From the Architectural Association, School Of Architecture In London, Taught By Nannette Jackowski And Ricardo De Ostos.

From the blog Pruned, on Landscape Architecture and Related Fields. By Alexander Trevi.

Airborne Vineyard by Soonil Kim

Writes Kim:

Inspired by the urban grains especially the railway network from both St. Pancras and King’s Cross Station around the site, the design is a formal continuation of the topography while reinforcing the colonisation of air space by winery branches. The audacious structure, the winery and the vineyard for red wine grapes are connected by a suspended transport network enabling the use of ground space for a public park. With a capacity to produce 10,000 bottles of red wine annually the project re-articulates private and public space blending productive infrastructure with quality areas to Londoners and tourists.

One can certainly imagine such a network built to grow others things, such as vegetables, herbs, fruits, cash crops, commercial flowers and plants, with the winery turned into a farmer’s market.

Need more space to grow? Simply extend it. Cities may have a lot of rooftop space for farming, but the negative space above people’s heads is exponentially greater.

See more here about this project.

Fish farm in Central London

Fish farm in Central London by Benedetta Gargiulo

Aquaculture is an urban landscape that playfully explores and re-imagines industrial food production, inviting visitors to examine the complex interrelationships between the private consumption and mass production of fresh fish.

Formed as a sinuous pedestrian network extending along the sides of Regent’s Canal, its central structural element is water. Aquaculture is characterized by continuous waterfalls and levelled terraces, which co-exist with the topography of Central London. It is a fish-farm that doubles as an innovative architectural body, providing a network of bridges, multi-level pathways and accessible connections across the riverbanks, while contemporaneously purifying and treating the canal’s water. The cultivated fishes are treated, filleted, and packaged on-site for instant consumption or for take away.

The visitors participate in the entire industrial process whilst experiencing an ‘Aqua Bridge’ or entering the ‘Aqua Tunnel’ by glancing at the mackerel and cod production lines from the sushi bar or simply by crossing and walking along the canal.

See more here about this project.

Farmacy

Farmacy – Samantha Lee’s proposal for a farm at King’s Cross London which “grows, manufactures and sells medicinal herbs.”

Lee writes:

With the notorious past the area has with drugs, and in this process of regeneration, this farm plays a role in its journey of healing. Herbs were selected according to ailments specific to a city like London – for example stress, insomnia, colds and depression.

Urban agriculture as detox centers for urban living.

See more here about this project.

Gastronomic Garden

Taebeom Kim’s Gastronomic Garden

There’s a lot of things happening here. First, there are the allotment gardens hovering over — perhaps are even propped up by — compost tanks used for recycling garden scraps as well organic waste of local residents.

One particularly large bulbous structure, somewhat reminiscent of sludge digesters at some sewer treatment plants, is designated as a place for contemplation, though it would most likely become a site of illicit activities and even grave criminality in the real world.

Somewhere on the site is a parking garage. This, together with the compost tanks, would generate energy via a process that unfortunately isn’t elaborated in the project statement nor in the images we have on hand. We suspect the “oven tower” plays a role. Something to do with (carbon monoxide) convection perhaps?

See more here about this project.

Farming on Film: Mitra Sticklen documents life on the urban farm

Film by Mitra Sticklen and Christine Nielsen
Article Written by: Robin Peterson
Chicago Weekly, June 4, 2009

“It’s not hard to make this stuff look good,” says filmmaker Mitra Sticklen, pausing in between shots of the bright green kale and collards on display on a stand at the 61st Street Farmers Market. “It’s beautiful stuff—beautiful footage.” The stand belongs to Windy City Harvest, an urban agriculture job training program of the Chicago Botanic Garden and West Side Technical Institute, whose participants Sticklen has been filming since last fall. With the working title “Growing Change,” the film was originally meant to be a ten-minute short documenting one season of the program.

During the course of filming, however, Sticklen “realized that there were several stories going on that were inspiring and interesting”—the farmer’s market itself, for instance, as well as a number of other urban agriculture initiatives that have recently sprung up across the city. Now Windy City Harvest is the focus of a demo reel, whose June 5 screening at the University of Chicago’s Film Studies Center Sticklen hopes will help win her funding for a longer film or television documentary.

A graduate student in the UofC’s Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS), Sticklen had little experience with filmmaking when she began the documentary. She worked on a student organic farm as an undergraduate at Michigan State University and now studies the anthropology of food and agriculture, an interest she decided to try to translate into film. “I really wanted to show people on the South Side of Chicago all the things going on in the last year and a half,” she says. “There’s a lot people don’t know about, and the farmers’ market is a great place to get involved.”

