# Urban Agriculture



## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Farm grows produce in urban neighborhood *
22 June 2007

ST. LOUIS (AP) - The new soil was washing away. The broccoli was purple. Bugs were eating the collard greens. Bind weed and Bermuda grass were taking over. A neighborhood dog killed most of their dozen chickens. 

The three dreamers who built a farm in the middle of north St. Louis with the idea that urban areas should grow some of their own food and to provide fresh, chemical-free produce to the poor were beginning to doubt their abilities. They felt alone. 

"We looked at ourselves and thought, 'Who is going to do this? Who is going to do all this work?'" said Trish Grim, 26, who grew up in Springfield, Ill. 

Without fertilizers and chemicals, the tasks were endless. The three were working part-time jobs to make ends meet. 

"We didn't have any clue how much work we were getting into," Grim said. "This was not something that three people can do two days a week." 

Over the next two years, however, the New Roots Urban Farm would flourish, feed area residents and teach kids. Others would come to share the three founders' dream. 

The idea of creating an urban farm took root in early summer 2004 among rows of squash on an eight-acre organic farm near Eureka. Grim, 26, and her boyfriend, Joseph Black, 28, were working as farmhands. 

Grim and Black, who grew up in Chesterfield, met at Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo. When Grim graduated with a degree in linguistics, she joined Black, who was already working on the farm. 

They met Amy Gerth, who was involved in the Catholic Worker community, which operates shelters in north St. Louis. Gerth wanted to start a gardening education program for kids. 

While pulling weeds for hours, the three shared their dreams and ideas. They were disappointed with the organic market, feeling its focus was mainly on high-end markets. Their efforts weren't reaching those in need of safe, fresh produce. 

Gerth's compassion for the poor, and the couple's commitment to the environment blended into the notion of creating a farm in St. Louis. "We thought we could bring the food and grow it directly where it's needed," Grim said. 

So Grim and Black left the beds of fancy lettuce and baby zucchini growing in rich soil along the Meramec River and headed to an area of decaying houses and weed-infested lots. They went from living in a pre-Civil War cabin to the Kabat House, a hospitality house run by Catholic Workers for the homeless and mentally ill. 

The three bought six city lots on Hogan Street in the St. Louis Place neighborhood. The half-acre site sits across from a juvenile detention center and next to an old Catholic church where Mass hasn't been held in decades. They got a state grant to cover the $7,000 purchase. 

The neighborhood they chose has little access to fresh fruits and vegetables. Recently, Bob's Quality Market on North Florissant Avenue had crates of soda sitting on the produce shelves. Salama Supermarket at 14th Street and Cass Avenue had wrinkled green peppers and wilted iceberg lettuce among handfuls of citrus fruits in an old drink cooler. Two fried-chicken restaurants and a hamburger outlet are the only eateries along North Florissant, the main thoroughfare. 

Limited access to nutritious foods is one of the reasons overall rates of obesity are highest among low-income people, especially women, researchers say. 

Gateway Greening donated tons of soil and compost to get the farmers started. Because old foundations were under the site, they built raised beds to plant in. 

They incorporated as Community Supported Agriculture, where shareholders pay $500 and each week get bundles of eight to 10 different fruits, vegetables and herbs. The payments provided money for seed and tools to get started. 

The urban farmers loved connecting residents in the city and near suburbs to their food. 

As Jenny Donelan, 36, of St. Louis, picked up a recent week's bounty, which included carrots, broccoli and green beans, her 5-year-old daughter, Ellie asked, "How do they get broccoli at the grocery store?" 

"It comes from far, far away," Donelan responded. "It's kind of crazy." 

This year, the farm has 24 shareholders and a long waiting list. 

The commitment of the shareholders, who also volunteered on the farm once a month, is what kept Grim, Black and Gerth from packing up those first few months. The excitement from neighborhood children deepened their resolve. 

In that first season, the children just showed up, wanting to plant and fighting over who would get the hose. Many were from a nearby shelter for abused women and their children. Afterward, the children ended up in Grim's kitchen, wanting to know how to cook what they helped harvest. 

Now the farm has a youth program, where up to 15 children can come on Tuesday and Friday mornings, help harvest, discuss nutrition and help cook lunch under the canopy of the farm's new outdoor kitchen. 

The farm's outreach efforts have become more organized. In the first two seasons, it donated produce to shelters and food pantries and sold produce cheaply to residents. 

This year, the farm got funding to start the North City Farmer's Market, which takes place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday through October on the 14th Street Mall. Each month, the farm distributes 240 $5 vouchers to area food pantries that can be used at the market, Grim said. 

On a recent Saturday, residents filling up their bags with inexpensive collards, turnips and onions talked about how excited they were to be able to walk to the market instead of taking the bus to get affordable produce. 

Denise Strickland, 43, walked down from the only business on the mall, a hair salon, to buy fruit for lunch. Otherwise, she would've gone to a fried-chicken restaurant or to another nearby eatery to get a BLT sandwich. "This neighborhood really needed something like this," she said. 

Grim, Black and Gerth are no longer alone. 

The farm is now run by a nine-member collective, which includes two interns. Most of the members of the collective live nearby. They get by with little money, ride bikes and cook their meals together. 

"People here are really dedicated to service. It's such a rare thing to find," said Stephen Inman, 22, who grew up in St. Charles and joined the collective in October. 

The group wants to acquire more land nearby, hire workers and get health insurance. This year, a $50,000 grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health is funding the farmer's market, vouchers and youth program. 

One recent morning, the farm was blossoming with plants such as tomatoes, green onions, kale, garlic and asparagus. Melon and pattypan squash seedlings growing in the makeshift greenhouse were waiting to be planted. 

Grim pulled off a sheet protecting the 70-foot-long bed of green beans from rabbits. "There's a ton of them, and they have absolutely no bug damage," she said as she snapped open one and took a bite. "Look at them, they are perfect." 

She sat on the edge of an open bucket and started picking. She told the intern to pick the big ones that have curled at the end and leave the other ones. 

They still have room to grow.


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## tablemtn (May 2, 2006)

Urban farming is an interesting concept. I think it could be successful in cities like Detroit, with large patches of abandoned ground which are currently returning to "nature." Speaking of Hong Kong, I met a man who grew a small plot of bok choy underneath a highway overpass in the New Territories. It wasn't a huge amount of produce, but it was something, and it was good to see the ground being utilized.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

I grow vegetables in my back garden, Potatoes, carrots, beans, radish, spinach, salad leaves, onions, garlic, kohlrabi and a few strawberries. Not sure it's big enough to count as farming though, my plot is only about 6 square metres!!

Allotments are popular in the UK, patches of open land in towns and cities that citizens can rent from the local government and grow their own produce. They are protected but developers always want to buy them and build there as they are often valuable patches of land. I know they are popular in Germany too and maybe other European countries.

This is one in Wimbledon, London


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## RafflesCity (Sep 11, 2002)

In Singapore, an undeveloped corner of the island is slowly becoming a niche area offering agritainment, where agriculture is combined with small scale edutainment or even homestays.





































Bollywood Veggies

http://www.bollywoodveggies.com/










Here is an article of such a setup:

Plans for chalets, spa and research centre at Kranji plot

16 Jan 07










BY NEXT year, visitors can pop up to Kranji for a farmstay, to relax at a spa, stroll through rows of corn and learn how coffee is produced.
The company that recently obtained a 5.1ha plot in the area in a government tender is building up to 20 chalets, a spa, a restaurant, a fishing pond and stores to sell produce. 

A subsidiary of listed group PDC Corp bagged the 20-year lease site for $880,000. The farm plot in Neo Tiew Lane 2 was among the first to be released by the Government since it eased rules allowing farmers to incorporate commercial and recreational facilities on their land.

PDC's farmstay will be the second in the area. Landscape company Nyee Phoe Group is building four kampung-style chalets on its premises in Neo Tiew Crescent. They are expected to be ready by the end of this year.

PDC's farmstay will complement the agricultural research centre it plans to open to develop corn hybrids for its 40,000ha plantation in Sumatra. That plantation is more than half the size of Singapore. 

Beverage company Super Coffeemix Manufacturing signed a deal with PDC yesterday to showcase coffee production methods at the research centre. PDC, in turn, will supply Super Coffeemix with coffee beans it cultivates in Sumatra.

Unveiling the plans yesterday, PDC said the research centre will conduct educational tours for local visitors as well as tourists. Glass-fronted research labs would enable visitors to get a close-up view of the laboratories, said chief operating officer Veronica Gan.

She added: 'Families can go fishing and, at the same time, enjoy the night breeze and have dinner there. The ladies can go to the spa. They can also do some shopping there.'

She said other companies may be roped in to run the spa and restaurant.

PDC, which is also developing a light industrial and commercial building off MacPherson Road, estimates it will invest at least $5 million in the research centre.


By Tan Hui Yee


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

In addition to increased sense of environmentalism, the drive for agriculture in Hong Kong is also caused by recent food scandals from imported mainland food :

*In greens we trust 
Produce grown in Hong Kong may cost more than mainland imports, but it's better for you - and the planet *
29 March 2007
South China Morning Post

The fresh food in my kitchen last week had travelled about 128,000km before it reached me. That's more than three times around the globe - by plane, train and truck - from field to fridge. This week, in an effort to reduce my so-called carbon footprint on the environment, all my fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, tea, eggs and herbs have come just 32km, by bus and ferry. 

The movement to eat locally has been growing overseas, especially in areas close to farming communities. It's big enough now in Hong Kong that environmentally conscious shoppers can use distribution networks that deliver fresh produce farmed within a few kilometres of where they live. 

Helping to drive such demand is concern about farming and food-processing methods used on the mainland, the source of much of our fresh meat and vegetables. An increasing awareness of the health advantages of fruit and vegetables is also benefitting Hong Kong's small agricultural industry. That's good for the sector and the public, says Clive Lau Siu-ki, a senior agriculture development officer at the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD). 

"Because of food incidents [from the mainland] we always emphasise that local products are of good quality and that the local industry plays an important role in supplying the Hong Kong market," Lau says. With the high cost of real estate and labour, Hong Kong is never going to be self-sufficient. Besides, if everyone opts for local produce, there won't be enough to go around, he says. Increasing wealth in Hong Kong has led to a greater demand for luxuries such as jet-fresh oysters from the US, pears from Japan and abalone from Australia. 

According to AFCD data, of the 1,440 tonnes of fresh vegetables Hongkongers ate each day in 2006, just four per cent came from a local source. And despite having a 3,000-vessel fishing fleet, 14 per cent of locally consumed fin fish arrives by air. The 385 tonnes of fish eaten per day in 2006 is close to one-half the freight capacity of a Boeing 747 flying into Hong Kong International Airport. 

Environmental concerns are persuading some Hong Kong people to seek food sources closer to home. There's also a growing Slow Food movement, which advocates that food should be produced in a clean way that doesn't harm the environment, animals or health. 

Worries about so-called food miles encouraged town planner Wong Tak-sang and fellow residents at his Sha Tin estate to seek vegetables from a local farm. With the help of the Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden (KFBG), they found a farmer in the New Territories who could deliver fresh seasonal vegetables to order to the residents' club house every Monday. With the help of the estate's management committee and volunteers, the produce is distributed to the 90-odd customers who have registered since the scheme was established late last year. 

"We wanted to make sure the food we eat is safe," Wong says. "If you buy locally, you reduce the food mileage problem, which will help improve the environment. Also, it's helping the local economy. If we can help local farmers, hopefully, the market will grow." 

Wong's commitment to home-grown vegetables runs to the five fields in the New Territories he rents for HK$850 per month. Most of what he grows feeds him and his wife. He also helps manage a small herb and fruit garden on his estate. It's so popular that residents have to draw lots every six months for a space. 

Wong admits local produce can be expensive. Local tomatoes cost about HK$25 per catty, compared with HK$5 for the same amount trucked in from the mainland. But he says the extra HK$20 buys peace of mind. And they're still cheaper than imports from the west. 

The knowledge that each ingredient in an average meal had travelled about 2,400km inspired Canadians Alisa Smith and James Mackinnon to start their 100 Mile Diet website. Their idea is to eat only produce farmed within 100 miles (160km) of their Vancouver home, thus reducing the impact of food miles on the environment. Hong Kong people can choose food farmed within the SAR's borders, but with compromises to diet and convenience. Chicken and pork are available, as are tomatoes, radishes, potatoes, lettuce, onions, pak choi, herbs, honey, milk and eggs. Staples such as rice, wheat, spices, coffee, sugar and salt are harder to find. 

"The major difficulty is that local produce fails to cover the full range required by the public," Lau says. "It's all highly seasonal. In summer and spring, you have a dramatic drop in the number of vegetables available." 

Smallholders hawk their produce in many outlying island and New Territories villages, but of the two big supermarkets, only ParknShop sells local produce in a few of its outlets in clearly marked packaging. Bona-fide local organic vegetables should carry the mark of the Hong Kong Organic Resource Centre. Seiyu in Sha Tin and Jusco in Tseung Kwan O carry processed fish products from some of Hong Kong's 1,500-odd marine and land-based fish farms, with the rest sold through wet markets. Look for blue tags on the fins of live fish, indicating that they come from a locally accredited farm that's regularly inspected and supported by the AFCD and Fish Marketing Organisation. 

If you want chicken, ask your poultry seller for ka mei gai, a line that's bred locally and was specially developed by the University of Hong Kong with funding from the AFCD. Outlets selling local pork should display a banner from the Hong Kong Pig Raising Development Federation. Temporary farmers' markets in Wan Chai, KFBG in Tai Po and near the Tai Wo railway station have been doing brisk trade, says Idy Wong, head of the Sustainable Living and Agriculture Department at KFBG, and the Wan Chai market attracts more than 1,500 customers every Sunday. Many farmers sell direct and are also willing to deliver. KFBG runs the Community Supported Agriculture Scheme with a group of local farmers. A quarterly subscription fee of HK$950 covers two deliveries per week totalling six catties of local organic vegetables. 

"People are becoming concerned about the impact their food has on global warming, and some are prepared to pay more and make the extra effort to source locally," says Wong.


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## zachus22 (Dec 4, 2006)

There was a thread started in the Toronto forum about a proposed "farmscraper" right in the heart of downtown. An ugly, grotesque piece of shit if you ask me, but it's the thought that counts.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

I remember there were (or it may have already happened) plans to create a neighborhood farm here in Hartford.

It sounds like a great idea. The city has only one real supermarket in the city limits (much more outside it), and the small convenience stores scattered all over the place don't have the most nutritious foods around.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Vienna has a substantial number of wine yards within its city borders. Does that count as well?

Its a very traditional thing, but currently some wealthy people discovered being wine grower as hobby and bought some fields to make their own high quality wine, they could give friends and business partners as present, or to enjoy it themselves.

It brought a nice new imput, but the largest part is still in the hand of professional farmers and thats not bad either.


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## LMCA1990 (Jun 18, 2005)

The gov. of Colombia gives crops to those who wish to grow them on their roof. It has become very popular among environmentalists in Bogota.


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## Jonesy55 (Jul 30, 2004)

Austria makes some very good sweet dessert wines :cheers2:


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

Jonesy55 said:


> Austria makes some very good sweet dessert wines :cheers2:


The one from the region I come from is more of a not so sweet sort. Grüner Veltliner. But I like it if its a good one. 

Actually I do not even know what they grow exactly inside of Vienna.


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## svs (Dec 5, 2005)

Los Angeles also has a few vineyards in city limits. You can see one in Bel-Air right across the freeway from the Getty museum. There are also vineyards in Malibu. 

A few farms such as Ramirez ranch still exist and grow crops but it is a long time since LA county was the number one agricultural county in the US. For myself, I have a few fruit trees in my back yard and grow plums, oranges, limes, lemons, pineapple guavas, peaches, persimmons, avacados, bananas, passion fruit, and figs. The plums were delicious this year. I also have a macadamia nut tree but the squirrels get the whole crop.


