New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'

Urban Adamah fellows. From left: Robin, Aliza, Talia and Eric. Photo by Adam Berman.

We produced more than 3,000 pounds of produce and distributed it through our free farm stand, food banks, and community groups.

By Sarah Henry
Grist
Feb 2, 2012

Excerpt:

Urban Adamah, a one-acre urban farm on a vacant lot in a gritty stretch of Berkeley, has transformed an area better known for liquor stores and light industry into a thriving community gathering space and food hub.

Adam Berman founded the farm in the summer of 2010 with just such lofty goals. Urban Adamah (for the Hebrew word for “earth”) offers a fellowship program for young adults, dubbed The Jewish Sustainability Corps, that integrates organic farming, social justice outreach, leadership training, environmental education, and progressive Jewish spiritual practice. There’s yoga, meditation, and singing too.

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Amy Lint giving a tour at the New Roots Community Farm. Photo by Kristin Kvernland.

The garden not only gave them a way to contribute but gave them a way to shine.

By Jill Richardson
Latitude News
January 30, 2012

Excerpt:

Imagine escaping from your farm in a war-riven part of Africa or Asia. You arrive in the U.S. What a relief! But you’ve replaced farming with asphalt and concrete of a U.S. city. Bewilderment, shock, all over again.

To help refugee farmers adjust, the International Rescue Committee started an urban farm in San Diego. It hired Amy Lint, then 31, to get New Roots Community Farm up and running.

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February 16, 2012
11 a.m. – 12 p.m. (PST); 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (EST)

A vibrant movement is afoot in cities across the country ? farmers, activists, and community organizations are improving the health, economic outlook, and vitality of their communities through urban farming. Advocates are illustrating that urban agriculture is a pathway to making healthy food more available for low-income communities, a key to shifting economic revitalization efforts, and catalytic for battling the challenges of blight and abandonment.

Building from the recently released PolicyLink Urban Agriculture Tool, PolicyLink will be hosting a mini-series of webinars focusing on how low-income communities and communities of color are incorporating urban agriculture into their community development efforts and into policy infrastructures supporting this work.

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See Curtis and Luke discuss a potential piece of property for an urban farming business.

Curtis Stone wants to teach you how he makes $60,000/year in sales growing food on 3/4 of an acre.

Mission: To create a movement of urban farmers to build communities, resilient local food systems, and income to support their families.

Your Guides: Curtis Stone, owner and operator or Green City Acres, a 3/4 acre pedal-powered urban farm in Kelowna, BC ($60,000 sales in his second season) and Luke Miller Callahan, founder of GroAction, a hub for social entrepreneurs.

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The Tap Tap Garden is Haiti’s largest urban garden containing more than 500 brightly painted tire gardens

Bochika press release
Jan. 2012

The “Jaden Tap Tap” urban agroecology and youth empowerment program was inaugurated on January 22, 2012. Nearly 600 individuals and organizations joined in this celebration of possibility and progress in Cite Soleil, Haiti, sponsored by Bochika with special guest BelO.

PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI – Bochika is pleased to announce that the “Jaden Tap Tap” (Tap Tap Garden) urban community garden was proudly inaugurated on January 22, 2012 in Cite Soleil, Haiti. The Tap Tap Garden is Haiti’s largest urban garden containing more than 500 brightly painted tire gardens, flower garden, and a nursery of 1,000 trees. Nearly 600 community members, NGO’s, and government officials joined Bochika, SAKALA-Pax Christi Ayiti, and SOIL in celebrating the inauguration of the garden, as well as a new community Eco-San Toilet. The crowd was delighted to participate in the daylong event that featured a “farmers market”, agricultural demonstrations, musical and dance performances by local youth, and special appearance by internationally recognized Haitian recording artist, BelO.

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“Urban agriculture a great way to make fresh fruits and vegetables available at reasonable prices to neighborhoods who do not now have access to them and it helps to build a sense of community where none existed before.”

