Sanatan Dharm Cultural Society, which hopes to eventually build a Hindu temple, is offering five-year leases on its land for agricultural use

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
February 6, 2012

Excerpt:

A Burnaby-based religious group is negotiating with young urban farmers to put nearly three acres of unused agricultural land back under crops this spring.

The Sanatan Dharm Cultural Society is hoping to build a brand-new Hindu temple and seniors’ home amid the sprawling vegetable fields and industrial yards of south Burnaby, but that may not happen for years.

“I think we can start with a five-year lease [with the farmers] and then see,” said the group’s priest, Shiv Mishri. “We want to build a big temple here, but we are not ready to build.”

A dairy farmer in his native Fiji, Mishri looked into farming when he first arrived in this country but decided the expense of buying land and set-ting up infrastructure was too great.

Land and capital costs are the biggest impediments facing young farmers, particularly in the urban environment.

Read the complete article here.

Sustainable model of farming brings together growers and consumers

By Christina Myers
Burnaby Now
January 25, 2012

Excerpt:

Last season, he grew dozens of different crops, from herbs to squash and everything in between, and had 17 members. He also sold produce at a number of local farm markets.

This year, he’s hoping to expand his membership to 60, particularly with residents in neighbouring communities like New Westminster, for the 20-week season.

And he may bring in some new “friends” as well.

“In the spring, I plan to get some goats and start making goat cheese, and maybe some chickens to get some eggs,” he said.

“I’ve always been into gardening; about five years ago I came in fourth for a residential garden award,” he said.

Read the complete article here.

The Metro Vancouver Small Farm Resource Manual is a project of the Richmond Food Security Society. This Manual is offered as a resource to small-scale farmers to help them source supplies, services, markets, and knowledge. The manual is a dynamic manual that can expand with your feedback and can be updated easily online.

The website is now online and loaded with resources for farmers!  The website contains 39 resource categories and currently has 306 resources listed.  

CATEGORIES

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Bees (20)
Books (1)
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Education & Training (30) Toggle
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Finding Land (3)
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Labour and Safety (3)
Legal and Insurance (3)
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Metro Vancouver Urban Farms (4)
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Visit the site here.

The biggest barrier to farming in the city is the cost of land, which may preclude urban farming ever becoming competitive as a career choice.

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
January 5, 2012

Excerpt:

Urban farmers in Vancouver are at that awkward in-between stage: They are gaining traction with growing public interest in fresh local food and farmers markets, but not quite making a living at it.

A report based on figures from 2010 found that eight urban farms with a total of 2.3 acres under crops earned $128,580, or $13,745 per growing season for each farmer. That’s an hourly rate of $8.64, based on a work day that varies seasonally.

“You have to bear in mind that these are new businesses, most less than three years old, so the farmers are still learning how to be productive and how to be a business,” said the report’s author Marc Schutzbank, a master of science candidate at the University of British Columbia.

Urban farms in Vancouver are a mixed bag of small-space plots on agricultural land, donated front yard space, land leased cheaply from municipalities and donated land farmed by non-profit groups. Only one property was owned outright by the farmer.

Read the complete article here.

Urban farmers hope to grow in school district

By Naoibh O’Connor
Vancouver Courier
January 4, 2012

Exceprt:

Fresh Roots, a project co-founded by Ilana Labow and Gray Oron in a backyard garden three years ago, now develops school-based market gardens to help teachers meet curriculum goals through experiential learning, while providing produce for school cafeterias and culinary arts programs.

The group has worked with Queen Alexandra for one full growing season.

“It’s had such a tremendous impact in the school community that my inbox became flooded with requests from teachers in other schools to be in a partnership with us,” Labow said, adding, “I’ve watched eight-year-old boys arm wrestle for broccoli flowers growing in that garden. It’s astounding to see the student body hungry to pick collard greens and bring green beans home to their parents.”

Read the complete article here.

Happy New Year!

And the weather report here in Vancouver is for more rain and mild temperatures. Wear your rubber boots to visit our rubber duckies at the Compost Demonstration Garden.

Unit to be installed on the roof levels of the EasyPark parking lot at 535 Richards Street in downtown Vancouver

By Terry Brodie
Globe and Mail
December 12, 2011

Excerpt:

Slated to be Valcent’s first ‘VertiCrop’ system in North America

Vancouver-based Valcent Products Inc. has signed a memorandum of understanding to install its first “VertiCrop” high-density vertical growing system in North America on the top level of a parkade in the city’s downtown core.

