Category — Video

New trailer for Edible City.

Support Edible City’s fundraising efforts.

Hidden between buildings and across networks of backyards, germinating in classrooms and sprouting up in city centers, a grassroots movement is thriving in the Bay Area.

Edible City, the forthcoming documentary from East Bay Pictures, follows the stories of folks who are digging their hands into the dirt, fighting for sustainability and social justice by doing something truly revolutionary: growing a local food system.

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An estimated 15 million urban white-collars spend more than five hours a day on Happy Farm, according to data from the game’s creator.

China’s growing addiction: online farming games

Elliott Ng
Venture Beat
October 29, 2009

A new agrarian revolution has occurred in China, but only in the virtual worlds of social games. Social farm games now dominate all major Chinese social networking sites — RenRen (formerly Xiaonei), Kaixin001, 51.com, and QQ’s QZone. The May launch and 2H 2009 adoption of QQ Farm — a version of China’s already popular Happy Farm game built to run on Tencent’s estimated 228 million active-user QZone platform — may very well have transformed China into the leading country of online farmers.

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Home-garden-sized row covers.

Sam Kass preps and plugs the winter garden

By Jane Black
Washington Post
Dec 16, 2009

First, he was profiled in Men’s Health magazine. Then it was People. Now White House assistant chef Sam Kass has taken the first step to small screen stardom. And by small screen, I mean YouTube.

Today, the White House released a video of Kass and Department of Agriculture officials readying the South Lawn garden for winter. A group of what appear to be a dozen volunteers set up hoop houses – a kind of temporary green house – in which staff will grow cold-weather greens for the White House table. The group also plant a cover crop of rye, which will help protect and enrich the soil during the cold months.

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Urban Agriculture Ideas Competition – Mowing to Growing

Non-Profit Design Group Terreform ONE Announces First Annual “One Prize” Award to Promote Green Design in Cities

Seeking architects, urban designers, planners, engineers, scientists, artists, students and individuals of all backgrounds:

How can we break the American love affair with the suburban lawn?

Can green houses be incorporated in skyscrapers?

What are the urban design strategies for food production in cities?

Can food grow on rooftops, parking lots, building facades?

What is required to remove foreclosure signs on lawns and convert them to gardens?

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Un hectare à Beyrouth – “Planete reporter” Le Monde.fr et Youtube

Une évocation de l’exploitation de Rahmé, agricultrice à Beyrouth. Les atouts de l’agriculture urbaine sont-ils une réponse aux enjeux environnementaux contemporains?

Un reportage destiné au concours “Planete reporter” organisé par Le Monde.fr et Youtube

Danielle visits an urban farming project in Kibera and talks about the importance of agriculture in improving nutrition and incomes in urban settings.

Urban Agriculture in Africa

Danielle Nierenberg is a Senior Researcher at the Worldwatch Institute and co-Project Director of State of World 2011: Nourishing the Planet. Her knowledge of sustainable agriculture issues, in particular factory farming and its global spread, has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and other media.

The following stories, videos and links are from Nourishing the Planet’s Weekly E-Newsletter, and include highlights from Danielle’s time in Kenya, where she met with farmers and visited projects on the ground to learn about and analyze environmentally sustainable ways of alleviating poverty and hunger.

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Noah Sheetz, Executive Chef of New York State picks some fresh produce from his plot at the Lincoln Park Community Garden in Albany. Photo by Michael P. Farrell

Gardens ripe with tales of Albany – Urban community plots are a fertile ground for diverse crops and a variety of people

By PAUL GRONDAHL
Times Union
August 23, 2009

ALBANY — Dressed in his formal chef’s whites, Noah Sheetz, Gov. David Paterson’s executive chef, ambled across Eagle Street from the Executive Mansion and picked his way through the bounty of the community garden that borders Lincoln Park.

From neatly ordered, weed-free rows in a corner plot he tends, Sheetz yanked up a fistful of ruby beets the size of baseballs and sliced off a head of broccoli as wide as his palm.
“This has worked out really well and it’s great to learn from the other gardeners,” said Sheetz, a Culinary Institute of America graduate with solid restaurant credentials.

As Sheetz commiserated about tomato blight and an influx of pesky beetles, gardener Euthia Benson, who grew up in the Deep South, told a story about how her mother taught her to grow tasty okra when she was a young girl.

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Trailer ‘Grown in Detroit’ from Mascha Poppenk on Vimeo.

Grown in Detroit

by Dutch filmmakers Mascha and Manfred Poppenk
(Highly recommended film! Mike)

Imagine urban teens, pregnant, and farming a decaying city. They’re working, learning and planning for a better life for themselves and their babies. It’s not a movie script. It’s the subject of a new documentary, Grown in Detroit, by Dutch filmmakers Mascha and Manfred Poppenk.

While Detroit may have a reputation as one of the most impoverished and dangerous cities in the U.S., this award winning documentary exposes a different side; the side about residents who are emerging by using their resource and creating unique solutions.

