The best way to try your hand at urban gardening – without running afoul of the law – is to educate yourself regarding local regulations and zoning laws.

By Ilyce Glink
CBS News
Feb 8, 2012
Ilyce R. Glink is an award-winning, nationally syndicated columnist, best-selling book author, and radio talk show host who also hosts “Expert Real Estate Tips,” a Internet video show.

Excerpt:

In decades past, Americans relied on rural farms to meet the food supply needs of the rest of the nation. But the capability to grow fresh fruits and vegetables, even of the super-trendy organic variety, is coming to the city. If you don’t believe me, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says “around 15 percent of the world’s food is now grown in urban areas.”

Picking up on this movement, the folks at Zillow recently mined their real estate listings to locate city homes for sale that may feel more like Green Acres.

Take for example one Austin, Texas, home listed at $391,500: That price will get you a two bedroom, one bathroom, 1,196 square foot home in the city limits. In addition to modern luxuries, your down payment also gets you a chicken coop and vegetable garden.

And would you ever expect to find goats living in the suburbs of New York City? With the growth of the urban farm trend anything is possible.

Read the complete article here.

“A few developing countries are way ahead of the US in terms promoting urban agriculture.”

By Rana Amirtahmasebi
World Bank Blog
2012-02-06

Excerpt:

In a country where, in some places, a burger barely costs a dollar while a bag of baby carrots is priced nearly thrice as much, there’s plenty of work to be done to make healthy foods affordable – and accessible. There is no denying that food insecurity (of which cheap and nutritionally inadequate junk food is a major manifestation) is a concern in the US. In fact, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) nearly 14.5 per cent Americans experienced food insecurity at some point in 2010.

To fight this, many cities across the US are assessing their food production potential and creating special legislation for promoting urban agriculture. Let me clarify that “urban” agriculture does not imply turning down high-density buildings in the city centers to build farms. As an urban planner I am a supporter of higher densities. However, the leftover land around the cities or the residential open spaces with no other obvious use could be used as productive fragments of land within the cities. But more on this later – maybe another blog entry!

In the US, urban agriculture began at the grassroots level as a social justice movement to combat food insecurity among under-privileged communities. Within a couple of decades, a growing demand resulted in local governments making an active effort to support urban agriculture. Sometime ago I documented some of New Orleans’ urban farms with my video camera.

Read the complete article here.

New Monaco – a new 125-acre sustainably planned neighbourhood in the District of Peachland, British Columbia.

Community Gardens

New Monaco’s home and community program will be one of a kind and will include:

Patio farm/ greenhouse for individual homes who wish a personal experience

Community farm/ greenhouse for those who enjoy group work

Programs to advise home gardeners and offer public seminars

Community composting to minimize organic wastes and to enrich local soils

Growers awards, events and day market for fun

A diversity of local cafes and restaurants

Links to local food producers, farmers and wineries

See the company website here.

It’s a worldwide phenomenon, and one that doesn’t bode well for Mother Earth. Has the “Market” become our lord and master?

By Jack Kelly
The Kona Story
Jan 25, 2012

Excerpt:

The Ho‘opili project on Oahu has come back before the Land Use Commission again. Developer D.H. Horton is seeking rezoning of 1,500 acres of prime agricultural land from Ag to Urban, to allow construction of an 11,750-home subdivision. D.R. Horton first brought the project to the LUC in 2009, but the request was denied because it lacked an adequate timeline for the development.

Major agricultural producer Aloun Farms presently farms about 1,100 of those acres and produces a good percentage of the locally grown fresh vegetables in the area. Opponents of the Ho‘opili project had been citing the loss of Aloun Farms as a major reason for turning down the rezoning. But suddenly, Aloun Farms came out in support of the project, saying it had other land already lined up. Honolulu Civil Beat quoted Aloun Farms representative Alec Sou as saying he supported the project because of the difficult economy. “I do support it, from the standpoint of job creation,” Sou said.

Read the complete article here.

Ho‘opili ‘s Urban agriculture program – (developer’s vision) here.

In one of the city’s few residential-agricultural zones, developers want to raze five homes to build a 37,500-square-foot elder-care facility. Neighbors are divided.

