Category — Entrepreneurs

“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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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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