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## BoulderGrad (Jun 29, 2005)

I can't really think of any farms within the city limits of Seattle, but one thing that is growing in popularity is green roofs. This has also been encouraged by the mayor as a way to reduce water runoff into Puget Sound.

Ballard public library, Seattle, WA


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

svs said:


> Los Angeles also has a few vineyards in city limits. You can see one in Bel-Air right across the freeway from the Getty museum. There are also vineyards in Malibu.
> 
> A few farms such as Ramirez ranch still exist and grow crops but it is a long time since LA county was the number one agricultural county in the US. For myself, I have a few fruit trees in my back yard and grow plums, oranges, limes, lemons, pineapple guavas, peaches, persimmons, avacados, bananas, passion fruit, and figs. The plums were delicious this year. I also have a macadamia nut tree but the squirrels get the whole crop.


So California has more in common with the state of Vienna than having an Austrian governor :lol: Also wine growing within city limits of the major city....


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## svs (Dec 5, 2005)

Slartibartfas said:


> So California has more in common with the state of Vienna than having an Austrian governor :lol: Also wine growing within city limits of the major city....


Well our governor is actually from Gratz rather than Vienna, but we do have links to Vienna through the refugees who settled here during the 30's and forties. Schoenberg, Schindler, Billy Wilder, etc. I wish we would open a few Heurigers near the lakes in our intracity mountains.


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## Slartibartfas (Aug 15, 2006)

svs said:


> Well our governor is actually from Gratz rather than Vienna, but we do have links to Vienna through the refugees who settled here during the 30's and forties. Schoenberg, Schindler, Billy Wilder, etc. I wish we would open a few Heurigers near the lakes in our intracity mountains.


Yes he is from the vicinity of Graz, but nonetheless that means he is from Austria as well 

A great idea btw. You have a good wine what I have heard, nothing speaking against some Heurigen. I dont know if Calfiornians are open for something like that, but it would sound like a nice idea 

What a bitty that so many people were forced to leave their own country back than. But at least from Billy Wilders I think he never cut all the ties to his homeland...


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Amid housing project and strip mall, a city farm thrives *
18 September 2005

CHICAGO (AP) - Amid a high-rise housing project, strip mall and busy intersection just north of the city's bustling business district, a small farm is flourishing on what was once vacant and blighted land. 

Simply called City Farm, the acre plot surrounded by tall metal fences produces organic tomatoes, squash and lettuce that is sold to residents and some of the city's swankiest restaurants. 

"People are wanting a different connection with their food," said City Farm's project director Kristine Greiber. "They want not only to do the right thing, but they really want to taste the difference." 

Urban farms like the one in Chicago are popping up across the country in cities like Detroit and Philadelphia as people look to transform vacant properties into prospering land. 

"You have this vacant land, but it's such a surprise in the city," Greiber said. "It's unexpected and magical." 

The Chicago-based Resource Center, an environmental education nonprofit group, operates three farms in the city including City Farm and another that specializes in garlic. But City Farm, which began in 2002, is the only one with a market stand, which is open three days a week. 

The Resource Center, which makes compost to create a nutrient-rich soil for the crops to grow, hopes to convert other vacant lots into urban farms, Greiber said. 

City Farm is less than a block from the notorious Cabrini-Green public housing complex and across the street from a strip mall that includes a large grocery store. Visitors to the farm can see the Sears Tower in the distance and frequently hear sirens blaring from fire trucks and police cars. 

About once a week, customer Mark Bystrom, 31, swings by City Farm to purchase vegetables that he says can't be found at grocery stores like the one across the street. 

"You can't get tomatoes over there that taste like these tomatoes," Bystrom said as he pointed to the grocery store and held a bag of City Farm cherry tomatoes in the other hand. "These are fresh, yummy, cheaper and straight from the source." 

Christine Kim, chef of cuisine at the Green Zebra, a popular, upscale restaurant about two miles west of City Farm, said the restaurant often buys greens, beets and tomatoes from the farm. 

"We want to support local farms," Kim said. "Not to mention, their produce is beautiful, too. They put a lot of heart into their farm." 

The urban farm market is growing in cities across the United States because of restaurants like the Green Zebra and city residents who flock to local farmers markets eager to buy locally grown food, said Roxanne Christensen, president of the Institute for Innovations in Local Farming, which helps operate a city farm in Philadelphia. 

That city's Somerton Tanks Farm grows organic vegetables on a previously vacant half-acre plot owned by the Philadelphia Water Department and sells them to residents and restaurants. 

"People want to put their money where their mouth is," Christensen said. "And we're slowly convincing policy-makers that farming has a place in urban areas." 

Somerton Tanks, which opened in 2003, raked in $26,100 in sales its first year and is slated to surpass $42,000 this year, Christensen said. About half of the farm's income comes from people who paid $550 for fresh produce for one season, which is about six months. 

In Chicago, City Farm last year brought in about $25,000 in sales, Greiber said. 

The farm has struggled a bit this year after moving to a new site, a vacant lot next to its previous half-acre location, and the summer drought. The farm hopes to hire an experienced farmer for next season, Anderson said. 

City Farm also wants to expand its community outreach. Local high school students and Somalian refugees have helped Resource Center employees work the farm, and this fall a nearby high school and the City Farm plan to have an urban agriculture seminar for students. 

"We want people to really claim the farm and come together and make it their own," Greiber said.


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## klamedia (Nov 21, 2005)

The largest community farm in the US was closed last year with a riot almost erupting.....this is LA btw.


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## TalB (Jun 8, 2005)

The Queens County Farm Musuem over in Glen Oaks is an active farm.


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## futureproof (Nov 2, 2006)

how much smog will cling in letucce leafs being grown in urban areas? it´s not new to japanese people anyways to plant vegetables in small areas in cities, some say due to lack of space.

Vienna looks very nice with those wineyards plantations


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## spongeg (May 1, 2006)

not really a farm but there is a guy who started a business here by using peoples backyards to grow things that he than sells onto produce markets or at a farmers market

he just asks people to let him use some space in their backyards and he does all the work

i think he had over 50 backyards i think it was catching on and he was having a hard time keeping up with it all

its an interesting idea


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## PedroGabriel (Feb 5, 2007)

we also have city hall farm ("horto municipal") and the garbage company farms that anyone can rent to produce their own food It's not very popular, cause although this is as city, we have countryside around. I don't even buy potatoes an the store, every Tuesday a farm women come here and delivers potatoes.

I've some plants in my "balcony", not garden, cause I live in an apartment. This year my balcony is full of parsley, b ut in other years it was full of tomatoes. But I've many other plants, including a beautiful orange tree, with two litlle oranges!! :banana: it's a young tree and it's in a vase. in spring it produces a lot of orange flowers and it gives a nice aroma, I recommend everyone to have an orange tree in their balcony. They need a lot of light to produce oranges, so it can't be too much North.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*In SF City Hall front yard, a bounty of produce *
31 July 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - For generations, the lawn at Civic Center Plaza was a lush, quarter-acre welcome mat outside City Hall, and a frequent staging ground for demonstrations.

But the grass has been torn out and replaced by tomato plants, spinach, beans and squash -- an officially sanctioned and very organic protest against a culture of mediocre, unhealthy food.

The Victory Garden, as it is known, is the centerpiece of a food festival scheduled for Labor Day weekend that is intended to underscore the connection between planet and plate.

In the foggy summer weeks between July 1, when the turf was ripped up, and Labor Day, it is a living billboard for urban agriculture. Tourists and political gadflies, office workers and the homeless stroll the garden each day; volunteers hover nearby, ready to dish up information and shoo away squirrels.

"We've reached critical mass in the media," says Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation '08, which organized and paid for the urban garden. "That level of critical mass has made it more acceptable to do the outrageous, and this is outrageous. We've just planted a farm in front of the mayor's office!"

Touchy about his image as one of "these nutty mayors," as he put it, Mayor Gavin Newsom denies there is any hippie plantation outside his office.

"Not everyone gets it yet. There have been some folks who criticize this as if we are building some farm out in City Hall," he said.

Newsom has planted the seeds of a run for California governor, and, eyeing conservative voters in California's real farm belt, doesn't want to appear too crunchy.

But the mayor's office approved of replacing lawn with lettuce, and Newsom said he has watched enthusiastically as "this victory garden" has sprouted.

"I have gotten to enjoy this the last few weeks right there -- my office is literally right there, the window with those shades open -- and every day I have been peeking out and looking at the progress," he said. "I'm just like a kid, I'm so excited about this, so proud about this."

Snap peas, broccoli, leeks, eggplant, pumpkins and peppers are flourishing in City Hall's front yard, a bounty meant to peak for the festival. After the last speech, it will be harvested and donated to the San Francisco Food Bank for distribution to the needy.

To the mayor, the garden embodies a movement toward healthier foods that is a natural policy companion piece to his push for universal health care. "What we're trying to do is move from access to investing in people's health, not treating people when they are sick," he said. "That's what, to me, this whole movement is about."

"This whole movement," it turns out, includes a whole buffet of issues, from protecting workers' and growers' rights; to banishing pesticides and other chemicals; to ensuring rich and poor have equal access to good food.

To John Bela, who designed and managed the garden, it's also about growing food closer to home.

"In San Francisco, we're making the big, visible, symbolic gesture here, in an effort to bootstrap urban gardening in the Bay Area and look at the role of urban farming in creating a sustainable food system," he said.

Fernald practically has to gulp for air as she rushes to tick off the issues driving "the movement." "Concern about oil, concern about health, concern about childhood diabetes, obesity," she said.

The garden is also a bridge to history. During World War II, City Hall's lawns were ripped up and replaced with vegetable plants meant to ease produce shortages. Thousands thronged to a Victory Garden Fair in the park in June 1943.

Sixty-five years later, organizers are predicting as many as 50,000 people will descend on the City Hall area for the Slow Food Nation festival -- what they are calling "the largest celebration of American food in history."

It will graft a political rally onto the mother of all farmer's markets. There will be seminars, chef demonstrations, produce spilling from crates, workshops, films, exhibits, music, and of course, tastings.

Bela and other organizers are uncertain what will happen to the garden after the festival, but they are almost certain it will not stay at City Hall. The soil and some other materials might be recycled and used at a garden in another city park, they said.

One recent day, it drizzled on the garden as the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition massed on the steps of City Hall and a few homeless people dozed through the protesters' chants.

The homeless are a permanent fixture in San Francisco, and some seem to live near the garden.

Although the garden has a permanent security presence, Bela said he is untroubled by the prospect of a hungry person picking the occasional radish out of the garden.

"If people want to eat out of the garden, and they need to eat a piece of lettuce, that's fine with me," he said. "It's good, organic food. That's the least of my concerns."

------

On the Net:

Festival Web site: http://slowfoodnation.org


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Albuquerque's rural roots put city at front of urban agriculture renaissance*
20 August 2008

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Dan Schuster breezes down the road in his green and yellow John Deere tractor, but instead of passing cow pastures or a barn, he drives by fast-food restaurants and strip malls as excited kids wave to him from open car windows in the city traffic.

Schuster, owner of Fair Field Farmer, which does custom plowing for landowners, and farm manager at the 130-acre Rio Grande Community Farms, makes his living as a farmer in the city.

Community gardening organizers and experts nationwide say growers like Schuster -- and urban areas like Albuquerque -- are bringing agriculture into their cities and suburbs in new ways as people worry about the environment, rising food costs and food safety. City folks also are relearning how delicious homegrown food can be.

Drive down a six-lane highway through this central New Mexico city and you can see cows chewing their cud. Small farms in the city's South Valley along the Rio Grande are a short bicycle ride from downtown skyscrapers. And, the city has one of the most lenient ordinances about backyard chicken ownership in the country.

"We're so far behind, we're ahead," Schuster said. "When all those (other cities) were getting populated and built on, we were still growing food here to eat. We still had families that were feeding themselves because they couldn't afford food except for what they could grow.

"Now, when the rest of the world is coming in, they are going, 'Man, that is incredible.'"

The rural lifestyle of backyard horse stables, fresh eggs for breakfast, fruit trees and vegetable gardens that people take for granted in many Albuquerque neighborhoods is catching on around the country.

"The actual phenomenon of urban farming is absolutely taking off even more," said Taja Sevelle, founder and executive director of Detroit-based Urban Farming, which creates gardens on vacant land to provide a sustainable food source in communities where people are hungry. "People are worried about the environment, the rising cost of food. People feel safer about their food being grown closer to home."

Urban Farming started with three gardens in Detroit in 2005. This year they have 600 gardens and have expanded across the country into cities like New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, Minneapolis and New Orleans, she said.

Greg Bowman, communications manager at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Penn., a nonprofit that promotes and researches organic farming methods, said urban planners are integrating sustainable agriculture into developments like retirement communities and subdivisions.

And local farmers -- who in recent years have brought organic produce into farmer's markets, restaurants and schools where urban dwellers can try it -- are choosing to plant vegetable varieties based on nutritional value and taste, rather than making decisions based on a business contract or how long a vegetable can sit on a shelf.

"It kind of opens up people's imaginations of what can be done closer to home," he said.

In Albuquerque, KT LaBadie has started http://www.urbanchickens.org. She trains urban and suburban residents to keep chickens in their back yards. The city has one of the most lenient ordinances affecting chickens in the country, allowing up to 15 chickens per household, she said.

"The urban chicken thing has really taken off," she said. "It's a draw to bring people to your cities and it's something that should be preserved."

Schuster, too, keeps chickens and sells the extra eggs to his neighbors, who leave 20 dollar bills on his porch periodically when they pick up their eggs.

He and his wife also feed themselves from their small vegetable garden, that produces enough to sell at a local farmer's market for extra income, and by getting vegetables, fruit and meat from other local producers.

Schuster also grows flowers that he sells at local shops and he allows a beekeeper to maintain a hive on his property from which he gets some of the honey.

Buying meat locally and stocking a freezer to keep fall's bounty through the winter are the real challenges, he said.

"This whole art of sourcing, storing and then preparing foods, that's the difficult thing. That's what takes more time and education. That's what we've lost," Schuster said.

But not everyone in Albuquerque is as optimistic as Schuster and LaBadie about local food production.

Water is a constant concern in this southwestern city, which has about 600 miles of irrigation and drainage ditches called acequias crisscrossing its neighborhoods near the river.

A lot of growers despair that small farms often are being subdivided into tiny lots -- the water rights to the parcels lost.

Agriculture is "under incredibly heavy pressure from developers," said John Shipley, vice president of the Rio Grande Agricultural Land Trust. "Why can't they leave the farmland alone on the valley floor? The loss of agricultural water and farmland is a major threat to the continuation of farming."

As things stand now, Albuquerque produces only about 3 percent of the food that the city eats, Shipley said.

Michael Reed, president of the New Mexico Farmer's Marketing Association, owns a farm south of Albuquerque where he grows heirloom crops that grow well in the region's dry climate and where he demonstrates that a lot of food can be grown in a small area.

"If we could encourage one city block to have each neighbor plant a fruit tree, in a few years they would have more fruit than they would know what to do with," he said. "This isn't about subsistence farming, it's about creating healthy communities."


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## Momo1435 (Oct 3, 2005)

I was surprised to see this land on the other side of the road of the Yokohama Arena in Shin Yokohama.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*The urban farmer's almanac *
24 October 2008
Canwest News Service

The backyard of this downtown Toronto row house looks like many, with a small patio and a rectangular lawn adorned by perennials along the border. But at the far end of the yard is the not-so-regular sight of a fenced-in wooden chicken coop.

Red, Ramona and Daisy, three 18-month-old hens, spend their nights in the enclosure and their days nibbling and digging in the yard. They eat a mixture of chicken feed, grass and kitchen scraps (the house's green bin goes out nearly empty) and provide their owners Chris and Cara (who asked that their last names not be used) with three humongous brown eggs almost every day. His hens utter the occasional cluck, but their poop fertilizes the lawn and the neighbours, far from offended, show up at Chris and Cara's front door with empty cartons.