By Ann M. Simmons,
Los Angeles Times
January 23, 2012

Excerpt:

A chicken, a raven and a peacock greeted Lisa and Ron Cerda when they moved into their southeastern Tarzana neighborhood almost two decades ago. It was just the sort of bucolic reception the couple hoped for when they fled crowded West Los Angeles for one of the city’s rare residential-agricultural zones, a district that permits farming and the keeping of livestock.

Today, the Cerdas say their rustic neighborhood is threatened with extinction. Schools, synagogues and commercial businesses have crept into the district, despite dogged opposition from dozens of residents.

The latest battle involves a proposal to demolish five single-family dwellings and construct a 37,500-square-foot elder-care facility.

“I feel like we’re under attack,” said Lisa Cerda, who heads Tarzana Residents against Poor Property Development. The group has appealed more than two dozen proposals for development projects in recent years, arguing that they were unsuitable for their neighborhood. “Once a precedent has been set and you allow an elder-care in an RA zone, you cannot prevent it from happening again.”

Read the complete article here.

Helps to Feed 200,000 People Every Month

By John Cueler
growingyourgreens
Jan 6, 2012

From Irvine Wiki:

The Incredible Edible Park a 7.5 acre community garden in Irvine and is located at 15058 Harvard Ave Irvine, CA, next to the meeting of Harvard Avenue and the Walnut Trail and Metrolink. Southern California Edison has an easement on the land and after years of being empty and overgrown with weeds it was decided to transform the area into a park.

The Incredible Edible Park is one of the last vestiges of agriculture in Irvine and features beans, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, oranges, potatoes and squash just to name a few. The crops grown and maintained by the community six days a week and up to 1,2000 volunteers a year. It is subsequently donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County to help feed thousands of hungry families.

The Incredible Edible Park is frequently referenced as an unique solution to several problems. Not only does the park provide food for disadvantaged families but it provides open space for the community, preserves a portion of Irvine’s agricultural history educates local children, and saves weed abatement costs on behalf of the city.

Sponsors and supporters include the City of Irvine, Southern California Edison, the Irvine Ranch Water District, the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County, Windwood Homeowners Associations, Orange County Farm Community and El Camino Real Elementary. Additional volunteers are always encouraged to contact the Second Harvest Food Bank.

In September 2011, Brighton & Hove City Council became the first local authority in the UK to publish guidance notes encouraging developers to include food-growing space in new building schemes.

Horticulture Week
13 January 2012

Excerpt:

Included as a case study in the guidance notes is BioRegional Quintain and Crest Nicholson’s sustainable living development One Brighton. Completed in 2010, the pioneering One Planet Communities project was the first development in the city to incorporate on-site allotments in its plans.

Among a host of other sustainable-living features, the apartment roofs house 28 box gardens for residents to grow produce. With 172 apartments in the development, a waiting list has inevitably formed. But on-site green facilities manager Peter Commane says planning permission for further growing space has been secured on a neighbouring former brownfield site to help meet demand.

One of the first such schemes in the country, Commane says national and international developers are seeing real value in the idea of incorporating growing space in their plans. “The rooftop allotments have worked very well as a shop window for other developers. They see that it works, it creates a community and there is value behind it. I’ve no doubt we will start seeing the idea springing up across the country,” he maintains.

Read the complete article here. Or see below.

See the municipal documents here.

Complete article from the Horticulture Week site.

Amenity – Enabling communities to grow their own

Friday, 13 January 2012

Planning guidance in Brighton and Hove is encouraging developers to create areas for communities to grow their own food, Hannah Jordan reports.
In September 2011, Brighton & Hove City Council became the first local authority in the UK to publish guidance notes encouraging developers to include food-growing space in new building schemes. The Food Growing & Development Planning Advisory Note (PAN) calls for rooftops, balconies, walls and surrounding land to be incorporated as landscaped areas for residents and local communities to grow their own food.

Approved in September, the guidance was developed for the Green Party-administered council by Food Matters and Harvest Brighton & Hove, part of the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership (BHFP), which is seeking to create a city-wide multi-organisation approach to developing more sustainable solutions to food production.