Sticklen found ample support at Fire Escape Films, the UofC student film club, which supplied her with the equipment and training necessary to begin the documentary. In the winter, she enrolled in a class on documentary video taught by Judy Hoffman, who encouraged her to expand the project beyond her original vision. She also began collaborating with Christine Nielsen, another MAPSS student with an interest in urban agriculture.

“The documentary has been a great opportunity to make a lot of connections, and to learn and document the learning process,” says Nielsen. She expects to continue learning this summer, when she will be moving to New Jersey to live and work on an organic farm. Sticklen also has big plans for the summer: starting in mid-June, she’ll be running a blog about “how people in the city relate to food,” following the various paths from farm to plate, in part through high-definition video. The blog will also cover Sticklen’s work at Uncommon Ground in Rogers Park, an eco-conscious restaurant with the country’s first certified organic rooftop garden.

Sticklen and Nielsen see their work as a way to spread the word about a growing movement that may still seem insular to the uninitiated. “A lot of people in the university tend to read and write articles in peer-reviewed journals—they’re in this kind of ivory tower,” Sticklen explains. “I want something accessible to the average Chicagoan, to highlight all the wonderful opportunities popping up around the city.”

Windy City Harvest is just one such opportunity, but it’s an appropriate starting point for a film that is meant to engage a broader audience for urban agriculture. Most of the participants in the less than two-year-old program—including adults who are unemployed or have criminal records—come to it with little prior knowledge about agriculture, much less of the urban or organic variety. “I knew nothing about growing,” admits Ricky Ross, a graduate of the program who joined during its first season in September 2007. Now, after learning how to farm organically, he says he realizes “there’s more to it” than it might seem.

For Ross as for others, urban agriculture is much more than an esoteric hobby. “People often think about farming as something that only a specific group of people are interested in,” Nielsen points out. With “Growing Change,” she and Sticklen hope to show all the different reasons people choose to pursue it, in a way that is also visually captivating. “It’s incredibly beautiful subject matter to film—the plants and the people working,” Nielsen says. “It’s a pleasure to videotape and to look at the footage for hours and hours.”

See article here.

Vegetables for the concrete jungle

Michelle Obama y Verónica Berlusconi convirtieron en tendencia las huertas urbanas. En Galicia ya están pegando fuerte y este mes nacerán dos asociaciones

By Alfonso Andrade
La voz de Galicia
6/2/2010 In Spanish

Es verdad que pocos privilegiados disponen en el hogar de un currunchiño de cien metros cuadrados para plantar sus lechugas como la hortelana Michelle en la Casa Blanca, pero tampoco es necesario. La primera dama americana, Verónica Berlusconi y otras celebridades han impulsado una moda absolutamente implantada en Canadá y el norte de Europa que llega ahora con fuerza a Galicia. El minifundio se estila también en las huertas urbanas que empiezan a poblar el paisaje gris de las principales ciudades para hacer realidad un viejo sueño del burgués: regresar al campo.

Basta con una pequeña terraza. Con habilidad, incluso un balcón. Con las flores y las plantas decorativas de retirada, tomates y calabacines se adueñan de los maceteros. El asunto va en serio y este mes verán la luz dos asociaciones que propugnan estas prácticas ecológicas. Ramón Paz es uno de los impulsores de la Asociación Galega de Horticultura Urbana (http://hortaurbana.blogspot.com). Nace también la Asociación de Usuarios e Usuarias das Hortas do Val de Feáns (en las afueras de A Coruña), que cederá parcelas de 40 a 60 metros cuadrados para su cultivo por urbanitas.

See the rest of the article here.

See the website of Asociación Galega de Horticultura Urbana here.

See Gardening in Spain website here.

By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 08, 2010

Proposed changes to the city ordinance dealing with the keeping of agricultural animals on city properties has agitated bee and chicken keepers.

Burgh Bees, a 375-member nonprofit, has put out a “call to action” via e-mail for attendance at a public hearing before the city planning commission at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 “to show how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are” in the city. The hearing is at 200 Ross St., Downtown.

Legal wording currently is confusing and leaves room for abuse of privilege, city officials have said. But bee and chicken raisers say the proposed changes could create unintended ill-effects.

The hearing is the public’s chance to offer input, said Joanna Doven, spokeswoman for Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

“We support urban farms and groups like Burgh Bees,” she said, “but we have to make sure we are balancing their interests with the safety needs and concerns of other residents.

“There has been a disconnect between what is and isn’t allowed, so we need an ordinance that clearly outlines how we should proceed.”

