Category — United States

Esperanza Pallana raises chickens and bees and grows seasonal plants at her 5,000-square-foot Oakland property. Photo by Russell Yip / The Chronicle.

“Even just in the last year, I think there have been a lot more people who are venturing to convert their space more intensively to grow food and keep animals.”

By Lauren Reed-Guy,
San Francisco Chronicle
June 12, 2011

Excerpt:

In 2008, Ruby Blume founded the Institute of Urban Homesteading, which offers classes in everything from beekeeping to cheese making to herbal medicine taught by local experts.

Next Sunday, the institute will offer tours of five backyard farms of varying sizes to demonstrate various sides of urban sustainability and show people how they can use the land they have, said Blume, co-author of “Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living” (Skyhorse Publishing), written with Rachel Kaplan and released earlier this year.

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Our 1/2 acre garden provides fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs to our household of twelve as well as the households of our friends and neighbors.

By Natasha Shapiro and Niambi McDonald
Philadelphia Neighbours
June 7, 2011

Excerpt:

Only a few years ago, 215 E. Penn St. was an abandoned lot, overrun by 15-foot bushes and weeds. Now it’s a half-acre farm in the city.

The Germantown Kitchen Garden practices local agriculture, supplying fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs to the Germantown community.

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“His resolve to become more self-sustainable has grown since he first began farming.”

By Autumn Thatcher
In This Week
2011-06-01

Excerpt:

In a neighborhood in downtown Salt Lake, there is a two-bedroom house surrounded by a chain-link fence. Across from the fence, in the area nearest the street, you will notice a carefully tilled and cared-for vegetable garden. Behind the fence, on any given day, you may encounter a fuzzy-footed chicken walking through the yard, a white duck quacking by, or even more entertaining, a beautiful Nigerian Dwarf goat jumping around and reaching up to eat leaves from the trees that grow in the yard.

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Fox 2′s Urban Farming Garden in Detroit

WJBK FOX 2
Detroit, MI
May. 22, 2011

Spring has sprung in the Fox 2 garden! The folks with Urban Farming came out this week to work on what will soon be a mini-farm with crops right outside our studio.

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Brother Nature in North Corktown. Photo by Marvin Shaouni.

Detroit’s food system seems to get richer and more complex everyday.

Patrick Crouch
Model D Media
Apr. 26, 2011

Excerpt:

Detroit’s current vibrant urban agriculture movement attracts people to this work for multiple reasons.

For some it’s the political act of increased food sovereignty for peoples in the city of Detroit, exhibited by groups like Feedom Freedom, the Detroit Black Food Community Security Network, and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen’s Earthworks Urban Farm.

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Camilla Hammer, left, and Alexanna Ashley-Roth till the earth at their first planned farm in Lower Manhattan. Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times.

A Farm Grows in the Battery – only one acre in size

By James Barron
New York Times
April 10, 2011

Exceprt:

The idea for an urban farm there originated with the environmental club at Millennium High School on Broad Street, a short walk from the park. The Battery Conservancy says that 650 students from 8 schools have now signed up to farm, and it is expanding the program to include community groups, Lower Manhattan residents, even people who just work there and want to do some digging, planting and nurturing.

The planting officially begins on Monday, when the the students will plant enough vegetables to fill the produce section at a corner deli.

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The Marathon Farm in North Philadelphia’s Brewerytown neighborhood will both ship food to the six Marathon restaurants throughout the city and sell produce to local residents. Photo by Dan Nessenson.

Urban farms surge around Philadelphia

By Hayley Brooks
The Daily Pennsylvanian
April 13, 2011

Excerpt:

Marathon Restaurants — a Philadelphia chain with six locations, including 200 South 40th St. — recently acquired 15,750 square feet of land at the corner of Master and 27th streets. The formerly vacant urban spot in North Philadelphia’s Brewerytown neighborhood has been transformed into “Marathon Farm.”

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Dig where you live

We are a new farm enterprise that grows lots of food in small city spaces through a network of urban farms.

We envision a small central farm located in downtown Raleigh that grows and markets food in the city. Core operations are self-sufficient, sustained by revenue from sales to Raleigh residents and restaurants. We are part of a sustainable food system that provides competitively priced fresh produce while restoring the environment.

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Rabbi Gavriel Goldfeder of Boulder’s Aish Kodesh

“One of the things we can look for in the Torah is the Torah’s vision of our environment, food supply and agriculture, and a very deep and sacred relationship with the land,” said Rabbi Soloway.