"There's really nothing to it," Chris says as he eats his fried egg sandwich for breakfast. "You wouldn't believe how good the eggs are."

So why isn't everyone living this locavore dream of having organic, free- range eggs for nearly nothing, right from their own backyard? Well, for one thing, it's illegal.

But as the local food movement becomes more popular, city dwellers such as Chris and Cara are questioning the rules against urban farming. City chickens can give us eggs and, when the laying years are over, meat. Backyard goats can yield milk, meat and weed control; bees in rooftop hives can both feed us and help local flora; and fish in unused swimming pools or water filtration plants can give us a supply of lean protein.

It's the logical extension of the proliferation of backyard, rooftop and communal gardens

that grow tomatoes, lettuce and squash. After all, we eat more than just vegetables. But to get more livestock feeding hungry urbanites on a truly local level, bylaws, attitudes and farming models will have to change. Or, more precisely, revert back to what they once were.

As recently as the 1980s, chickens, goats and rabbits had homes in many Toronto backyards - as they still do today in many cities around the world. Up until the late '60s, live animals were kept in Kensington Market; you could pick the chicken or duck you liked and have it killed and cleaned on the spot. But then we started to think of cities as clean, concrete jungles - no place for the dirty business of farming. About 30 years ago, Canadian cities started enacting bylaws to limit the kinds of animals one could keep at home and to stipulate that they could only be killed in slaughterhouses. (Toronto did so in 1983.) Stricter provincial rules for slaughterhouses led to the closure of small and urban abattoirs (local pressure to get their stench out of town didn't help), leaving only big slaughterhouses doing business with large-scale farms. Urban Canadians lost their livestock-raising skills. They would now like them back.

Rising food prices, meat contamination and a growing sense of concern about where our food comes from have put urban meat back on the table.

"The whole thing is taking off," says Wayne Roberts, manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council. He recently visited the University of Pennsylvania, which is on the cutting edge of food policy research, and all anyone could talk about was city farming. "It's an idea that's exploding," says Rhonda Teitel-Payne, urban

agriculture manager for The Stop Community Food Centre, a nonprofit organization that does food security work. "People are looking for answers and are not happy with what they're finding."

Whether animals and their byproducts are raised in backyards or in communal settings - for sharing or for profit - city animal farming has big benefits. Besides being easily traced to its source, urban farm products save on fuel. City beasts such as chickens, goats and tilapia will eat orange peels and wilted lettuce, and this "upcycling" can help reduce garbage. Since farming takes a lot of land, using corners of backyards, rooftops and disused pieces of the city for animals could prevent more greenbelt from being razed for farms. City land is pricey, but since animal products garner more than produce, it makes economic sense to raise livestock instead of veggies on urban land.

And animals raised on a small scale are yummier. "Anyone who's ever eaten a pig that has been fed a variety of foods and been outside where it can root around [knows] the taste of the meat is entirely different than what you buy from stores," says Christie Young, executive director of FarmStart, a Guelph- based organization that helps people launch farms.

The urbanization of agriculture starts with chickens. They're inexpensive, require less work than a dog and give you daily, delicious eggs and eventually meat. They eat bugs, chew up rocks and irrigate the soil when they dig, making them a common fixture in apple orchards.

Chickens are legal in Niagara Falls, London, Victoria and numerous U.S. cities (Seattle reportedly has 1,000 coops in backyards). Waterloo, thanks to pressure from a group of citizens called the Waterloo Hen Association, has re- evaluated the public health risks of backyard birds and may change its bylaw as early as next month.

Here, a group called Toronto Chickens has put together a 600-signature petition, which it plans to present to city councillors soon. Councillor Joe Mihevc, who just a year ago was against chickens being raised in urban areas, supports them now. "I went to a home where they had illegal chickens and was shown that they can be grown, and the impact on neighbours was non-existent and frankly had no negative impacts," he explains.

Eletta Purdy, manager for Toronto Animal Services admits: "We do need to look at our bylaw. We'd like to update it to address the current day's needs." She says the city may review rules for chickens and exotic pets next year.

Bees, meanwhile, are governed by provincial laws, and can be kept in town. The Toronto Beekeepers Cooperative, a group of 25 volunteers and one certified beekeeper, cares for 21 hives at the Brick Works and three on the rooftop of the Fairmont Royal York hotel. These insects (which are dying off in the wild) produce honey full of local pollen, which acts as an immunity booster for people with allergies. Bees pollinate flowers, everything from daisies to tomato vines, which helps these and numerous other plants grow and reproduce.

Hives take up little space, and require work about once a week (more in the summer during honey harvest). The Royal York got 300 pounds of honey this year from its bees. But the rules say that hives must be kept 30 metres from residences or thoroughfares. "We're looking for more locations," says Mylee Nordin, the cooperative's staff beekeeper. More awareness, understanding and funding for beekeeping could mean more hives on rooftops, in communal gardens or in disused lots.

A rarer city sight are goats, which have multiple urban uses. Annie Booth, a researcher at the University of Northern British Columbia, recently observed 10 goats doing weed control on city lands in Prince George. Except for buying the goats and fencing, this was nearly a cost-free venture, as they chewed on dandelion and thistle all day. "Working with goats is like dealing with large cats with hooves," says Booth of the friendly animals, which are easy to herd. Small breeds such as the pygmy goat can live in backyards and provide both milk and meat.

Similarly, sheep make excellent lawnmowers, and some people recall an old North York oil refinery using them to cut its grass as recently as the 1980s. We could try out sheep at a few city parks, and Scadding Court Community Centre executive director Kevin Lee thinks urban shepherding has potential as a profession for the city's at-risk youth.

The compact Dexter cow needs a big yard, or could graze with a herd in disused land near railroad tracks or industrial parks. Milk is expensive to transport -i's heavy and needs refrigeration - so a local supply makes sense. Pigs, meanwhile, need little space and eat bugs.

Fish have great city potential, too. Every June for the past seven years, Scadding Court has drained and dechlorinated its pool and filled it with fresh water and a thousand trout for community members to fish. While designed to get urban kids in touch with their food, Lee wonders why his idea can't be spun out to feed more people. "The city has a number of outdoor pools that are only used for eight weeks of the year. You could stretch a plastic tarp across these pools, and it's a greenhouse that fish can live in," says Lee. Tilapia is the best city fish: It can exist in kiddie-sized pools, as long as they're kept warm; they reproduce like mad and eat mainly kitchen scraps.

Yet, the numerous reasons for driving animals out of town years ago still exist. Clucks, oinks and bleats can disrupt city streets. Manure piles can attract flies and rodents and lead to conflicts between neighbours. Sheep and goats doing natural lawn work could escape from their confines and spook people or get run over. E coli and other bacteria from manure can get into the water or soil, while city chickens could spread avian flu, as they have in parts of Asia. Backyard farmers might be tempted to sell their wares outside the food system, which means the meat or milk would not be tested, putting others at risk. No city bylaw would be able to ensure city livestock got regular vet care. "You could be eating a sick animal," says Jim Chan, manager for Toronto Public Health's food safety program.

If problems in the food system reach a more critical state, these risks may become worth it. But more limiting to the growth of animals in town are our own rules and attitudes. Right now, people with chickens, goats, pigs or sheep in their yards in Toronto can be fined $240 and up to $5,000 if the case goes to court. (It's legal to keep as many as six rabbits in a house or yard. "I know someone who tried going into the rabbit business," Booth says. "But in the end couldn't bring themselves to whack the rabbits.")

It's also illegal to slaughter most animals at a residence, and finding an abattoir willing to slice up single a chicken, goat or cow is next to impossible under current guidelines.

Cities can issue permits for pilot projects and studies, but they rarely do.

"Everyone just thinks inside the box and brings up barriers," says Lee, whose fish farming and urban shepherding have met with resistance from city officials. A proposal to turn the Etobicoke Sewage Treatment Plant into a tilapia fish farm years ago went nowhere. And although Booth showed that weed control with goats was cheap and effective, the City of Prince George didn't want to take over the flock when her research project was done.

We require new farming models to really bring animals into the city in a way that's safe, profitable and helpful. As the trend spreads and more researchers such as Booth and groups like FoodShare and Scadding Court test out new ideas, we may see the identification of more city-friendly animals, creative ways of repurposing land and new models for working together for both sharing or profit.

Does this mean, eventually, that every Toronto yard will house a chicken? Hardly. You need a sizable yard, time and a real passion for local food to endure bee stings, manure on your shoes and late-night calls to the vet.

"You have to care for these animals, keep them clean, feed them the right things. There will always be issues, and it's not for everyone," Young says. But for lovers of backyard eggs, pristine bacon, local honey and milk from the source, the fight for these types of animal rights will surely continue.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*In every backyard, a garden plot
Entrepreneurs set out to farm unused residential yards – and make money to boot *
20 October 2008
The Globe and Mail

VICTORIA -- It all started in June for Deb Heighway with a call from her brother, Craig, proving that good ideas grow roots and flourish quickly. He had declared himself CPO – “chief pitchfork operator” – of an urban farming venture in Vancouver, and he urged her to give the concept a try.

“The timing was right, as I had just finished a contract,” said Ms. Heighway, who works helping people who have suffered brain injury. “And I said: ‘Why not?' ”

Ms. Heighway, who is originally from London, Ont., started off by purchasing a set of manuals online about small-plot intensive – or SPIN – farming: “It was $85, approximately.” The guide was part of a series produced by the pioneers behind the SPIN farming movement in Saskatchewan, Wally Satzewich and Gail Vandersteen.

“So I started knocking on doors, just on my street,” said Ms. Heighway, with flyers offering to “turn your yard into a productive vegetable garden. We'll do all the work and you get healthy, fresh and FREE vegetables.”

And so Donald Street Farms came into being.

SPIN farming is an urban agriculture phenomenon that is growing across Canada and the United States. It offers more productive land use in the city as well as food sustainability closer to end-users.

It's an example of a greener mindset leading to a kind of enlightened self-interest: making good money while meeting needs and creating opportunities by using overlooked, available resources in a new way that is environmentally progressive.

When SPIN pioneer Mr. Satzewich started his venture, he rented land from Saskatoon homeowners, but Ms. Heighway chose the barter route.

In exchange for use of the land, each client gets a basket of fresh produce weekly throughout the season of about 20 weeks. Others who can't offer land can purchase “market share subscriptions” and receive a steady, weekly supply of produce throughout the season.

“I've seen subscription prices range from $400 to $850,” Ms. Heighway said. She didn't have any official subscription clients this year because she started late, but she did sell fresh produce to people she knew in the neighbourhood, such as Shekinah Home, a place located on her street for people with developmental disabilities.

“I'm still not sure what I'm going to charge … not $850. And I also want to sell at some kind of farmer's market nearby.”

That's what Mr. Satzewich and Ms. Vandersteen do, according to their website. He rents the land for Wally's Urban Market Garden (about 25 backyards totalling about a half-acre of growing area).

He grows the vegetables (sometimes three successful crops a year in the same backyard “field”) on the rented land and sells them at the Saskatoon Farmers' Market.

On their SPIN website, Mr. Satzewich and Ms. Vandersteen say growing produce in the city can be easier because the environment is more manageable in terms of pests and wind control. They indicate it's possible to gross $50,000 a year from a half-acre.

Ms. Heighway wasn't calculating profit this year, but her door-to-door sales worked: It wasn't long before she had three clients, one offering 1,000 square feet in her yard, another, 800, and a third, 500. She has two more lined up for next spring.

“When I started knocking on doors it was July, and as the summer went on, I was happy I only had three” yards to work. Ms. Heighway has also converted her own yard to SPIN farming.

City Harvest, another Victoria-area SPIN operation, is run by Paula Sobie and Martin Scaia.They've been urban farming since early 2007. Unlike other business startups in an urban marketplace, their relationship with Ms. Heighway's Donald Street Farms is not competitive.

“Paula and Martin have been nothing but helpful. I went to hear them speak in July about converting backyards into food-producing gardens and it was inspirational. They've got more than a dozen locations and little kids at home. … I've called Paula for help and she's always generous.”

Ms. Heighway uses organic farming methods and says, “I don't dig.” She builds her beds up; it's called “lasagna” farming. First she lays cardboard onto the plot to make any remaining grass or vegetation mulch-able. The cardboard decomposes under a layer of manure and then she adds a layer of topsoil.

“It's called no-till farming – it's easier than digging and you can plant immediately.”

She uses a hand-seeding device to plant seeds in the rows, which have sawdust footpaths between them. That way the urban gardener can straddle the crop rows while working. Ms. Heighway said her adult children like to help when they come to visit “because they both have indoor, chained-to-the-desk jobs.

“It's still hard on the back,” she grinned. “I'll be doing a lot of sit-ups this winter.”

This being her first season, she doesn't yet have a solid estimate of her costs.

“It depends how much I can get for free, like the compost. Free is good. The topsoil is about $40 a yard. And looking ahead, I need a shed. And an outside fridge. And some kind of sink arrangement,” she says thoughtfully, listing her operation's future needs on her fingers.

The fridge and the sink will allow her to progress to basic food processing and storage, having things fresh and ready for market sales and for subscriber distribution.

“I think it's so exciting, and it's such a contribution” to Vancouver Island being better able to feed itself and to “improve local food security” so people will feel confident about the safety of the food they eat.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Tokyoites go farming to escape urban woes *
5 November 2008
Agence France Presse

Tomohiro Kitazawa makes an unlikely farmer. He works neither under the sun nor in the fields, instead reporting for duty in the bustling heart of Tokyo.

As Japan's capital city struggles with problems from food safety to global warming to unemployment, a growing number of people in the famously crowded metropolis are becoming city farmers, planting crops atop tall buildings or deep underground.

Kitazawa, 31, arrives for work in Tokyo's financial district of Otemachi in a heavy-duty silver elevator. What was once a bank's underground vault has been transformed into a subterranean world of greenery and warm, moist air.

Kitazawa was one of many young people here left without a stable income as Japanese companies slashed jobs. But he finally ended years of job hunting when he found the position growing vegetables right in the middle of Tokyo.

"I felt a bit odd at first growing vegetables like this, but I've learned its merits," Kitazawa said.

The state-of-the art farm, known as Pasona O2, was created by Tokyo-based temp staffing agency Pasona Group Inc. The farm carefully adjusts temperatures, humidity and lighting so vegetables can grow under the ground.

Kitazawa grows a few different types of lettuce in one of the six "farms," which look somewhat like space laboratories divided by glass doors that slide open and shut automatically.

The other farming rooms grow rice, roses and vegetables such as tomatoes and pumpkins.

"We want to activate Japan's agricultural sector by dispatching enthusiastic young people," said Sayaka Itami, leader of Pasona's new business development division.

"By creating this new style of farm, which is bright and clean, in the middle of Tokyo, we want to draw young people's interest into farming," she said.

She said that urban farming helped her company by creating a new source of jobs.

City farming also offers a solution for another problem in Tokyo and other major cities -- the so-called urban heat-island effect.

Cities' temperatures rise in the summer due to the urban environment of heat-absorbing concrete buildings and pavement. In a vicious cycle, the heat boosts the use of air conditioning, raising carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

Encouraged by environment-conscious Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, a number of building owners in the capital have introduced roof-top gardening as a way to prevent overheating.

In the "Green Potato" project launched by two subsidiaries of Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Corp., city farmers not only help cool down Tokyo but also harvest sweet potatoes in autumn.

"Sweet potatoes grow strongly in the tough roof-top environment of harsh sun and strong wind," said Masahiro Nagata, a staff member of NTT Facilities Inc.'s environment business department.

The plants are particularly good for roof-tops because their wide leaves can cover the whole surface and are efficient at transpiration -- evaporating water -- which has a cooling effect.

The temperature of a roof area not covered by potato leaves was as much as 27 degrees Celsius (48.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than an area covered by the leaves, according to a survey taken on top of the NTT Facilities building.