“This isn’t the typical, negative Detroit story. It’s a powerful, uplifting story about rebirth of the city,” Said Mascha Poppenk, documentary filmmaker. “It focuses on the future by featuring the efforts of teens and their educators. The message they are teaching us applies to all in the world, not just the residents of Detroit”

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A Food Revolution – Urban Communities Growing Fresh Food

November 24, 2009

Fresh vegetables and fruit can be hard to find in the inner cities, but one man is trying to change that.

FAO/UN film (in Spanish) about urban agriculture in Bolivia involving young people. This film shows an FAO initiative which is improving city dwellers’ lives by helping them grow their own food.

Growing Home is committed to bring fresh food to Chicago’s South Side.

“Englewood, where our Wood Street Urban Farm is located, was once a flourishing Chicago neighborhood. It has suffered from decades of neglect and the flight of about 50% of its population since the early 1960’s. This dismal cycle of decline in Englewood can be seen in the vacant buildings and sparse population that have allowed drug trafficking and other criminal activity to grow. As gangs protected their territories, violence increased and youth became at risk of either gang assaults or gang recruitment.

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PopTech 2009: Will Allen from PopTech on Vimeo.

Watch Will Allen’s 24 minute talk.

In 1995, former Proctor & Gamble marketing executive Will Allen was helping neighborhood kids with a gardening project when he decided that introducing farming to America’s inner cities could reap real public health benefits. The farming methods and educational programs he subsequently developed are now the hallmark of Growing Power, the nonprofit organization Allen co-founded and directs.

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Watch the Video

Michelle Obama appeared on Sesame Street, as part of the 40th anniversary of America’s longest-running children’s TV series.

During the first lady’s visit, she was interrogated by Elmo and Big Bird, two of the characters who have starred in the iconic series since it launched in 1969.

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Part 1. The Sweet Water Organics fish vegetable farm is in a 10,000 sq. ft. old Milwaukee factory building.

Sweet Water Organics

“Sweet Water Organics is the first major commercial upgrading of MacArthur genius Will Allen’s aquaculture methodologies, i.e. a three-tiered, aquaponic, bio-intensive fish-vegetable garden. Sweet Water is the anchor project in the transformation of a massive industrial building in an “industrial slum” into a show-case of the potential of living technologies and high-value added urban agriculture.

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10 minutes from the Introduction to Victorian Kitchen Garden.

The Victorian Kitchen Garden

The Victorian Kitchen Garden was a 13-part television series produced in 1987 for BBC Two (Must see. Mike). It recreated a kitchen garden of the Victorian era at Chilton Foliat in Wiltshire. The presenter was the horticultural lecturer, Peter Thoday, the master gardener was Harry Dodson.

Harry James Dodson (1919 – 2005) was an English gardener who became a celebrity as a result of the BBC television documentary series, which featured his professional expertise and his reminiscences.

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Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives
By Carolyn Steel: Food urbanist
Published: 26 Mar 2009

“The question of how to feed cities may be one of the biggest contemporary questions, yet it’s never asked: we take for granted that if we walk into a store or a restaurant, food will be there, magically coming from somewhere. Yet, think of it this way: just in London, every single day, 30 million meals must be provided. Without a reliable food supply, even the most modern city would collapse quickly. And most people today eat food of whose provenance they are unaware.

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Dan Palmer, the permablitz visionary.
Photo: Shaney Balcombe

Permablitz: new word, noun

1. An event in which volunteers use permaculture principles to transform a suburban garden into a place that produces its own food. A combination of the words permaculture – a design system for sustainable living and land use – and Backyard Blitz a television program in which backyards receive a makeover.

The rules of a permablitz are simple: if you want a permablitz crew to turn up to your place, you have to help out on at least two other working weekends before they will do so. In addition, Palmer defines a permablitz as a day in which “two or more people come together to:

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Costa’s Garden Odyssey

Six episodes of Season One are now on-line in brilliant colour. See what’s happening in the city of Melbourne. You must see these shows! (Mike)

Examples of stories from the show:

Collingwood is an inner city suburb of Melbourne and it’s the home of the Collingwood Children’s Farm, a special place where children enjoy the opportunity to have some “hands on” experience with farm animals. It’s also a community garden where Costa meets people like 70-year-old Harry Haralambos who grows wonderful produce for his entire family here as well as Joy McGaffrey who introduces Costa to the taste of “Worm Juice”.

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The Food Project and Starbucks recently teamed up to produce a video highlighting youth and farms. Starbucks has been a supporter of the Food Project and source of volunteers for five years.

“In 2009 Starbucks awarded 50 Shared Planet Youth Action Grants totalling $842,000 to US non-profit organization to help support young people identify and address local needs. Starbucks is proud to support the work of all of these organizations including The Food Project in Boston, Massachusetts. The Food Project supports youth in producing healthy food for residents of the city and suburbs, provides youth leadership opportunities, and supports others to create change in their own communities.”

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By Bronwyn Smyth

My dad makes this juice every year from our small, Alberta grown purple grapes. We then freeze it. At Christmas time, we take it out and have it with Christmas dinner or at New Years. Sometimes, we add sparkling water, soda or ginger ale to it for fizz and flavour.

1. Place your grapes in a bucket and fill the bucket with water. Let your grapes stand for an hour, so that any insects and insect bodies will come floating to the surface. Skim these off, then remove your grapes.

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