The vertical farming system allows leafy green vegetables to be grown all year round in urban environments in much smaller spaces, using much smaller amounts of energy and water while generating higher yields.

According to the VertiCrop site, using the system requires just 8 per cent of normal water consumption used to irrigate crops, can work in any climate, can grow more than 50 varieties of leafy green vegetables, and offers yields about 20 times higher than normal production of field crops.

Read the complete article here.

Valcent’s First VertiCrop(TM) Installation Slated for City of Vancouver

Vancouver, British Columbia,
Dec 12, 2011
Marketwire Via Comtex

Valcent Products Inc. announced today that it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with PSWJ Holdings Ltd. (“PSWJ”) and EasyPark, a Corporation that manages and operates parkades and properties owned by the City of Vancouver, to install a VertiCrop(TM) high density vertical growing system on the top-level of a parkade in the heart of the city’s downtown core.

Named one of TIME Magazine’s 50 Best Inventions, VertiCrop(TM) allows leafy green vegetables to be grown in controlled environments such as greenhouses and underutilized urban warehouses. In addition to providing year-round access to fresh, healthy, local produce, VertiCrop(TM) requires a fraction of the land, energy, and water conventionally required to grow, prepare and distribute produce.

The MOU proposes that North America’s first VertiCrop(TM) unit be installed on the roof levels of the EasyPark parking lot at 535 Richards Street in downtown Vancouver, or a similar location. The business will be operated by a new joint venture between Valcent and PSWJ.

“We’re very excited about the possibility of having North America’s first VertiCrop(TM) operation installed in the progressive City of Vancouver,” said Stephen Fane, CEO of Valcent Products Inc. “The way we produce food today will not satisfy global demand in the future. VertiCrop(TM) is the paradigm shift that we need in agriculture.”

The City of Vancouver has set the goal of being the world’s greenest city 2020 and EasyPark will provide the opportunity to showcase the VertiCrop(TM) technology and demonstrate a sustainable local food production facility.

“The proposed VertiCrop(TM) installation in the City of Vancouver showcases our ability to adapt our urban assets to meet changing market demands and promote environmental leadership,” said General Manager Mel McKinney for EasyPark. “This long-term lease generates direct financial benefit to Vancouverites while showcasing Vancouver’s sustainability innovation.”

The MOU calls for the formal lease agreement to be completed within 90 days of today’s signing.

Link here.

While urban farmers may have gotten some of the answers they were looking for at the forum, it appears they may have actually gotten more questions!

Vancouver Urban Farmers Newsletter
Dec 2011

Excerpts:

The Urban Farming Forum took place on November 25 and 26th, 2011 at Boneta restaurant and SFU Woodwards in Vancouver. Both days were well attended by an enthusiastic crowd of urban farmers, food security advocates, NGO representatives, and consumers.

See details of Discussion Sessions:

The afternoon session was the discussion session, where ideas collected from the morning were grouped to form the following discussion topics

Business Support and Development
Community Connections
Finance and Managing Risk
Government Support #1
Infrastructure and Operation
Land Access
Land Utilization
The Big Picture
Government Support #2

See the complete summary here.

An Urban Farming Census – Project Description

By Marc Schutzbank, MSc. Candidate
University of British Columbia
November, 2010
Presented at the Vancouver Urban Farming Forum

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index is at the highest level ever recorded. Wheat crops have failed in Russia and in China due to severe heat and draught. International food access issues are stirring local public and private responses, one of which is urban farming. To ascertain the community impacts of urban farming, I propose the development of an urban farming census to measure the economic, social and environmental outcomes of urban farming.

Vancouver’s Urban Farm Network: A Look into the Economics of Urban Farming. See the large poster here. (Large 5.3 MB

Many cities and municipalities are developing local food strategies that include provisions for local production and distribution of agricultural products. Entrepreneurs are developing businesses in the field of urban agriculture and thousands of gardens are being readied for next season. Yet, despite this interest and growth, there are no data available on specific yields, economic profit, social benefits or environmental impacts of urban farming in North America. I will address this lack of information by conducting a census of urban farms. Using Vancouver, BC as a test case, I will use the census to help elucidate both urban farming practices and their community impact. This tool will be exportable, to assist and encourage better accounting of urban farming in other communities. Measuring the impacts of sustainability initiatives like urban farming, can help decision makers target resources to the most effective programs. Results can drive future sustainability initiatives. I hypothesize that Vancouver’s urban farming promotes a wide range of community benefits; this census will evaluate my hypothesis.