By Susan Glairon
Intermountain Jewish News
13 Jan. 2011

Excerpt:

The first year, approximately 70 families joined the CSA; that number has since doubled. Bates said that the organizers of Tu Ha’Aretz hope 200 families will join this year.

The term Tuv Ha’Aretz, which is found in Deuteronomy, means both the “good of the land” and “good for the land,” Rabbi Soloway said, meaning that the CSA provides goodness from the earth to eat and that it’s environmentally responsible.

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Brooklyn Grange, a rooftop farm business in Long Island City, NY. Photo by Cyrus Dowlatshahi via The Greenest.

Roundup of news from “The Greenest – Superlative Ideas for a Sustainable Future”

By Derek Denckla
The Greenest
January 3, 2011

Excerpt:

What is new now about urban agriculture is increasing numbers of farmers and widening diversity of experiments motivated by intersecting crises in climate change and in public health.

A majority of urban agriculture projects gaining public attention are less than a few years old. There are many bold experiments that are untested with farmers who are new to their profession. So the urban farmer story will begin to evolve from “newness” to a theme of “sustainability.” With so many commentators and communicators recognizing the newfound importance of urban agriculture, I wonder what will happen in this next phase of its development which will be less glamorous, harder to track and thus commanding of less immediately gratifying attention.

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K. Rashid Nuri. Photo by Joeff Davis.

Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture to break ground – Urban Farm in Old Fourth Ward

Old Fourth Ward is getting a neighborhood, organic vegetable garden on 4-acres leased from Wheat Street Baptist Church! The project will also be a marketplace and serve as a training center for budding urban gardeners.

With the help of District 2 City Councilmember Kwanza Hall and generous investments by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation, Atlanta’s Old Fourth Ward will soon be the site of a new four-acre organic urban garden.

The historic Wheat Street Baptist Church, one of the nation’s oldest African American churches, has leased four acres of inner city land to Truly Living Well Center for Natural Urban Agriculture (TLW) to build an organic vegetable garden, which will also serve as a market place and training center for Atlantans interested in urban agriculture.

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David Kahn founded Edendale Farm five years ago on a sloping half acre in the middle of a Silver Lake neighborhood. He wanted to show that a slower pace is possible, even in a metropolis like Los Angeles. Photo Credit: Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times

Urban farm really grows on visitors and volunteers

By Kate Linthicum
Los Angeles Times
November 07, 2010

Excerpt:

If there are any doubts about the viability of Edendale Farm — which Kahn built, improbably, on a sloping half acre smack in the middle of a swanky Silver Lake neighborhood — the mealtime menus should quell them.

The workers were chewing in silence Thursday, gazing happily out at the shady yard, when they noticed that something seemed off. The landscape was moving — and clucking.

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The Urban Agriculture Innovation Zone will reuse 28 acres of land in Cleveland’s ward 5 into farmland

By Eugene McCormick
Cleveland Leader
10/21/2010

Twenty-eight acres of under-utilized and vacant land in the Kinsman neighborhood will soon become the largest urban agriculture district in the U.S. Ward 5 Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland; Mayor Frank Jackson; Burten, Bell, Carr Development, Inc; The Ohio State University Extension; representatives from Ohio Governor Ted Strickland’s office; and representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture will take part in an announcement at Otter Park, E. 83rd Street and Gill Avenue tomorrow announcing the plans.

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Touring the farm. Photo by Mark Randall. Urban Farmer founder Jessica Padron talks with Chef Baron Skorish, owner of the Blue Moon Fish Company in Lauderdale by the Sea. The chef toured the property on Powerline Road where Padron is growing various types of lettuce, peppers, tomatoes and strawberries on about 6000 square feet of a 1.15 acre industrial site. The produce is being grown hydroponically on verticle stands. More photos here.

Some municipalities are changing laws to allow farming on under-utilized lots, other small pieces of land

By Maria Herrera
Sun Sentinel
October 17, 2010

Excerpt:

Appropriately named The Urban Farmer, Jessica Padron will participate in a community agriculture program, offer workshops for children and adults and have a farm stand for the extras.

“If I won’t feed it to my daughter, I won’t sell it to you,” Padron said.

Padron’s is one of dozens of farms sprouting in urban settings and inner cities across South Florida. There’s Earth N’ Us and Roots in the City in Miami; Marando Farms in Fort Lauderdale; and the Girls U-Pick Strawberry Farm in Delray Beach. There are also smaller community gardens taking root behind backyard fences, church gardens and abandoned lots.

