Hear Feed ‘Em Freedom Grower at 31.30 minutes in the radio show. Slide the button forward to the chosen time.

By Krista Tippett
On Being – American Public Media
January 19, 2012

We travel to Detroit to meet the civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs. We find the 96-year-old philosopher surrounded by creative, joyful people and projects that defy more familiar images of decline. It’s a kind of parallel urban universe with much to teach all of us about meeting the changes of our time. Radio interview here.

“Detroit, because we have this position in the history of the country and the world, is creating that alternative — not in words but in action,” she says. “There’s a group on the east side called Feed ‘Em Freedom Growers; if you don’t have food you can’t be free. Detroit has over 1,000 community gardens. Urban agriculture started very simply with some African-American women seeing some vacant lots.

That’s how big changes take place, with small changes. Important changes always start from the bottom up. We think they come from the top, or start with millions of people. No, they start when some people respond to the historical context and do what needs to be done. That’s how revolution takes place.”

Quote from article here.

Index shows “urban agriculture pages 115-132″.

Link to book on Amazon here.

“I sell to restaurants, I go to market on a weekly basis and I operate a small CSA.”

By Matt Purdy,
Baltimore, 88-1, WYPR
Sept 2011

Excerpt:

Abby Cocke is an environmental planner with the Office of Sustainability.

“There’s been a community gardening movement for many, many years which is just about encouraging self-reliance and community building and reusing of vacant spaces, building up of neighborhoods and at least as I’ve been able to see the urban agriculture movement has sort of sprung out of that, out of that energy and out of the energy of young people… to see can we make a living off of this, can we change the way that these food systems work, not just for me and my neighbors but for the whole city.”

The city’s zoning code is being extensively revised for the first time since the 1970s. Cocke says the revised code, as currently proposed, would take into account community gardeners and urban farmers.

“We’re adding things that were never in there before about community gardens, about urban agriculture, where it’s permitted, where it’s conditional. We’re trying to make it much easier for people to get into growing their own food in an entrepreneurial way.”

Read the complete article here.

Radio Series

By Megan Burke, Maureen Cavanaugh, Patty Lane
KPBS, San Diego State University

Monday Aug 29, 2011 – The Grow It Yourself movement (GIY).

Tuesday Aug 30 – We look at problems with urban farming, and how that might affect local refugee and immigrant communities.

Wednesday Aug 31 – Low water edibles and growing your own at home without a yard

Thursday Sept 1 – Local restaurants embracing community farming and bringing it to the table.

Urban Farming-Grow It Yourself Movement

We kick off a series of programs on Urban Farming in San Diego by finding out why people are doing it. When food is accessible anywhere from supermarkets to drive-throughs, why is the movement to grow your own food becoming so popular? We’ll hear from the co-founder of one of San Diego’s best-known sustainable farms and an I-T entrepreneur who has just joined the urban farming movement.

Guests

Lucila De Alejandro, co-owner Suzie’s Farm

Lauren Shaw is president of San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project

Link to show.

Urban Farming – What Are Your Rights

Our series on urban farming continues with an exploration of the legal problems that can crop up when backyards and vacant lots are turned into farmland. San Diego has struggled with questions about raising chickens, keeping bees and whose land is it anyway?

Guests

Anchi Mei, manager of food security and community health for the International Rescue Committee, San Diego

Adrian Florido, reporter for VoiceofSanDiego.org

Dan Joyce, is a senior planner for the City of San Diego

Link to show.

Urban Farming – Low Water Edibles

Part three of our series on urban farming continues with a look at low water edibles and growing your own at home. We’ll discuss growing food, even if you don’t have your own backyard with gardening expert Nan Sterman. Determined growers in San Diego are using outdoor pots and window ledges to grow tomatoes and herbs.

GUESTS

Nan Sterman, Gardening expert, Plant Soup, Inc.

Link to show.

Local restaurants embracing community farming and bringing it to the table.

See series here.

Radio Interview with author Manny Howard

The Takeaway is a national morning news program that invites listeners to be part of the American conversation. Hosts John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee, along with partners The New York Times, BBC World Service, WNYC, Public Radio International and WGBH Boston, deliver news and analysis and help you prepare for the day ahead.?May 19, 2010

For this week’s food segment, we talk with Manny Howard, a man who turned his tiny New York City backyard into a farm, complete with produce and livestock.

