Category — europe

General map of the project consortium. Suggested test site cities are marked red. (Map by Ralf Wieland, Geography Department, Ruhr-University Bochum, 2012)

The plan is to conduct small crop-growing experiments, to interview growers, sellers and government officials as well as to teach local farmers about new techniques they can adopt

By Olivia Solon
Wired UK
May 8, 2013

Excerpt:

“For a long time, scientists were so concerned with the hinterland, thereby neglecting the issue of urban food production — which is efficient, but still offers far greater possibilities for increased yields. We must tap this potential too, if we are to keep abreast of population increases”, explains Bürkert. Africa already has a billion people living in it, and is predicted to almost double by 2050.

The German team are partnering with 14 African institutes to develop ways to increase food production in urban areas and understand how this sort of farming can help generate economic growth. Initial research will take place in Burkina Faso and Ghana, before extending to other West African cities including Camaroon, Mali and Nigeria.

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At the former Chocolate factory in Dublin city

By gabig58
ulcommunityroofgarden
April 28, 2013

Excerpt:

Started last year as a FundIt project, the Dublin Urban Farm occupies 400sqm’s of rooftop space at the former Chocolate factory in Dublin city centre. Its objective: researching and demonstrating intensive urban growing techniques. According to the project description on FundIt, the urban farm “will host events & community groups and provide hands-on workshops that teach responsible food production, carpentry, energy-saving systems, ecological cycles, and community self-sufficiency observing organic & pesticide free practices”.

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Horta neighbourhood. Photo by Stefanie Fock. See larger image here.

Putting the countryside into the city means changing the city’s rhythm to the rhythm of nature

Photo Exhibition and story by Stefanie Fock
2009

Excerpts:

Where there is always more bored people waiting for somebody to entertain them in the urban environment; in Barcelona and its surroundings there are a lot of people who create spaces actively to bring nature and knowledge about our food to the city and at the same time they take care of a more healthy and conscious diet. This photo-documentary visualizes the gardens of this city as heterogeneous as its inhabitants and it shows the differences between the reclamation of space and the controlled distribution of parcels by the government.

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Help during the last week of June, 2013 (Working language: French)

Métropolisation de l’agriculture et enjeux alimentaires

L’agriculture urbaine rencontre un attrait grandissant, tant de la part de ceux qui ont en charge la gestion des villes que de la part de citadins ou d’associations. L’usage du singulier tend à mettre en avant l’existence d’un lien, reliant les problématiques de la conservation des surfaces agricoles dans le contexte de la métropolisation, et celles des pratiques des citadins en demande de nature. Ce lien, c’est celui de l’alimentation et des enjeux associés à la proximité.

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Rain water stored in tanks in the top of the tower use zero energy gravity feeders as a source of irrigation for the building

By Except Integrated Sustainability
The tower was commissioned by SIGN, in collaboration with Bartels & Vedder, Van Reisen and Kelsey’s o.o.m.
The Netherlands

The Hortus Celestia is a vertical farm tower, designed for Naaldwijk, the Netherlands. The tower rises 28 stories high above the greenhouse-filled landscape, offering 14 farming floors with embedded expo centers.

The tower functions as a demonstration center for innovative Dutch greenhouse industry partners, and attracts international visitors from around the globe.

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Beekeepers and employees install three beehives in the blue, white, red colours of the French national flag on the roof of the National Assembly in Paris. Photo by Jacky Naegelen.

The roof of France’s National Assembly is ready to buzz with activity after the arrival of three large bee hives this week as part of a project to promote pesticide-free honey

By Tara Oakes
Reuters
PARIS. Apr 4, 2013

Excerpt:

The bees are expected to be moved in once the weather warms up, should produce up to 150 kg of honey a year and help pollinate flowering plants around the capital at a time of worldwide decline in bee numbers.

The project is part of a new trend across Europe to put bee colonies on city rooftops, taking advantage of the fact that bees adapt well to urban living and can target the many varieties of long-blooming inner-city greenery.

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He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread; but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding. – Proverbs

The Labourer’s Friend Society was a society founded by Lord Shaftesbury in the United Kingdom in 1830 for the improvement of working class conditions. This included the promotion of allotment of land to labourers for “cottage husbandry” that later became the allotment movement, which the Society campaigned for after the Swing riots of 1830 as “the most plausible remedy for the social problems of the countryside”.

