tagged w/ Urban Agriculture
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The City of Vancouver is pursuing changes to bylaws and regulations that will rescue commercial urban agriculture from its legal limbo.The City of Vancouver is pursuing changes to bylaws and regulations that will rescue... more
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Hi Current Community!
I'd like to take a moment of your time and tell you all about our company because we're trying something new and Current.com is full of people who push boundaries.
We are: 312 Aquaponics and we design computer-monitored industrial aquaponic systems (called PODs) that grow massive amounts of great food year-round.
We've just received seed-funds and are building our first prototype this spring in an old meat-packing plant turned vertical farm/food business incubator.
Check out our introductory video and follow us on our journey as we develop and grow.
!Follow our progress at www.312ap.comHi Current Community!
I'd like to take a moment of your time and tell you all... more
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312ap
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1 year ago
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Expanding urban agriculture means gardens on rooftops and animals within city limits. You can read the definitive online book at www.cityfarmer.info.Expanding urban agriculture means gardens on rooftops and animals within city limits.... more
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The Pollinator Frocks Project is a limited edition collection of clothing based on scanning electron microscopy images of plant pollen grains linked to endangered pollinators.
The fabrics are treated with pollinator food sources that replicate nectar, which will be specially coated onto the fabric prior to cut and assembled as “pollinator frocks” (loose fitting unisex clothing).
Would you wear one? Share your thoughts here: http://ow.ly/3I6KOThe Pollinator Frocks Project is a limited edition collection of clothing based on... more
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Havana, Cuba, is a world leader in urban agriculture. Today more than 50 per cent of Havana’s fresh produce is grown within the city limits, using organic compost and simple irrigation systems. Can we all learn from this sustainable solution to agriculture?
When the Soviet Bloc collapsed in 1989, Cuba lost its food imports and agricultural inputs from which it depended for an adequate supply of food. The US Embargo also created a shortage of petrol necessary to transport the food from the rural agriculture sector to the city. This marked the beginning of serious food shortages that shook the entire country, but most of all Havana.
When these sources where cut off and food shortages began, Havana residents responded en masse, planting food crops on porches, balconies, backyards and empty city lots. The Cuban Ministry of Agriculture and Havana's city government supported this grassroots movement, jointly forming an Urban Agriculture Department in 1994. This department first focused on securing land use rights for urban gardeners and committed itself to provide land - free of charge - to all residents who wanted to grow food in the city. Today, the Ministry advice and disseminate knowledge based on the principles of organic agriculture and usually plays a pivotal role in the start-up and functioning of the popular gardens and horticulture clubs. They also operate centres, selling agricultural supplies like seeds.
While Havana's urban agriculture has taken on many forms - ranging from private gardens (huertos privados) to state-owned research gardens (organicponicos) Havana's popular gardens (huertos populares) are the most widespread. Cuban statistics are difficult to get, but in 1995 it was estimated that there were 26,600 popular garden parcels (parcelas) throughout the 43 urban districts that make up Havana's 15 municipalities. The popular gardens range in size from a few square meters to three hectares. Shared use of the popular gardens, range from one to seventy people per garden site. The sites are usually vacant or abandoned plots due to collapsed houses located in the same neighbourhood, if not next door to the gardeners' household. Gardens are cultivated on concrete ground.
A wide selection of produce is cultivated depending on family needs, market availability and suitability with the soil and locality. Garden productivity has been achieved with minimal external inputs, applying principles of organic agriculture i.e. low cost, readily available, and environmentally sustainable. Gardeners seldom use chemical fertilizers. Instead they rely on organic fertilizers in the form of chicken or cow manure, compost from household food waste and occasionally vermiculture (the use of worms). Farmers often maximize the use of land by cultivating multilayer crops, i.e. crops in the ground, on the ground and above the ground at the same time. A popular combination includes cassava (providing shade), sweet potatoes (providing good ground cover) and beans (fixating the soil with nitrogen).
Some predicted that with the easing up of the food crisis, Cuban’s urban gardens would fade away. But just the opposite has happened. Havana’s farms and gardens are steadily increasing, both in size and number, but most importantly in quality. They have had a visible impact on the food security of the city and in improving the Cuban diet. The gardens also bring environmental benefits. Many empty lots, which earlier were informal garbage dumps, are now beautiful gardens that provide food to local communities and improve neighbourhood aesthetics and health.Havana, Cuba, is a world leader in urban agriculture. Today more than 50 per cent of... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, environmentalists and food advocates warily welcomed the news that Walmart plans to expand its local, sustainable food program. The company announced it would double its sales of locally grown food by 2015 and, in new markets, would source from small and midsized producers. Given Walmart’s market share, this announcement is generally understood to be a positive development for the sustainable food movement.
