Category — Podcast

Image from the Carrot City Slide Presentation w/Mark Gorgolewski.(Fairmont Hotel) See here.

Farming in the City XIII

by Jon Steinman – Deconstructing Dinner
Radio show broadcast
February 4, 2010

In November 2009, a panel discussion on urban agriculture was hosted by Backyard Bounty and the University of Guelph. The event was called Opportunities for Action: An Urban Agriculture Symposium and Deconstructing Dinner partner station CFRU recorded the panel. This episode hears from two of the panelists who both share innovative urban agriculture projects: the Carrot City exhibition – a collection of conceptual and realized ideas for sustainable urban food production, and the Diggable Communities Collaborative – a community garden initiative that demonstrates the importance of partnerships and the ways in which regional health authorities and local governments can support and implement local food system and urban agriculture planning.

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By Darrin Nordahl
Island Press (September 23, 2009)
200 pages

Public Produce makes a uniquely contemporary case not for central government intervention, but for local government involvement in shaping food policy. In what Darrin Nordahl calls “municipal agriculture,” elected officials, municipal planners, local policymakers, and public space designers are turning to the abundance of land under public control (parks, plazas, streets, city squares, parking lots, as well as the grounds around libraries, schools, government offices, and even jails) to grow food.

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Christoph Martens and Paul Hoepfner-Homme with the baby greens in one of their plots. The two hope to make food more local by using unused yards in and around Nelson.

“FARMING IN THE CITY XI (Nelson Urban Acres / Massachusetts Avenue Project)”

By Jon Steinman
Deconstructing Dinner
September 10, 2009

Nelson Urban Acres

Nelson Urban Acres is bringing fresh produce closer to home. They are a multi-plot urban farm in Nelson, British Columbia that launched into operation in 2009 based on the SPIN farming model. Co-founders Paul Hoepfner-Homme and Christoph Martens are working backyard gardens within the city using low-impact, organic farming techniques to grow fresh produce.

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Photo by Belinda Pryse. Elephant plant holders at Hyderabad hotel.

BBC’s OnePlanet: Farming in the City
By Andrew Luck-Baker
24 July 2008

Andrew Luck-Baker investigates the pros and cons of urban farming in India. Hyderabad is a city with a booming IT industry. Its streets are also home to thirty thousand buffalo – the animals behind the Indian city’s booming urban dairy businesses. But are the two compatible in a fast modernising city? And is re-using Hyderabad’s polluted waste water to grow vegetables good environmental practice – or a danger to consumers?

Link to BBC Hyderabad podcast.

IDRC Photo: by Frederick Ibanda (follow link). “Kampala residents have set up several flower and tree nurseries along the roads leading to residential districts; there they use polythene bags that once carried milk, fruit drinks and groceries as containers for seedlings. Also many residents now eat vegetables grown in re-used polythene bags.”

BBC’s OnePlanet: Farming in the City
By Andrew Luck-Baker
17 July 2008

“Andrew Luck-Baker goes in search of farmers growing crops and rearing livestock amid concrete and traffic, in this edition of One Planet.

“The world’s city dwellers now outnumber its rural folk, so it may become necessary to farm in cities in order to feed everyone. Andrew investigates how green urban agriculture is and whether it is safe.

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