Category — Land

The unofficial community garden at Robert Mills Manor on Logan Street in Charleston where 20 mairijuana plants were found.

“The plants didn’t appear to have been there long.”

Glenn Smith
Post and Courier
May 2, 2013

Excerpt:

Charleston police are trying to determine how 20 marijuana plants ended up growing in a community garden near a downtown public housing complex.

Police were tipped off Monday that someone was growing the pot in a plot near 105 Logan St., in Robert Mills Manor, home to 222 families.

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After their plants died in 2010, David Neufeld (pictured) and Maggie Andres rediscovered that the herbicide Tordon 101 was used in nearby ditches. Photo by Maggie Andres.

Manitoba farmers grappling with impacts and legality of municipal herbicide use

By Larry Powell
The Dominion
Feb 19, 2013

Excerpt:

There, they became the first and only producers in the province at the time to market certified organic seedlings, such as tomatoes, peppers and medicinal herbs, to fellow growers. Over the years, their rural homestead became a gathering point for others who shared their passion for a simpler way of living.

While no longer officially certified as organic, the two were still producing their plants without the use of chemicals when tragedy struck in 2010. To their horror, as Neufeld put it, “Every single one of our plants curled up grotesquely and died!” He estimates this resulted in a revenue loss of $10,000.

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Tips for growing safely in the city and preventing childhood lead poisoning

University of Cincinnati Health and Medical News

Bill Menrath – Lead expert and Senior Research Associate, UC Department of Environmental Health

Nick Newman, DO – Director, Pediatric Environmental Health and Lead Clinic, cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Lead experts from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center talk about ways to reduce the risk of lead exposure when gardening on city plots.

Kent Mullinix, Director Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at the Institute for Sustainable Horticulture of Kwantlen Polytechnic University, looks over some under used land in Richmond on Wednesday. Photo by Ian Lindsay.

More crops, better processing would keep billions of food dollars in the Vancouver Lower Mainland says researcher

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
Jan 31, 2013

Excerpt:

“If the available underutilized ALR (Agricultural Land Reserve) land was put to use in these small-scale, human-intensive farm operations, they could satisfy Surrey’s demand for 24 commonly consumed crops and animal products, create almost 2,500 jobs, and contribute over $173 million in gross receipts to Surrey’s agriculture sector, more than doubling the current size of the industry in Surrey,” the Kwantlen report states.

It was commissioned by Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts to estimate the economic potential of fallow land. City staff have been creating a strategy based on that document. It will come to council in the next few weeks, she said.

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Proposed sale of about 177 acres to Hantz for $520,000

By Chad Halcom and Dustin Walsh
Crain’s Detroit
Nov 21, 2012

The Detroit City Council tabled for now the proposed sale of 1,956 city-owned lots to Hantz Woodlands LLC, and will hold a public hearing on John Hantz’s plan to develop a tree farm on Detroit’s east side.

The council, after hearing citizen feedback on the purchase, agreed to reschedule the proposed sale of about 177 acres to Hantz for $520,000. The lots are on the near east side between Van Dyke and St. Jean Street and Jefferson and Mack Avenue.

The council expects to take the issue up again at its meeting Dec. 11.

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Chris Costa and one of her chickens on her farm in Downingtown, Pa. Costa and her partner, T.J., found the land for this farm through a sustainable agriculture program. Emma Lee/WHYY.

Landowners and aspiring farmers can meet each other – kind of like speed dating, but for agriculture.

By Emma Jacobs
NPR
November 12, 2012

Excerpt:

Many farmers want their farms to be located close to a city – especially organic farmers who’d like to sell their produce at big urban farmers markets. But the price of land within range of a big city is sky high and only getting higher.

Most small farmers buy their land, but some are now looking to lease in suburban or exurban areas. And to do that, they’re using something straight out of Fiddler On The Roof: A matchmaker.

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Fig. 2. Examples of Google Earth reference images used to identify sites of food production in the city of Chicago: (A) community garden on the city’s far south side and (B) residential garden on the near south side.

The production area of home gardens identified by the study is almost threefold that of community gardens.

