Category — Water – Greywater

As a first step, a farmer company was set up to manage micro-loans through a revolving fund.

Water is a critical resource in urban settings, with the poor often being forced to endure unreliable supplies and contaminated wells.

International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
Issue 16 – 2013

Excerpt:

The urban poor in South Asia often lack livelihood opportunities and adequate nutrition. One way to address both these shortcomings is to encourage urban farming. Projects facilitated by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one of the partners of the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) Foundation, assisted urban gardeners and entrepreneurs in Gampaha, Sri Lanka, with marketing, business planning and agricultural water management. The initiative led to a policy amendment in Sri Lanka’s Western Province followed by a process to incorporate urban agriculture in the National Agriculture Policy.

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FAO Water produces Training handbook for farmer field schools

FAO Water Development and Management Unit
2012 – 52 pages

Many farmers in developing countries grow crops, especially vegetables, in urban and peri-urban environments using wastewater, raw or diluted, to irrigate their crops. Such wastewater is often heavily contaminated with disease-causing organisms and chemical agents that can seriously harm the health of the farmers, the traders who handle crops and the people who consume them. It is therefore very important for urban and peri-urban vegetable farmers to be aware of the health-risks associated with using wastewater for their irrigating crops and to know how to use wastewater safely at farm level to reduce those health risks.

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Watershed in garden.

The Watershed

By David Bonn, Managing Member
WaterShed Designs LLC

Building urban-friendly gardens that are totally dependent on municipal tap water just doesn’t make sense. In light of the situation, the WaterShed team took a fresh look at harvesting rainfall. The result is a wealth of knowledge and the WaterShed freestanding rainwater harvester. The WaterShed employs simple technology to harvest, store and distribute substantial quantities of high-quality water to support urban-friendly agriculture. Just add rain.

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The Wealth of Waste – The economics of wastewater use in agriculture

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Rome, 2010

Excerpt:

6 September 2010, Stockholm/Rome – Recycling urban wastewater and using it to grow food crops can help mitigate water scarcity problems and reduce water pollution, but the practice is not being as widely implemented as it should, according to a new FAO report.

Use of reclaimed wastewater in agriculture has been reported in around 50 countries on what amounts to 10 percent of the world’s irrigated land, according to “The Wealth of Waste: The Economics of Wastewater Use in Agriculture,” published today at the start of World Water Week (Stockholm, 5-11 September).

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Uniting a community in Northeast Baltimore through gardening

Hamilton Crop Circle is seeking seed money to help our various projects grow!

Some money will be allocated to developing worm composting systems other funds will be allocated to building greenhouses for year round produce production. Our projects will become sustainable economic engines thanks to start up funds.

Local Composting Program:
Hamilton Crop Circle works with area restaurants to collect compostable materials at no charge, reducing waste, while creating natural fertilizer.

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The RUAF’s Urban Agriculture Magazine 20 is out. “Water for Urban Agriculture”

• Sustainable Use of Water in Urban Agriculture
• Using Treated Domestic Wastewater for Urban Agriculture and Green Areas; The case of Lima
• The Use of Reservoirs to Improve the Quality of Urban Irrigation Water
• Adapting to Water Scarcity: Improving water sources and use in urban agriculture in Beijing
• Improving Decision-making on Interventions in the Urban Water Systems of Accra

Read the complete issue online here.

Host-Pathogen interactions, Malaria Infection cell biology. See complete image here.

Published in Malaria Journal, 4 August 2008
By Eveline Klinkenberg, PJ McCall, Michael D Wilson, Felix P Amerasinghe and Martin J Donnelly

To investigate the impact of urban agriculture on malaria transmission risk in urban Accra larval and adult stage mosquito surveys, were performed.

There has been a resurgence of interest in the problem of urban malaria in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years. Urban malaria is likely to increase in importance as rapid urbanization will result in the majority of Africa’s population living in cities in the near future. It is commonly assumed that urbanization leads to a decrease in malaria prevalence because it results in fewer Anopheles breeding sites, reduced biting rates due to the higher ratio of humans to mosquitoes, better access to treatment and better (mosquito-proof) housing.

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“During summer one Melbourne gardener, Marika Wagner, was struggling to look after her vegie patch under the somewhat arbitrary water restriction regime in Victoria – two watering windows a week is simply not enough to keep vegetables alive during a Melbourne summer!

“Like many others Marika rents her inner suburban home. For such people, those on a low income or for those who have a community garden plot, it is particularly difficult to grow vegies during summer.  For them systems such as water tanks are either out of reach financially or not worthwhile installing in a temporary situation.

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Tasha talks to Mike about natural lawn care at City Farmer. A push mower makes no noise, uses no gasoline and does not pollute the atmosphere. See what else you can do to become a green ‘Lawnranger’.

Visitors learn about alternatives to lawns at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden. How about a waterwise native plant garden or replacing your lawn with a variety of classy ground covers?

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Photo from ‘Cowfiles African Gardens’.

From: ‘Ideas that will catch on here.’
July 12, 2008, BBC

“Another fantastic idea I picked up – which could make its way onto my allotment before long – is the keyhole veg bed. This is a raised bed with bells on: it’s about 1m (3’6″) high, and the outer bed, where the vegetables are growing, slopes down from a central hollow column. There’s an access path to the column (giving the bed a “keyhole” shape viewed from above) and inside it is what amounts to a compost bin, held in with hessian: you fill it with kitchen waste, stable manure, grass clippings – whatever you’d put on your compost heap.

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Video: Rethinking Water: Greywater Guerillas Workshop

Petaluma home is first in the county (Sonoma) with a permitted system that uses old wash water for irrigation.

By COREY YOUNG
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF
May 8, 2008

When it goes online, the system should funnel 36,000 gallons of water a year into the back yard, Heckman said. The average four-person household in Petaluma uses more than 100,000 gallons of potable water a year, so the savings from a greywater system can be significant, he said.

Once cleaned, the water will be distributed to three locations in Heckman’s back yard, where the roots of berry bushes, shade trees and other plants will soak up it up. Heckman is growing pomegranates, blackberries, raspberries, edible flowers and more as part of a more sustainable lifestyle. “Tens of thousands of gallons of water, instead of going away, is being used to grow your food and shade your house,” Heckman said.

Link to article, “Going green with greywater”.