The PAN does not introduce any new requirements for planning applications but provides technical advice on how to deliver food-growing opportunities in development schemes and includes case studies and examples of potential approaches for use by developers.

Enclosed by the South Downs to the north and the English Channel to the south, Brighton is a compact city with little space for food-growing, which makes the PAN all the more vital, says BHFP director Vic Borrill. “We want to give people the right information about what grows well in our environment and in the context of confined spaces such as roofs and balconies,” she explains.

Borrill points out that as part of the city’s push towards a more sustainable food system, interest in food-growing from community groups and schools has increased dramatically over the past few years and she sees the PAN as a way of raising the bar by highlighting developers’ responsibilities towards sustainable living.

“We don’t know what is going to happen as a result of the new national planning regulations yet, but down here the Green administration sees the planning guidance as a way of helping to embed principles and mindsets of what they want to take place in the city,” she says.

Included as a case study in the guidance notes is BioRegional Quintain and Crest Nicholson’s sustainable living development One Brighton. Completed in 2010, the pioneering One Planet Communities project was the first development in the city to incorporate on-site allotments in its plans.

Among a host of other sustainable-living features, the apartment roofs house 28 box gardens for residents to grow produce. With 172 apartments in the development, a waiting list has inevitably formed. But on-site green facilities manager Peter Commane says planning permission for further growing space has been secured on a neighbouring former brownfield site to help meet demand.

One of the first such schemes in the country, Commane says national and international developers are seeing real value in the idea of incorporating growing space in their plans. “The rooftop allotments have worked very well as a shop window for other developers. They see that it works, it creates a community and there is value behind it. I’ve no doubt we will start seeing the idea springing up across the country,” he maintains.

Brighton & Hove City Council sustainability manager Francesca Iliffe says the One Brighton development chimes well with other food-growing initiatives being pioneered in the city and is an excellent example of what the new guidance is seeking to achieve.

“We have done a lot of work encouraging developers to green their sites with green walls and roofs and planting around the buildings – the guidance is part of trying to improve our overall green infrastructure,” she explains.

The council hopes that the guidance will be used as a template by other local authorities around the country to encourage developers to create edible landscapes and provide growing space for residents. A number of councils, including Bristol, are already looking at the document, says Iliffe.

“Incorporating growing space needn’t be a considerable additional expense because they are already putting in some kind of landscaping so it is just a question of their specifications. Of course there will be management issues, but there will be management issues with any landscaping,” she asserts.

Sustainability checklist

Complementing the PAN is the council’s revised online Sustainability Checklist for Planning, which asks applicants for details of any food-growing elements that they intend to include in their developments. A completed checklist must now accompany all planning applications for new-build developments and conversions in the city.

Since the PAN was published, around 50 per cent of completed checklists show planning applications that incorporate food-growing space, says Iliffe. “Developers are responding well to this, which is exciting because historically it’s not an area that planning has covered. But by pushing for food-growing areas you encourage community cohesion, sustainable land use, improved biodiversity – the list of benefits goes on,” she adds.

The guidance has also been well received by representatives from the city’s local housing partnership as well as local housing associations, she adds, many of which, in response to increased demand, already work with residents to provide food-growing space.

Federation of City Farms & Community Gardens chief executive Jeremy Iles says with waiting lists for allotments spiralling across the country since 2008, many local authorities are unable to meet demand. But the innovative approach being taken in Brighton and Hove should serve as an example to others, he adds.

“They have a great partnership between community and local authority, which I think has helped lead to the planning guidance. But there are only a few isolated examples of this kind of innovative thinking,” he says.

“Community gardening has been around for a long time and it’s one of the most exciting things happening in the UK right now. We need more people to start thinking laterally about what has been done traditionally.”

Brighton & Hove City Council’s Food Growing & Development Planning Advisory Note can be found at www.foodmatters.org.

Food strategy updated in Brighton and Hove

In 2006, Brighton and Hove became the first city in the UK to produce a food strategy – Spade to Spoon. Written by the Brighton & Hove Food Partnership (BHFP) and supported by the city council, a revised version – Spade to Spoon: Digging Deeper – will launch in the coming weeks.

