This farm will create green jobs and provide healthy food to the community

The Viet Village Urban Farm project represents an effort to reestablish the tradition of local farming in this community after Katrina. New Orleans East was one of the most damaged areas of the city New Orleans during the storms of 2005. In response to the devastation, the community has organized around the idea of creating an urban farm and market as the center of the community. The farm, located on 28-acres in the heart of the community, will be a combination of small-plot gardening for family consumption, larger commercial plots focused on providing food for local restaurants and grocery stores in New Orleans, and a livestock area for raising chickens and goats in the traditional Vietnamese way.

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been an environmental and economic disaster for communities throughout the region. With a heavy base in the fishing industry, the local Vietnamese community has been one of the hardest hit. Local leaders are working to create quality, long-term green jobs to offset the economic costs of the oil spill.

The Mary Queen of Viet Nam Community Development Corporation supports New Orleans East, a large Vietnamese and African-American community. It provides business development, affordable housing, urban farm, community organizing, social services, healthcare outreach, and environmental justice programs. Now, it is hoping its plans for a 28-acre Viet Village Urban Farm can help lead New Orleans to a sustainable future. This farm will create green jobs and provide healthy food to the community. The organization is hoping to break ground in 2011.

See Winner: Viet Village – 2008 ASLA Excellence Award here.

See more about the Viet Village project here.

Farming in the City: Joys of Growing Food

by Ann Dornfeld
This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report
July 5, 2010

The Voice of America, which first went on the air in 1942, is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors. VOA broadcasts approximately 1,500 hours of news, information, educational, and cultural programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of 125 million people.

The short article is about Seattle’s Alleycat Acres. Sean Conroe and Amber Banks are interviewed. Following the story, 42 people from around the world used their limited English to comment on the story and speak about urban agriculture.

Examples:

ZX Cindy (China)
What a coincidence! People in my city (I live in Chengdu, a middle-sized city in Southwestern China) are also enjoying a new trend to grow foods by themselves. They rent a small piece of land in the suburban areas, and plant vegetables there. The rent is about $180 a year. All the things from the soil belongs to you, of course. The enthusiasm for growing food from a life-simultation computer game called HAPPY FARM, but in which your friends will steal your products and vice versa!

Ton Nu Truc Huong (Vietnam)
I like this article so much. I believe it is very interesting when we grow vegetables by ourselve and eat them. It can save our money and be good for the health. However, the most difficult problem is that how we can find out the land to do this in urban areas which have a big population.

Korea (Jane)
When I was young, my parents grew some vegetables in the garden. But these days there aren’t any places in the cities. I always want to grow some vegetables. Do I have to move to country??

See the complete story here.

This film, produced by the RUAF, is a very good, brief introduction to urban agriculture. Cities visited include: Dakar, Senegal; Hanoi, Vietnam; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Quito Ecuador.

Part 2 of the video is on the following page.

Urban Agriculture clip 2.

Along with the IDRC and the RUAF, Urban Harvest, headquartered in Lima, Peru, is a major centre for international urban agriculture development. This recent publication, 2007, is available for download as a 64 page PDF (3.2MB).

“Although many migrants move to cities in the
expectation of more and better-paid jobs than in the
country-side, we know that many cities have as much as
90% informal employment, meaning occasional and
precarious opportunities for earning income. Urban crop
production and livestock-keeping have been shown to be
complementary activities to casual non-farm work for
many families and improving their income-generating
potential can help them move out of poverty.

Articles from the Philippines, Vietnam and Uganda show the special opportunities that urban and peri-urban producers have to access local input and produce markets.”

This publication is “a review of some of the ongoing work of Urban Harvest, the CGIAR System-wide initiative on urban and peri-urban agriculture, focusing on how initiatives under the themes of urban livelihoods and markets, urban ecosystems health and stakeholder and policy dialogue are helping to support urban poor in Africa, Latin America and Asia.”

Download here. Impacts of Urban Agriculture – Highlights of Urban Harvest Research and Development, 2003-2006.

Subjects from the Table of Contents include:

Introduction to urban livelihoods and markets

Flower power in the Philippines: Strengthening the contribution of the jasmine industry to urban livelihoods

Meals on wheels add a new dynamic to pig raising in Hanoi

Identifying best bet marketing opportunities for Kampala farmers

What should I feed my child? Perceptions of foods for young children
among Lima mothers

Introduction to Urban Ecosystem Health

Adopting Farmer Field Schools to urban realities in Lima, Peru

Research for a cleaner future: Heavy metal contamination in Kampala

Dirty secret treasures in Nairobi

Improving the quality of irrigation water in Lima

Introduction to Stakeholder and Policy Dialogue

Getting agriculture on the municipal agenda in Lima

An urban agricultural model in the making: Kampala, Uganda

Improving the integration of urban agriculture in national and local government in Kenya, through multi-stakeholder platforms

Urban Harvest

Urban Harvest is the CGIAR system wide initiative in urban and peri-urban agriculture, which aims to contribute to the food security of poor urban families, and to increase the value of agricultural production in urban and peri-urban areas, while ensuring the sustainable management of the urban environment. Urban Harvest is hosted and convened by the International Potato Center.

Contact: Gordon Prain, PhD Global Coordinator
CIP, Apartado 1558 Lima 12, Peru
Av. La Molina 1895, La Molina, Lima-Peru
Tel. 51-1-3496017, Ext 2040/3042
email: urbanharvest@cgiar.org