Interest in local food continues to grow. Concerns of food safety and unease with international markets for agriculture are driving more customers to their local farmer’s markets and to their gardens. In 2008, Canadian farmers’ markets supported twenty-eight million shoppers, each spending thirty-two dollars per visit for a total economic impact between two and three billion dollars . In the United States, there has been a 250% increase in the number of farmers markets over the past fifteen years . Local food increasingly finds it way to the dinner table. Vancouver is no different.

Though many local farmers drive into the city from the surrounding areas, produce is readily available from expanding urban farmers. Urban farmers, unlike community gardeners, farm to make a living. They raise produce, grow ornamentals, extract honey, raise chickens and collect eggs to sell in their community. This year, 13 urban farms grew food for their community. Together, urban farmers have built an Urban Farmer’s Network to develop relationships, build community and understand the impacts of their work.

Working with the Urban Farming Network, the City of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia, I have conducted an urban farming census, which provides data on number of financial and social metrics: revenue gained, jobs provided, volunteer hours logged, and social benefits. These metrics, among others, were collected through individual interviews and surveys. In addition, I will be describing and modeling urban farm business operations. This will help give policy makers data to better develop legal frameworks for these programs and make best business practices available to current and future urban famers. Attached you will find my poster and flyer with information from the census.

Urban farmers seek to build our future around a vision of local production. During World War II, Victory Gardens provided 42% of fresh vegetables consumed in the United States. This vision is possible and already happening in Vancouver.

Vegetable Vancouver 2010: An Urban Farming Census. See the two page flyer PDF here. (1.7 MB)

Vancouver’s Urban Farm Network: A Look into the Economics of Urban Farming. See the large poster here. (Large 5.3 MB)

Also see: “Urban Farming by the Numbers” here. Dec 9, 2011

Contributing to Vancouver’s goal of being the Greenest City in the World

Collected and presented by Joanna Clark
For “Vancouver Urban Farming Forum”
Nov. 26, 2011

This past weekend The Vancouver Urban Farming Forum gave urban farmers, policy makers, and food security advocates an opportunity to gather together to discuss urban farming in the context of land use, municipal policy, and best practices.

The Farms:

Fresh Roots Urban Farm

Urban Digs

The Orchard Garden

Inner City Farms

Giddy Up & Grow

City Farm Boy

My Urban Farm

Duncan’s Backyard Henhouses

Farmers on 57th

World in a Garden

Grant’s Gourmet Gardens

Loutet Farm

Sundog Veggies

Southlands Heritage Farms

Urban Edibles

YWCA Rooftop Garden

SoleFood

UBC Farm

Environmental Youth Alliance Youth Garden

Yummy Yards

24 Carrots

Natural Urban Growers (NUG)

Terra Nova Sharing Farm

Green City Acres

Common Grind

Carrot Creek Urban Farm

See all the farms here.

See the Vancouver Urban Farming Forum website here.

Environmental Youth Alliance grows wheat on 25 small patches of land in the city

By Terry Lavender
Vancouver Observer
Oct 24th, 2011

Excerpt:

Never has pizza tasted so good. But maybe I’m biased. After all, the flour that made the pizza dough came in part from wheat that my partner grew. Not only that, but I helped grind that wheat into flour by peddling away on a bicycle-powered flour mill. And I chopped the peppers that, along with cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms and pesto made up the pizza topping.

So good, that I could hardly wait for the next batch of pizzas to come out of the portable pizza oven (made from an old oil drum) so I could have seconds.

It was the culmination of the Environmental Youth Alliance’s Lawns to Loaves. The celebration of the successful project took place at EYA’s ecopavilion garden house at the Strathcona Community Garden on October 22.

Read the complete article here.

See Lawns to Loaves website here.

The urban agriculture movement is gaining strength across B.C., enthusiastically adapted by everyone from businesses to backyard growers to pot-growers. So why is it being used as a wedge issue in Vancouver’s latest election?