It will set out how the city intends to address issue such as food poverty and the environmental impact of food imports while supporting local food businesses and creating a more sustainable food system.

As part of the strategy, the BHFP works with local organisations to encourage food-growing on vacant land, gardens, parks, housing estates and schools throughout the city.

In 2009, St Luke’s Primary School applied to convert part of its playground into an edible forest to teach its pupils about food-growing techniques in an urban environment, food uses, environmental issues and sustainability in the community.

Made possible through a £10,000 grant from the Big Lottery Fund and backed by local charity Harvest Brighton & Hove, the project allows the school’s 600 pupils, as well as parents and local residents, to use the forest during term time for practical training in food-growing and gardening techniques.

A 12x20m area of tarmac was replaced with a landscaped space using permaculture principles and irrigated through a rainwater-harvesting system.

The garden incorporates fruit trees, soft fruit, edible perennials with ground layers of low-growing fruits and salads along with hardier root vegetables.

It is planted in three layers to mimic natural woodland with trees at the top, shrubs and perennials in the middle and ground-cover plants at the bottom.

Regular harvesting allows the school to provide food for pupils and local residents, highlighting the success of the project.

Children and young people cabinet member for Brighton & Hove City Council Vanessa Brown says the project is an example of sustainability in action and will enable future generations to make the connection between “spade and spoon”. The project will hopefully inspire pupils and residents to grow their own food, she adds.

Unlike urban leaders of yore, city and state officials today aren’t just using urban gardens as a kind of emergency welfare or a distraction from troubled political and economic times.

By Sarah Parsons
Good
January 10, 2012

Excerpt:

Cleveland has bulldozed 6,400 homes since 2005, and another 20,000 throughout Cuyahoga County are slated for demolition. But amid the bleak landscape, something more hopeful has been growing: urban gardens.

Cleveland has deployed Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds to replace these bulldozed homes with parks, expanded yards, and, most notably, community and market gardens. These urban farms produce food for local residents and establish a sense of stability during troubled times. While Cleveland always had a land bank to use for community improvement projects, “the accelerated demolition caused us to be more aggressive in looking at innovative ways to use the vacant land,” says Daryl Rush, director of Cleveland’s Department of Community Development.

Foreclosed-home-turned-garden is now a familiar trope in depressed cities across the U.S. After Detroit’s auto industry crumbled, the Motor City became America’s poster child for urban decay. Detroit now holds more than 40 square miles of vacant property, an area the size of San Francisco. So the city has grown into a gardening hub, with residents transforming the city’s 33,000 vacant lots into green spaces that produce food and jobs.

Read the complete article here.

The Mayor’s Office and BRA are launching ‘kicking off the planning process’ with a Kickoff and Visioning Meeting, scheduled for January 30, at 6:00 p.m. at Suffolk University

Mayor Thomas M. Menino and the City of Boston want to establish an environment in which all of our citizens–particularly the most underserved–have direct access to locally produced fresh food, the ability to produce food for themselves, and access to education and knowledge about healthy eating.

Objectives for the Mayor’s Urban Agriculture Initiative include:

1. Increase access to affordable and healthy food, particularly for underserved communities.

2. Promote economic opportunity and greater self-sufficiency for people in need, including increasing the capacity of Boston residents and business and grow and distribute local and healthy food;

3. Increase education and knowledge around healthy eating and food production, particularly among youth.

4. Increase partnerships with, and/or between, local and regional food producers

5. Increase healthy food supplies to local schools, organizations, institutions and corner stores.

The BRA’s Urban Agriculture Rezoning Initiative is one of a number of of City initiatives designed to support these objectives.