By Chad Deal
San Diego Reader
January 31, 2012

Excerpt:

Today was a landmark for urban agriculturalists as the City Council voted unanimously in favor of amendments to municipal code which simplify the process for approving farmers’ markets on private property, make minor adjustments to community garden regulations, and ease restrictions for keeping chickens, goats, and bees.

In an affable session marked by laughter and applause, the Council heard from several supporting speakers ranging from Hoover High School geographic information systems students to members of the San Diego Beekeeping Society, the San Diego County Farm Bureau, the Goat Justice League, Food Not Bombs, the International Rescue Committee, New Roots Community Farm, the San Diego Hunger Coalition, and the One In Ten Coalition, as well as 55 written supporters who did not speak at the meeting.

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Husher’s T-shirts.

Help publish the Urban Farm Manifesto

By Justin Husher
On Rockethub

The Urban Farm Manifesto is a 20-page comic-zine with essay elements that chronicles some of my surreal experiences during the last three years of growing in the wilds of western Cleveland; and then combines it with socio-cultural commentary on food sovereignty versus the corporate food system, the politics of local food, and other seemingly disparate topics like “the Small-Mart Revolution” and permits. It’s about the modern aesthetics of urban farming. I liken it to the Four Elements of Hip Hop.

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“The goal is for the resource to be continually growing with high quality advice on how to earn a living farming in the city”

By Gavin Walsh

“Urbanpatches will be a place where successful urban farmers can post what they’ve learned and their ‘best practices’ for running their farms. It’s designed so farmers can easily login (via Facebook) and add a post with their tips and strategies for running their farm successfully. It’s designed to be a resource and a way for urban farmers to share their knowledge with each other in one location.

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See full page image here. (2.2MB)

“When a farmer within the city limits is making $30,000 yearly out of potatoes alone, it is time to think of vacant lots in connection with the cost of living”

The New York Tribune Magazine
Jan. 14, 1917

Excerpt:

In the three metropolitan boroughs of New York – Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn – Brooklyn alone has vacant land suitable for farming and gardening purposes. The Brooklyn land has been used for hundreds of years or more by farmers, beginning with the old Dutch landsmen, and the soil has been made productive by constant fertilization. In Manhattan there are practically no vacant lots. The vacant lots in the Bronx are fast disappearing and what remain are rocky and unproductive. In Queens there are acres and acres of vacant land, but Queens to all intents and purposes is still a rural district. Brooklyn, therefore, is the only part of the metropolitan section of New York City that contains farmlands and truck gardens.

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“The community was ready for a garden like this. It was just the right idea at the right time.”

By Michelle Pak,
NRCS Idaho
January 23, 2012

Excerpt:

Eric Moore had a vision to grow a garden outside his office window. Moore, an employee of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Idaho, works at the USDA Service Center in Gooding.

For years, the back part of the Service Center property was vacant and covered in weeds. Looking at that weed patch always bothered Moore. So he was excited when he got permission from the landlord to start a garden there last year.

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Meir Lazar is reflected in a tank he uses to raise tilapia at his home in the Baltimore suburb of Pikesville. Photo by Lloyd Fox.

Baltimore-area aquaponic farmers raise seafood and vegetables in a quest for self-sustainability and better health.

By Timothy B. Wheeler
The Baltimore Sun via LA Times
January 28, 2012

Excerpt:

The aquarium in the living room of Meir and Leah Lazar’s home isn’t just for decoration. The tilapia and bluegills packed into the 50-gallon glass tank are waiting their turn to wind up on dinner plates.

Out back, Meir Lazar is putting the finishing touches on a bigger new home for the fish inside a plastic-covered greenhouse. There, he hopes, the waste from the fish he’s tending will help him raise enough lettuce, tomatoes and other produce to feed his family of five year-round.

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Photo by Shottty.

Seen on a London balcony next to Regent’s Canal.

Wherever there is grass, there is a chance to put food on the table.