Under current law, residents must get a variance to raise chickens on properties of less than 5 acres or if their lots don’t allow 200 feet between the coop and a property line, but it’s vague as to whether a five-animal limit means pets are included. In addition, enforcement is driven by complaints.

A proposed 15-foot setback from any property line and 2,500-square-foot minimum per hive would in effect ban beekeeping in many of the city’s dense neighborhoods, “where our members have been safely keeping bees for years,” said Meredith Grelli, founder and director of Burgh Bees.

Furthermore, she said, people’s efforts to comply with the 15-foot setback, especially in dense areas, could lead to bad beekeeping.

See the rest of the article here.

Burgh Bees website here.

Hear From Our Founder from AeroFarms on Vimeo.

Meet Ed Harwood, Founder & CEO of Aero Farm Systems

Aerofarms – The future of urban agriculture

From their website:

AeroFarms provides aeroponic technology and comprehensive business expertise to those pioneering the future of urban agriculture. The world’s current food system is unsustainable economically, environmentally and socially. Today’s rural and centralized food production uses a vast amount of resources—land, water, transportation fuel— which will become increasingly scarce and expensive as world populations grow and continue to urbanize. At the same time these resources diminish, demand for food will increase, requiring current food production levels to double by 2050 to support the world’s population. We need a better way.

AeroFarms believes that we can transform our food system to be more sustainable, efficient, and secure. We envision a system of decentralized, urban farms that produce fresher and safer food at the point of consumption. While this movement has started gaining traction, in order to make great change, we need to expand beyond community and rooftop gardens into commercial growing. We have dedicated ourselves to developing the technology to realize this vision.

In the days and weeks to come, we’ll be blogging about a wide range of topics, from sustainable agriculture to innovative salad recipes. We believe in the open exchange of ideas and welcome any questions or suggestions. Please join us in pioneering the future of urban agriculture!

See AeroFarms raises $500,000 from venture capital investors.

See Aerofarms website here.

Urban Orchard

By Andrew Maynard Architects, a young Melbourne, Australian firm

Premise

A cities gardens can be more than a decorated landscape. Like the built environment, green spaces can work with us to make an integrated urban environment rather than isolated pockets of manicured greenery.
We propose a garden that contributes a SOCIAL space, creates a low impact and sustainable ECONOMIC model, beautifies the URBAN landscape and improves our urban areas impact on the ENVIRONMENT.

We propose that rather than only producing a beautiful, green rooftop space, we also create a greater, and achievable urban gesture. We propose a working garden that is wonderful to visit, great to have events at, while also producing food much like Cuba’s Market Gardens.

Close the food loop – reuse food waste

At the moment we bring food from many hundreds of kilometres away into urban centres. After the food is consumed by-products and food waste are placed in landfill. This material can easily be put back into the food loop by converting it into power and fertiliser.

Food scraps = global warming

Melbourne has a diverse and rich food culture. As such Melbourne transport’s a large variety of foods into the city and produces an extremely large amount of food waste. Decomposing food scraps contribute to roughly 10% of man-made greenhouse gases in the form of Methane. If we captured this Methane we can easily convert the Methane into a free, clean energy source. The by product of this process is fertiliser which can be put back into the system to create more roof top produced food rather than more landfill.

It is estimated that 2 million homes in the UK could be run entirely on methane generated energy if London were to collect and process all of its food scraps. If London adopted clean, free methane energy this would radically change London’s environmental footprint while also drastically reducing the need for transport and landfill for food scrap waste. The calculations have been done in London. Why not put the concept into practice in Melbourne.

See more on their web site here.

Project launched to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in bid to reverse agricultural decline

By Marc Frank in Camaguey
The Guardian
7 February 2010

Cuba has launched an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in a bid to reverse the country’s agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes.

The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in four mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba’s cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.

The island’s authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labour.

But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in the communist-run nation.

The pilot programme for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey, which the Cuban agriculture ministry has said eventually will have 1,400 small farms covering 52,000 hectares (128,490 acres), just minutes outside the town.

The farms, mostly in private hands but also including some cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, must grow everything organically, and the ministry expects they will produce 75% of the food for the city of 320,000 people, with big state-owned farms providing the rest.

On a recent day, dozens of people were hard at work plowing fields, hoeing earth, posting protective covering for crops and putting up fencing as the sun came up.

“This land they gave to us, the private farmers. I have four hectares (10 acres) and now they have leased me eight (20 acres) more,” one of the farmers, Camilo Mendoza, told Reuters.