By John R. Taylor, Sarah Taylor Lovell
Landscape and Urban Planning
Vol 108, Issue 1
Oct 2012 pages 57-70
Purchase $41.95

Abstract

Although always a part of city life, urban agriculture has recently attracted increased attention from diverse groups in the United States, which promote it as a strategy for stimulating economic development, increasing food security and access, and combatting obesity and diabetes, among other goals. Developing effective policies and programs at the city or neighborhood level demands as a first step the accurate mapping of existing urban agriculture sites. Mapping efforts in major U.S. cities have been limited in their focus and methodology. Focusing on public sites of food production, such as community gardens, they have overlooked the actual and potential contribution of private spaces, including home food gardens, to local food systems. This paper describes a case study of urban agriculture in Chicago which used the manual analysis of high-resolution aerial images in Google Earth in conjunction with ArcGIS to identify and map public and private spaces of food production.

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The Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Trust has been established to honour Her Majesty The Queen for a lifetime of service. The Trust is open to donations from individuals, groups and organisations – from the UK, the Commonwealth and the wider world – for the duration of the Jubilee Year.

Our “Urban food theme” will encourage urban communities to grow vegetables both to consume themselves and to sell for income.

Excerpt from their site:

We will work with city authorities to encourage them to make space available to allow city dwellers to have access to land for food gardens. This can be a range of different spaces including balconies, rooftops, kerb sides and even containers such as rubbish skips, enabling people to feed themselves, earn an income and improve their diets.

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Landshare UK has a community of more than 59,000 growers

Landshare Canada brings together people who have a passion for home-grown food, connecting those who have land to share with those who need land for cultivating food. The concept of Landshare began in the UK, launched through the River Cottage television program in 2009, and has since grown into a thriving community of more than 59,000 growers, sharers and helpers across the country. Now that Landshare is here in Canada, we welcome you to come and take part in this fantastic initiative.

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Photo by Kevin Bauman from website 100 Abandoned Houses. See more here.

Estimated cost $1 million

By Maxwell Strachan
The Huffington Post
March 24, 2011

Excerpts:

Bank of America, the country’s largest bank by assets, has announced an initiative to demolish one hundred abandoned Detroit homes currently under the bank’s ownership, a task that CEO Brian T. Moynihan says will “help ‘right-size’ the city,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

The bank, which estimates the costs at $1 million, says the land plots will be donated to the city “for green space, urban farming or redevelopment.”

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Homeowner Michael Ackhurst (right) is letting Brant Cheetham (left) and Shauna MacKinnon (with baby Neve) grow a garden this summer in his unused backyard. Photograph by Ward Perrin, PNG, Vancouver Sun.

Avid gardeners work their neighbours’ lifeless yards and make them thrive

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
March 25, 2011

Excerpt:

Sharing Backyards was founded four years ago in Victoria by the LifeCycles Project Society and has proliferated around the globe since then, with 41 websites covering 400 municipalities from Vancouver Island to New Zealand.

LifeCycles partners with local organizations such as Vancouver’s City Farmer to help build, host and maintain the websites.

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Craig Strong, left, executive chef at Montage, and Nic Romano, founder and owner of VR Farms, show the bounty picked fresh from the farm at Bella Collina Towne and Golf Club in San Clemente. Photo by Leonard Ortiz, The Orange County Register.

The 1 1/2-acre parcel close to the clubhouse is fully planted

By Cathy Thomas
The Orange County Register
August 18, 2010

Excerpt:

Golf greens and vegetable gardens might seem incongruous, but not at VR Green Farms in San Clemente. Nestled on a slope of the Bella Collina Towne & Golf Club, just east of the clubhouse, urban farming flourishes.

There’s rainbow chard, celery and assorted herbs. Cabbage, summer squash and shallots thrive, along with 180 red flame grapevines. And glorious tomatoes. There are enough tomatoes to harvest more than 400 pounds a week in the summertime.

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Benjamin Woods weeds between carrots and sugar peas at Mama Earth Farm, which he runs with his wife, Mary, and mother, Shirley, in Somerset, near Placerville. Benjamin got his start at an “urban agriculture center” in Santa Barbara; Mary liked organic food as a Sacramento college student. Photo by Paul Kitagaki Jr.

Cities and suburbs now supply young recruits to agriculture

By Carlos Alcalá
The Sacramento Bee
Apr. 20, 2010

Excerpt:

The refrain about young people and agriculture used to be, “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm?”