Urban Roots – Film
Directed by Mark MacInnis
Produced by Leila Conners
Film 2011

URBAN ROOTS is a documentary that tells the story of the spontaneous emergence of urban farming in the city of Detroit. Detroit, once an industrial powerhouse of a lost American era, is a city devastated by the loss of half its population due to the collapse of manufacturing. By the looks of it, the city has died. 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. With the most vacant lots in the country, citizens are reclaiming their spirits by growing food. A small group of dedicated citizens 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.

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Richmond Heights, Ohio, resident Martinez Garcias has completed four comic books in his “Brink City: Green in the Ghetto” series and will soon begin work on the fifth instalment in the series. Photo by Andy Attina.

Brink City will be a 12-part comic book series when it’s completed.

By Andy Attina
Cleveland.com
January 27, 2012,

Excerpt:

He wrote the first of four comic books, titled “Brink City: Green in the Ghetto.” Brink is used as a generic name for similar cities all around the country.

The comics have dealt mostly with urban farming, as Rid-All runs greenhouses in Cleveland. They were geared toward inner-city youths, but Garcias wanted them to be more versatile and appeal to kids in the suburbs, as well.

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In planting the garden, the hotel also wishes to sow seeds of change, creating Montréal’s first downtown hotel rooftop garden.

By Quebecgetaways,
September 9, 2011

Excerpt:

It isn’t possible to visit this secret garden. But guests at the hotel can already taste the difference in their plates. Since the month of May, the garden has already provided different kinds of eggplant, plum tomatoes, beets, peppers, Swiss chard, endive, radishes, zucchini, Montréal melons and several kinds of mint and basil for amazing results!

This urban garden gets perfect sun for growing food. The hotel has opted for a container culture technique developed by experts from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.

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“SFUAA get emails from folks all over the bay area and the entire country – Oakland, Burlington, [Washington] D.C., Chicago – all actively seeking information. That’s perhaps biggest change since ordinance passed – visibility,”

By Catherine Adams
Fog City Journal
January 27, 2012

Excerpt:

San Francisco took a bold step in 2011 further legitimizing urban agriculture in the city. With the passage of the Planning Code Amendment on Urban Agriculture (ordinance 66-11), commercial garden and small farm sites are now legal city-wide. The ordinance received unanimous support from the Board of Supervisors in April before it was approved by Mayor Ed Lee.

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“Lots of Green” Youngstown, Ohio.

“People are starting to see land reuse as a new approach to neighborhood revitalization in post-industrial cities,”

By Lee Chilcote
Hive City Media
January 15, 2012

Excerpt:

Since Lots of Green launched in the summer of 2010, the program has reclaimed more than 150 urban lots (about 17 acres of city land). Some completed projects include community gardens, side yard expansions, pocket parks, a storm water mitigation demonstration site, a block-long soil research site and a 2.5 acre urban farm.

“We now have five community gardens with over 100 registered gardeners,” Presley says. “We’re igniting innovative projects and empowering residents to get involved.”

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“Grow – Episode 6” – Excellent series!

‘Farmtina’ – When Martina put a few cucumbers in pots on her balcony in Brooklyn, New York, she had no idea where it would grow from there. A creative spirit helps her face the challenges of city gardening, such as space…and soil.

More Grow episodes can be found here.

YWCA Evanston/North Shore.

The YWCA said the program will help empower local women.

By Jessica Rudis
Evanston Patch
Jan 27, 2012

Excerpt:

Colorado based CoBank recently announced that it will contribute $34,000 over the next three years to help the YWCA Evanston/North Shore to support an expansion of their urban farming initiative.

The urban farm started in the spring of 2009, when the YWCA built a small raised bed vegetable and herb garden to grow fresh produce for Mary Lou’s Place, their domestic violence shelter for women and children.

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Sustainable ideas: Above, Dave Carlson in the garden of his home. Carlson runs Common Ground Community Farm in Burnaby, a community supported agriculture project. Photograph by Jason Lang.

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.

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