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Filmed on the banks of the Ripoll River, between Cerdanyola and Ripollet (Barcelona)

By Pau Faus
Jan 10, 2010
In English and Spanish
Must see! Mike

English:
The daily life of one of the many retirees who cultivate their own allotment gardens in an urban margin land that doesn’t belong to them, between rivers, highways and railroad tracks on the outskirts of Barcelona. To explore and get to know these gardens is a way of approaching one of the many autonomous practices that, from its ‘disobedience’, also shape our contemporary cities. Practices that far from being simply incidental can give us many clues about what is going on behind the supposed urban order. This work focuses on the social dimension of these self-constructed gardens, seen here as a lesson of autonomy in a society that insists on assimilating ‘Retirement’ to uselessness and dependence.

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Prof Lou Yongqi (Shanghai), Dr. Despommier (New York), Prof. Ranhagen (Stockholm), Dr. He Jie (Singapore) discuss urban agriculture.

20 videos from the Linköping, Sweden 2013 Urban Agriculture Summit now online

Conference was held Jan. 29-31, 2013

Urban Agriculture Summit 2013; the largest conference ever in the rapidly growing area of urban agriculture becoming internationally recognized as an important trend according to Wall Street Journal, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and many others.

As always when challenges are to be met, new marketplaces emerge. We have successfully assembled leading authorities and decisionmakers from China, India, Japan, the Middle East, Europe and the US; politicians, researchers, business people, innovators, entrepreneurs – from states, cities, universities, non-profit organisations, large corporations and the local community.

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The Urban Farm operates as a closed loop garden which avoids waste and helps to protect the environment.

By Patrice Houssais
Option-naturel@sfr.fr
Tel: 00 33 (0) 2 43 53 26 75

‘Option: Natural’ is a French company which proposes to develop a mobile garden concept called ‘Urban Farm’. Trays made from polyethylene and carbon steel are capable of accommodating a maximum 3.5 m3 of cropland. They drain to ensure surface gardening which benefits our ‘Urban Farms’ because there is a water tank placed at the bottom of the trough (about 900L). It is separated from the upper part containing the cultivated earth and filtered by a partition.

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Spitalfields City Farm from Dan Walsh on Vimeo.

We represent around 120 city and school farms, nearly 1,000 community gardens, a growing number of community-managed allotments and at least 200 city farms and community gardens in development.

Administrator
Organisation: Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens
Salary: £19,126 – £20,858
Location: Bristol
Hours: Full Time
Position type: Paid
Contract: Permanent
Closing date: Fri 29 March 13
Website: www.farmgarden.org.uk
Contact telephone: 0117 923 1800
Contact email: admin@farmgarden.org.uk

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Urban And Peri-Urban Agriculture And Short Food Chains: Lessons From The South

By Marielle Dubbeling
Director RUAF Foundation
March 2013

The SUPURBFOOD project (www.supurbfood.eu) is looking to identify experiences from the global South and North with recycling of nutrients, waste and water in urban and peri-urban agriculture, short chain delivery of food in urban and peri-urban areas, and multifunctional agriculture in urban and peri-urban areas in order to enrich South-North exchange and collaboration. We are specifically interested in innovative experiences – with a special focus on the type of business models that were applied, the role of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and their sustainability.

The RUAF Foundation (www.ruaf.org), one of the partners of the SUPURBFOOD project, is now inviting researchers, local authorities, urban planners, SMEs, producers, NGOs, staff from international organisations and other stakeholders to contribute on an electronic Forum discussion to this inventory and analysis by sharing relevant cases, interesting best practices (and failures) and new insights. This Forum discussion will focus on three main thematic areas:

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Map displaying community gardens and public-access community gardens in Berlin.

Gardeners learned about soil quality, shade patterns and heat levels in different parts of the garden, Berlin climate or local wind patterns.

By Pim Bendt, Stephan Barthel, Johan Colding
Pages 18-30 in Landscape and Urban Planning
Volume 109, Issue 1, Pages 1-128 (January 2013)
Special Issue: Urban Ecosystem Services

Abstract

We analyse environmental learning in public-access community gardens (‘PAC-gardens’) in Berlin, representing public green spaces that are collectively managed by civil society groups. Through extensive fieldwork, and drawing upon social theories of learning, we describe learning communities in four PAC-gardens and analyse factors that influence participation and boundary interaction, that is when experiences brought in from the outside encounter socially defined competences.

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Urban Agriculture in Morocco.