The vegetables are consumed locally, helping ease another growing worry in Japan -- the safety of its food.

Japan, which has limited natural resources, imports around 60 percent of the food it consumes -- a higher rate than any other rich country.

Public concerns have mounted about tainted food, particularly produce imported from China. In the past year, Japanese people have fallen ill from eating Chinese frozen dumplings and green beans laced with pesticides.

NTT Facilities is targeting not only big office buildings in Tokyo but also schools, hoping to market "Green Potato" nationwide.

Nagata said he hoped more children in urban areas would learn about the environment and the fun of growing food with their own hands.

The excitement is already felt among office workers in Ginza, the glitzy Tokyo shopping district where real estate is the priciest in Japan.

Yukio Oki, a spokesman for the Matsuya department store, was delighted with the basket-full of vegetables -- tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, pumpkins and watermelons -- he harvested on the rooftop.

"We harvested lots of vegetables and enjoyed a savoury vegetable curry," Oki said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban growers go high-tech to feed city dwellers *
21 November 2008

The program run by the California State Polytechnic University agriculture professor is part of a growing effort to use hydroponics -- a method of cultivating plants in water instead of soil -- to bring farming into cities, where consumers are concentrated.

Because hydroponic farming requires less water and less land than traditional field farming, Fujimoto and researchers-turned-growers in other U.S. cities see it as ideal to bring agriculture to apartment buildings, rooftops and vacant lots.

"The goal here is to look at growing food crops in small spaces," he said.

Long a niche technology existing in the shadow of conventional growing methods, hydroponics is getting a second look from university researchers and public health advocates.

Supporters point to the environmental cost of trucking produce from farms to cities, the loss of wilderness for farmland to feed a growing world population, and the risk of bacteria along extensive, insecure food chains as reasons for establishing urban hydroponic farms.

However, the expense of setting up the high-tech farms on pricey city land and providing enough year-round heat and light could present some insurmountable obstacles.

"These are university theories," said Jim Prevor, editor of Produce Business magazine. "They're not mapped to things that actually exist."

The roots of hydroponically produced fruits and vegetables can dangle in direct contact with water or be set in growing media such as sponges or shredded coconut shells. Most commercial operations pump water through sophisticated sensors that automatically adjust nutrient and acidity levels in the water.

Hydroponics are generally used for fast-growing, high-value crops such as lettuces and tomatoes that can be produced year-round in heated, well-lit greenhouses. So far, production is not large enough for the U.S. Department of Agriculture to track.

The country's largest hydroponic greenhouse is Eurofresh Inc.'s 274-acre operation in southeastern Arizona, where more than 200 million pounds of tomatoes were produced in 2007. Most large-scale commercial operations are in the arid Southwest, where water-efficiency is prized, or the sometimes frigid Northeast, where the method can be used year-round in heated greenhouses.

The technology has benefited from nearly three decades of NASA research aimed at sustaining astronauts in places with even less green space than a typical U.S. city.

Hydroponics bears the dubious distinction of being a growing method for marijuana.

Fujimoto said one of his research assistants got a call from the FBI after using a credit card to buy nutrients for the campus greenhouse at a hydroponic-supply store.

There's clearly nothing illicit going on at the greenhouse, where thin streams of water pass silently though dozens of long white plastic tubes arranged in rows across chest-high stands. Rose-shaded lettuce leaves, pale-green stalks of bok-choy and sprigs of basil poke from the holes in the tubes.

Fujimoto aims to prepare his students to operate the urban hydroponic businesses that he thinks will gain importance in the future. They sell their lettuces, peppers, tomatoes and other produce to an on-campus grocery store and at a farmers market.

In Ohio, the ProMedica Health System network of clinics used a Toledo hospital roof to grow more than 200 pounds of vegetables in stacked buckets filled with a ground coconut shell potting medium. The tomatoes, peppers, green beans and leafy greens were served to patients and donated to a nearby food shelter, hospital spokeswoman Stephanie Cihon said.

When the project resumes in the spring, the hospital plans to expand into at least two community centers in economically depressed central Toledo, where fresh produce is hard to come by.

"From the health-care perspective, the more we can increase people's lifestyle changes and encourage them to eat better, it's going to impact our services greatly," Cihon said.

In a New York City schools program run by Cornell University, students grow lettuce on a school roof and sell it for $1.50 a head to the Gristedes chain of supermarkets.

Cornell agriculturist Philson Warner, who designed the program's hydroponics system, said his students harvest hundreds of heads of lettuce a week from an area smaller than five standard parking spaces by using a special nutrient-rich solution instead of water.

The numbers have some researchers imagining a future when enough produce to feed entire cities is grown in multistory buildings sandwiched between office towers and other structures.

Columbia University environmental health science professor Dickson Despommier, who champions the concept under the banner of his Vertical Farm Project, said he has been consulting with officials in China and the Middle East who are considering multistory indoor farms.

He is also shopping his concept to engineering teams in hopes of having a prototype built as he seeks funding.

"Most of us live in cities," he said. "As long as you're going to live there, you might as well grow your food there."


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Can Community Gardens save a city? In Holyoke, urban agriculture is spurring development and improving nutrition.*
9 November 2008
The Boston Globe

THE GIVING ISSUE

Daniel Ross walks through a garden in South Holyoke with plants straight out of Puerto Rico, chicharos and jabaneros. This was the first of what are now 10 jardines comunitarios - community gardens - located throughout low-income neighborhoods in the area, and it sits about a half block from the blighted Main Street shopping district, a place where vacant buildings and overgrown lots seem to outnumber functioning businesses. "Hey, Carmelo," he calls to a man working a plot in midmorning. It's Carmelo Ortiz, a retiree who emigrated from Puerto Rico to Holyoke decades ago and helped found this garden back in 1991, working with local volunteers to reclaim a lot made vacant when a church burned down.

These seemingly humble gardens are part of a local success story with national significance. They've blossomed because of the nonprofit agency Nuestras Raices - Our Roots - which has received numerous honors for its model of using urban agriculture to spur economic development, enrich a community through cultural pride, and improve nutrition for youth and the community in general.

The gardens are cooperatively maintained but are overseen by Nuestras Raices, which helps people get access to the lots. The gardeners use the food for their own households, share it with neighbors, or sell it at farmers' markets.

The nonprofit also has a 30-acre farm site where it teaches people who were farmers in Puerto Rico or other countries how to be commercial farmers in Massachusetts.

Overall, Nuestras Raices has assisted in the creation or development of some two dozen small businesses that are related to food or agriculture, including artisan bakery El Jardin and the restaurant Mi Plaza, both of which rent space in a Holyoke building renovated by Nuestras Raices. And it works extensively with young people, teaching them about gardening and farming and running programs on topics ranging from computers to health to leadership. Altogether, the organization's impact on South Holyoke is estimated at about $2 million a year, with the potential for double that, says Stephen Sheppard, a Williams College professor who led a study last year on the group. "They're a very big player in the microcosm of their neighborhood," he says.

All of this success has come under the guidance of Ross, 35, a Manhattan native who grew up primarily in Western Massachusetts and Puerto Rico and is fluent in English, Spanish, and BlackBerry. In 1994, when he became executive director of the nonprofit, it was the tiniest of operations. Today, the group has an annual budget of $800,000.

The Nuestras Raices formula encompasses economic development, environmental sustainability, healthier eating in schools and at home, and a sense of community. All four are hot buttons nationally. Ross is now helping other communities build similar organizations, starting with nearby Westfield. A significant economic downturn may make him even more in demand - everything Nuestras Raices does is driven by community members, from "the bottom up," Ross says. That approach, he says, is the "right direction for everybody."

Michael Fitzgerald is a frequent contributor to the Globe Magazine. Send comments to [email protected].


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## Jaeger (May 11, 2006)

> *Welcome to Thanet Earth: The biggest greenhouse in Britain unveiled
> Daily Mail (London)
> 
> 11th June 2008*
> ...


More Info -

Thanet Earth Website - http://www.thanetearth.com/

Fresca Website - http://www.frescagroup.co.uk/


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

^ Could this factory be adapted for urban agriculture purposes though? Sounds like the size is a bit too big for the average city plot.


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## Jaeger (May 11, 2006)

hkskyline said:


> ^ Could this factory be adapted for urban agriculture purposes though? Sounds like the size is a bit too big for the average city plot.


If one development can supply 10% of the UK population, this could be the way forward to feeding the world.

Even if it's not done on such a large scale hydroponics, offer an interesting way forward for both large greenhouse developments and urban developments.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Hard times can increase innovation and collaboration*
Sustainability becomes more important when times are tight and people are more inclined to work together to achieve it
13 December 2008
Vancouver Sun

When times are good, we don't need each other, or at least we are more reluctant to be obligated to any one. When times are tough, however, . . .

"Since the downturn I have become far more intentional and deliberate about asking for help, even professional help,'' reports Doug Makaroff of Living Forest Communities, the Victoria sustainable forestry advocate and property developer.

Kiertstin De West of Ci: Conscientious Innovation expects mutuality and reciprocity will renew their importance in relationships in the years ahead.

''We're going to see a lot more visually apparent incidents and characteristics of social sustainability, because inside that's what people are looking for and craving,'' the Vancouver sustainability-marketing specialist says.

''It's not a trend, but a deep desire. All of these things people are doing on the surface because they don't have the financial means to go out to the fancy dinners -- sitting around the family dinner table, potlucks, DIY -- underneath, are actually fulfilling what we're all looking for culturally as consumers today."

While hardship, economic or otherwise, is not something most people desire, let alone seek, adversity does have a way of inspiring collaboration, creativity and innovation.

"What's going on now in the economy will foster innovation because you have to be innovative to survive and sustainability is really connected to that,'' De West says.

''I think we are going to see some interesting categories in the marketplace rise and grow, supporting this desire for community connection."

Makaroff offers similar sentiments when he talks about the current movement to build community by decentralizing and localizing everything from food production to alternative forms of transportation.

"By building far more relational communities we can happily share our contacts and information and resources because we all benefit," he says.

"By community building I mean more than just Web 2.0, or social networking formats. It has to be face-to-face interaction. By building sustainable and relational communities, our lives are richer."

Makaroff describes how he has already experienced the benefits of this approach. "In the month of October, I was able to raise one-third of my second round of investment [for the conservation community of Elkington Forest in the Cowichan Valley].

''I don't know of anyone else who has been able to do that. This money was raised around kitchen tables, not in the boardrooms."

This does not mean that sustainability-minded businesses and developments are immune to present economic woes.

Both De West and Makaroff suggest that authenticity and an understanding of people's desire for personal connection is key.

"We will see some fall-off of that part of the sustainability marketplace," De West says, "that has been hijacked by eco-chic and green luxury: the high price points."

It is the top sustainability issues -- connectedness, to family and friends, for example -- that De West feels are going to foster and inspire great innovation. When Makaroff approached people about his Elkington Forest development he says, "People really had to believe in the story to move beyond their fears of investing at this time."

Springing up on vacant lots, greening gaps in the urban fabric, the growing popularity of food gardens, in many ways, encapsulates people's desire to reconnect with cultural tradition, the land, and community.

When the Onni development company opened the second Pacific and Seymour community garden, nearly four hundred people were waiting in line to get plots. "Urban agriculture has moved in a huge way in the last little while," says Mike Levenston, of City Farmer.

Not sure if you want to specify it here, but Mike is the Founder of City Farmer, and has been an advocate of urban farming since 1978.

Once relegated to small community newsletters, the topic now makes headlines in major publications around the world.

"Today I opened the L.A. Times and there was a story on chickens in the city, he notes. ''In 1978, if we let [chickens into the city] it meant we were going back to the dark ages. Now everyone wants to bring rural traditions into the city."

De West says it is particularly interesting to look at the demographic embracing this movement: style savvy, conscientious innovators. Food gardening is becoming a hip and cool thing to do.

Reports Makaroff: "When I'm selling Elkington Forest, older people are concerned and excited about views and the quality of the homes. Younger people, however, are concerned about the food production. They want to know where their food is coming from."

Daniel Roehr, a University of B.C. professor of landscape architecture, notes, "food and water are going to be the biggest problems human generations are going to face."

It is his hope that urban agriculture is implemented into city policies and planning. He points to the strategies being discussed for the downtown eastside in an effort to provide the homeless with opportunities to grow their own food. "The community garden is one little area where people can implement awareness for each other," says Roehr. "It is a small remedy, to some of the bigger issues that we have."

From the relief gardens of the ''Dirty '30s' to the Victory Gardens of the Second World War, North Americans have a long history of turning to food gardening for improving the health and spirit of its population.

While there have been different reasons at different times, Levenston says "somehow, as people we want to return to this.'' It is "horticulture therapy, buoying us up and giving us the strength to carry on."

For deeper reads on matters raised here, visit: livingforestcommunities.com conscientiousinnovation.com cityfarmer.org, and greenskinslab.sala.ubc.ca

Kim Davis is a Vancouver sustainable-design consultant.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*In Pittsburgh neighborhoods, clusters of cluckers produce meat and eggs *
11 January 2009

PITTSBURGH (AP) - The hens are Lu-Lu, Lady Penelope, Dorothy and Trudy. Then there is Scrappy, the aptly named rooster that rules the coop behind Shelly Danko-Day's house in Highland Park.

"He has come close to getting his name changed to 'Stew' often," Danko-Day said of the ornery bird with a penchant to dig its spurs into her legs that she has been tempted to make into dinner.

Danko-Day is among a growing number of people in and around Pittsburgh who raise chickens. Although there is no official census of urban fowl farmers, people are raising poultry for food and fun in city neighborhoods such as Garfield, Greenfield, North Side and Stanton Heights, and suburbs including Fox Chapel.

"I think it's becoming more common than you would think," said Jody Noble, who has raised chickens in Highland Park.

Besides producing eggs and meat, chickens help to control bugs and dispose of food scraps, their keepers say.

"It's become almost a craze, at least for people raising chickens in the city," said Elaine Belanger, editor of Wisconsin-based Backyard Poultry magazine.

Dozens of cities allow residents to raise chickens, including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In Pittsburgh, residents are allowed up to five pets, including chickens. Certain zoning variances are required, depending on lot size.

Although Animal Control officials could not be reached to verify it, Danko-Day and others who raise chickens in Pittsburgh say neighbors have not complained.

Belanger said she has noticed a sharp increase in the number of city dwellers wanting to raise chickens during the past five years. Her family's magazine restarted in 2005 because of renewed interest and publishes 80,000 copies, six times a year. The magazine has 230 subscribers in Pennsylvania.

Danko-Day works for Grow Pittsburgh, a regional organization dedicated to developing sustainable urban agriculture. The group recently started a blog on the Internet for chicken farmers. Other popular Web sites include UrbanChickens.com and BackyardChickens.com, which has more than 20,000 members, including a number of Western Pennsylvania residents who post on its message board.

Two to three times a week, Belanger said she receives messages from people looking for help to change ordinances that prohibit raising chickens.

Plum officials in October refused to issue a variance for a family wanting to continue raising chickens despite noncompliance with an ordinance requiring people to own at least two acres to raise poultry.

Joanna Hohman began raising five hens behind her Greenfield house in July. She grows vegetables and herbs in a small garden.

"I think, in the long run, food is going to get more expensive, so I try to grow as much as I can," Hohman said. "I like eggs, and I'm trying to not patronize grocery stores as much. Plus, I can raise (chickens) in a more humane way.

"Have you ever seen how they treat those chickens on those (commercial) farms? It's awful."

The United States is the world's largest producer of poultry meat, at more than 40 billion pounds annually, and second-largest egg producer, with about 90 billion produced annually, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Large hatcheries can have more than 350,000 hens, the USDA reports. Critics often complain that commercial farms mistreat chickens by clipping their beaks, cramming them in tight living quarters and rarely, if ever, allowing them to roam free.

But city life is no walk in the park for chickens, either.

"It's tough being a chicken," said Fritz Mitnick, who raises as many as 75 chickens on her 34-acre "hobby farm" in Indiana Township. "Roosters can be nasty. So I wait to see who is the nastiest, then we make soup."