Along the way, he confronted unexpected catastrophes, including tornadoes and countless animal deaths. He also learned important lessons about his own limitations, and his family’s. He writes about his experience as a city farmer in his new book “My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm.”

Click here for the radio interview.

See his new book “My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm” here.

Gardeners and Food Bank Planting Seeds for Urban Farming

Rachel Ward
WXXI Centre for Public Affairs
2010-05-06

Audio story: Listen here.
WXXI’s Rachel Ward reports on a coalition of urban agriculture advocates hoping to find a new way to deal with hunger in Rochester neighborhoods.

Excerpt:

ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) – At first glance, the farm does not look promising. It’s overgrown with tall grasses and weeds. There’s a high brick wall surrounding it, which casts deep shadows over the cluster of apple trees. And there are kids running around everywhere.

But there’s also a warm, sunny greenhouse full of long tables of seedlings – a sign that some serious farming is going on here, according to coordinator Jan McDonald. She says the tiny farmers here at Franklin Montessori are growing 90 different varieties of vegetables, herbs and flowers in the courtyard of their school.

The students are part of Rochester Roots. They tend the plants and then take the harvest home, or sell it. But the program isn’t just about farming – it’s also about sustainability and nutrition. And soon, Rochester Roots will join forces with the area’s biggest food bank, Foodlink, to teach legions of people how to grow their own food, right inside the city of Rochester.

“Bigger than just agriculture”

Tom Ferraro is the founder and president of Foodlink, something of a local food bank empire.

“We really see this as part and parcel of how we correct some of the ills that are making that people are hungry. There’s just a lack of wealth and a lack of jobs.”

So Foodlink has stepped up its efforts, to make itself more sustainable, in the hopes of transferring that knowledge to the community. It has a farm where it grows produce to give away, and to sell. It’s cutting its delivery costs by brewing waste food into ethanol. And the food bank is hoping that soon it will be able to sell the leftover gunk from ethanol production to gardeners, as nutrient-rich soil, according to Ferraro.

“This is much bigger than just urban agriculture, I think as we begin to as a society be able to turn our waste stream into energy and do a variety of other things, the world as we know it is going to change rather quickly and dramatically.”

Read the rest of the story and listen to the audio story here.

Kansas City Council Considers Nurturing Urban Agriculture

By Sylvia Maria Gross
KCUR
2010-05-03

KCUR’s Sylvia Maria Gross recently visited a home farm in southwest Kansas City. Bad Seed Farm has become ground zero for the debate over urban agriculture. And real estate agent Stacey Johnson-Cosby, with the Center Planning and Development Council, weighs in with concerns about the proposed ordinance.

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCUR) – Locally-grown produce is becoming increasingly popular around the country, but in Kansas City, not everyone seems to want food grown as locally as next door. The city council is considering an ordinance to foster urban agriculture.

It would allow people to sell produce out of home or community gardens in residential neighborhoods. Supporters of the new ordinance say it will bring healthy food into disadvantaged areas. But some community leaders are concerned that these small ventures could disrupt otherwise quiet neighborhoods.

Hear the interview here.

Young Urban Farmers

The YUF garden system incorporates two styles of gardening: rasied garden beds and direct in-ground gardening. This allows us to utilize the best of both worlds to grow a variety of delicious produce.

Our raised bed planter measures 4×4 feet and is assembed in attractive, organized grids. This setup allows for 16 square feet of planting space, and a wide array of plants. Within each square a different type of plant can be planted, however it is recommended to choose your top 4 or 5 favourite fruits, vegetables or herbs to get a full harvest of each type.

Our direct in-ground garden setup is the chance or you to grow things not fully suited for the raised bed or experiment with something new. Vegetables like zucchinis, sunchokes, asparagus, carrots, and more are especially suited for the in-ground setup.

All of our garden solutions include everything you need to get started. This includes the materials and creation of the raised bed, our unique YUF soil mix, the seeds and transplants, and any additional options you may have chosen. It’s as easy as calling us to arrange for an estimate at your place and then choosing the produce you want to grow.