By Peter Ladner
Crosscut
Nov 7, 2011
Peter Ladner is the founder of “Business in Vancouver” newspaper and a former Vancouver City Councillor. He is currently a Fellow at the Simon Fraser University Centre for Dialogue. His new book is named: The Urban Food Revolution: Changing the Way We Feed Cities.

Excerpt:

As the Nov. 19 municipal election deadline nears, the struggling right-of-center Non-Partisan Association (NPA) has been challenging the ruling Vision Vancouver party’s misspending through its Greenest City Action Plan. The one project singled out for high profile ridicule is the “wheat fields” — a modest $5,000 grant to the Environmental Youth Alliance dedicated to planting enough wheat in numerous front yards to harvest 100 pounds, redefine the notion of the “city farm,” and teach young people how bread is made. It’s definitely a stretch of taxpayer dollars, but hardly significant for a city with a $1 billion budget.

In another attempt to create a wedge issue, NPA has challenged Vision’s approval of urban chickens. Candidates for the party make public appearances with a chicken mascot, holding up a sign that says, “Chickens for Gregor” — a reference to Vancouver’s mayor, Gregor Robertson.

“Chickens. They love the mayor,” NPA mayoral candidate Suzanne Anton wrote in the Vancouver Sun last summer. “Their chicken brothers, sisters, and cousins can all retire to Vancouver. And if they wear out their welcome in somebody’s backyard, they can always move to the mayor’s $20,000 shelter for homeless chickens.”

Read the complete article here.

‘Vision Vancouver’ – Community gardens and food security

By VoteVision, Press Release
Vision is a Vancouver, BC, political party
Oct 25, 2011

Take a walk through the expanded Cottonwood Community Gardens on Raymur Avenue or the newly formed Mount Pleasant Gardens on Ontario and West 16th and you’ll see the potential for growing food in an urban setting. Tomatoes, bok choi and apple trees abound! Vision Vancouver sees the potential too – we even built a community garden at City Hall.

In 2010, Vision Vancouver established 450 new community garden plots in the city. It’s just one of the ways Vision Vancouver is support urban agriculture and food security. Vancouver now has approximately 3260 community garden plots.

Spread across the Vancouver’s parkland, community gardens are key spaces for residents to increase their own food security. In one of the city’s 74 gardens, you can learn how to grow vegetables, connect with your neighbours and add some green to your neighbourhood. Check to see if you have a garden in your neighbourhood, or start your own!

The City’s goals in encouraging urban agriculture include:

Enhancing the City’s food security and reducing the City’s ecological footprint by reducing “distance to fork” through encouraging more locally grown, culturally appropriate and affordable food production

Encouraging increased social interaction in high density developments

Supporting and encouraging an environmentally and socially sustainable activity.

Increasing the number of community plots in the city is just one way to help residents have access to land to grow their own food. And it’s just one of the ways Vision Vancouver is committed to helping Vancouver become a more sustainable city.

Over its term the Vision Council has approved several policies, motions and staff directives in support of urban agriculture and food security, including:

Developing Urban Agriculture Design Guidelines for new private developments,

Passing a motion in support of Farmers Markets,

Creating 450 new community garden plots,

Supporting the Vancouver Food Strategy.

Your support for Vision Vancouver will help continue this work to become the Greenest City.

See the press release here.

Mike: I am able to remember the tree’s name by calling it ‘Blet Medlar’ after the comic actress Bette Midler.

Today we met two people, born in Northern Iran, who were picking the fruit of a Medlar tree planted along a residential street in Vancouver. They loved this fruit, but hadn’t tasted it since leaving Iran 26 years ago.

The couple said that after taking the fruit home, they would let them ripen (blet) under a cloth on a tray in a warm place for a couple of weeks before eating. Finding these fruit brought memories back and tears to their eyes.

Photo by Michael Levenston.

One of our garden neighbours, food writer Eve Johnson, introduced us to this unusual fruit a couple of years ago. In her book “Eating my Words”, she wrote:

“Then, cleaning up a day or two after a medlar tasting, I was shocked to find that one of the medlars left on the serving plate had become tumescent, engorged. The wrinkles were gone. The skin was as smooth as a just-picked medlar, and now it shone again, in some places a dark wine red, in others, a rich purple brown with golden spots. The once recessed seeds had popped out. The pentagram was even more prominent. And the rim of the calyx had begun to leak a sweet, shiny juice.”