The Urban Agriculture Rezoning Initiative is being rolled out in two phases. Phase I, the Pilot Urban Agriculture Rezoning Project, was initiated in fall 2010. A collaborative effort between the Mayor’s Office, the Department of Neighborhood Development (DND), and the BRA, the Pilot Urban Agriculture Rezoning Project involved the creation of an Urban Agriculture Overlay District on two city-owned properties in South Dorchester and the issuance of a Request for Proposal (RFP) to identify prospective farmers. Extensive community participation including five community meetings and regular dialogue with community leaders was involved in the rezoning process, RFP process, and selection of the farmers. Presentations from three of these meetings—November 16, 2010, March 29, 2011 and April 14, 2011—can be viewed under “Publications” below (the same presentation used for the November 16 meeting was used in the December 2010 and January 2011 community meetings).

See more here.

Productive Neighborhoods

By Magdalena Celinska, Intern
In collaboration with Jason Henry & Rachael Meyer
The Berger Partnership
Summer Internship 2011
Seattle, WA
(Must see report. Mike)

Introduction:

Currently there are 103 urban food production sites in Seattle. These include urban farms, P-Patches, community gardens, and school gardens. From the 103 sites, however, only 10 are functioning as Urban Farms. While P-Patches, community gardens, and school gardens are an important component of Seattle’s food system, urban farms have the potential to make a large impact on the local food supply system. Within this report we focus on existing urban farming case studies to better understand how these farms function.

As designers, we seek to support these functions in our projects because we know the environmental and social values that they can bring to build healthy cities and communities. Through the exploration of these case studies we observed a number of factors that prevent urban farmers from being able to turn a profit despite the large return on community benefit. In order for the urban farming movement to continue to progress it must become more accessible and economically viable for urban farmers.

See the report here.

“The bottom line is that even as the economy improves, we’re still going to be stuck with some stalled development that doesn’t actually work with the community.”

By Meghan Barr
Associated Press
December 04, 2011

Excerpt:

NEW YORK — A remnant of the Great Recession is hiding behind a paint-splattered wall in Chinatown, in an empty lot where a building was supposed to rise into the sky.

The plywood barely conceals the mess behind it: a pile of cement blocks and tangled metal and empty bottles of beer. It is, in short, exactly the sort of place that draws the ire of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

“There’s a lot of bad things that happen in stalled construction sites,” says Stringer, whose office issued a report earlier this year cataloguing the more than 600 stalled sites that are scattered throughout New York City. “Especially if everybody sort of ignores the site and lets it grow in a very unpleasing way.”

Instead of allowing these lots to become eyesores, some developers are coming up with creative ways to use them temporarily until construction can begin. Grow vegetables in milk crates? Sure. Sell doughnuts out of a shipping container? In New York City, where open space is a precious commodity, just about anything goes.

Read the complete article here.

By Barbara Damrosch
The Washington Post
November 9, 2011

Writers Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman own and operate Four Season Farm, an experimental market garden in Harborside, Maine. The farm produces vegetables year-round and has become a nationally recognized model of small-scale sustainable agriculture.

Excerpt:

Roger Doiron, founder of Kitchen Gardeners International, proposed “using the federal tax code to promote gardening through a $1,000/household garden stimulus package.” My own two cents’ worth came in an address at Maine’s Common Ground Country Fair titled “It’s a Cute Little Movement, but Can It Feed the World?” I’d been provoked by a flood of articles declaring that only large-scale, industrial, biotech farms can save our increasingly overpopulated planet. That small farms and gardens cannot do that has become a mantra, self-replicating its merry way to pseudo-truth.

Plenty of studies prove otherwise, and the one that does the best job of exploding the myth is the massive effort, launched in 2002 by the World Bank, called the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, or IAASTD. Unprecedented in its inclusiveness, it involved 61 countries and more than 400 agricultural scientists. As the work went forward and 500 pages of distilled findings came together, evidence piled up that small-scale, diverse, sustainable farms (and even home gardens) had the most potential to solve the world’s hunger problems while reversing modern agriculture’s devastation of our ecosystems.

Read the complete article here.

See Four Season Farm here.

Also see “It’s a Cute Little Movement but Can It Feed the World?”

Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman.