Sustainable food, however, has grown beyond the dictum to eat simply locally and organically grown food. Farms have sprung up on rooftops, home canning of fruits and vegetables has taken off, and composting is de rigueur. A common thread runs through this movement, one with a long tradition in American life—a preference for self-reliance.
“Independence is for Neanderthals”
In her new book, The Resilient Gardener, Chelsea Green author Carol Deppe writes about her garden not just as a local, sustainable source of food, but as a tool for building a sustainable community.
“The resilient gardener knows we have our ups and downs, as individuals, families, societies, and as a species,” she says. “The resilient garden is designed and managed so that when things go wrong, they have less impact.”
Deppe argues that growing staple crops like potatoes, corn, beans, and squash, and learning how to store vegetables and save seeds will help communities thrive, even in times of erratic climates.
“I aim for appropriate self-reliance, not for independence,” she says. “Independence is for Neanderthals.”
Communal eating
Yes! Magazine’s Vicki Robin has been feeding herself only with produce from a friend’s farm and a handful of other necessities sourced within a 10-mile radius of her home—which is on an island in Washington State. She’s been documenting her “10-mile diet” since the beginning of September, and as it came to a close in early October, she wrote: “The overall news is that we are actually on our way to at least partial food self sufficiency on the island, and could get closer with some changes—if we eat what we can grow here and not insist on what cannot grow here….”
From the farm to the city
For Robin, eating locally often meant eating food grown by neighbors. For city-dwellers, “local” is much more flexible. In New York City, for instance, local food at the city’s Greenmarkets can come from more than two hundred miles away, as farmers make weekly drives from upstate New York, Vermont, or southern New Jersey.
Although urban farms have drawn attention as a innovative solution for localizing food production, no one is arguing that a city could feed itself entirely from its rooftops or empty lots. It may not even be wise to dedicate large chunks of city space to agriculture, as Daniel Nairn argues at Grist: Cities need to be dense to promote energy efficiency. Jason Mark, editor of the Earth Island Journal, also writes at Change.org that most urban farms, so far, are not supporting themselves financially.
Sustained by subsidies
For American agriculture across the board, subsidies are a key to financial sustainability. The USDA has funded the growth of corn and soy megafarms in the Midwest, and earnings from outside jobs supplement the incomes of many small or midsized farmers. So far, outside support for urban agriculture has come primarily from private foundations, although earlier this year Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced a bill that would create an Office of Urban Agriculture within the federal agriculture department.
Still, increasing outside funding for urban agriculture may not be the key to sustaining it. “The question of whether farms can become self-sufficient has major implications for the larger drive to create a green economy,” Mark writes. For the green economy to work, it has to be self-reliant.
Mark highlights Dig Deep Farm in the suburbs of San Francisco, CA, as an example.
“To reach profitability, we have to reach a lot of people,” Hank Herrera, one of the farm’s owners, told Mark. “Our goal is to have enough productivity to reach scale, to have the poundage to really feed people.”
To that end, Herrera and his partner, Abeni Ramsey, are looking for more corners of land in the vicinity of their farm to convert into growing space.
Farm ecosystems
Communities sustained by good food practices extend beyond humans to the natural ecosystem of worms and insects that lives in the dirt, helping to enrich and clean it. As Sara Rubin writes at Campus Progress, “A farmer attentive to natural systems will often rejoice over a handful of soil packed with the tiny squirmers, but mostly because it’s packed with microscopic critters, too. An entire ecosystem of beneficial fungi and bacteria and tiny insects can be active below the soil surface.”
That community of underground wrigglers contributes to the resilience of human communities, too. Healthy bugs and bacteria crowd out dangerous pathogens that have led to food-related outbreaks of salmonella, for instance, in the past few years.
Environmentalists should welcome Walmart’s new-found dedication to local foods. It shows that the first battle for a sustainable food system has been won, freeing up time and energy to develop new, exciting projects that will ultimately strengthen communities, not corporations.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, environmentalists and food... more
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by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, environmentalists and food advocates warily welcomed the news that Walmart plans to expand its local, sustainable food program. The company announced it would double its sales of locally grown food by 2015 and, in new markets, would source from small and midsized producers. Given Walmart’s market share, this announcement is generally understood to be a positive development for the sustainable food movement.