Besides hungry owners, common predators include dogs, hawks and raccoons.

Mitnick said she has lost about 10 birds to predators, although she was able to save one from a hawk and another from a neighbor's dog.

Noble's seven-member brood was thinned out considerably in July, when five were killed by weasels, she said. The same predator later got the two initial survivors, she said.

"I've never seen a weasel," Noble said. "But you can kind of tell what's killing your chickens by the way they were killed."

Weasels often eat the brains of their prey, and Noble said such was the case with her chickens.

Noble plans to get more chickens in spring, and said she will put a door on the coop.

"Live and learn," she said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban farmers push city to grow food instead of grass and flowers in public spaces*
February 06, 2009
Toronto Star










_Paula Sobie of City Harvest, who started growing produce in people’s yards in Victoria, speaks at City Hall about the benefits of urban farming. (Feb. 5, 2009)_

Imagine turning the rink at Nathan Phillips Square into a vegetable garden. Or seeing corn stalks along the Gardiner Expressway. Or filling the median along University Ave. with a row of tomato plants.

That's the dream of food enthusiasts like Debbie Field, who think Toronto should take advantage of its public spaces and grow food closer to home. That would encourage healthy eating as well as fight climate change by reducing the distance food travels from farmer's field to kitchen table.

"Why don't we naturalize the side of the Gardiner with corn? Or we could grow pumpkins," Field said yesterday as she addressed city councillors and others during a discussion on how Toronto can encourage more urban farming.

"We are still spending a lot of money planting annuals and mowing grass," she said. "Whereas our movement thinks we can let people grow vegetables and fruits. Rosemary, thyme and all herbs smell beautiful. Kids love to touch them."

While Field, executive director of FoodShare, used the example of the side of the highway for visual impact, she conceded testing may be needed to ensure food grown near the Gardiner is safe to eat.

But her point was that there are many areas that could be used for community gardens and urban farms, from schoolyards to public housing to hospitals.

"There are big chunks of land – acres of publicly owned land that is just sitting there or has grass growing on it," she said. "We are still paying a lot of people to plant and mow grass, and are often told it's not a good idea to garden."

As she spoke, FoodShare staff handed out small bags of pea sprouts grown in an old greenhouse at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, to show how easily something edible can be grown in just six weeks.

Paula Sobie, who started City Harvest in Victoria, spoke about how much produce can be grown on small plots of land – and even turned into a profitable business if crops are properly rotated.

Two years ago, together with a friend, she placed online classified ads titled: Garden Wanted.

The response was unbelievable. What started as nine small plots of land in the front and back yards of private homes became 16 plots totalling half an acre, yielding 300 pounds of produce a week.

Sobie would give the homeowner a weekly sampler basket of organic produce in exchange for use of the land. The rest was sold to restaurants and at a farmers' market.

City staff will be drafting an urban food policy in coming months that takes into account experiences elsewhere.

A key issue will be zoning – whether people will be allowed to sell food grown in backyards. As well, while urban farmers would want to see lower property taxes if land is zoned agricultural, the city wants to maintain its tax assessment base.

Another tricky issue will be what to do about backyard animals: Would residents want their next-door neighbours raising chickens or goats?

Current bylaws prevent it, but some councillors might support a few hens – though not roosters – in the yard.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Well ... not exactly agriculture ... but close enough not to start another thread :

*Milwaukee suburb may join urban chicken movement *
22 April 2009

MILWAUKEE (AP) - Shorewood leaders are considering allowing residents to keep chickens.

The Milwaukee suburb would be following in the steps of Madison, Green Bay and Chicago, which are among the cities allowing backyard chickens.

Shorewood Village Trustee Jeff Hanewall says people kept "goofy pets" when he was growing up in Wauwatosa and no one cared. But he also says Shorewood is more densely populated and he doesn't want to create conflict among neighbors.

Pam Karstens keeps chickens at her home in Madison. She says they provide eggs, eat bugs and weeds and provide manure that can be composted into garden fertilizer.

But others complain the hens smell and attract predators. Caledonia in Racine County recently rejected a proposed ordinance allowing them.

------

Information from: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


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## Taylorhoge (Feb 5, 2006)

I know a proposal in Vegas was to build a high rise farm and on various levels have one sort of crop growing


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Portable garden boxes planted on vacant city lot *
17 May 2009

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A new community garden project is giving a whole new meaning to the idea of food "to go."

The People's Portable Garden project allows people to rent 4-foot by 16-foot planter boxes for growing gardens. The boxes, which rent for $25 annually, have been placed on a vacant lot owned by the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City. The rental price includes water.

When the land is developed, the boxes will be moved to a different vacant lot.

RDA recognizes the potential of the property to enhance the neighborhood by providing a healthy and productive community space, executive director D.J. Baxter said.

Residents of the heavily urban neighborhood that includes apartments, commercial developments and homes next to a light rail station worked hard to get the project approved.

"Everyone should have a garden," said neighborhood resident Teresa Thein, "even if you live in an apartment or don't have a good yard to grow sustainable, organic food."

The portable garden is a project of Wasatch Community Gardens. WCG director Claire Uno says Salt Lake City is one of the first cities in the country to build the portable gardens.

"This is 50 percent about gardening and 100 percent about community," said Uno. "This is an example for our community and an exciting new chapter for our organization."

------

Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Skyscraper greenhouses to sprout in crowded cities: expert *
5 June 2009
Agence France Presse

Vertical greenhouses that grow organic fruit and vegetables smack in the middle of crowded cities where land is scarce may soon be a reality, a Swedish company developing the project said Friday.

"A tomato seed is planted on the ground floor on a rotating spiral and when it arrives at the top, 30 days later, you pick the fruit," the vice president of Plantagon, Hans Hassle, told AFP.

In a few decades, 80 percent of the global population will live in cities, increasing the need "to grow fruits and vegetables in an urban environment due to the lack of land," he said.

With a vertical greenhouse, "we could have fresh organic produce every day and sell it directly to consumers in the city," Hassle said.

That way, "we would save 70 percent on the cost of fresh produce because right now 70 percent of the price is transport and storage costs," he said.

Fresh and healthy produce would thereby also become more readily available to those with slim budgets, he added.

No vertical greenhouse exists yet, but "several cities in Scandinavia and in China have expressed an interest," Hassle said.

Each installation would cost around 30 million dollars (21 million euros), much more than a regular greenhouse. But the investment would rapidly turn a profit, he insisted.

"With ground space of 10,000 square metres (107, 640 square feet), a vertical greenhouse represents the equivalent of 100,000 square metres of cultivated land" thanks to the rotating spiral that allows continual planting.

"An inventor came up with the idea 20 years ago but none of the people he presented it to believed in it. He presented it to me 10 years ago and it seemed like a good idea, so I talked to Sweco, a Swedish engineering firm, and they agreed to build these vertical greenhouses," Hassle explained.

A virtual image of what one of the greenhouses could look like resembles a large glass sphere with a pillar in the middle, around which the seedlings rotate on a platform.

"It looks fantastic like that, but the technology is simple," Hassle said.


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## qymekkam (Jul 11, 2008)

urban agriculture defiently isnt new to Fresno California. the cities economy is almost based on it.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban Farming, A Bit Closer to the Sun *
17 June 2009
The New York Times

THIS summer, Tony Tomelden hopes to be making bloody marys at the Pug in Washington, D.C., with tomatoes and chilies grown above the bar, thanks to the city's incentives for green roofs.

Mr. Tomelden, the Pug's principal owner, says he's planting a garden to take advantage of tax subsidies the city offers in his neighborhood if he covers his roof with plants.

''If I can do something in my corner for the environment, that seemed a reasonable thing to do,'' he said. ''Plus I can save money on the tomatoes.''

There won't be bloody marys at P.S. 6 on New York's Upper East Side, but one-third of its roof will be planted with vegetables and herbs next spring for the cafeteria. The school is using about $950,000 in city funds that it has put aside, and parents and alumni are providing almost a half-million dollars more.

''For the children, it's exciting when you grow something edible,'' said the school's principal, Lauren Fontana.

Aeries are cropping up on America's skylines, filled with the promise of juicy tomatoes, tiny Alpine strawberries and the heady perfume of basil and lavender. High above the noise and grime of urban streets, gardeners are raising fruits and vegetables. Some are simply finding the joys of backyard gardens several stories up, others are doing it for the environment and some because they know local food sells well.

City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings. But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants, often just carpets of succulents, to cut down on storm runoff, insulate buildings and moderate urban heat.

A survey by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, which represents companies that create green roofs, found the number of projects its members had worked on in the United States grew by more than 35 percent last year. In total, the green roofs installed last year cover 6 million to 10 million square feet, the group said.

Steven Peck, its president, said he had no figures for how many of the projects involved fruits and vegetables, but interest is growing. ''When we had a session on urban agriculture,'' he said of a meeting of the group in Atlanta last month, ''it was standing room only.'' Mr. Peck said the association is forming a committee on rooftop agriculture.

Tax incentives have accelerated the plantings of green roofs, particularly in Chicago, which has encouraged green roofs for almost a decade. The Chicago chef Rick Bayless uses tomatoes and chilies he grows atop his restaurant Frontera Grill to make Rooftop Salsa.

New York State has subsidies both for roofs with succulents spread out over a thin layer of soil and for edible plants covering a smaller area. A proposed amendment to New York City's tax abatement for some roof projects would include green roofs. Most roof gardeners aren't in it for the money, though.

After her Lower East Side co-op refurbished the 1,000-square-foot roof of its six-floor walk-up, Paula Crossfield persuaded fellow board members to spend $3,000 to put a 400-square-foot garden on it. They built planters and paved part of the roof so people can walk easily among the plantings.

Ms. Crossfield, managing editor of the Civil Eats blog, about sustainable agriculture, is paying for the seeds and will do the harvesting, sharing the bounty with her neighbors. (She and her husband live on the top floor.)

In the process, she estimates she carried up 500 of the 1,500 pounds of soil they bought and put in planters.

''My decision to start a garden is an extension of my work,'' Ms. Crossfield said. ''Growing my own food helps me understand better what I write about: how food gets to our table, the difficulties it entails.'' It's not all about agricultural policy, she added.

''The bottom line,'' she said, ''is that I harbor a secret desire to be a farmer, and my way of doing that is to use what I have, which is a roof.''

Two weeks ago Ms. Crossfield transplanted seedlings from her apartment onto the roof: golden zucchini, oakleaf lettuce, brussels sprouts, butternut squash, watermelon, rainbow chard, cucumbers, nasturtiums, calendula, sunflowers, amaranth greens, tomatoes and herbs.

In San Francisco's Tenderloin district, Maya Donelson has filled planter boxes with vegetables on a 900-square-foot patch of roof at the Glide Memorial Church. For the last two years she has managed the Graze the Roof Project at the church's Glide Center, a neighborhood social service provider.

The food goes to the center's volunteers and children in the neighborhood who work in the garden one day a week and learn to cook what they grow.

''I've never had one kid who hasn't wanted to get his hands dirty,'' said Ms. Donelson, who studied architecture and environmental design. ''They are willing to try anything if they see it growing and pull it out of the ground. We juiced the purple carrots and the kids drank that.''

Sustainable South Bronx, a nonprofit environmental organization, said it will help Alfred E. Smith High School plant a roof garden and has helped a company in Hunts Point put strawberry plants on its roof. (The owner likes strawberries, an official of the group said.)

One of the more ambitious projects is a 6,000-square-foot roof farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which will grow food for local restaurants and shops.

Ben Flanner, a transplanted Wisconsinite who's running it, said he became fascinated with organic agriculture and was set to take an internship on a rural farm but then had a change of heart.

''I wanted to farm but I didn't want to leave the city,'' he said.

Mr. Flanner was lucky to find an environmentally aware company -- Broadway Stages, a stage and lighting company -- that wanted a green roof on one of its buildings. It paid to prepare the roof for planting and agreed to let him grow food on it. Mr. Flanner and his partner, Annie Novak, did the planting and will be able to keep all the profits from their organic vegetables.

''People are knocking on my door to buy the stuff,'' he said. Andrew Tarlow, a partner in four nearby restaurants, including Marlow & Sons, has agreed to buy anything Mr. Flanner grows.

The roof cost $6,000 to prepare, according to Lisa Goode, who with her husband, Chris, owns Goode Green, a company that designs edible roof gardens. There are at least 1,000 seedlings planted in 16 beds, each about 60 feet long.

''A smaller roof would cost more per square foot,'' she said. Mr. Flanner's costs for the garden itself were less than $2,000, but Ms. Goode said it will take more than one roof for him to make a living.

''This is sort of a pilot to see if it can become a viable business model because he isn't going to make any money from this,'' she said. ''If we can get the owner to do more roofs, he can then make a profit.''

Not long ago, edible rooftop gardeners were less likely to be thinking about sustainable food systems or the environment.

Lee Utterbach wanted to recapture summers on his grandmother's farm. But there was no land around his house in the Mission district of San Francisco. So when he bought the building where he lives and runs a photo equipment rental shop, he turned the roof into a vegetable and flower garden. Since the roof slopes, all the planting was done along its perimeter. Some of it, like the rosemary, is so well established, it hangs over the front of the building.

Reaching the roof means a trip through the kitchen window, then up an incline. A small ladder takes visitors to his wife's greenhouse and a hot tub, a deck , a composting toilet and the future guest room. In one area that his wife, Aly, describes as his ''man cave,'' Mr. Utterbach watches his 17-inch TV screen from a comfortable chair.

''I was probably eight or nine years ahead of the curve when I built this,'' he said. ''I just enjoy watering plants and digging in the soil.''

Peter Bergold, a neuroscientist who teaches at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, was also inspired by the past. Memories of the first asparagus and carrots he ate from a garden years before led him to start growing produce on the roof of his landmarked brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, six or seven years ago.

''That was my epiphany,'' he said of the sweetness he was trying to recapture. ''I assumed asparagus grew with a rubber band around them.''

Environmental awareness came slowly. ''One of the things that got me interested,'' he said, ''was that between global warming and the thermal bubble of cities you can start things much earlier so you have a much longer growing season.''

Another benefit gardeners get from planting well above the ground is that they face fewer pests.

But roof gardeners also have to think about winds that can knock over tender vines. And while concentrated heat on top of city buildings can help tomatoes ripen, it also means more frequent watering, even if irrigation requires lugging watering cans up stairs.

Though rooftop gardens go back at least to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the modern green roof movement has made its way here from Europe, where for years government policies have encouraged or required green roofs.

The government benefits take into account the fact that gardening on the roof requires much more preparation than gardening on terra firma.

First, it must be determined whether the roof can support the weight of the soil, the plants and the water. It may need to be retrofitted. Barring that, gardeners can place planters around the perimeter, which is generally its strongest part.

The containers can be almost anything: ready-made planters; boxes made of reclaimed wood, old milk cartons, children's wading pools. A screen at the bottom holds in a lightweight substance, like packing peanuts for bulk, topped with a barrier fabric so the soil can't go through. Potting soil, mixed with ingredients to lighten it, is put on top.

When gardens are planted directly on the roof, a waterproof membrane is laid down first, followed by insulation and a root barrier. (A guide to roof gardening is available at baylocalize.org.)

All this work can be off-putting for landlords. Five years ago, Ms. Crossfield said, the owner of an apartment building on Sixth Avenue in the West Village told one of his tenants to get rid of a garden she had planted.

''He told the woman to take it off the roof,'' she said, ''because he didn't see any benefit in it.''

That's not so likely these days.

''Several years ago you might have seen a certain amount of resistance,'' said Miquela Craytor, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, ''but now people are coming to us saying they want one.''


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban farmers on the rise: More grow own food to save money or control what goes into it*
By Meredith Cohn, The Baltimore Sun

Jun. 28--If you asked Josh Smith where breakfast comes from, the Baltimore teen would likely say, "the girls." That would be Sugar and Spice, his family's pet chickens.