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Andrew on left.

Andrew Plotsky visits the farmers

I am looking for young farmers and urban agricultural projects to visit, to learn about and document. Using photographs, essays and videos, it is my intention to share the stories of the people who are taking initiative and making these projects happen.

I am interested in Doers. People who are passionate, whose eyes glow when talking about their trade. People whose hands have been callused and will continue to harden with the labor of growing food and growing a movement. I’m looking for people who are Movers, who understand the importance of community and personal interaction. People who are living out their dreams, who are not afraid to go for It and see what happens.

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Partners put down roots in the heart of the Bull City, North Carolina

By Elizabeth Shestak
The Durham News
Oct 2, 2010

Darko Urban Farm is another example of Durham ahead-of-the-foodie-curveness.

Approximating a bit over 2,000 square feet of crops ranging from fruit trees to herbs, asparagus to lettuces, the farm is located about a block from Little Five Points in the Cleveland Holloway neighborhood near downtown.

Urban farming has been gaining ground, or rooftop, in many cases, but Darko Urban Farm is the first official farmlet, as I like to call them, trying out a CSA program. (CSAs are community supported agriculture programs and usually entail customers making a seasonal payment to farmers in exchange for weekly produce deliveries.)

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See the TV episode here.

Must-see interview with Mary Seton Corboy of Greensgrow Farms

By Growing a Greener World, a groundbreaking new television series that delivers the latest trends in eco-friendly living mixed with traditional gardening know-how to a modern audience.

Excerpt:

Joe and Patti journey to Philadelphia, home of Greensgrow Farms, fulfillment of the dream of visionary in urban farming, Mary Seton Corboy. More than ten years ago a city block in the Kensington area was the site of an abandoned galvanized steel plant and an EPA brownfields project (see below) that the neighborhood had given up on. But not Mary. Beginning the experimental transformation she was growing lettuce hydroponically (growing plants in a water and nutrient solution without soil) for her clients; high-end local restaurants in need of fresh, organic produce. But the one attribute she prides herself on is her ability to change.

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In 2010, Levi Strauss and Co. began a collaboration in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a broken town struggling to reinvent itself. As part of this collaboration, Levi Strauss and Co. invested in Braddock’s community center, public library, and urban farm. The result is a campaign that tells the story of the people of Braddock.

A vacant lot, an opportunity – We Are All Workers: Episode 7 Urban Farm

As an urban farmer, Marshall envisions Braddock’s empty lots as opportunities to create a stronger, healthier community. Amidst the closed steel mills and abandoned homes, the Urban Farm brings affordable, organic produce that’s “as local as you can get” to the dinner tables of Braddock’s homes. Brought to you by Levi’s in partnership with IFC and Sundance Channel.

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Clockwise from the top of the facing page: Seattle homeowner Eric Lucas raises hens, and grows pie cherries, fava beans and corn on his city lot. The Northwest is a leader in the urban farming movement. Photos by Nancy O.

They want to grow tomatoes and can them

By Eric Lucas
Horizon Air Magazine
August 2010
See pages 10 – 20

Excerpt:

That proud heritage is what spurred University of Idaho Extension Educator Ariel Agenbroad to choose “Victory Gardens” as the name of the six-week evening course she introduced last year in the Greater Boise area. Agenboard, who works for the Extension’s Canyon County office, based in the city of Caldwell, west of Boise, reports a huge swell of interest in urban farming.

“Our course demand is huge: Last year we filled the class at 50 participants,” she says. “This year we have 50 participants again, and a wait list of 50 again. And when we asked last year’s participants if they were operating their gardens this year, the response was 10p percent, ‘Yes.’ ”

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Convert blight to gardens

By: Stephen Clark
ABC 7
Sept. 6, 2010

Excerpt:

DETROIT (WXYZ) – It looks like a farm somewhere in the Midwest; row after row of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli and corn. Butterflies flit among the flowers. Somewhere a cricket chirps. But this isn’t Kansas; it’s the heart of Detroit.

An urban farm is carved into a row of empty lots at Linwood and Gladstone . It’s an island of green, red and orange in a sea of abandoned and burned out buildings.

“They got all kinds of vegetables, lettuce and tomatoes.” Andre McCullough tells us, “I mean what more could you ask for? We have fresh vegetables right at your hands.”

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