By Barbara Damrosch,
MOFGA president and keynote speaker
2011 Common Ground Country Fair

Excerpt:

You would think an idea like this would be pretty hard to argue with, but some people work very hard to come up with reasons why change for the better can’t happen. “You’re out of touch,” someone accused, after I’d published a brief article on the subject. I’d explained how the idea of Daylight Savings time originated in 1918 so that people could have an extra hour of daylight after work to tend their War Gardens (later called Victory Gardens in World War II). The reader went on, “Some people work 12 hour days or have a long commute or both people in the family work and have barely enough time to say hello to their kids.” Well, maybe growing a significant amount of your own food could let you afford fewer hours at a job and more at home. Not everybody likes to garden, which is fine. But it’s not surprising that when times are tough, during war or hard times, the idea quickly becomes more appealing. The surge in home gardening that sprang to life in 2008 when the economy plunged has not abated, according the Bruce Butterfield of the National Gardening Association, when he was interviewed recently for The New York Times. The article describes home gardeners in eastern Kentucky who have taken to growing their own to save money, and farmers’ markets that are wholly different from the chic sort you might find in rich urban areas. They’re supplied by people who sell the extra from their home gardens for extra cash, and “are geared to shoppers who want to buy in bulk at the lowest possible price in order to pickle, can, dry and freeze.” I predict we’ll see a new interest in nuts and bolts crops that store well, such as rutabagas, that are there for you as insurance all winter long.

Read the complete article here.

Actress Daryl Hannah – “The people from the South Central Farm community have already suffered the great loss of their farm, which was their source of food, their safe haven and their green space.”

Los Angeles Wave
Nov 15, 2011

Excerpts:

Horowitz forced the farmers off the land in 2006. The city provided an alternative community garden space at 111th Street and Avalon Boulevard on Department of Water and Power property.

The vote Tuesday allows Horowitz to sell the Lancer site to a collective of four clothing manufacturers, which Councilwoman Jan Perry said would create jobs — 300 construction jobs and 600 permanent jobs in the factories and office headquarters.

The city will use the $3.6 million to improve green space and park and exercise equipment at nearby parks, including space at the public housing project Pueblo Del Rio and nearby Fred Roberts and Ross Snyder parks.
Perry called the plan a win-win situation.

“It will help create new jobs at a time when they are desperately needed and bring vital resources to parks that can use the funds immediately to implement improvements,” she said.

Read the complete article here.

See “Group Protests Deal Involving Former Site of South Central Farm”.

San Diegans are getting excited as the urban agriculture ordinance works its way through the city’s long and winding government system

By Jill Richardson
Grist
Oct 29, 2011

Excerpt:

An advocacy group formed calling itself the 1 in 10 Coalition, in reference to their hope that — once the rules changed — one in 10 people in San Diego would be able to get at least some of their food locally. One of the group’s leaders was Parke Troutman, who had written a PhD dissertation on land-use politics in the city and county of San Diego. “[It] was a land-use issue, and only a few of us had experience with that,” he recalls.

Changing the community garden laws was a long, hard slog that took two years, even with several city council members’ support. Toward the end, the effort got a boost from a $16 million obesity-prevention grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that included a school and community garden program led by San Diego County. The money went to fund the creation of five regional gardening education centers throughout the county. The grant also paid for work on policy changes; it paid for Troutman to consult as a “Land Use and Planning Consultant,” allowing him to devote more time to bringing San Diego’s urban agriculture laws into the 21st century.

The community garden effort brought to light a number of other urban agriculture-related issues — such as the need to revisit chicken ownership, farm stands, and beekeeping. So, once the community garden issue was wrapped up in June, San Diego City Council wasted no time; by July, they had brought urban agriculture before the council’s Land Use and Housing Committee.

Read the complete article here.

San Diego – Urban Agriculture Potential Regulatory & General Plan Amendments

San Diego – Urban Agriculture Regulatory Summary Table

San Diego – Urban Agriculture Regulations- Farmers Market & Retail Farms – Draft November 1, 2011

“There’s a big difference between gardening and farming. Some activities are essentially rural and some urban, and we need to reestablish this distinction.”

By James Howard Kunstler
Published in the July/August 2011 issue of Orion magazine
James Howard Kunstler is probably best known as the author of “The Long Emergency” (The Atlantic Monthly Press 2005), and “The Geography of Nowhere” (Simon and Schuster, 1993).

