SPIN farmer now for over two seasons. In his first season a $8,000 investment yielded $20,000 in profit. This year he informed the crowd that he added another $5,000 into the business to top the season at over $65,000 in sales.

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Suburban goats? This Hadley, NY home for sale comes with a goat pen and fenced area.

Zillow Blog – Little Farm in the Big City

By Erika Riggs
Zillow Blog
November 21, 2011

Excerpt:

With a local food movement, a downsized economy and more people eager to find practical and hands-on methods of satisfying some basic needs, it could mean finding yourself living amongst chickens, goats, rows of lettuce or a forest of towering tomato vines.

Welcome to the new era of urban farming.

Residents within the limits of many U.S. cities are learning that some neighbors want to make more full use of their property. And that has put some pressure on municipalities to revisit local laws that regulate the occupancy and management of animals and crops.

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Villarreal Family Farm plans to produce enough food to support a year-round CSA

Summary

Villarreal Family Farm strives to provide naturally and locally-grown produce, eggs and poultry to all members of our community by developing plans for a full-scale, commercial, urban farm, located at 4539 Delmar Blvd. to serve as a hub for urban food production, distribution, sustainable living and education. This urban farm will be the first urban agricultural venture of this type in the city of St. Louis. Villarreal Family Farm seeks to bring naturally-grown food closer to the consumer, while educating the community on the health and environmental benefits of naturally-grown foods, the economic and environmental benefits of locally grown food as well as building personal agricultural and job skills.

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Forward by Boris Johnson, Mayor of London

By Olivia Varley-Winter
City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development
Capital Growth
Oct 2011 – 59 pages

Excerpt from Executive Summary:

This report aims to:

show that many community food-growing groups and other urban agriculture projects provide community-based learning and training opportunities, and are an effective way to develop employability for people in general,

outline how such projects can help people who face difficulties in finding and keeping work in particular, and

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Eddie Miller is the founder of Heritage Lawn Mowing, a company that rents out sheep as a landscaping aid. Pictured, Mr. Miller and two of his Jacob sheep, Panda and Nerd, walk to their truck after a job mowing a lawn. Photo by Randy Harris.

“Building a new America will require an understanding of farming,”

By Kevin Roose
New York Times
November 2, 2011
Oberlin, Ohio

Excerpt:

In this verdant lawn-filled college town, most people keep their lawn mowers tuned up by oiling the motor and sharpening the blades. Eddie Miller keeps his in shape with salt licks and shearing scissors.

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Agrowculture wants to foster the urban agriculture movement by empowering the 21st century farmer to leverage social networking sites

New York, NY, November 1, 2011 – agrowculture, New York City’s newest food-tech startup, is trying to alter the way people grow, buy and sell their food. While the company has only just launched in alpha, it aims to help neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs develop sustainable, fresh local food networks.

In the advent of New York City Council’s Food Works legislations (Local Laws 50, 51, 52 and 49), agrowculture hopes to increase local food sourcing and stimulate local commerce through online markets and local sales networks. Backyard farmers, community gardeners, rooftop beekeepers, mycologist[s] and canners can create a Farmer Profile on agrowculture.org and have product listings.

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Green City Growers’ CEO Mary Donnell.

New Urban Farm Joins Cleveland’s Central Neighborhood

By Anne Glausser
Ideastream
Oct 17, 2011

Excerpt:

DONNELL: We’re looking at 10 acres of ground that has been assembled in the heart of Cleveland, in the Central neighborhood, where we’ll be building out a 3.25-acre greenhouse for year-round food production of leafy greens and herbs.

Right now they’re clearing and leveling the land–you can hear the backhoes in the distance. They’re prepping to pour the foundation for the greenhouse which the for-profit company is paying for through loans.

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(Excellent video. Mike)

Calls on Government to put food growing on the curriculum and make land available for allotments

Excerpt:

In his acceptance speech Kelly told the story of how an incident in a supermarket 5 years ago opened his mind to the problems in the food chain – discovering that the garlic he was about to toss in to his trolley was imported from China. “In Ireland we produce enough food each year to feed 34 million people and yet we still import €5 billion worth of food each year,” he said. “It just doesn’t make any sense, and it has a direct impact on people’s health, communities, Irish jobs and the environment.”