“I peeled it. The scent had sharpened. Instead of the muted applesauce smell, it was stronger and sweeter, the taste of apple-flavoured fermentation, but not the taste of a rotten apple. I felt, unmistakably, a little electric thrill.”

See Eve Johnson’s book here.

Also see: Medlar: The Best Fruit You’ve Never Heard Of here.

Flash from the past – 1979 article in City Farmer Newspaper

By Kerry Banks
City Farmer Newspaper
Vol 2 No. 1, October, 1979
(City Farmer began in 1978 by publishing a newspaper. Kerry is a founding member of City Farmer. He is an award-winning freelance writer and journalist. See bio further on.)

(1979) – Dr. Donald Flather and his wife Grace have one of the more unique vegetable gardens in Vancouver. It’s the last remaining ‘victory garden’ from the city’s World War Two home food production effort.

Beginning back in the early forties, the Government of Canada made a concentrated effort to get city and town folk involved in growing their own food. Large advertisements were placed in the daily newspapers.

“Plant a wartime garden,” they urged. “Home production of vegetables is needed now more than any time during the war. Help by growing the vegetables your family needs.”

The Flathers responded by obtaining permission from the city to make use of the vacant B.C. Hydro right of way boulevard in front of their Kerrisdale home. The garden they planted in 1942 still flourishes today; a 37 year old artifact from a time when being a city farmer was synonymous with being a Canadian patriot.

“The ground wasn’t very good originally,” remembers Dr. Flather. “It was full of stones and bits of broken brick and glass. Apparently there’d been a big greenhouse on this site before we moved in.”

“The first year our garden was only a marginal one, we planted carrots, onions, parsnips, … that sort of thing. But it grew in size each year as we gradually built the tilth up.”

“Our front lawn at the time was reserved exclusively for raising potatoes. Our neighbours on either side of us did the same.”

Dr. Flather can recall that during the war years the B.C. Hydro right of way that extends down their street was covered with vegetable gardens. “They ran up and down the boulevard on either side of our garden for 100 yards,” he says.

Title: River Scene. See more of Donald Flather’s work here.

At the time, the Flathers had just one of the many productive gardens in the city. A report released by the Federal Agricultural Supplies Board for the year 1943 valued the 31,000 tons of produce taken from 52,000 victory gardens in Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and North and West Vancouver at 4 million dollars, the equivalent of 20 million dollars worth of supermarket produce today.

In Dr. Flather’s mind, the figure of 31,000 tons of produce is likely an understatement. “In those years you could find at least one good sized victory garden on every block in the city.”

One has to wonder why people gave them up.

“In our neighbourhood,” says Dr. Flather, “there were those gardeners who died, others that moved away and some people who became too affluent.”

What was commonplace in the war years of the 1940′s is today an object of curiosity. Passerbys are constantly stopping to gawk at the Flather’s victory garden.

“So many people stop and get out of their cars to stare, one of our neighbours suggested we could put up bleachers and sell tickets,” jokes Mrs. Flather.

We don’t consider our garden fabulous,” states Dr. Flather. “I’d say it’s rather average actually. We grow for productivity, not show.”

That’s no idle boast. The Flather’s 18’ by 50’ garden supplies a harvest of over 20 different crops, including corn, carrots, onions, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, squash, cucumbers, celery, rhubarb and parsnips.

This summer they‘ve harvested a year’s supply of potatoes, collected 15 pints of beans and canned so many tomatoes that they no longer have any shelf room left.

“We have a 22 cubic ft. freezer in our basement,” notes Mrs. Flather. “We can just get the lid closed.”

“Over half of our food we‘ll have to give away to friends and relatives. We couldn’t possibly eat it all ourselves.”

Do they ever buy any vegetables?

Yes, avocados. But not too often, we’re really not that fond of them.”

Title: Mount Robson. See more of Donald Flather’s work here.

Each year Dr. Flather tries a different type of crop in his garden. This past year he’s enjoyed success with a new type of tomato called Ultra Grow. Those varieties of vegetables that prove unproductive or unflavorful he drops from his repertoire.

Dr. Flather helps his vegetables along with a combination of compost and chemical fertilizers.