Hear the CBC interview here.

Visit their website here.

The Cutting Veg

Rooted in Organic farming, The Cutting Veg runs a variety of programs aimed at cultivating personal, social, environmental, and economic health. In addition to growing and distributing Organic Produce, we also run the Global Garlic Project, growing over a dozen varieties of garlic from around the world. Through our Food Coaching services, TCV offers garden & composting project support, educational workshops & urban farming internships, and food-career counselling. TCV also offers one-on-one Wellness Counselling for individuals who want to take steps forward with their health and happiness.

The Cutting Veg grows over a dozen varieties of garlic from various places in the world.

Starting with 100 bulbs in 2005, The Cutting Veg has built up its volume of seed stock steadily over the years to the point of a harvest of 20,000 bulbs in 2010. The Cutting Veg chooses to focus on garlic for a variety of reasons, including its health promoting qualities, tastiness, storability, and seed diversity preservation. If you are interested in learning more about the different varieties, and how they differ in taste, size, and cloves per bulb, please visit our Varieties Available page.

Hear the CBC interview here.

Visit their website here.

Seattle radio interview with three experts

Steve Scher
KUOW Radio 94.9FM
04/28/2010

This year has been declared the year of urban agriculture in Seattle. Is urban agriculture more than just growing food in P–Patches and backyard gardens? What is local government doing to support food production within the city? Some urban areas in Asia produce more than 60 percent of their food within city limits. Could Seattle be that fertile? Is urban agriculture the way of the future, or simply a hobby for people who have backyards?

Guests:

Darrin Nordahl is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center in Davenport, Iowa. He has taught planning at the University of California at Berkeley, and is the is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center in Davenport, Iowa.

He has taught planning at the University of California at Berkeley, and is the author of “My Kind of Transit,” and “Public Produce.”

Stella Chao is the Director of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods which is in charge of the P–Patch Program.

Gia Clark is a founding member of Alleycat Acres, an urban farming collective that aims to transform vacant spaces to create a network of sustainable urban farms in Seattle. She is a recent graduate from the Master of Landscape Architecture program at the University of Washington where she studied urban ecological design.

Listen 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.

Rounding off the show – regular contributor Bucky Buckaw and his Backyard Chicken Broadcast. Bucky dispels the myth that backyard chickens attract rats and he shares insights on raising roosters – an often prohibited presence even within municipalities that do allow backyard chickens.

Guests/Voices

Mark Gorgolewski co-curator, Carrot City (Toronto, ON) – Mark is a Professor and Program Director for the graduate program in building science in the Department of Architectural Science at Toronto’s Ryerson University. He is a Director of the Canada Green Building Council and has worked for many years as an educator, architect, researcher and environmental consultant to the construction industry in Canada and Europe. Recently he was co-curator of the exhibition Carrot City – Design for Urban Agriculture. He has also coordinated one of the winning teams in the CMHC Equilibrium Housing Competition to design a sustainable, net zero energy housing development, and is co-recipient of the 2007-2008 ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award.

Katherine Pigott manager, healthy communities & policy team, Region of Waterloo Public Health (Kitchener, ON) – Katherine has worked at Region of Waterloo Public Health since March 2000. A key part of her role has been the development of a comprehensive local food systems planning approach in Waterloo Region as Manager of the Healthy Communities and Policy Team. Katherine has over twenty years experience in community based program development, planning, and systems change that has spanned economic development, health promotion and environmental planning. She serves of the Board of Directors of the Association of Health Centres of Ontario and on the Steering Committee of Food Secure Canada.

Bucky Buckaw – host, Bucky Buckaw’s Backyard Chicken Broadcast (New York, NY) – Bucky Buckaw gives advice on raising backyard chickens as just one example of how a locally based economy can work. Through this segment, he informs listeners about the downside of factory farming and what kinds of toxic chemicals you can expect to find in the resultant livestock. He promotes organic gardening and composting, and supporting local farmers.

Listen to radio show here. Note: urban agriculture section begins after about 5 minutes.

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.