International Colloquium Of Urban Agriculture
27 Feb-02 March 2013,
Casablanca, Morocco

Confirmed Speakers:

Dr. Amin AL HAKIMI, University of Sana’a, Yemen
Thiago BARBIZAN, Municipality of Sao Paulo
Dr Alison BLAY-PALMER, Wilfried Laurier University, Ontario
Dr Moez BOURAOUI, Université Tunis
Sonia CALLAU, City of Barcelona
Nevin COHEN, The New School, NYC
Julien CUSTOT, FAO Food For Cities
Marielle DUBBELING, Head of RUAF Foundation
Moncef FADILI, UN-Habitat, Morocco
Mehdi GUADI, Association Marocaine pour des Éco-Villes (AMEV)
Dr. Hans R. HERREN, Millenium Institute, Washington
Dr. Abdelkader KAIOUA, Inspecteur de l’Urbanisme, de l’Habitat et de la Politique de la Ville du Grand Casablanca
Andrea KOCH-KRAFT, German Federal Ministry of Education and Research

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Weaver Square Community Garden started in May 2011 on a derelict site owned by Dublin City Council in the Liberties area of Dublin. The site contains the Community Garden and 28 individual allotments let out by the council.

“This garden has given disadvantaged youth something positive instead of going into negative things that lead to anti-social behaviour.”

By Stephanie A. Caspelich
The Liberty
Feb 7, 2012

Excerpt:

“Three years ago, the neighbors and I became aware of so much derelict space around the Liberties. It was a shame these areas were lying desolate and so we decided to start an action group called RECLAIM (which has since been renamed Weaver’s Square Community Garden),” said Gary Brady, organizer and founder member of the garden.

“We lobbied [Dublin] City Council (DCC), our councillors and let them know we wanted to make it a nicer area to live with more greenery around.”

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De Madrid al suelo: la emergencia de la agricultura urbana.

The Community Garden Network of Madrid – La Red de Huertos Urbanos de Madrid

La Red de Huertos Urbanos de Madrid es una iniciativa impulsada por diferentes colectivos que se dedican a la agricultura en los espacios urbanos, en la ciudad de Madrid. La creación de la Red surge como respuesta a las necesidades de las huertas urbanas de recibir apoyo mutuo y compartir conocimientos, experiencias, insumos, etc.

Por otro lado, la idea de la red es una forma de crear un punto de encuentro. De centralización, por parte de todos los colectivos interesados: para darse a conocer, para organizar actividades comunes, para incidir de forma conjunta en la sociedad, etc…

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All royalties from sales of the book go to the charity S.E.E.D. (School Earth Education Developments)

Trevor’s Kitchen Garden: A Week-by-Week Guide to Growing Your Own Food
By Trevor Sargent
2012
(Trevor visited the City Farmer Garden a few years ago. See here.)

Named after his popular blog Trevor’s Kitchen Garden, Trevor Sargent’s debut book on growing your own food is for those who want to grow their food in a small space and in an Irish climate, and who aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty.

Trevor’s Kitchen Garden:

- Is structured on a week-by-week basis, with information on planting, maintaining and harvesting for every week of the year, based on the author’s experiences in his own garden.

- Contains other practical information on compost heaps, sheds and garden design.

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Click on image to see larger file. Freightliners Farm was founded on wasteland behind Kings Cross station in London in 1973. Freightliners is the only city farm in the UK which has a non-slaughtering policy.

The Farm is situated in the London Borough of Islington, the tenth poorest borough of London

By Jon Dean
Islington Gazette
January 20, 2013

Freightliners City Farm, in Sheringham Road, Holloway, has scooped more than £130,000 from Local Food supported by the Big Lottery Fund.

It will use it for its Islington Combined Harvest project to try to produce high quality local produce for people in the area.

The café will host tastings and children will be invited to learn about food production and agriculture.

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At the Moritzplatz in Berlin, a busy roundabout in the centre of bustling Kreuzberg, well over a thousand supporters have helped the site to grow “from an ugly vacant lot to a paradise”. Over 500 different types of herbs and vegetables are growing here.

The Prinzessinnengarten is a communal project – vegetable beds are shared without any one claiming their own.

Funding project begun:

Material support is especially essential for the initiation of participatory process. In the past we have started a well-respected participation project with over 100 youth from the neighborhood, called ‘city safari’. With backing from the district we suggest a similar process for the Moritzplatz. We aim to show that participation can be more than displaying pre-made working plans for the public to agree to. In workshops and idea factories we would like to develop ideas on how to live within cities together with the people that live around us. We plan to design practical approaches such as a communal composting system, a collective bicycle repair shop or a public library.

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St Werburghs City Farm is 34 years old

Two popular lion-haired rabbits have been returned to St Werburgh’s City Farm after they were stolen in a New Year’s Eve break-in. Vandals damaged animal pens, CCTV units and security lights at the Farm’s charity centre during the raid at 9.45pm. Following an appeal for information in The Post, police say they received an anonymous tip off from the community. The rabbits were then recovered from an address in Easton where the suspect was arrested.

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