“Look, on this side and the other side are other plots, and over there another. Here they have given quite a bit of land and support to private farmers,” he said.

The project is modelled after the hundreds of urban gardens developed by then-defence minister Raul Castro during the deep economic depression of the 1990s that followed the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.

See the rest of the article here.

Urban Roots – The industrial powerhouse of a lost American era has died, and the skeleton left behind is present-day Detroit.

URBAN ROOTS, directed by Detroit-native Mark McInnis is a documentary that tells the powerful story of a small group of unique individuals involved in Detroit’s urban agricultural movement.

But now, against all odds in the empty lots, in the old factory yards, and in-between the sad, sagging blocks of company housing, seeds of change are taking root. A small group of dedicated citizens, allied with environmental and academic groups, have started an urban environmental movement with the potential to transform not just a city after its collapse, but also a country after the end of its industrial age.

Urban Roots is the story of a group of dedicated Detroiters working tirelessly to fulfill their vision for locally-grown, sustainably farmed food in a city where people — as in much of the county — have found themselves cut off from real food and limited to the lifeless offerings of fast food chains, mini-marts, and grocery stores stocked with processed food from thousands of miles away. The people of Detroit have taken on the enormous task of changing this for themselves, and to under-stand their story is to understand how we can change it for us all.

The film follows the inspiring stories of several agricultural programs, each one designed to address a specific issue. Not only are the organizations amazingly productive and emotionally driven, but the people tilling the soil and picking the harvest have fantastic stories to tell.

See more about the film at the Urban Roots website here.

Crops for Clunkers [HD]

by Lou Karsen (videos)
18:01

New film by Lou Karsen about the transformation of a ‘78 Mazda pickup truck into an edible garden by the Seattle Urban Farm Company for the 2010 NW Flower and Garden show.

See 18 minute video above or here.

Urban farmers fight nationwide to sow green biz

By Raquel Maria Dillon
Feb 5, 2010
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES – Tara Kolla fancied herself a green thumb-turned-green businesswoman when she planted an organic flower plot in her yard and sold poppies, sweet peas and zinnias at the local farmers market. For her neighbors, it was an eyesore.

Where Kolla saw her efforts as creating a lush sanctuary, her neighbors witnessed dusty pots, steaming compost, flies and a funky aroma on their tiny cul-de-sac in Los Angeles. They complained to zoning officials — and prevailed.

Kolla and other urban farmers are fighting back by challenging city halls across the country to rewrite ordinances that govern residential gardens. They believe feeding their fellow urbanites homegrown tomatoes, fresh eggs and sweet corn will change the world one backyard at a time.

Seattle has loosened its rules for backyard goats, New York City’s health department is taking steps to legalize beekeeping and Detroit is looking into regulating compost and greenhouses.

In Detroit, where zoning laws ban growing crops and raising livestock for profit, city planner Kathryn Lynch Underwood is part of a work group rewriting the regulations and defining what kinds of urban farms might need more oversight.

“The city has not been treating it as an illegal use or a nuisance because it has been a good thing,” Underwood said.

She is hopeful that urban agriculture and the city’s nearly 1,000 community gardens will create good jobs in a city that desperately needs them and put vacant lots to use in blighted neighborhoods.

Kolla, meanwhile, found a loophole allowing her to grow vegetables while lobbying for the right to set up a city farm at her home just four miles from the urban jungle of downtown Los Angeles.

The challenge for cities is to balance the potential to grow green businesses with the concerns of neighbors who don’t want a thriving, for-profit enterprise next door, never mind the noise and smells that come from compost and small livestock.

Urban agriculture crosses jurisdictional lines, said Alfonso Morales, a professor of planning at the University of Wisconsin. He advises cities to set up a one-stop-shop for urban farms, like they have for small business development, so that city farmers can deal with zoning, home business regulations and nuisance laws all in one place.

“There’s such enthusiasm that people push the laws and upset their neighbors,” he said. “The fact is you can’t do anything you want on your property.”

While most urban farms operate under the radar of city officials and many neighborhoods welcome productive plots and even backyard chickens, other city growers run into trouble with neighbors who won’t be placated with gifts of salad greens or fresh eggs.

In middle class areas, concerns about property values and aesthetic differences lead to conflicts.

Kolla alienated neighbors on her quiet cul-de-sac of Spanish bungalows and neat green lawns in the city’s Silver Lake section when she began peddling organic bouquets at farmers markets that she grew on her 21,000 square-foot lot.