Sustainable food, however, has grown beyond the dictum to eat simply locally and organically grown food. Farms have sprung up on rooftops, home canning of fruits and vegetables has taken off, and composting is de rigueur. A common thread runs through this movement, one with a long tradition in American life—a preference for self-reliance.
“Independence is for Neanderthals”
In her new book, The Resilient Gardener, Chelsea Green author Carol Deppe writes about her garden not just as a local, sustainable source of food, but as a tool for building a sustainable community.
“The resilient gardener knows we have our ups and downs, as individuals, families, societies, and as a species,” she says. “The resilient garden is designed and managed so that when things go wrong, they have less impact.”
Deppe argues that growing staple crops like potatoes, corn, beans, and squash, and learning how to store vegetables and save seeds will help communities thrive, even in times of erratic climates.
“I aim for appropriate self-reliance, not for independence,” she says. “Independence is for Neanderthals.”
Communal eating
Yes! Magazine’s Vicki Robin has been feeding herself only with produce from a friend’s farm and a handful of other necessities sourced within a 10-mile radius of her home—which is on an island in Washington State. She’s been documenting her “10-mile diet” since the beginning of September, and as it came to a close in early October, she wrote: “The overall news is that we are actually on our way to at least partial food self sufficiency on the island, and could get closer with some changes—if we eat what we can grow here and not insist on what cannot grow here….”
From the farm to the city
For Robin, eating locally often meant eating food grown by neighbors. For city-dwellers, “local” is much more flexible. In New York City, for instance, local food at the city’s Greenmarkets can come from more than two hundred miles away, as farmers make weekly drives from upstate New York, Vermont, or southern New Jersey.
Although urban farms have drawn attention as a innovative solution for localizing food production, no one is arguing that a city could feed itself entirely from its rooftops or empty lots. It may not even be wise to dedicate large chunks of city space to agriculture, as Daniel Nairn argues at Grist: Cities need to be dense to promote energy efficiency. Jason Mark, editor of the Earth Island Journal, also writes at Change.org that most urban farms, so far, are not supporting themselves financially.
Sustained by subsidies
For American agriculture across the board, subsidies are a key to financial sustainability. The USDA has funded the growth of corn and soy megafarms in the Midwest, and earnings from outside jobs supplement the incomes of many small or midsized farmers. So far, outside support for urban agriculture has come primarily from private foundations, although earlier this year Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) introduced a bill that would create an Office of Urban Agriculture within the federal agriculture department.
Still, increasing outside funding for urban agriculture may not be the key to sustaining it. “The question of whether farms can become self-sufficient has major implications for the larger drive to create a green economy,” Mark writes. For the green economy to work, it has to be self-reliant.
Mark highlights Dig Deep Farm in the suburbs of San Francisco, CA, as an example.
“To reach profitability, we have to reach a lot of people,” Hank Herrera, one of the farm’s owners, told Mark. “Our goal is to have enough productivity to reach scale, to have the poundage to really feed people.”
To that end, Herrera and his partner, Abeni Ramsey, are looking for more corners of land in the vicinity of their farm to convert into growing space.
Farm ecosystems
Communities sustained by good food practices extend beyond humans to the natural ecosystem of worms and insects that lives in the dirt, helping to enrich and clean it. As Sara Rubin writes at Campus Progress, “A farmer attentive to natural systems will often rejoice over a handful of soil packed with the tiny squirmers, but mostly because it’s packed with microscopic critters, too. An entire ecosystem of beneficial fungi and bacteria and tiny insects can be active below the soil surface.”
That community of underground wrigglers contributes to the resilience of human communities, too. Healthy bugs and bacteria crowd out dangerous pathogens that have led to food-related outbreaks of salmonella, for instance, in the past few years.