“Not many people know it, but if you ask them, the City will deliver a load of leaves free of charge to your doorstep. l’ve found them to be an excel- lent conditioner for the garden.”

His leaves are mixed into the compost pile with grass and other green vegetable cuttings. Employed as a mulch and spread in the garden as needed, the leaves have a blotter effect, helping to retain valuable moisture in the soil. As well, leaves serve as a soil texturizer, supplying aeration and retarding the growth of weeds.

“Some people will tell you that you shouldn’t use cedar needles in the garden, but that’s basically an old wives tale,” states Dr. Flather. “Cedar needles might take a little longer to rot down, but they won’t harm your plants. That was scientifically proven in a series of Saanich Island experiments done using 12 different wood mulches in 1951.”

Dr. Flather uses the more concentrated forms of chemical fertilizers such as 16-20-10 and 16-16-16. He claims the milder mixtures are mostly filler and “diluted so the greenhorn won’t kill his plants.”

He applies his fertilizer in parallel strips about 2 inches from the young plants – roots can easily reach when they need nutrients.

He doesn’t believe chemical fertilizers to be hazardous if properly applied. “A plant,” he says, “can’t distinguish between natural and artificial minerals.”

The Flathers have not restricted their horticultural efforts to the victory garden. Their backyard resembles a commercial nursery. There is a greenhouse here for starting seedlings, dozens of scattered planters, several thriving beds of flowers and dwarf fruit trees, a trellis of sweet peas and another of grapes, plus a variety of healthy fruit trees. The Flathers harvest fruit from cherry, pear, peach, nectarine, and apple trees and from their strawberry and raspberry bushes.

The 30 year old apple tree is the backyard’s centerpiece.

By careful grafting techniques the Flathers now possess a tree which provides them with no less than 28 different types of apples!

I asked ‘the doctor if he could forsee anything causing a return to the tremendous productivity of the victory garden years in Vancouver. “There’s at lot of wasted potential here,” he suggests, gesturing down the grass covered boulevard. “There could be food gardens extending all the way along here as far as 57th Ave.”

“Sometimes I wonder if the higher prices of vegetables and the slump in the economy might not be a blessing in disguise. Harder times I’ve found, usually help bring people to their senses.”

“The Secret Life Of Donald Flather”

Written by Daniel Wood
Beautiful Bc Magazine
Spring 1999

Excerpt:

As David Flather, then 28, stood in the doorway of his grandparents’ Vancouver home four years ago, he was struck by a sense of erieness. His grandmother, Grace, had just died. His grandfather, Donald Flather, had passed away in 1990. Together with his aunt and uncle, David was there to begin the task of emptying the cluttered home of 54 years of occupancy. His grandfather had been a Vancouver school teacher and packrat of the first magnitude. His grandmother had rebuffed every effort to clean the house after her husband’s death. She wanted nothing moved, believing her husband was still there, still inhabiting the place. And in a strange way, she was right.

The livingroom walls were covered with Donald Flather’s paintings — large, abstracted landscapes that had a familiarity David couldn’t quite define. A half-dozen more paintings were stacked — like a firescreen — in front of the fireplace. In the hall, in the diningroom, in the bedrooms, every wall held more of his grandfather’s artwork. When he pushed open the door to the upstairs studio, where David on occasion had watched his grandfather paint, he paused and asked himself: Where do I put my feet? Dozens of large, framed landscape paintings stood on edge, filling the room from wall to wall. They leaned against each other and against the room’s shelving where hundreds of slide trays, jammed with Flather’s travel photos, were stacked among the musty collection of art books. In the corner by the north window stood Flather’s easel.

Read the complete article here.

See Donald Flather’s bio here.

Kerry Banks – Bio

From the Trent University Alumni Magazine
Fall 2011

Kerry Banks has been a freelance writer and journalist for over 30 years. During his studies at Trent, he majored in history and wrote for The Arthur – and he credits his involvement with the student paper for giving him the exposure, confidence, and technical skills he needed to become the writer and journalist he is today.

After graduating from Trent, he applied the skills he learned from The Arthur – writing articles, creating layouts, taking photos, and writing headlines – at the Peterborough Common Press, a local weekly newspaper that was published in Peterborough in the 1970s. However, in 1977, he started working as a freelancer full-time and moved to Vancouver, where he lives to this day.