“They’re trying to grow it into something bigger than what should be in a small neighborhood,” said Frank San Juan, who lives across the street from Kolla. “When she started having these gardening workshops without telling anybody, there was no parking. You couldn’t enjoy your weekends.”

Just a half century ago, Los Angeles was transforming itself from the most lucrative farm county in the nation into a major metropolis. A zoning ordinance written in 1946 as developers were cutting down the San Fernando Valley’s citrus orchards to build suburbia allowed small farms to grow vegetables to truck to market, but banned growing fruit, nuts or flowers for sale on residential plots.

Kolla could get a conditional use permit, but she has a stubborn streak and it costs $15,000 just to apply. She and others are trying to reverse the zoning laws with a proposal called “The Food and Flowers Freedom Act.”

Growers from across Los Angeles formed the Urban Farming Advocates to rally around Kolla, defend her right to grow and lobby the city.

“Most people would pay to have a view of her backyard,” said founding member Erik Knutzen, who keeps chickens and grows food in his yard. “I can understand someone not wanting 50 roosters or an autobody shop next door, but our proposal is about bringing common sense back to our lives.”

In July, City Council President Eric Garcetti introduced a motion to clarify city policies on urban farms and allow cultivation and sale of flowers, fruits, nuts or vegetables.

While the city farmers wait patiently for the proposal to work its way through the planning commission, Kolla started a weekly vegetable box subscription service so as not to miss too many of Southern California’s long growing seasons.

She feels the distinction between vegetables and fruit is arbitrary and unscientific.

“Broccoli is a flower, and a tomato is a fruit. And some of my flowers are edible,” Kolla said. “It’s more legal for people to grow marijuana in L.A. than flowers.”

Hayes Valley Farm – San Francisco

Our Vision

Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) is an education and research project with a focus on urban agriculture. Situated on the city-owned lots bordered by Oak, Fell, Laguna, and Octavia streets, the project is organized by an alliance of urban farmers, educators, and designers that comprise the HVF Project Team. HVF is a Parks Partner, a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco Parks Trust.

The project is founded on an interim use agreement between Hayes Valley Farm and the City’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development- a two to five year time frame – until which time the City moves forward with other development plans for the site.

1. to create a successful, sustainable urban farm where community members can access healthy local food
2. to serve as a model and a resource center for urban agriculture education and green job training
3. to build community resiliency around local food production

What does this look like?

We envision Hayes Valley Farm as a place where people come regularly to meet and connect with each other. Friends exchange food, recipes, stories and knowledge about ways we can all live in greater harmony with our surroundings. They are surrounded by an abundant and rich forest of food that encourages connection and understanding of the vital life systems that support human kind.

Video by Chris Martin

Where is Hayes Valley Farm?

We are located in the heart of Hayes Valley in the city block formed between Oak St., Octavia St., Fell St. and Laguna St. Our main entrance is located at 450 Laguna St., San Francisco, CA 94102.

What are some of the activities that exist at Hayes Valley Farm?

We are offering urban agriculture courses and classes including fruit tree care, kitchen garden basic, herb garden basics, backyard bio-intensive farming, bee care, sustainable landscape design and many more. View a full listing of our activities.

I’m not sure I want to eat the fruits of this garden because it used to be a freeway. How much lead is in the soil?

I can’t say health is our number one priority, because access to water, mulch and manure was, but it was our second. Honestly, we take the health of the community seriously. We’re not just interested in understanding the issue, but overstanding it. Before we started planning we lab tested 64 soil points across the site, all parts of the site came back with lead levels lower than the EPA’s standard for soil (400 ppm by weight) with the exception of the southern facing hill along Oak St. between Laguna and Octavia. Second, our plan is to place 3-4 ft of organic material thus building 1-2ft of soil on top of the current site fill, which is a proven method of diluting lead levels if they do exists. Third we plan on measuring the lead in the plant roots, shoots, leaves and fruits after the first harvest before allowing human consumption. Fourth, plants that produce fruit (apple, tomato, pepper, etc) tend to store minuscule amounts of lead inside the fruit with the majority being taken up into the roots and some remaining in the shoots.

See Hayes Valley Farm website here.

See more photos of the project here.

Grow food, health, jobs and justice at an Urban Farm in S Central LA. Community Services Unlimited Inc. (CSU)

Overview

The Community Food Village Urban Farm project will transform an under utilized 1 acre garden into a highly productive urban farm that will supply S Central LA with fresh, local, organic produce. The farm will grow more than just food. It will employ local youth who will learn job, life, and entrepreneurial skills while helping to grow and market produce in the neighborhood. It will empower residents to eat healthy and to participate in transforming their community into a healthy and beautiful place to live.