Environmentalists should welcome Walmart’s new-found dedication to local foods. It shows that the first battle for a sustainable food system has been won, freeing up time and energy to develop new, exciting projects that will ultimately strengthen communities, not corporations.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Last week, environmentalists and food... more
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As a city dweller, you can easily supplement your diet with a few vegetables, or grow some fruit in your back yard. But on your 25-foot lot in the shadow of your neighbours house that's about it. So what if you got together with your neighbours and a few people grew veggies, a few others grew fruit and still others kept chickens for eggs and bees for honey? Now we are talking synergy.As a city dweller, you can easily supplement your diet with a few vegetables, or grow... more
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Agroecology is the logical extension of sustainable food production. The term itself is an amalgam of the word Agriculture and Ecology. It focuses on natural rhythms of the environment to produce ecosystems on the farm, obviously employing the organic options, but even further than "organic" labeling.
Agroecology.org lists a number of principles that all agroecologists should employ, mainly using renewable resources of energy and fertilizer; minimize toxics like pesticides, herbicides or anything that "the use of materials that have the potential to harm the environment or the health of farmers, farm workers, or consumers"; conserve resources, soil, water, energy, capital and genetics by saving seed, promoting heirloom, perennial, low -to -no till crops, and mulching.
All of the above could easily apply to an organic farm, but what makes agroecology stand apart from the organic farms is its dedication to managing ecological relationships within the landscape. Agroecologists prefer to "manage their pests instead of trying to control them," and this is a very serious point as many farms, organic or "traditional" are always fighting the battle between pest and crop. "Traditional" farms use pesticides and herbicides; Organic farms might use organic pesticides and herbicides or they may use predatory bugs, but the agroecolgist will use pest control by other pests as the primary and (hopefully) sole practice.
Further, the agroecologist will look to find plants and crops that are native to the soil, rather than finding soil to fit the plants. This ensures that the relationship between the soil and the plants is less susceptible to blight, pests or fungal diseases, lessening the need for battle in the first place and satisfies the principle of conserving and restoring soil to its best potential.
Though agroecology is not a recent idea in the sense that this is how truly traditional farmers have cared for their crops, it is little-known in the industrial food system; as the consumer base is starting to demand more sustainable, accountable and ethical methods of farming, the academic industry is following suit.
Today there are over a dozen universities in the United States that are offering programs in agroecology, many of which are located in California where a considerable amount of our nation's food system is currently grown. Additionally, universities in other countries like Mexico, Spain and Denmark are offering programs in agroecology.
As the graduates from these programs start to employ the practices of the sustainable food system, more and more farms will move to a sustainable model, since one of the key principles to agroecology is reducing or eliminating all bank debt.
One pioneer in the field is Jerry Glover, an agroecologist who works for The Land Institute in Kansas. He was recently featured in National Geographic for his dedication to sustainable practice in farming grains. Glover focuses on perennial plants in the fields as a way to preserve and enhance the soils which have been already overused:
"Perennial plants generally have longer growing seasons and deeper rooting depths, and intercept, retain and utilize more of the natural precipitation," Glover writes. This is becoming even more important as farmers are forced to grow crops on marginal land more prone to soil erosion in order to feed an ever-growing population.
Agroecology is a burgeoning field and a considerable solution to integrate - on a commercial level - sustainable agriculture into a much needed sustainable food landscape.Agroecology is the logical extension of sustainable food production. The term itself... more
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Hundreds of clandestine urban egg farmers and thousands of illegal chickens can rest easy. Vancouver city council passed a bylaw amendment Tuesday to make it completely legal to keep laying hens in backyards.Hundreds of clandestine urban egg farmers and thousands of illegal chickens can rest... more
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Vancouver’s first fully legal backyard chicken eggs could be in frying pans as early as June. City staff are preparing to take registrations from would-be egg farmers as soon as council approves enabling bylaw changes expected June 1.Vancouver’s first fully legal backyard chicken eggs could be in frying pans as... more
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In a world where there are more overweight human beings than there are malnourished, it is easy to recognize that a lack of food is hardly the real issue; it is a more balanced redistribution that is needed. Americans are in the eye of a recession; very few remain unscathed. Urban Agriculturalist and gardening extraordinaire Jason Boarde has witnessed first hand how getting the food from the, “farm to the plate to the charity is more than twice as expensive as farm to plate.”