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Vegetable Garden. For eight months of each year, the gardens provide the kitchen at Le Manoir with over 70 types of herb, further reinforcing Chef Raymond’s belief in seasonal, sustainable, organic produce.

“Vegetable and herb gardens provide the kitchen with ultra-fresh, and often exotic, produce that helps keep the kitchens at the cutting edge of taste”

Vegetable Garden

The vegetable garden supplements herbs and vegetables for the restaurant during the late spring, summer and autumn months. Of the different varieties of vegetables grown, most are picked at their young and tender stage.

Different varieties and types of European and Oriental leaf crops are grown to add variety to our salads. As well as the main season’s vegetables grown in the extensive main potager, tender crops such as aubergines and peppers succeed early and late salads are grown in cloche tunnels.

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Your beer can’t get any more local than this – “100 Mile Ale”

By Shelley White
Globe and Mail
Oct. 17, 2011

Excerpt:

Mr. Clark and his Bellwoods Brewery team are just finishing up their first city hops harvest. The hops flowers will be dried, vacuum-packed and frozen this fall for future use (Mr. Clark and Mr. Pestl are currently setting up the brewery in a downtown former auto shop).

Although the majority of the brewery’s output in the coming year will be made from standard farm-grown hops, Mr. Clark and Mr. Pestl plan to utilize the city hops they grew this summer for specialty casks, and have found more locations (including Toronto’s Brickworks) in order to expand the project next summer. They even have ambitions to create a “100 Mile Ale,” in which all the beer’s ingredients are grown within a 100-mile radius.

“Even if the city hops program isn’t a colossal money-maker, there’s a tangible benefit to the greening of space and having it produce something that connects people to that space,” says Mr. Clark.

Read the complete article here.

Michelle Marcus proudly displays the seedlings for her Boulevard Veg! project. Photo by Vincent L. Chan.

Vancouver Foundation’s “Green Generation” Awards kick-start youth-run environmental projects

Wendy Szeto was a bit skeptical about the idea of planter boxes popping up on her boulevard in Vancouver’s leafy Dunbar neighbourhood.

“At first, we didn’t think we would participate in the project,” she says. “But we decided to give it a try. And we are so glad!”

Szeto lives on the same block as 14-year old Michelle Marcus. Marcus is shy and soft-spoken, but she’s also a keen environmentalist.

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FoodPool is working to solve the “last mile problem.”

Excerpt:

Our backyards are home to a wealth of gardens and fruit trees, many of which bear more produce than the gardener can consume, or more at one time than is desired. Often people end up with piles of unwanted zucchini, plums falling off trees to rot on the ground, peas that grow old and hard before they can be picked and shelled, and other garden produce that goes to waste.

At FoodPool, we see the “problem” of excess garden abundance as an opportunity! It is an opportunity to help provide those in need with fresh, ripe, homegrown produce. The only obstacle lies in linking growers with their hungry neighbors. Our answer is FoodPooling.

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Joaquin Nuño-Whelan – Green Place Detroit

Excerpt:

We recently met with Joaquin early on a Saturday morning. The sun was still low in the sky as Joaquin, a handful of people from his team at GM, and his young daughter and son harvested potatoes, melons, parsley and more from their urban garden. He explained, “We were tired of the negativity around Detroit, and what people were saying about the city and the auto industry. And over lunch and after work over some drinks, we got together with the core group of guys that I work with and said ‘Let’s do something about it, let’s set an example.’ And we started a nonprofit called Green Place Detroit.”

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A Farmscape garden installed in a client’s front yard.

“It takes courage to be a first-adopter of a new service”

By Kelly Hatton
Seedstock
October 5, 2011

Excerpt:

The 150 gardens that Los Angeles, CA-based urban farming startup, Farmscape, LLC has installed at residences, senior centers, schools and in communities since 2009 do more than provide yearlong bounty to customers – collectively, the small gardens represent a movement to bring food production back to the city.

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Partnership for Sustainable Communities

United States Environmental Protection Agency
September 2011
77 pages

The Urban Farm Business Plan Handbook provides a framework for any organization or community interested in developing an urban farm on cleaned brownfields or vacant lands, food access, or community development challenges. The handbook provides guidance on how to assemble marketing, operating, and financial strategies to communicate your urban farm project to potential partners and funders. Questionnaires related to each section as well as financial spreadsheets are also included in this toolkit.

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