Over his career, he has won several national Magazine Awards and Western Magazine Awards. His work has appeared in Vancouver Magazine, Equinox, Western Living, WestWorld, and Maclean’s. In addition to writing articles on business, arts, culture, travel, and the environment, he has written several sports books.

Link here.

Randy Shore is the Vancouver Sun newspaper’s ‘Green Man’. One year ago Shore took on the challenge to eat something that he grew each and every day for one year.

By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
September 30, 2011

Excerpt:

For every hard-to-manage bit of ground in your yard, there is a protected corner, sunny spot or shady microclimate waiting to be exploited with a pot of soil and a few seeds. If you can find those secret spots, you can use them, usually year round.

Growing food has been delicious, rewarding, discouraging, heartbreaking and the best thing I do all day. Preserving, processing, picking, cooking and eating what we grow, my wife and I do together every day.

Figuring out what to do with it all is a daily topic for conversation for the family. New recipes were invented. Old recipes were resurrected. A few favourites were rewritten to use whatever was in abundance that day.

The most important thing I learned is that if you want to eat every day, plant every day. Food grows in the ground and in boxes, in pots, under glass and in jars on the kitchen counter. A seed can return thousands of times its weight in healthy food. All you have to do is take a few minutes — less than the duration of a TV rerun — to help it along.

Read the complete article here.

A gathering of Vancouver’s urban farmers

Friday, November 25, 2011 (evening);
Saturday, November 26, 2011 (all day)

Introduction from the website:

Vancouver has the goal of being the Greenest City in the World by 2020. Local food and green economy are two of ten areas of focus for achieving the greenest city goals. Urban farming is in a unique position to contribute to both of these goals. The number of urban farms in Vancouver is increasing and these green businesses are leading the way in developing economically viable food production models for the urban environment.

With urban commercial food production being a relatively new occurrence in Vancouver, it is not accounted for in current city policy. There are a number of factors affecting urban farms’ ability to operate as legitimate businesses in Vancouver including land zoning and business licensing. This forum comes out of an interest from both the City and Urban Farmers to work together toward policies, best practices, and land-use decisions that can support urban farming practices now and into the future.

This forum will draw on policy precedents from other West Coast cities such as San Francisco, Seattle, Victoria, and Lantzville – to generate ideas for shaping Vancouver’s city policy. Each of these cities has implemented urban farming policies over the past several years and can offer a lot of insight into developing our own policies here in Vancouver.

This forum also offers the opportunity for urban farmers to share what they have to offer to the city and to discuss best practices to ensure urban farming activity is not at odds with other urban activities.

As urban farming becomes more and more prevalent in Vancouver changes to policies will be essential in ensuring the sustainability of urban farming businesses. This forum offers the opportunity for input from a wide range of stakeholders in an effort to realize those changes.

See more details here.

And sign up today here.

Tenants challenge explicit orders to remove their veggie patch.

By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight
September 14, 2011

Excerpt:

Two gardening renters in East Vancouver are headed to provincial arbitration on September 30. This will come after their landlords demanded they dig up their extensive vegetable garden, and remove a greenhouse and rain barrel, along with other instructions sent in writing on August 5 and 14.

“It was like an absolute slap in the face,” Jodi Peters, project coordinator with the Environmental Youth Alliance and an avid gardener, told the Georgia Straight while sitting in the back yard of their multi-unit dwelling at 1922 Adanac Street.

“It [the first letter] was worded very harshly and quite insultingly, given the amount of time and care that we’ve put into this garden, with absolutely no room for negotiation. It was handed down like the law.”

At issue is Peters’s claim that she and her boyfriend, Jeffery Radke, agreed to rent because they were explicitly told they would be allowed to garden to feed themselves year-round. The couple did not formalize this in written form, only verbally, but have gardened since moving into the large, 102-year-old house in November 2009.

Read the complete article here.

Successful politicians will be out in front of this parade, not jeering from the sidelines.

By Peter Ladner
This column originally appeared in the Sept. 20, 2011 issue of Business in Vancouver.
Peter Ladner’s book, The Urban Food Revolution, Changing the Way We Feed Cities, will be published by New Society in October, 2011.

Politicians and candidates be warned: ridiculing urban farming is a no-win strategy. Food security is marching up the priority list in cities around the world, and Vancouver should be leading, not resisting, this movement.