It will make fresh organic produce available at an affordable price to all residents regardless of income. It will bring residents of all ages and backgrounds together to build relationships and share knowledge, stories, and food from their different cultures.

Deliverables:

- Hire 1 Farm manager to run the farm & engage community

- Grow and sell 10,000 lbs of produce through weekly farm stand & to local businesses

- 5 local food businesses support youth programs

- Host 20 volunteer events

Goals

Train at least 500 volunteers in organic farming & food/enviro justice.
Create jobs for at least 15 youth who will help grow & market food.
Increase access to healthy food by selling produce in community.
Raise minimum of $15,000 through produce sales to support youth programs.
Grow at least 10,000 lbs of organic produce in one year.

See proposal here.

See CSU’s Growing Healthy here.

The Chicks Are Coming! local resources for urban chicken farmers

by Kate Bryant
Feb 03, 2010
Portland Monthly

Ten years ago, when I first kept chickens, there were few places in Portland to buy supplies. Driving out to Foster Feed on Southeast Foster & 103rd (Tel: 503-777-2967) was something of a pilgrimage from the city — there weren’t many of us with chickens yet then – and I’d often ride out with one of the few other chicken-o-philes I knew so we could pool resources and buy big sacks of grit and oyster shell, feed (there was no organic feed available then) or bedding. We chicken people stuck together.

Now, we have numerous small farm stores in the city limits where urban chickeners can buy their supplies. Baby chicks are available throughout spring and early summer, along with the organic feed, bedding and other supplies needed to keep them healthy and happy. You can even buy some rather spectacular pre-fab coops!

Photo of Naomi’s Organic Farm Supply

Since we’re in the final countdown to the start of chick season (mid-February), here’s a survey of my favorite places to find chicks and all-things-chickeny in Portland.

See the rest of the article here.

For the Greener Good: “Urban Agriculture” from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Presenter(s): Josh Viertel, Liz Falk, Steve Cohen, Allison Arieff (moderator)
Date Recorded: January 26, 2010
Duration: 01:26:11

Listen to a panel of experts discuss the ecological impact of how we grow our food and how urban agriculture has the potential to reclaim unused land in cities. The panel included Josh Viertel, president, Slow Food USA; Liz Falk, director and co-Founder, Washington D.C. based Common Good City Farm; Steve Cohen, food policy and programs, Portland Oregon’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability; and moderator Allison Arieff, Food and Shelter Ambassador, GOOD and “By Design” columnist, The New York Times.

Given that the average grocery store vegetable travels 1500 miles to reach our plate, city leaders and community activists are investigating how we can increase farming inside our city limits. Listen to a panel of experts discuss how we can create oases where there were once food deserts.

Coverage of the workshop:

How to Expand Urban Agriculture

Urban Agriculture Future of Sustainability

Best Practices in Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Development

To be included in JAFSCD Vol. 1 Issue 2
Deadline: June 5, 2010

JAFSCD welcomes research or policy briefs, and case studies (up to 2,500 words) and full articles (up to 8,500 words) on best community-development practices related to:

Urban livestock management and regulation
Urban market gardening and backyard gardening
Marketing and value-adding
Waste management and reuse
Urban farming by immigrant or other special populations
Farming on the fringe

Briefs, case studies, and articles should focus on illustrative programs or projects, survey results, literature reviews, and public policy related — but not limited to — land-use planning and regulation, health ordinances or their implementation, training and educational programs, marketing systems or value chains, partnership development, systems approaches, issues of scale, and farm-neighbor relations. We are particularly interested in holistic approaches that combine community and economic development with environmental protection. Examples of applied research questions include:

Poultry, rabbit, swine, and small ruminant production versus community health: can a balance of interests be found?

Where and why are urban live animal markets flourishing? What are the SWOTs?

Where and why have some conventional family farmers been able to successfully adapt to urbanization, and what are winning programming strategies to support them?

What are key programmatic ingredients in helping older immigrants with a background and interest in farming gain access to agricultural opportunities in and around cities?

What are the trends in growth of urban and peri-urban farming, and what hinders or encourages urban or peri-urban agriculture?

What architecture or landscape designs are successfully accommodating urban or peri-urban agriculture?

Where are urban farming policies working or showing promise? Why?
What are viable approaches to market analysis and modeling for urban food production and sales outlets?

There is a rich literature on urban agriculture in the Global South. Can that literature inform approaches that can be taken in the North?