Josh's mother, Liz, got the girls by mail order in April and set up a coop for them in the backyard of the family's Hamilton house, between a beehive and rows of planted vegetables. Josh, 13, and his brother, Hooper, 7, delight in feeding the ginger-colored birds treats of worms and melon and collecting the big, brown eggs that come two a day.

"This is how it's supposed to be," Liz Smith said as she nestled and stroked a softly clucking Sugar. "The eggs are really delicious. Though I don't think I'll ever eat chicken again after having them as pets."

The Smiths join an increasing number of urban farmers in Baltimore and around the nation who are growing their own food to save money or to control what goes into it. Or they want to better connect with their environment. Some people have chickens as pets, but many also want the eggs or meat, or a lesson for the kids about the food chain.

And though owning chickens in Baltimore is legal, many people are nonetheless keeping mum, lest they ruffle their neighbors' feathers. That has made keeping track of chickens harder for officials, who have rules to address at least some of the potential health problems from waste, not to mention noise and smell. State and city officials can't say for sure how many birds live in Maryland's urban and suburban areas, though Baltimore is working on new zoning laws to more thoughtfully account for urban agriculture and, perhaps, draw some of the growers out of the closet, er, coop.

State officials have registered 31 households in Baltimore and 626 in five surrounding counties -- that includes chickens, pigeons and doves. In Baltimore, a multiple-pet permit is required from the Bureau of Animal Control, but only four residents have bothered. (Smith said the process isn't too cumbersome, though it means visits from city officers, advertising and an $80 fee.)

City health officials said they rarely get complaints that might prompt them to look for scofflaws.

Meanwhile, the backyard chicken movement has become a nationwide phenomenon that has given rise to Web sites, magazines and even inspired a documentary, Mad City Chickens.

One of the fowl Web sites, thecitychicken.com, lists 38 states and 145 cities that have laws addressing chickens. Those that allow them include San Francisco, Atlanta, Minneapolis and New York; most allow three to five birds in a coop not too close to neighbors, which can be the most difficult issue in crowded urban areas. Washington, D.C., does not allow chickens.

Baltimore allows four to be kept in movable coops at least 25 feet from any residence. The chickens must be fed, watered, sheltered and kept clean. No roosters, ducks, geese or turkeys are allowed.

Marilyn Bassford, Maryland's longtime poultry registration coordinator, has seen the rise in interest. She counted at least 300 new names on her list this year, bringing the total of registered flocks to 2,300 statewide. There's no way to know how many ignored or didn't know about the registration law.

Bassford points out that chickens are big business in Maryland -- particularly on the Eastern Shore, where some of the industry's principal names operate -- and the state wants to keep tabs on backyard operations in case of a health emergency such as an avian influenza outbreak. Most people say they keep backyard flocks as a hobby or as pets, she said.

"I think with each generation, we get further away from the farm," she said. "Many people used to be able to say they had a grandma or uncle with a farm but not so much anymore. People want to get back to that a little."

Baltimore officials, recognizing that times have changed, are rewriting the city's 38-year-old, 250-page book of zoning regulations. Currently, the only reference to chickens (and rabbits) is for butchers. Laurie Feinberg, in charge of the effort in the city's planning department, said officials want clear and understandable rules when it comes to urban agriculture.

The revised rules will focus on impacts to neighbors, such as backyard efforts that become commercial enterprises. But animals may not require any additional regulating. A draft of the revisions is expected in the fall.

"We aren't interested creating an issue where none exists," she said. "We had even joked about finally taking out the reference to chickens and rabbits, but maybe not."

Indeed. Interest in chickens in the city and suburbs does appear to be rising. Andrew Rose of Baldwin read The Omnivore's Dilemma, which touts the benefits of locally grown foods, for his book club a few months ago and was inspired.

He also has a neighbor with chickens and enjoys getting the occasional free egg. He got plans from a Web site and began trapping and releasing raccoons farther from his yard. He's almost finished his own coop.

"My family is interested in raising the birds for their eggs, not meat," he said. "My kids will name the chickens, and it is pretty hard to eat a pet that has a name."

Though some people say chicken feed and waste attracts rats, and the chickens -- or illegal roosters, more likely -- are noisy, Michelle Brown is happy to live next to the birds. She lives in Upperco and enjoys the cackling, crowing and "ambience" of chickens owned by neighbors. Chickens, she says, imply, "You're in the country."

After reading books and magazine on the subject, she said her family is ready for its own chickens.

Back in Baltimore, Smith said newcomers may discover that chickens require a significant investment of time and money.

Start-up costs were about $1,000, which leads her to joke that each egg will cost $14 for perhaps as the long as the chickens live, eight years or more. The birds have to be fed and watered daily, and occasionally cleaned. Waste needs scooping to control odor, the coop needs moving to avoid lawn damage, and hands and eggs need washing to control a possible salmonella outbreak.

But the affection, as with any pet, goes both ways, Smith says. And Josh adds that the eggs are like none found at the grocery.

"They're kind of sweet," he said. "I like mine fried with bacon on the side."


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

There should be laws against roosters. Can't sleep because of noisy neighbors roosters crying at 4am. hno:


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

hkskyline said:


> *
> 
> Start-up costs were about $1,000, which leads her to joke that each egg will cost $14 for perhaps as the long as the chickens live, eight years or more. The birds have to be fed and watered daily, and occasionally cleaned. Waste needs scooping to control odor, the coop needs moving to avoid lawn damage, and hands and eggs need washing to control a possible salmonella outbreak.
> *


*

Just give them kitchen waste and you pay no penny on feeds.*


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Remsings grow corn, other crops as urban farmers *
7 July 2009

DALWORTHINGTON GARDENS, Texas (AP) - Lynn and Cynthia Remsing have a 7-acre front yard in this small, increasingly affluent Tarrant County city now dotted with $1 million mansions.

But theirs is like none other in the community of 2,400 surrounded by Arlington.

What started out as an after-school project by their two children has evolved into the Remsings' livelihood. They produce tons of commercially rare -- or just plain delicious -- varieties of onions, garlic, okra, seedless tomatoes, corn, leeks, artichokes, rhubarb, blackberries and strawberries.

In fact, Lynn, who has become a natural proselytizer for niche agriculture, takes particular pride in that his fruit has "no shelf life."

It is sold the day it's picked, and he recommends eating it quickly to enjoy the freshness that commodity varieties often lack because they're bred for transcontinental hauling.

Lynn and Cynthia left their jobs to become full-time urban farmers. He gave up a white-collar career with a national paper company in 2001 and she retired from AT&T three years ago to intensively cultivate the plot with scaled-down but high-tech equipment that they also sell.

Lynn, who grew up on a North Dakota farm and studied botany in college, even designed and built one machine: a two-person strawberry picker, very slowly self-propelled by an 8-horsepower Honda engine.

His wife handles sales, back-office duties and pitches in during heavy harvests.

The two ventures, Gnismer Farm Equipment and Gnismer Farms, complement each other, Lynn said. (Gnismer, pronounced NAIZ-mer, is Remsing spelled backward.)

Farming around urban areas in Texas has been upstaged by producers in California, Florida and Mexico in recent decades, with the result that "fresh" produce in local supermarket bins could have been shipped 1,500 miles.

If conventional wisdom holds that North Texas can no longer compete, Lynn begs to differ. He's convinced that with the right approach, the right equipment and the right skill set, a person can make farming pay even on expensive Metroplex land.

Laura Miller, a commercial horticulture specialist who serves Tarrant County for the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, says Lynn not only has made his venture work, but has been more than willing to share what he's learned with others.

The Remsings' produce business, including the pick-your-own berries unit, caters to an expanding "eat local" trend, Miller said. Yet there are still few farmers like them, and demand outstrips supply.

In an upcoming newsletter, Miller rattles off other urban and semi-urban producers in the area: Homestead Farms, a goat dairy, vegetable and grass-fed beef venture in Keller, and Roanoke's Henrietta Creek Orchard, a pick-your-own apple and peach farm.

Moreover, the Cowtown Farmers Market in Fort Worth offers products grown within 150 miles.

Gnismer Farms has been careful as a niche, urban grower by producing high-value crops, like a tiny Italian garlic variety used to flavor bottles of olive oil.

"Otherwise you can't justify it considering the cost of land," Miller said.

Revenues come from its fruit stand sales, pick-your-own business, deliveries to restaurants and stores, and a special arrangement with a large Arlington employer whose workers place orders online and receive weekly drop-offs from Cynthia. Retail prices are competitive with major supermarkets, the Remsings say.

"It's hard work, but this is a lot more satisfying," said Lynn, 60, interviewed when the temperature hit 102 degrees.

"And there's no one to answer to."

Before expenses, produce sales are in six figures, he said. Equipment sales this year so far have tripled because of demand from niche farmers and, if the current trend continues, will top $1 million for the year, he said. The Remsings wont disclose profits.

The Remsings' venture is not without the risks all farmers face.

A freeze knocked out 60 percent of their strawberry crop, in which they had already invested about $56,000 for planting, plastic sheeting and drip-irrigation tape.

"We recouped only $16,000," Lynn disclosed.

"Things vary, but you look at a seven-year average," he said. "Here's the gamble: If you don't know what you're doing, it's a hobby."

He also had waged a five-year fight with the Tarrant Appraisal District to get an agriculture exemption. A district agent couldn't believe that anyone could make money on 7 acres, but Lynn presented five years of records proving that the family could. The exemption was granted, reducing property taxes from $15,000 to under $10, he said.

Aside from growing interesting varieties of produce without heavy use of chemical fertilizer or pesticides, the Remsings are also bringing Dalworthington Gardens back to its roots as a New Deal planned community that sold, on easy terms, small plots of 2- to 5-acre subsistence-farming homesteads.

In the mid-1930s, a few residents farmed full time, while many families had at least one breadwinner commuting to Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington, the three cities that form its name.

According to the city's Web site, Eleanor Roosevelt recommended the area as a subsistence-farming community in 1933 after visiting Dallas Morning News bureau chief Carl Mosig, a family friend who had bought a 15-acre farm nearby.

Applicants were highly scrutinized by a federal agency. Initially, only whites could sign up, and they had to earn less than $200 a month.

It's not known if political affiliation hurt or helped, but the original 79 homesteads were said to have ended up largely in the hands of Democrats.

They even had their own "socialized" health plan to which residents contributed $1 a month, giving them access to services provided by several Arlington physicians, according to a 1935 Fort Worth Press article.

However, members of the "new Utopia" revolted after fencing, piped water and other promised infrastructure failed to arrive in a timely manner. In protest, residents renamed a street that had honored Eleanor to Park Drive, but kept Roosevelt Drive intact.

Now, 62 percent of the community is registered Republican, and only the Remsings farm commercially.

To compete with cheap produce from California and Mexico, Lynn says he has to "work harder and smarter."

Miller says the farmer is always trying new things to make the most of his small holdings.

"It's pretty amazing. I would never have thought of intercropping my corn with asparagus here," she said, referring to planting two crops in the same field together.

Now Lynn is working on technologies that permit tomatoes to be planted 40 days earlier in the season to compete with hothouse producers at a fraction of the growing cost.

Asked whether neighbors in Dalworthington Gardens have a problem living next to a working farm, Lynn replied: "Actually, the rich people -- the doctors and the lawyers -- come and bring their children. It's the Joe Blows who grew up in the country and say they could do it themselves but don't."


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Gardens crop up in Seattle parking strips *
3 August 2009

SEATTLE, Wash. (AP) - 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 farther 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 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.

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.

It's not just a matter of what people put in their mouths. It's about the environment and economic development, social justice and long-term health care costs, community building and livability.

Last year, when the Seattle City Council passed a nonbinding "local food initiative," some were skeptical that it would amount to any real change. But there has been progress.

Officials began studying city codes and policies through the lens of healthy eating goals. Do land use codes have an impact on people's ability to eat healthy food? Should developers get open-space credits for food gardens?

It was quickly clear that city policies created impediments for farmers' markets. Convinced that these markets offer numerous benefits, the city made permits cheaper and made it easier to site markets in the street and in city parks. Chris Curtis, director of the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance, said she's now optimistic about finding permanent locations for several markets that were in danger of losing their leases on private property. She's even talking to Sound Transit about locating one along the new light rail line.

"I don't think we would have ever had some of these conversations with policymakers 10 years ago," Curtis said.

City departments are beginning to ask new questions. Are kids getting healthy food in after-school programs? At community centers? The city Parks and Recreation Department is working on that. It's also creating "learning gardens" to teach kids about growing food and eating healthy. "It's a long-term strategy to increase access to healthy food, particularly in disadvantaged communities," said Phyllis Shulman, an aide to Conlin.

In addition, city and county officials are looking at creating incentives to preserve county farmland through a new program allowing rural property owners to transfer their development rights to urban areas, which are viewed as better able to support high-density development.

In another multiagency venture, local activists feel they're finally getting traction in their efforts to create a food policy council that will bring together an array of interests that have connections -- some of them less obvious than others -- with healthy eating. They'll talk about everything from transportation -- do public transit issues make it harder for people to get to the grocery store? -- to the environment to public health.

The big news in food circles recently was that Seattle will receive a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a variety of projects aimed at increasing urban agriculture and improving access to healthy food in low-income communities. Solid Ground is the lead agency on the grant, but several city and county offices are involved and will contribute matching funds.

The grant will be used to create additional community gardens, which will produce food not only for the gardeners themselves but for local food banks. In addition, the grant will pay for gardening and nutrition education at community and senior centers and for projects aimed at getting healthy food into convenience stores, where some low-income residents are forced, by dint of proximity, to shop.

Local food also figured in last year's parks levy, which included $2 million for new community gardens and P-Patches, particularly in underserved areas. The popular P-Patch program has a waiting list of 1,900 people.

"It's almost an urban back-to-the-land-movement," Born said, adding that it's not just about growing food. "Community gardens look rather quaint on the surface. But you get into them and you see they're a powerful transformative element."

Mount Baker resident Don Comstock knows that. An avid gardener, he began planting vegetables in his sunny parking strip and found neighbors routinely stopping by to chat. He invited neighbors to plant their own vegetables in his strip, which he blocked off nicely into plots.

"I've been doing this in my backyard for years, but by moving it out front, it's become much more of a public awareness thing," he said. "It's really a great move to build neighborhood."

And besides, he said, "I'd much rather be eating food that doesn't have to be trucked 1,000 miles to me."


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban farming finding increased interest in Twin Cities *
10 August 2009

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - We're in the peak season for Minnesota-grown fruits, vegetables and other produce, and a small but growing amount of the state's food is coming from urban farmers.

Urban farming is an old idea that is attracting new followers. Besides fruits and vegetables, urban farmers raise fowl and even fish. Urban farming advocates point to better taste and a smaller carbon footprint as benefits.

Karen Swanberg has an aquaponics setup on the front porch of her south Minneapolis home. It consists of a big fish tank filled with tilapia and a nearby bed of edible greens.

"Water is constantly being pumped into the grow bed, which in this case is made out of a 55-gallon drum cut in half lengthwise and then filled with gravel," said Swanberg.

The fish tank water carries the waste from the 22 tilapia and feeds the jungle-like collection of edible greens including watercress, bok choy and miner's lettuce in the gravel-filled grow bed. The clean water from the grow bed is then sucked back into the fish tank.

The fate of the tilapia?

"The plan is to eat them, soon," Swanberg said. "I actually have all the gear I need to kill them and eat them. We'll just see if I can do that."

Swanberg's tilapia are thriving, but she admits some of the greens could use more sun.

Sunshine is a challenge to urban farmers, at least in Minneapolis, a city blessed with a thriving urban forest which helps keep neighborhoods cool. The flip slide is shade can stunt some plant growth.

So when the chance to farm a sun-drenched vacant lot popped up, Julie Aponte jumped at the opportunity. Aponte said developers demolished the house on the lot and had plans to build condos just before the economy crashed.