As far as the real “green” goes, Urban Agriculture could potentially save millions of dollars per year. By cutting out the middle-man, local agencies, such as SOVA, wouldn’t have to purchase as much as half of their food. Not only that, but while in transit, food that is either being collected or dropped off is far more expensive that’s its locally grown, fresh counterparts in gas and inefficiency alone.
http://www.pedalpatchcommunity.com/read/2010/5/6/urban-agriculture-in-a-concrete-jungle.htmlIn a world where there are more overweight human beings than there are malnourished,... more
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I recently had the good fortune to travel to Cuba as part of trip organized by the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance and the IATP Food and Society Fellows program. The organic and urgan agriculture revolution that is under way there is nothing short of amazing, but what a lot of people don't know is the amount of hardship Cubans have been through to get to where they are. Unlike with most people in the US and other wealthy countries, growing their own and doing it organically were not really choices for Cubans: they did it to survive. Or to put it more flippantly, when life gave the Cubans limes (mint and rum), they decided to make mojitos.
I'm sharing some of my own reflections on what I saw through the video above. Although the gardens and farms we saw were picture perfect, Cuba's food system is far from perfect, but even in its imperfection it offers much food for thought about gardening's role in our societies and how that role may change as we move more into the post-carbon world that Cuba has been acclimating itself to over the past 20 years.
In the end, each city will have to make its own path to sustainable food security for its residents and what works in tropical Havana may not translate to Hartford, Connecticut or Hamburg, Germany. The road is going to be long and bumpy, but as the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu so famously said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and the most important thing is getting started on that journey.I recently had the good fortune to travel to Cuba as part of trip organized by the... more
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Downtown Cleveland gets taken over by a mall, which gets taken over by a farm.
Shopping malls haven’t shown any sign of slowing down in their rampant development since the first one opened near Kansas City, Mo., in 1922. The economy, on the other hand, has shown woeful signs of slowing down to the extent that many retail centers are closing their doors due to the traumatic hit consumer confidence has taken in recent years.
Such was almost the case with the Galleria at Erieview in Cleveland, Ohio but it took the bright idea of Vicky Poole, their marketing and events director to do more than just drop the cost of rent.
I started, again, reevaluating the space and when this idea came for urban growing and I got, again, more involved in the local food movement, I realized that there was no reason why we couldn’t implement growing and still be a business center and an events center. We could still remain a community and yet benefit from the plants and the local food.
Vicky says the businesses will take time to come back, just as the plants will take time to grow. For now, the visibility and good feeling the greenhouse gives to the community is a solid foundation for a sustainable future.
For the full interview with Vicky Poole, click here.
Photo by T-FIZ.Downtown Cleveland gets taken over by a mall, which gets taken over by a farm.... more
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Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle City Councilmembers announced the "2010: The Year of Urban Agriculture" campaign to promote urban agriculture efforts and increase community access to locally grown food.
In April of 2008, Seattle City Council adopted Resolution 31019, the Local Food Action Initiative, outlining a series of actions developed to promote local and regional food sustainability and security. The goals of the Local Food Action Initiative include improving the local food system through advancing the City of Seattle’s interrelated goals of race and social justice, environmental sustainability, economic development, and emergency preparedness.Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle City Councilmembers announced the "2010: The Year... more
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Local food production isn't just root vegetables anymore. In Minneapolis and urban areas all over the country people are seeking permits so they can obtain and raise chickens in the city. Chickens require a lot of work, produce undesired roosters, and are causing quite the controversy.Local food production isn't just root vegetables anymore. In Minneapolis and... more
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The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.
But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is... more
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GRITtv
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3 years ago
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One of the hottest topics in food is to go from farm to table. But what if you live in the middle of a city?
Urban farming is not as strange as it may sound. All over the world, city dwellers with roots in agricultural communities have taken to the rooftops and vacant lots to harvest they’re own crops, raise bees, and even livestock.
The East New York Farm United Community Center is one such urban agricultural oasis that thrives in one of the most economically depressed areas in the country.
Sarita Daftary, Youth Program Coordinator and Project Director.
“Before we even started our project, East New York had over 140 registered gardens. So what we really started to do was to support those gardens and use them as a resource for food production. And we also added in the youth training component and leadership development.”
Success stories like 12 year old interns going on to start their own farms to senior citizens organizing farmers markets and helping to feed those in need are just two examples of the power of organized urban farming.
For more on East New York Farms and urban farming, visit the links below.
East New York Farms! Blog
Urban Agriculture Notes (CityFarmer.org)
Urban Agricluture News
An Abbreviated List of References and Resource Guides (USDA)
Heavy Petal (Gardening: From a West Coast Urban Organic Perspective)
See below for the full slideshow of our trip to the East New York Farms.One of the hottest topics in food is to go from farm to table. But what if you live... more
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