New Stories From ‘Urban Agriculture Notes’

Painting by Beryl Cooks, ‘The Allotment’.
See Beryl Cook web site here.

Editorial in The Times (Britain)
Aug 25, 1919

Urban Allotments

There is a side to the question more important than the money value of the produce. The country is about to undergo an industrial revolution. There is to be a maximum working week of forty-eight hours for the vast majority of working men who dwell in towns. What are the artisans, clerks, shopmen, and the multitudes of indoor labourers to do with their new leisure?

Some will do nothing with it, or worse. But if facilities in the way of allotments and of instruction in the growth of flowers and vegetables are given to them, very many will gladly utilize them. It will be an interest, a recreation, and a health giving pursuit to them.

Even when the working day was long, artisans and miners readily cultivated plots when these were within reach, and the dwellers in large towns should be given the same facilities. The compulsory shortening of hours of labour must be correlated with increased provision for the hours of leisure, and in the provision allotments should be included.

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Photo: Library of Congress. ‘Must see’ larger image here.

Thomas Jefferson Park, New York City

A children’s farm garden, one of many which flourished in parks in the first half of the 20th century, opened on May 20, 1911 with 1008 plots for children to grow flowers and vegetables. Designed as a place of respite for child laborers, the farm garden later hosted nature study classes and, during the World Wars, provided a lesson in self-sufficiency for local children.

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Photo by Novella Carpenter. Larger image here.

Novella Carpenter is the author of the forthcoming book FarmCity: The Education of an Urban Farmer (Penguin Press). “I studied under Michael Pollan at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism for two years. My journalistic work reflects my interests–in farming, food, the environment, and culture. In a nutshell, I like to tell stories about people who follow unconventional paths.”

Novella blogs her life on her urban farm at ‘Ghost Town Farm’. Here is an early blog entry by the author.

Feb 16, 2007

I first started farming in the city of Seattle in 1998. At the time, I was a book editor at Sasquatch Books, and one of our favorite authors was Carla Emery. She wrote a book called the Encyclopedia of Country Living. One day I was flipping through the newsprint pages of the book (this is how editors procrastinate) and happened upon a section called How to Build a Chicken House.

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Information below from the MacArthur Foundation Web Site.

Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. In 1995, while assisting neighborhood children with a gardening project, Allen began developing the farming methods and educational programs that are now the hallmark of the non-profit organization Growing Power, which he directs and co-founded.

Guiding all is his efforts is the recognition that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban populations, and such related health problems as obesity and diabetes, largely are attributable to limited access to safe and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Rather than embracing the “back to the land” approach promoted by many within the sustainable agriculture movement, Allen’s holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting.

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Photo by Cynthia Price. Larger image here.
MetroAg co-coordinators Joe Nasr, James Kuhns and Martin Bailkey, with Marielle Dubbeling of RUAF and Joe’s mother in Philadelphia for the event.

MetroAg promises to bring support and recognition to growing urban agriculture movement

Article by Kristin Reynolds in ‘Urban Grown’ the Newsletter of the Kansas City Centre for Urban Agriculture. Link to all ‘Urban Grown’ issues here.

Excerpt:
In conjunction with the annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference, a newly-formed organization held its first official forum on urban agriculture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Saturday, October 4th, 2008.

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Photo by: Dorothea Lange, 1936. See larger image here.
Title from that time: “Homegrown food is homegrown wealth. The foresighted farmer makes a garden plan showing what to plant, when to plant, and when to make second plantings. The plan shows how to cultivate and keep the garden free of weeds, and what poison spray to use to kill the insects that might eat up the vegetables. A garden is meant to feed the family, not the bugs and worms.”

Farmer in Chief
By Michael Pollan
New York Times October 9, 2008

This new post (White House Farmer) would be charged with implementing what could turn out to be your most symbolically resonant step in building a new American food culture. And that is this: tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden.

The president should throw his support behind a new Victory Garden movement, this one seeking “victory” over three critical challenges we face today: high food prices, poor diets and a sedentary population.

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Urban Wheat Field Sprouts Busting Through Concrete and Myths in New York City

On Monday, October 6th, a live wheat field, approximately one quarter of an acre in size, sprouted at New York City’s South Street Seaport. The Wheat Foods Council’s “Urban Wheat Field Experience,” which ran October 6th through 8th, brings the farm-to-fork journey of America’s most-consumed grain to life with a wheat field, full-size combine, functioning mill, bread-baking station, nutrition lab and more.

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Girl in garden, early 1900’s. Larger image here.

Julian Cribb, author of ‘The Coming Famine’, said:

“This intensive urban vegie culture is an entirely new industry and will need a new professional - the urban farmer who can grow food on the roofs and sides of buildings, in intensive biocultures and by other novel methods to feed the megacities of 30 million-plus inhabitants.

“If we don’t, by 2050 we will have more than three-quarters of the human population - almost 8 billion people - living in places where they are totally without the means or the knowledge of how to feed themselves. Our giant cities will be gigantic death traps, at the mercy of even quite minor glitches in regional or global food supplies.”

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Cover photo of Eliza and Peter.
Published by Sono Nis Press in 2007

The Garden That You Are explores that culture through the lives and stories of eight gardeners who all live within a square mile of each in other, in British Columbia’s bucolic and culturally diverse Slocan Valley. Some garden for a living, others garden as a passion, but all have fascinating personal histories and gardening lives.

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Image from Growing Gardens, Portland Chickens.

At the 5th Annual Portland Tour de Coops in July, about 600 people visited, on average, 17 backyard chicken farms in Portland, Oregon. Link to their web site here. See photos of hen houses at Dave’ Garden Forum here.

U.S. City Dwellers Flock to Raising Chickens

By Ben Block, Worldwatch Institute
October 6, 2008

In the backyard of a suburban home in Denver, Colorado, 22 chickens are hiding out from the law.

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