Background

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has defined urban agriculture as “an industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to the daily demand of consumers within a town, city, or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urban area, applying intensive production methods, using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes to yield a diversity of crops and livestock” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture). The findings of national censuses, household surveys, and research projects suggest that up to two-thirds of urban and peri-urban households around the world are involved in agriculture. Much of the food produced is for their own consumption, with occasional surpluses sold to local markets (www.fao.org/ag/magazine/9901sp2.htm).

Urban and peri-urban agriculture appears to be on the rise in industrial countries, especially among ethnic immigrant groups in North America and Europe. This may be fueled by people’s economic situations as well as by growing interest in greening cities, localizing food production, and promoting food sovereignty These trends in urban and peri-urban agriculture are also accompanied by debates on related issues like land use, public health, sanitation, and economic viability. Our intent for this special-topic call for papers is to fill the significant deficit in the applied literature on trends and programming activities.

See more information on the Journal website here.

Hamm is the CS Mott Chair for Sustainable Agriculture and leads the CS Mott Group for Sustainable Food Systems at Michigan State University. He’s been working on a way to use that land to develop an urban agriculture system in Detroit.

Excerpts:

Hamm works with Kathryn Colasanti, a graduate student who analyzed Detroit’s publically-owned space. Colasanti’s study focused on open land where buildings had already been torn down. She didn’t include parks or right of ways.

Colasanti discovered about nine square miles of empty available land within the city limits. If her study included land with abandoned buildings, that space would be doubled or tripled, Hamm said. Hamm and Colasanti determined with just 2,000 acres Detroit could produce up to 75 percent of the vegetables needs and about 50 percent of the fruit needs for 900,000 people.

With the use of high-tunnel technology which is already in place at the MSU Student Organic Farm, four-season extension technology and controlled atmospheric storage, Detroit could become a food production center for Michiganders in the region, Hamm said.

“If you think of 2,000 acres and you think of three acres, it would take 700 new farmers … and my personal opinion is in the next 10 years it’d be difficult, if not impossible to generate that many farmers inside Detroit,” Hamm said.

Hamm suggests different scales of agriculture will be needed to reach the 2,000-acre goal. Two companies are looking at creating 30- 40-acre farms. These larger scale farms would complement medium and small scale farms to realistically reach 2,000 acres, Hamm said.

See the rest of the article here.

Promoting community agriculture efforts and increased access to locally grown food

“2010: The Year of Urban Agriculture” was organized by Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, Department of Planning and Development, and the Seattle City Council.

The site includes:

City Initiatives & Programs:

Street Use Permits: Gardening in Planting Strips
Seattle’s P-Patch Program
What’s new at P-Patch
P-Patch Program Evaluation (2009)
Seattle’s Market Gardening program

Tips on how to start a community garden
Gardening in the P-Patch program
Information on the $2 million Parks Levy allocation to P-Patch development
Neighborhood Matching Fund (free fruit trees for Tree Fund participants)

The site also links to:

Calendar of Events

Urban Agriculture Community Organizations

Information on Urban Agriculture

Local Food Action Initiative

See the website here.

Also see “Mayor McGinn and City Council Officially Announce Seattle’s Year of Urban Agriculture” here.

The Seattle City Council is working to increase availability of affordable, locally grown food. One approach: allowing folks to grow vegetable gardens in parking strips — the no man’s land between sidewalk and curb

By Maureen O’Hagan
Seattle Times
July 25, 2009

We’ve all heard the foodie mantra: Eat Local.

It’s going gangbusters in grocery stores that increasingly tout local produce. Now, area government has gotten involved, too.

No, the City Council isn’t pushing expensive arugula. Instead, it’s trying to increase the availability of locally grown food, especially for those least able to afford it.

“I think there’s a real transformation happening,” said Branden Born, assistant professor of urban design and planning at the University of Washington.

Some of this shift involves research projects and nonbinding resolutions, which are essentially invisible to ordinary citizens. But for tangible evidence — actual growing evidence — you need look no further than the lowly curb in front of your home.

It used to be that planting anything but grass in the strip between the sidewalk and the curb required a permit, even if it was just a spray of flowers or a few carrots. For hardscaping, like steppingstones or raised beds, fees averaging $225 were attached, too. Would-be gardeners routinely called the city to complain.

This year, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) changed its rules. Now, no permit is required for parking-strip vegetable gardens. While hardscaping still requires a permit, it’s easy to get and free of charge, said Rick Sheridan, spokesman for SDOT.

Last year, the city issued 22 permits for parking-strip gardens. This year, they’ve issued 52, and that’s for hardscaping alone. There’s no telling how many people have taken advantage of the new no-permit rules for simple vegetation.