City attractions were deemed too strong for the simple life to compete for the attention of young rural adults.

That longtime story is reversing.

Cities and suburbs now supply young recruits to agriculture, primarily to small and organic farms, and the trend is playing out in El Dorado County. Melinda Lundgren, 29, first came to agriculture as a college student at Northeastern University in Boston.

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Truck Farmer teaser – 2 minutes

How do you grow your own food in the big city if you ain’t got land?

Truck Farm, a film by Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney. Episodes 1 and 2 are now complete and on the web.

“We’ve combined green roof technology, organic compost, and heirloom seeds to create a living, mobile garden on the streets of Brooklyn, NY. A solar-powered timelapse camera will monitor the crop’s progress throughout the summer, and every month we’ll release a short excerpt from the film – and with any luck a bunch of very local produce.”

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Photo: The Rev. DeVanie Jackson (l.) and the Rev. Robert Jackson, founders of Brooklyn Rescue Mission, stand among plants at their Bed-Stuy Farm on Decatur St.

By Elizabeh Lazarowitz
DAILY NEWS
July 29th 2009

Brooklyn Rescue Mission could lose half of it’s Bed-Stuy Farm property to developmment plans

They turned a vacant lot into an edible Eden that provides freshly grown food to thousands of needy Brooklynites.

But the Brooklyn Rescue Mission, an emergency food pantry in Bedford-Stuyvesant, could lose half of Bed-Stuy Farm – its 5,000-square-foot facility on a long-neglected lot – if plans go through to build on it.

“We have this really thriving, amazing farm that’s feeding people,” said the Rev. DeVanie Jackson, who runs the mission with her husband, the Rev. Robert Jackson. “They’re trying to get us to move it, but the other places they wanted to move it to, it wasn’t the same.”

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Looking West across the Square Mile showing 30 St Mary Axe and Tower 42, Barbican, with Westminster in background.

The local authority wants some of its 9,000 residents to use sites awaiting development to grow food in giant grow bags.

By John Vidal
The Guardian UK
16 June 2009

The Square Mile, capital of commerce and the site of Britain’s most expensive real estate, could soon host some of its first temporary allotments with giant “grow bags” set up on building sites.

The City of London, one of the few authorities not to have formal allotments, wants some of its 9,000 residents to use the spaces to grow fruit and vegetables. The authority has only 22 acres of open space, mostly in old burial grounds and small squares, but the recession has left many building sites vacant.

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What is Landshare?

With allotment waiting lists massively over-subscribed and people right across the country keener than ever to grow their own fruit and veg, the aim for Landshare is to become a UK wide initiative to make British land more productive and fresh local produce more accessible to all. But all of this depends on people like you registering their interest now.

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Surrey may be home to region’s first vertical greenhouse

By Kelly Sinoski, The Vancouver Sun
21 Oct 2008

Rooftop gardens and vertical greenhouses could be a sign of the times in Metro Vancouver as the region wrestles with ways to tackle a global food crisis and the effects of climate change.

And Surrey could lead the trend, with at least one developer considering building a so-called vertical farm in Whalley, which is slated to become the region’s second downtown.

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Urban Wheat Field Sprouts Busting Through Concrete and Myths in New York City

On Monday, October 6th, a live wheat field, approximately one quarter of an acre in size, sprouted at New York City’s South Street Seaport. The Wheat Foods Council’s “Urban Wheat Field Experience,” which ran October 6th through 8th, brings the farm-to-fork journey of America’s most-consumed grain to life with a wheat field, full-size combine, functioning mill, bread-baking station, nutrition lab and more.

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Girl in garden, early 1900′s. Larger image here.

Julian Cribb, author of ‘The Coming Famine’, said:

“This intensive urban vegie culture is an entirely new industry and will need a new professional – the urban farmer who can grow food on the roofs and sides of buildings, in intensive biocultures and by other novel methods to feed the megacities of 30 million-plus inhabitants.

“If we don’t, by 2050 we will have more than three-quarters of the human population – almost 8 billion people – living in places where they are totally without the means or the knowledge of how to feed themselves. Our giant cities will be gigantic death traps, at the mercy of even quite minor glitches in regional or global food supplies.”

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