"It didn't work out so, they were gracious enough to let us use the land," Aponte said.

Everyone's happy because instead of rubbish-strewn lot with a bumper crop of weeds, Aponte and her business partner John Seitz have turned the space into an urban garden fit for the cover of Fine Gardening Magazine.

Seitz and Aponte are business partners who own a company called Uptown Farmers.

When not at their day jobs at a food co-op, they are watering, weeding and harvesting on a couple of vacant lots and selling the produce at the Mill City Farmers Market.

Uptown Farmers relies on free, or nearly free, land agreements with vacant lot owners.

Seitz said it's less about the money than it is about showing others the amount of food that can be raised in the city.

"We're really trying to start a serious local food network of sorts," Seitz said. "This can work and this is a way entrepreneurs who are willing to work hard hopefully can make a living, or a half living anyways."

Urban farming has a long, if neglected and forgotten, history in the Twin Cities.

Long before we enjoyed lettuce from California and grapes from Chile, Twin Cities residents bought seasonal produce from local urban farming businesses called market gardens that ringed the Twin Cities. Most have long since been covered with suburban housing.

One of them, the Gibbs family farm, now the Gibbs farm museum in Falcon Heights, an inner-ring suburb, is a short walk from University of Minnesota agronomist Nick Jordan's office on the university's St. Paul campus.

One prediction is the world needs to double food production to keep up with population growth. Jordan sees the resurgence of interest in urban farming as a promising development.

"The question of where will more food come from is really the question of the day," Jordan said. "We are all going to be pressed to figure out how to grow significantly more food on this planet under really challenging circumstances."

Back on the porch of her south Minneapolis home, Swanberg is 18 months into her exploration of aquaponics -- raising fish and plants.

"So right now, mostly different salad greens," Swanberg said. "But once you get into aquaponics that has full access to light, unlike the ones that I have right now, you can do anything. Tomatoes love it, cucumbers love (and) melons love it."

History shows that urban farming in Minnesota seems to flourish when crisis strikes; the crash of 1857, community gardens and victory gardens during the Great Depression and during World War II.

The economic crisis appears to be motivating a resurgence in urban farming. The question is: when the economy recovers, will growers and consumers still be interested?


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*In Portland, urban chicken keeping has found its place and a passionate following *
24 August 2009

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - North Williams Avenue is a street with a soundtrack like most any other in the neighborhoods of Portland. There's the swishing of bikes, the rustling of leaves, the whirring of motors.

But then there's something else under those familiar notes: a tiny warble of clucks coming from a chicken coop set in a front yard.

Newspapers across the country have been splashing urban and suburban chicken-keeping across their front pages. It's the latest thing, they say. But in Portland, it's old hat. For the past few years, chicken-keeping has found its place here.

It seems odd at first; a background beat added to the wrong song. But if you listen as you walk along the streets, it's a chorus that starts to sound familiar.

Portland Mayor Sam Adams has two hens. Spots in chicken-raising classes fill up nearly as fast as the nurseries in North Portland can plan them. Hatcheries have trouble keeping up with demand. Residents dedicate blogs to their chickens.

And late last month, hundreds of people turned out for the Sixth Annual Tour de Coop, a self-guided tour of 26 chicken coops.

"It's inspiring," said Naomi Coplin, one of the chicken-watchers as she looked around at the setup just off North Williams Avenue.

The yard looked like a watercolor painting. Greens and reds and yellows and pinks folded in on each other. Sunflowers taller than the visitors shot up from the tilled ground. Raised beds offered up produce. Bees and butterflies shot through the air, using wildflowers as landing pads. And at the center of the garden was one of Portland's most impressive coops.

The structure wound through the yard in the shape of a "V." There was a roost, a run, a tower for lounging and a sign out front in the shape of an egg. "Hens for Obama," it read.

On that warm Sunday, Coplin, 49, had come to this coop on a mission.

"I'm hoping by the time we're done this morning, she's convinced," she said with a nod at her friend, Barb Wayson.

Coplin already has her own chickens and Wayson, her old high school pal, has been mulling over getting some of her own. "I kind of pride myself on being an environmentalist," Wayson said. The hens would be one more step toward sustainability. They'd eat leftover scraps and offer up some fertilizer and fresh eggs.

Wayson took in the scene once more. "I just love the yard with the chickens," she said.

Growing Gardens, the group that presented the tour this year, sold out of the 800 booklets it printed detailing the route. It's a glossy guide, complete with pictures of the ways in which Portlanders have wrangled chickens into their lives and onto their property.

Some coops are sleek, cottage-looking things, the sort of home Martha Stewart would order up. Others are more eclectic, cobbled together from scraps of tin and wood.

The tour started six years ago with just a dozen coops and about 100 people. Since then, Growing Gardens, which promotes home gardening and sustainable living, has taken it over and watched it expand.

"Three years ago, I was thinking, oh, you know, maybe at some point this is going to peak," said Debra Lippoldt, the executive director of Growing Gardens. It hasn't.

Why hen-keeping came early to Portland is hard to say.

"It's people wanting to get into a more sustainable way of living and more of a grow-local movement, and I think Portland and some of those other areas have been in the forefront," said Rob Ludlow, the owner of Backyard Chicken, a California Web site that offers itself up as a chicken-keeping field guide.

Mandie Rose, resident chicken expert at Pistils Nursery in North Portland, says the store has been selling about 600 chicks every year and the number keeps growing. This spring, hatcheries were having trouble keeping them stocked.

"That's the first time it's happened in the four years I've been here," Rose said.

Customers are young and old, single and married, hip and not-so-much. "It's pretty much everybody," she said. "I've seen every type and every personality."

A Portland chicken-raising listserv, PDXBackyardChix, will clog an inbox with discussions of the intricacies -- and joys -- of keeping hens.

"(F)irst egg!!!," read a recent subject line. "Oh the thrill!"

"Yahoo!" came a quick response from some chicken-loving stranger. "Did you take a picture of it?"

The reply: "Indeed, we took a ridiculous number of photos! It is, after all, the $533 egg we have so been anticipating."

Nationwide, many cities have changed laws to allow for small flocks, often without roosters and their early morning crowing. Disputes have surfaced in some cities and suburbs over concerns that chickens will reduce property values or that their feed could attract rodents.

In Salem, Oregon's capital city, Barbara Palermo has led the local fight for the right to raise chickens in her backyard. When city officials told her she'd have to get rid of some illegal chickens about a year ago, she nearly gave in. Then she did some poking around and discovered the vibrant chicken scene in Portland and how it was spreading.

"I had no idea that this was allowed everywhere, that there was this urban-chicken movement," she said. "When I discovered that, then I really realized that it was just ridiculous not to at least try to change the law."

Palermo has organized hundreds of chicken lovers in Salem, and put together a packet countering arguments against chicken keeping. She's fielded calls from city dwellers in New Jersey, Tennessee, North Carolina and elsewhere who want the scoop on chicken ordinances.

Progress in Salem itself has been slow. Trying to convince council members that chickens don't smell, won't run wild and won't, generally, cause havoc is difficult.

But, Palermo says, "It's a movement. It's not going to go away."

------

On the Net:

http://www.backyardchickens.com
http://www.salemchickens.com/SalemChickens/Welcome.html
http://www.pistilsnursery.com
http://www.growing-gardens.org


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*More chickens clucking in urban backyards *
23 August 2009

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - A movement in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids to legalize backyard chickens is taking wing.

Buoyed by the growing popularity of home gardening and local foods, advocates see raising chickens for fresh eggs as a natural progression in the move toward sustainability.

"Thats a huge part of our lives," Rachel Morey, 34, said of the garden her family tends at their southeast Cedar Rapids home. "Adding chickens to the mix seems like the natural thing to do." Morey belongs to a fledgling Cedar Rapids movement called Citizens for Legalization of Urban Chickens, or CLUC, a relatively new group with about 35 members.

They have been in contact with the city zoning department and spoken informally to City Council members. Nothing official has been proposed. Their goal is to have an ordinance change by spring.

Iowa City's IC Friends of Urban Chickens already has made progress, said Stacey Driscoll, one of the groups organizers.

Driscoll noted that a petition with 676 signatures was presented to the City Council this summer. Council members will discuss the topic at a Sept. 14 work session.

As it stands, chickens are considered livestock and cannot be kept within city limits unless a property is zoned agricultural.

Misha Goodman, Iowa City Animal Services director, said proposed revisions would likely limit the number of chickens to five, with no roosters.

Coop requirements, including distance from neighbors homes, and licensing also will be considered. Goodman, who admits to liking chickens but isnt taking a position on the issue, said she has heard from both sides. Opponents worry about noise, smell, rodents and chickens on the loose.

"I personally don't think they'd be any louder than the average dog," Goodman said.

Sanitation is a concern with any pet, she noted, and an ordinance exists that regulates animals running at large.

Iowas largest city already allows backyard chickens. Des Moines residents can have two poultry or fowl, which must be kept in a pen or coop at least 25 feet from a neighboring dwelling. Brendan Owens, 35, a member of the Cedar Rapids group, would like to keep a few chickens at his home.

"I just always had an interest in chickens," he said. "For me, it's more of a recreational thing."

Owens is hoping the endeavor will become an activity to engage his young children. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three girls, ages 5, 2 and newborn.

Owens sees a common thread among group members, who have substantial gardens and are interested in raising their own food.

Members have looked at other cities, such as Madison, Wis., New York and Seattle, which allow backyard chickens.

In general, complaints are about roosters, which crow early in the morning.

"We dont have any interest at all in getting roosters," Owens said. Their proposal, he said, will likely set a maximum of six chickens, no roosters, and would provide for licensing.

Kate Hogg raises about 60 chickens on the Cedar Rapids acreage she shares with her husband, state Sen. Rob Hogg.

Chickens are allowed because the property was zoned agricultural. She noted that chickens eat weeds and bugs, and free-range chicken eggs are said to have a higher nutrient content than store-bought eggs.

CLUCs Morey cited an additional benefit for gardeners: Chicken manure is high in nitrogen and a great compost addition. Chickens can eat vegetable scraps and generally lay one egg per day.

"It seems like a slick recycling method," Morey said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Springfield program gives access to garden plots to grow local, sustainable food *
6 September 2009

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) - A program in Springfield is allowing residents to rent a garden to grow local food.

Starting in October, 60 urban garden plots will be up for rent at Rutledge-Wilson Farm Community Park. The first-come, first-serve plots will be rented out for $25 to $40. Eight-foot-by-16-foot plots to 16-by-16-foot plots will be available.

The park provides soil, water and fencing for its "Adopt an Urban Garden."

Officials say the program gives people access to a fertile growing area, a chance to learn how to tend a garden and encourages sustainable local production of food.

"This is a pilot project that the park board has been working on for eight years," Amy Dooley, coordinator at Rutledge-Wilson Farm, told the Springfield News-Leader. "If the pilot program goes well, it perhaps could work at other parks."

If the program is successful, there is room for up to 600 garden plots.

Gardeners must be 18 to rent a plot, but officials expect many families will participate.

That's why applicants will have to pass a background check, which includes reviewing the Missouri Registered Sex Offender list, a Casenet search for criminal activity and verification of Social Security number and address.

"We do background checks on anyone coming to the parks system who will be spending a significant amount of time around children," Dooley said. "It's a safety measure."

About half the plots will be used for organic farming, with no pesticides or chemical fertilizers allowed. There will be rules for the other plots in terms of what kind of garden chemicals will be permitted.

Dooley said gardeners will benefit from onsite security and daily monitoring by Rutledge-Wilson staff.

"We'll also have park rangers come by after hours to check on the gardens," Dooley said.

Gardeners can plant any legal crop they want, but nothing can be sold from the site, she said.

------

Information from: Springfield News-Leader


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## fuenteselaine (Sep 7, 2009)

Hi Guys,
Urban Agriculture is the interesting concept. I am growing vegetables in my back garden. Urban Agriculture can be possible if the all persons are growing vegetables in their vacant plot. This will really help in increasing the Urban Agriculture.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Filmmakers capture urban agriculture in Flint *
20 September 2009






FLINT, Mich. (AP) - Two filmmakers from Michigan State University are examining the emergence of urban agriculture as part of efforts to revive a city that's emblematic of the auto industry's decline.

Geri Alumit Zeldes and Troy Hale have started a documentary tentatively titled "The Greening of Flint: Master King Fights and Farms." They've shot and edited some footage, and are seeking funding for a full film.

"It's going to give a good historical perspective -- where the city has been, where the city is trying to go with community agricultural efforts," Zeldes said Friday.

The title hints at one of the likely subjects: Jacky King, who runs a karate school and farm with his wife, Dora, just north of Flint. Some footage the filmmakers said could open the documentary has been posted on YouTube.

Zeldes and Hale plan to film other urban farmers in Flint and get some of them to shoot footage themselves. They'll train them in filmmaking techniques and loan them digital video cameras.

"It actually gives the people of Flint ownership in the film itself," Hale said.

After lining up funding, they expect shooting and production to take about a year.

Hale, 32, is an academic specialist with the department of telecommunication, information studies, and Media. Zeldes, 38, is a Flint native and assistant professor in the school of journalism.

For Zeldes, the project is personal because of her Flint roots. She's regularly returned to her hometown over the years and recently has seen how agriculture is being seized upon as a way to help remake the city.

"It was so refreshing for me as a native to see people with such hope," Zeldes said.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban farmers, gardeners in northern US use hoop houses to extend growing season *
15 September 2009

FLINT, Mich. (AP) - On the vacant lot in Michigan where her childhood home once stood, Carolyn Meekins grows seedlings for Asian greens, red kale and green beans in a plastic-covered greenhouse known as a hoop house.

The structure warms and protects the tender, young plants, allowing Meekins to plant earlier in the year. She was the first in Flint to build one last year, but more urban farmers like her are using hoop houses to extend the growing season in northern U.S. cities.

Hoop houses are relatively inexpensive to build and often are unheated -- relying instead on the sun or heat thrown off by compost heaps. With frames made of metal, flexible PVC pipe or wood, they work like greenhouses but are covered with plastic instead of glass. They can be small enough for a city back yard or 100 feet long.

With them, farmers can extend a five- or six-month outdoor growing season to the whole year, said Adam Montri, an outreach specialist with Michigan State University's Department of Horticulture. And hoop houses don't need heaters or the costly high-intensity lights often used in commercial greenhouses.

"Northern cities are ... seeing the benefits of having them," Montri said. "As urban agriculture has grown, hoop houses have kind of grown simultaneously."

Urban farming is on the rise in Flint, where sparsely populated neighborhoods and thousands of empty lots provide space for growing. Meekins began gardening in her neighborhood in 1995, and her Urban Community Youth Outreach farm now includes 11 lots, with rows of vegetables and a wheat field.

Plants started in late winter in the hoop house, Meekins said, will give her an early jump on spring crops for her farm. She also wants her hoop house to be a place where smaller community gardeners can get their starter plants.

"Our plan is to make this a hub of all transplants," Meekins said.

Commercial farmers in rural areas around the country also use hoop houses, but they make sense in cities, where lots are smaller and yard space is often limited, because crops can be grown close together -- or even stacked in layers inside.

"It's very different than in the field," Montri said. "What it allows us to do is produce a large amount of food in a smaller space."

The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network uses a hoop house at its D-Town Farm to grow food that it sells in the city. Former pro basketball player and urban farmer Will Allen's Growing Power Inc. uses hoop houses in Milwaukee to grow greens. They're also popping up in Chicago, where increased interest in eating locally grown food has made a longer growing season more attractive.

"It's very easy to eat locally in Chicago in August. It's harder to do that in February or March," said Lisa Junkin, education coordinator at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, which has a hoop house on its farm.

The cost of a hoop house depends on its size and the materials used. Kits for 8-by-10-foot backyard models start at a few hundred dollars, while larger hoop houses can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Many can be built in a day or two by a group of do-it-yourselfers. Food can be grown in the ground if the hoop house doesn't have a floor, or plants can be put in pots or raised beds.