Public agencies at one time were at best indifferent about, or at worst dismissive of, food production in the city. Today, public officials recognize that food insecurity is affecting everyone, not just the inner-city poor, and that policies seeking to restructure the production and distribution of food to the tens of millions of people living in cities have immediate benefits to community-wide health and prosperity.
 
This book profiles urban food growing efforts, illustrating that there is both a need and a desire to supplement our existing food production methods outside the city with  opportunities inside the city. Each of these efforts works in concert to make fresh produce more available to the public. But each does more too: reinforcing a sense of place and building community; nourishing the needy and providing economic assistance to entrepreneurs; promoting food literacy and good health; and allowing for “serendipitous sustenance.” There is much to be gained, Nordahl writes, in adding a bit of agrarianism into our urbanism.
 
Biography

Darrin Nordahl is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center, which was formed in 2003 as a division of the Community & Economic Development Department of the City of Davenport, Iowa. He has taught in the planning program at the University of California at Berkeley and is the author of My Kind of Transit.

Link to publisher here.

Radio Interview with author

The Diane Rehm Show

10:00 Darrin Nordahl: “Public Produce” (Island Press) (Rebroadcast)
Urban agriculture: A city designer explains how growing food in urban, public spaces can help feed the hungry, supplement the existing agribusiness model, and promote good health for all.

Guests
Darrin Nordahl, city designer, The Davenport Design Center, a division of the Community & Economic Development Department of the City of Davenport, Iowa.

Teva Dawson, horticulture inspector for the city of Des Moines, Iowa

Ryan Hertz, principal, Eco Zoic Detroit

Sam Adams, Mayor, Portland Oregon

Listen here.

“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.

This year they have been growing a variety of vegetables throughout the season for Nelson’s community markets. Deconstructing Dinner checks in with Paul to learn of the challenges and opportunities learned from trying to make living as an urban farmer.

Massachusetts Avenue Project

The Massachusetts Avenue Project hosts the Growing Green Program, a youth development and urban agriculture program about increasing healthy food access and revitalizing the Buffalo community through urban farming, healthy nutrition, environmental stewardship and social enterprise. In addition to its urban farm, Growing Green also hosts a youth enterprise, a farm to school initiative, a mobile market and runs various workshops related to urban agriculture.

Massachusetts Avenue Project

Guests/Voices

Paul Hoepfner-Homme – urban farmer,
Nelson Urban Acres web site here.
(Nelson, BC) – Paul is 28 years old and was fortunate to grow up in a gardener’s oasis uncharacteristic of the norm in suburban Oakville, Ontario. His mother, a passionate gardener, transformed the lawns into a thriving landscape consisting of native plants and shrubs, vegetables and berries. Being raised in this environment gave Paul an early appreciation for what grows out of the ground. During university he developed a passion for sustainability when he read the novel Ishmael, and upon completing his computer science degree he made it his mission to learn how to live sustainably. This passion led him to enrol in a 7-month internship at Everdale, an organic farm in Ontario, where he gained valuable skills and knowledge in operating an organic vegetable farm. In 2008 he moved to the Kootenay region of British Columbia and took a Permaculture Design course in Winlaw where he gained a deeper understanding of growing food in relationship with ecosystems.

Diane Picard – executive director,
Masachussetts Avenue Project (MAP) website here.
(Buffalo, NY) – Diane has been with MAP since 1997. She was instrumental in opening the Neighborhood Outreach Center in 1998 and she currently directs Growing Green. She received a Masters of Social Work from Boston University, specializing in Program Planning and Community Organizing. Her undergraduate degree in International Agriculture and Development from Cornell University prepared her to teach agriculture and art at a rural secondary school in Botswana, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1986-1988. Diane is devoted to grassroots community-building as a means of making positive change.

Listen to the show on Deconstructing Dinner here.

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.

“Visiting urban farmers in back alley plots and slum district cattle sheds in East Africa and India, Andrew explores the issues through their personal stories. He also talks to the agricultural experts, city officials and politicians who work with, and sometimes against, them.”

Listen to BBC Podcast here:

More links on this subject.

Background: Urban Agriculture in Kampala

CFP Report 29B – Urban Agriculture in Kampala, Uganda: Reviewing Research Impacts