Excerpt:

Speaking of technofantasies, another popular proposal is for skyscraper farms. The fiasco of suburbia sowed a lot of confusion in how we think about our human habitat. It hopelessly muddled the distinction between urban and rural. A manifestation of this confusion is the notion that we should focus our resources on growing food in “vertical farms” in the midst of our cities.

The problems we face with skyscrapers in terms of capital resources argue against this idea in the first place. Add to that the need to provide either artificial lighting for plants stacked under many layers of ceilings, or the energy to mechanically rotate them around the outer walls to expose them to sunlight. It is a particularly dumb idea when you consider that there is a practical relationship between cities and their agricultural hinterlands, where crops can be grown horizontally on the earth itself, without elaborate structures, artificial lighting, or high-tech gadgetry. The vertical farming idea is a demonstration of how extreme our technograndiosity has become, and how far we’ve strayed from centuries of accumulated wisdom.

Growing food on city rooftop gardens is fine but limited. Urban kitchen and dooryard gardens are historically quite customary. Community gardens on empty lots are a swell idea. But we better get our heads straight about where most of the food will have to come from, especially when a lot more of it will have to be grown locally. The appropriate place for that is outside of town. There’s a big difference between gardening and farming. Some activities are essentially rural and some urban, and we need to reestablish this distinction.

Our confusion about this distinction is visible in proposals to turn Detroit into farmland. Detroit is so far gone, the argument goes, that the only conceivable use for all that abandoned real estate is to re-ruralize it. This speaks to our lack of confidence in architecture and urbanism per se, and leads to the current default remedy whenever our cities fail: tear things down in favor of green space.

Read the complete article here.

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

identify the support projects needed to develop employability among their participants.

Community food-growing projects, city farms and other urban agriculture initiatives in London already reach people who are facing particular difficulties with their employability: out of the 23 London agriculture groups interviewed, 20 include people experiencing unemployment and/ or facing difficulties including physical or mental disability, addiction issues, homelessness, English language barriers, and long-term unemployment. 12 out of the 23 projects were purposefully reaching people in one or more of these situations, with the aim of helping them. They also help experienced individuals at difficult times in their lives.

This report looks at how urban agriculture develops the skills and attributes that people need to develop to improve their chances of getting and staying in employment by:

building the confidence and social support that is a foundation for further learning,

developing the transferable skills, including teamwork and communication, which are needed in most workplaces,

supporting the acquisition of basic skills like literacy and numeracy where these are lacking,

teaching technical skills which enable participants to fulfil a particular role, and

helping participants to present their skills to employers and get into work.

See the complete report here.

See more details here.

14 sites totaling about 70 acres that could be used for the program

By Chad Lawhornon
Well Commons
October 31, 2011

Under her proposal, the city and county would “license” the property to the growers for a three-year period, although the city and the county would have broad authority to end the license. Horn said more discussion would be needed to determine what growers should pay the city and the county for use of the property.

She said the city and county perhaps could consider some unique forms of payment, such as agreements from the farmers to donate a certain amount of their produce to local food banks or to sell a certain amount of their produce at reduced rates to area school districts.

“I’m excited to see what type of proposals we get,” Horn said. “It will be interesting to see in a year or so how many more vendors we have at the Farmers Market or what schools are serving local foods because they have a partnership with a grower.”

Read the complete article here.

Developers want to replace one of the last small orchards in the county with single-family houses.

By Nicole Santa Cruz
Los Angeles Times
July 23, 2011

Excerpt:

The Sexlinger Orchard, which borders a park and sits across Santa Clara Avenue from a cemetery, has managed to remain untouched. But the orchard’s 250 trees, one of the last sizable groves in the city, could be gone by next year.

A real estate company wants to build 24 single-family homes on the land, but opponents with the Save Our Orchard Coalition say the project, currently in the review stage with the city, would destroy valuable property that could be preserved and used as an educational center and community garden.

The plot, purchased by the Sexlinger family in 1913, is one of the region’s oldest unaltered orange groves. A Craftsman bungalow, built by the family in 1914, still stands.

Read the complete article here.