“We get the sense that people are really embracing it,” Sheridan said.

‘Eat your yard’

Gardener Jake Harris, for one, couldn’t wait, and immediately planted a veritable cornucopia in front of his University District home. In addition, Harris’ company, Cascadian Edible Landscapes, has installed raised beds for a half-dozen other Seattleites eager to capture the unobstructed sunlight that parking strips offer.

Harris says his mantra is “eat your yard.” And the demand in Seattle, he said, is “pretty huge.”

“We’re looking for every way possible for people who want to plant food to be able to do so,” said Rob Gala, an aide to City Council President Richard Conlin, who is leading the charge. “And the closer it is to their house, the better.”

Parking strips, however visible, are just a small part of larger changes, Born said. He sees hope in the research projects, grants and policy decisions that are aimed at broadening the local food movement.

See the rest of the article here.

See Cascadian Edible Landscapes here.

Agriculture and Food Availability
Cultivating the City: Mapping and Characterizing Urban Agriculture with Satellite Imagery – Lisbon, Portugal

By Sérgio Freire, T. Santos, and J. A. Tenedório,
posted on November 26th, 2009
in Agriculture, Articles, Biodiversity, Earth Observation, Sustainability

Excerpts:

The city of Lisbon, Portugal, has historically expanded towards areas occupied by farms, orchards, and olive groves, thus integrating some rural character. This process was complemented by the influx of immigrants from the rural countryside or from abroad who had farming habits. While until recently this land use activity was perceived as marginal and simply tolerated by public officials, there are now municipal plans to expand it, organize it, and integrate it in the city planning process.

Within the city, agriculture typically takes place in small farms or clusters of plots in residual or vacant public land, occupying valleys, hillsides, and roadsides. After peaking in 1987, it is estimated that currently this land use occupies close to 84 hectares. However, since this is mostly an informal activity with limited official supervision, there is a lack of available accurate and updated records or geospatial data for assessment and analysis.

Conclusions

The present work is an on-going exploratory attempt, part of a wider goal of defining an expeditious method to obtain updated geographic information for municipal use. Accuracy of mapping urban agriculture using semi-automated feature extraction approaches was generally low. Semi-automated extraction of urban agriculture is complicated by the fact that the class is very heterogeneous, comprised of a mosaic of small parcels having: i) the same crops in different stages, ii) different crops, and iii) fallow or recently farmed parcels. This mapping and analysis effort has revealed availability of vacant areas with bare ground or natural vegetation, which could be used to support the expansion of urban agriculture in Lisbon in accordance with current municipal goals. Future developments include the use of another QuickBird image acquired in March 2007 to detect changes in land use. Also, more advanced contextual approaches should be explored to increase the accuracy of semi-automated detection and extraction of urban agriculture.

Read the complete article here.

Farmscape woven into the Urban Fabric

By Trevor Boyle and Justin Fong
Email: boyletrevor@yahoo.com

“The site was directly across from a park that during WWII was used for victory gardens, and so that idea was brought into it as well. The elevated ‘walkway’ is used as a growing surface, translating the urban stacked density into a farming notion, instead of the sprawling countryside that’s usually seen.

“Southern facing walls on the buildings are also plant walls on the exterior, with a modular steel frame. The actual fruit/vegetable growing floor space is only around 30% of the total for the building; it’s more about introducing the idea back into mainstream daily life. The square footage is enough to be able to feed 200 people throughout a year, so it’s more about growing for the community around the site than being able to mass produce and feed the whole city, though that would be possible with another iteration.

“The Urban Farm project was designed after a trip to Manhattan, where the urban condition has basically taken completely over the entire island, with only a couple parks existing as protected areas. As the human population expands and urban density steadily increases, the natural environment becomes further and further detached from daily life. Nature becomes a contained condition, with small pockets of protected plant life that form within the overbearing mass of the city.

Larger image here.

“Instead of fighting back the continuous creep of the city edge, the Urban Farm project suggests a co-habitive measure, where commerce and nature can exist within the same space. Instead of the complete domination of the built environment over the natural landscape, the two can weave together. This creates a more harmonious space, one that provides for the needs of people without sacrificing the benefits of plant life. It is a space which is commercial and garden all at once.

Larger image here.

“There’s an elevated walkway that’s made for 10′x10′ planting plots, and vertical plant walls that weave throughout a commercial office space site. These also meet the needs of the community, since the site is surrounded by residential zones. It’s an area for people to embrace nature while being able to get done what they need to.”

Larger image here.