Growing more food in our cities harms no one, and spins off myriad benefits: better diet, lower health care costs, beautification, safer neighbourhoods, safer food, inter-cultural and inter-generational integration, increased food security, exercise, increased property values near community gardens, less hunger, and, yes, commercial enterprises.

The commercial potential is greatest in desperate, shrinking cities like Detroit, but that isn’t stopping cities everywhere from promoting urban farming any way they can. New York just passed legislation that will, like Seattle, exempt rooftop greenhouses from height limits. New York is also making data about whether city-owned property is suitable for urban agriculture publicly available, and it’s mandating city jails and health centres to buy more locally grown food. Urban farming in New York is growing at what one city councilor there described as “an astounding rate”.

Citizens, schools, community centres, seniors’ centres, hospitals and neighbourhood groups, architects, planners and a new breed of commercial urban farmers are jumping into local food growing with a vengeance. Politicians should be making this good work easier, and respecting it in every way possible.

Fighting this tide could land you in the mud. While Victoria has joined a growing list of cities that allow commercial sales of produce grown on city lots, Lantzville, near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, has attracted international outrage for persecuting urban farmers. Lantzville resident Dirk Becker and his partner Nicole Shaw live on a 2.5-acre residentially-zoned lot and make $20,000 a year at farmers’ markets selling produce grown on their property. While Becker has lovingly restored the property by piling up sawdust and compost to replace the original soil that was mined and sold by the previous owner, his neighbour prefers the manicured estate look of the golf course that abuts both their properties. The neighbour has the ear of the local council, which last fall ordered Becker and Shaw to “remove all piles of soil and manure” from their property and boulevard and “cease all agricultural activities”. The order was based on a bylaw that says, vaguely, that residentially-zoned properties cannot “grow crops”.

Becker’s case has drawn hundreds of his supporters to public meetings and attracted international attention, positioning Lantzville as a gross aberration of a sustainable town, where petty partisan process trumps common sense. Why would a town on an island where 95% of food is imported not do everything possible to encourage local food production?

The mayor counters that he and his council are concerned about manure and woodchip deliveries to the property, encroachment on the neighbour’s property, traffic and water supply contamination—all non-issues from what I can tell. The dispute is, unbelievably, headed for the courts.

I drove down the dead end road to Becker’s semi-rural property last month, and found it to be neatly kept, odourless, and totally alive with squash, beans, chard, raspberries, carrots, potatoes and myriad other foods. To consider it a blight on the neighbourhood would require a massive stretch of the imagination and an unhealthy sprinkling of bad blood between neighbours.

Vancouver politicians with legitimate concerns about sloppy civic spending should be wary of the lessons from Lantzville. Attacking urban agriculture these days is a mug’s game.

“Most of us in the well-fed world give little thought to where our food comes from or how it is grown,” writes Charles Siebert in the July, 2011 issue of National Geographic. “We steer our shopping carts down supermarket aisles without realizing that the apparent bounty is a shiny stage set held up by increasingly shaky scaffolding.”

People are responding by growing more, not less, food in cities everywhere. Successful politicians will be out in front of this parade, not jeering from the sidelines.

Urban farming’s growing political power

Listen to anti urban farming political ad here:

NPA Ad by Sunciviclee

By Doug Ward
Vancouver Sun
September 15, 2011

Excerpt:

Peter Ladner, the previous mayoral candidate for the Non-Partisan Association, isn’t happy with his party’s campaign decision to mock Mayor Gregor Robertson’s promotion of urban agriculture.

“Politicians and candidates be warned: Ridiculing urban farming is a no-win strategy,” wrote Ladner in a column this week in Business In Vancouver.

“Food security is marching up the priority list in cities around the world, and Vancouver should be leading, not resisting, this movement.”

His column appeared one day after the NPA released a radio attack-advertisement that criticized Robertson for promoting backyard chickens and front-yard wheat.

Read the complete article here.

Also see:

Attack Ads Against Local Food Production

By Andrew Frank

Excerpt:

The NPA’s new attack ads rely on a politics of division and ignorance that appeals to the darkest side of voters, and I think that’s why they’ll fail, especially in community-minded Vancouver. Concern and interest in this city about urban greening and local food production has resulted in community gardens springing up on every patch of available land, long wait lists for community garden plots, and scores of volunteers for public space initiatives.

Read the complete article here.