The Save Our Orchard Coalition Proposal for the Orange Orchard

In light of the recent release of the EIR from the Santa Ana Planning and Building Agency regarding the TAVA housing development proposal for the property at 1584 East Santa Clara Avenue, the Save Our Orchard Coalition is asking that the Santa Ana City Council consider supporting preservation of the Sexlinger orange orchard as an invaluable historical site and as a site for development of an urban agricultural center that would well serve the present and future residents of Santa Ana. Such alternative consideration and support would simultaneously demonstrate Santa Ana’s civic leadership of Orange County in actions of historical and open space preservation, promotion of cultural understanding through the teaching of community and agricultural history, and the provision of community garden space in support of health education and sustainable environment programs.

OPPORTUNITIES: The Sexlinger Urban Agricultural Center will be readily sustainable: initially through volunteer leadership and labor, material contributions, membership donations, and special fee events. As we build an endowment fund through direct charitable contributions, we can begin a second phase including possible relocation of the farm house to a more central location on the property, modest expansion of facilities (teaching stations) and a limited number of paid staff positions (i.e.: an operations director, a naturalist, and an agricultural manager).

Visit the petition site here.

“There’s a lot of interest out there,” he said. “We’re very open to selling all the lots we have for useful purposes.” Otis Williams, deputy executive director with the St. Louis Development Corp.

By Georgina Gustin
St Louis Today
Nov 4, 2011

Excerpts:

The couple, both 35, have secured city approval to buy a derelict one-third-acre lot at 4539 Delmar Boulevard and start farming it next year. They plan to take on trainees who will eventually do the same thing on other properties throughout the city, transforming vacant eyesores while providing jobs and healthful produce in the process.

Initially, the couple considered buying a second plot somewhere in the countryside. But the Villarreals stumbled onto the St. Louis Land Reutilization Authority’s list of properties after a friend suggested urban lots. The authority manages tax delinquent properties throughout the city, and sells them to prospective buyers who go through an approval process. The couple found their lot on Delmar and were approved to buy it earlier this year after convincing the city they had a solid plan.

A study conducted by the Show-Me Institute this year found that the city had a track record of rejecting buyers for LRA lands. But that appears to be changing, according to the institute, and the city seems more inclined to sell land to prospective farmers.

Read the complete article here.

Written by Heather Wooten, MCP (PHLP) and Amy Ackerman, JD (Consulting Attorney)
The National Policy and Legal Analysis Network to Prevent Childhood Obesity (NPLAN)
October 2011 – 40 pages

Introduction – Excerpt

Communities can support, promote, and preserve urban agriculture through land use laws. Land use policies can assist in securing access to and ensuring the preservation of land for agricultural uses. Zoning regulations can ensure that agriculture occurs in suitable locations and under the proper conditions. But there is no one-size-fits-all urban agricultural land use policy. Urban areas vary in availability of land for agriculture, population density, soil suitability, and resident interest. This toolkit sets forth a framework and model language for urban agriculture land use policies that communities can tailor to their particular context and needs.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Definitions of Urban Agriculture Types

A Framework for Developing Urban Agriculture Land Use Policy
What Are Land Use Laws?
Key Questions to Consider
Additional Considerations

Preserving Urban Agriculture
Open Space Zoning Districts
Land Banks
Conservation Easements and Land Trusts
Leases on Public and Private Land

Other Laws Affecting Urban Agriculture
The Americans with Disabilities Act
Pesticide and Other Environmental Laws
Brownfields and Environmental Cleanup Laws
Right to Farm Laws
Laws Regulating Commercial Farms and Produce Sales
State and Local Laws Establishing and Regulating a Business Entity
Federal, State, and Local Taxation Laws
Federal, State, and Local Employment and Volunteer Laws
Federal and State Food Safety Laws
Animal Welfare and Control Laws
State and Local Building Safety Laws
Medical Marijuana Laws
Local Composting Laws

Model Comprehensive Plan Language for Urban Agriculture

Model Zoning Ordinance for Urban Agriculture
Definitions and Types of Uses
Regulations of Uses
Incidental and Accessory Uses
Animals

Resources

Read the complete report here.