Hoop houses are usually permanent structures, but often aren't strong enough to withstand high winds and can collapse if heavy snow isn't brushed off. The plastic traps warmth from the sun. In colder weather, composting inside the hoop house can add warmth, since the process throws off heat.

Before building a hoop house, however, urban growers need to check local zoning rules and building codes. Meekins learned this after she started building her hoop house in 2005. The city stopped construction, saying she needed a zoning variance because it was on a vacant lot.

Meekins had expected to spend a few thousand dollars and have a hoop house in a few days. Three years later, the total reached $21,000. Money spent seeking a permit, getting blueprints drawn up to satisfy the city and buying more materials drove up the cost.

If she built another one, Meekins said, the price likely would be much lower.

Once a hoop house is up, farmers find using them is a learning experience -- more like growing in a traditional greenhouse than a field. The sides can be rolled up or down to vent air and control the temperature, but it took Meekins a while to learn to do this properly. Her first set of plants died.

"I thought it was supposed to get real hot and I just burned them out," she said. "I'm strictly a city girl, so I am learning."


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

fuenteselaine said:


> Hi Guys,
> Urban Agriculture is the interesting concept. I am growing vegetables in my back garden. Urban Agriculture can be possible if the all persons are growing vegetables in their vacant plot. This will really help in increasing the Urban Agriculture.


Exactly, there is so much unused space in suburban gardens. Unfortunately many people don't have the time and passion to grow their own vegetables, and chicken. I stopped buying vegetables years ago. Everything is produced in my yard.


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## PDXPaul (Sep 11, 2002)

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/3167651/8977681

I believe this project has been talked about on this forum, but I found this video very informative and well produced. I know it sounds simple, but greenhouses are really amazing! I'd been reading more on the agricultural technologies which bring my food to me and it has been enlightening. I grew up thinking my tomatoes came from California fields, but really the North American tomato market comes from a handful of giant greenhouses, of which 2 are in Ontario. The tomatoes my neighborhood grocer stocks are from there.

Edit: I didn't realize there was an article on the previous page, but everyone should watch this video too!


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## totheskies (Oct 18, 2007)

HANGING TOMATO PLANTS!!! Best idea ever.


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/

Here is a nice forum about aquaponics. They combine backyard fish farms with high intensity vegetable garden. The systems seems to be highly efficient and self sustainable. The plants keep the water quality for the fish tolerable while the fish provide the plants with nutrients to grow.


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## julesstoop (Sep 11, 2002)

In the Netherlands, wedged between the cities of The Hague and Delft and the Rotterdam seaport, lies de 'Westland' area. Often refered to as 'de glazen stad' (the city made from glass). The ± 80 sqkm area is densely packed with huge greenhouses - interspersed with a towns and villages - leaving only space for roads and canals. The total population is about 100.000.










It is one of the most productive and most innovative agri/horti culture areas in the world and one of the main reasons our small and densely populated country is one of the largest exporters of vegetables in the world.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

julesstoop said:


> In the Netherlands, wedged between the cities of The Hague and Delft and the Rotterdam seaport, lies de 'Westland' area. Often refered to as 'de glazen stad' (the city made from glass). The ± 80 sqkm area is densely packed with huge greenhouses - interspersed with a towns and villages - leaving only space for roads and canals. The total population is about 100.000.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Is that also why flowers are reasonably cheap in Holland?


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## ukiyo (Aug 5, 2008)

*For Urban Farming Wisdom, Look to Japan*









My neighbors are farmers. They regularly bring us cabbages, cucumbers, bitter melon, tomatoes, eggplants, persimmons, and other local specialties, and their arrival on our doorstep with a box of fresh-picked produce is as much an announcement of the changing seasons as the color of the sky or warmth of the wind. Our conversations often turn to rain, mulch, tools for tilling, and fruit yields from the old but still-productive trees they tend. They offer advice on reviving my stunted tomatoes, and we debate the relative merits of baseball caps for working the fields under the hot sun as opposed to the traditional straw kasa. None of this would be remarkable except that we live in the middle of Yokohama, a progressive city of 3.6 million people, and our houses are so densely packed that they almost touch. My neighbors are Japanese urban farmers, and have been for decades. 

Urban development in Japan often leaves small farm plots, rice fields, and other rural features intact while houses and apartments spring up all around them. When American housing developments are built on farmland, nothing of the farm remains. The land is bulldozed and flattened in large multi-acre chunks, the ground cover scraped away to be re-sodded later, new drainage and roadways built. In contrast, the Japanese pattern is generally more piecemeal, old households remaining in place while new dwellings are erected on selected plots. 

The farmers in my neighborhood belong to families that, like my Japanese in-laws, have been here for generations. They are mostly elderly now, but the group includes a few younger men who discovered a knack for growing vegetables early on and have temperaments that compel them to do it. Their farming is something deep and rich—an anchor to the land, and a means of reinforcing social bonds. When Masahiro shows up unannounced clutching a bag of persimmons in his calloused hands, saying almost apologetically, "Oh, we picked a lot this year, you'd be doing us a favor by taking some," we feel like we've received a sincere gesture of regard, the fruit of the actual labor of his family. 

We also know that the farmers in the neighborhood are monitoring the health of our environment, and can share an excellent perspective on the weather and other conditions that stretches back decades. And "farm time," when we procrastinate by loitering around the fringes of the plot, is an occasion for discussions that can veer productively into deeper shared concerns, political ones perhaps, or interpersonal, or even philosophical, as well as for teaching the local kids a few things about food, water, the weather, or insects. It's an activity that binds generations in a way few others do. 








This particular plot is only about 10 by 20 feet, but its significance and positive impact on all of us are far larger than its dimensions suggest. And it is only one of dozens within a several block radius, each with its own story. Japanese urban conditions are nearly unique, of course, and it might seem difficult to draw lessons from their experience that will resonate with Americans. Urban farming initiatives have taken root in most American cities, but the trend towards increasingly dense urban space in the U.S. seems likely to continue, and many cities may even witness population explosions that could sharply reduce the number of available vacant lots. Yet even now, in situations where little land is available for food production, the Japanese approach can stand as an excellent model. 

One of the more remarkable aspects of the farm plot in my immediate neighborhood is how it takes advantage of the peculiarities of the site to make maximum use of available sunlight. It is actually a trapezoid, hemmed in by houses to the north and east, and by a high concrete railway embankment to the southwest. The only access is a narrow, winding footpath that leads eventually to the street. The railway ensures that sunlight is blocked only when trains pass, and though this is every 10 minutes or so, for all practical purposes the sun exposure is perfect. On the other hand, the trains generate large gusts of wind, so the farmers have planted hedges, shrubs, and mulberry bushes around the plot as windbreaks. They have even erected a waist-high paling fence, marvelously ad-hoc, made of old twigs and branches, odd lengths of bamboo, broken umbrella poles, and a few lengths of steel rebar, all tied together with baling wire. They have encouraged vines to engulf it—legumes mostly, like peas and a Japanese variety related to the fava called sora mame. In the best Japanese fashion, this fence serves two purposes at once, providing extra windbreak and maximizing growing area by going vertical. 

At first I was concerned that the large Japanese persimmon tree and mullberry bushes almost due south of the plot were seriously interfering with the sunlight. I could see that the persimmon shaded the house from the western sun, while a large shii tree—a broadleaf evergreen that provides edible acorns—shaded the house from the south. But the persimmon seemed wrong in relation to the plot itself. When I brought it up, the farmer pointed out that the space under the spreading branches of the tree and protected by the mulberries has special characteristics ideal for other plants, particularly a wild vegetable called fuki. This microclimate is noticeably shadier, cooler, and moister than the surroundings most of the year, cool and moist enough for moss even in the summer, and in the winter, when sunlight counts most, the tree loses its leaves and lets a little more sunlight in for the winter vegetables. 

There are many lessons to be absorbed from this tiny farm plot: read the site, work with what's there, make peculiarities work to your advantage, pay attention to the wind as much as to the sunlight, and go vertical when necessary. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/food/archive/2010/06/for-urban-farming-wisdom-look-to-japan/57931/


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## stevensp (May 7, 2010)

imo Japan, HOlland and Denmark have some nice examples of bringing 'green' in towns...
its slowly getting through in whole europe though


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## socrates#1fan (Jul 1, 2008)

http://urbanhomestead.org/


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Comment: Greens living in ivory towers now want to farm them too: *
The idea that you can feed Manhattan with crops grown in a skyscraper is the craziest of my allies' many miracle solutions
17 August 2010
The Guardian

No one is immune to it; in some respects it is the foundation of our lives. Magical thinking is a universal affliction. We see what we want to see, deny what we don't. Confronted by uncomfortable facts, we burrow back into the darkness of our cherished beliefs. We will do almost anything - cheat, lie, stand for high office, go to war - to shut out challenges to the way we see the world.

I spend much of my time confronting one aspect of denial: the virulent repudiation of environmental constraints by those who admit no challenge to their vision of the world. But it pains me to report that I find myself at odds with other greens almost as often as I find myself fighting our common enemies. I've had bruising battles over a long series of miracle solutions supported by friends: liquid biofuels, hydrogen cars and planes, biochar plantations, solar electricity in the UK, scrappage payments, feed-in tariffs. But no green delusion is as crazy as the one I am about to explain. The idea itself might not interest you. But the insight it gives into the filtering techniques humans use is fascinating. So please bear with me while I spell out the latest madness.

That there's a problem is undeniable. As some of the papers published yesterday by the Royal Society show, farmland is in short supply, water shortages could impose ever tighter constraints on agriculture and there are grave questions about whether a growing population can continue to be fed. There are a number of plausible solutions. But none of them appeals to some environmentalists as much as the towering lunacy promoted by a parasitologist at Columbia University called Dickson Despommier.

Despommier points out that while horizontal space for growing crops is limited, vertical space remains abundant. So he proposes that crops should be grown in skyscrapers, which he calls vertical farms. These, he claims, will feed the growing population so efficiently that ordinary farmland will be allowed to revert to forest. Vertical farms will feed the urban populations that surround them, eliminating the need for long-distance transport.

You can, if you shield your eyes very carefully, see the attraction. But even a brief reading of Despommier's essays reveals a few trifling problems. He proposes 30-storey towers to feed people in places like Manhattan. You wouldn't see any change from $100m, possibly $200m. The only crop that could cover such costs is high-grade cannabis. But a 30-storey hydroponic skunk tower would be hard to conceal.

Without any explanation, Despommier asserts that his system will need "no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilisers". Perhaps he has never seen a fungal infestation in a greenhouse. And does he expect the plants to grow on water and air alone? He also insists that there will be "no need for fossil-fuelled machinery", which suggests that he intends to farm a 30-storey building without pumps, heating or cooling systems.

His idea, he says, is an antidote to "intensive industrial farming, carried out by an ever decreasing number of highly mechanised farming consortia". But then he calls on Cargill, Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and IBM to fund it. He suggests "locally grown would become the norm", but fails to explain why such businesses wouldn't seek the most lucrative markets, regardless of locality. He expects, in other words, all usual rules of business, economics, physics, chemistry and biology to be suspended to make way for his idea.

But the real issue is scarcely mentioned in his essays on the subject: light. Last week one of my readers, the film-maker John Russell, sent me his calculations for the artificial lighting Despommier's towers would require. (You can read them in full on my website). They show that the light required to grow the 500 grammes of wheat that a loaf of bread contains would cost, at current prices, pounds 9.82. (The current farm-gate price for half a kilo of wheat is 6p). That's just lighting: no inputs, interest, rates, rents or labour. Somehow this minor consideration - that plants need light to grow and that they aren't going to get it except on the top storey - has been overlooked by the scheme's supporters. I won't bother to explain the environmental impacts.

None of this has dented the popularity of Despommier's dumb idea. It has featured in the New York Times, Time magazine and Scientific American, and on the BBC, CNN, Discovery Channel and NBC. Three weeks ago the Guardian published a supportive piece, whose author appeared to be unaware that nutrients don't magically regenerate themselves in an agricultural system. Environmentalists love it. Treehugger.com claimed that vertical farming would "help us stop the use of pesticides, herbicides, oil-based fertilizers" and suggested, again unhindered by evidence, that it could produce a net output of energy. The Huffington Post said the idea is "so simple, so elegant that you wonder why you didn't think of it yourself."

In my grouchier moments I feel that only those who grow some of their own food should write about food production. Horticulture, with its endlessly varied constraints and disappointments, is an excellent corrective to wishful thinking. But this is about much more than ignorance and inexperience. It's about seeing something you like - local food for example - and allowing that idea to crowd out everything else. This is how we all live.

In a recent essay in New Scientist the psychologist Dorothy Rowe explained that none of us can see reality. We have to construct it from our interpretation of what we perceive, tempered by experience. As a result, each of us exists in our own world of meaning, constantly at risk of being shattered by inconvenient facts. If we acknowledge them, they can destroy our sense of self. So, to ensure that we won't be "overwhelmed by the uncertainty inherent in living in a world we can never truly know", we shut them out by lying to ourselves. Though it challenges my sense of self, I am forced to accept that my allies can lie to themselves as fluently as my opponents can.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*With more chefs growing their own fruits, vegetables, gardens are named top restaurant trend*
4 October 2010

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Gardens have been named the hottest trend in restaurants this year as more chefs involved with the eat local food movement decide to grow their own tomatoes, herbs and other produce.

A third of the 2,000 chefs surveyed by the National Restaurant Association named gardens the top trend. Chris Moyer, who leads sustainability programs for the group, said it costs restaurants less to grow their own produce than to buy it elsewhere and have it shipped. It also gives them more control over quality, he said.

"It lets them offer things people are looking for, and a growing number of people are looking for that locally grown type of fare," Moyer said.

The association doesn't track how many restaurants have gardens, and its survey didn't ask chefs whether their restaurant had a garden or had one planned.

But Moyer said independent restaurants tend to be the ones with gardens because they have the flexibility to adjust their menus with what's in season.

"When you walk into a chain, you expect the same thing every time," he said. "Independent operators don't have the consistency factor that chain restaurants do and that makes it easier for them to implement these gardens."

The Blue Water Grill in Grand Rapids, Mich., expanded its garden from about 1,000 square feet last year to about 3,000 square feet this year. It started mostly with tomatoes but has added squash, peppers, sweet corn, herbs and strawberries. The restaurant also has 12 fruit trees, including pear and apple.

"We just though it was a great opportunity that supported doing what we wanted to do and that was to be a local restaurant," general manager Kevin Vos said.

The garden also adds a personal touch, Vos said.

"A lot of times when we take customers for a garden tour, it starts with what we can do and 'Can we cook you something special tonight?'" he said.

Larry Bertsch and his wife, Diann, are weekly guests at the Blue Water Grill. While the garden is not the main reason they frequent the restaurant, it's a nice addition, Larry Bertsch said.

"It's a benefit knowing the food you're eating is grown 20 feet from the kitchen without pesticides or artificial fertilizers," said Bertsch, 50.

The garden also makes a nice view from the restaurant's windows and patios.

"The scene, the beautiful colors when everything is ripe, and the way the gardens are laid out -- the beauty of how they've done it," Bertsch said.

Moyer said most restaurants start with small gardens in which they grow a few basics, such as lettuces, tomatoes, peppers and herbs. It's rare for them to grow everything they need because weather limits the growing season and big gardens take up staff time and space few restaurants can afford, he said.

Rob Weland, chef at Poste Moderne Brasserie in Washington D.C., said his restaurant planted its first garden six years ago in an outside courtyard and it gets a little bigger each year. This year, fruit trees were added.

About 20 percent of what the restaurant uses is grown in the garden, which includes 12 varieties of heirloom tomatoes, asparagus, basil, mint, tarragon, thyme and strawberries.

The restaurant also gears promotions around the garden, including Thursday events in which up to 15 people have a five-course meal prepared with produce grown there.

Paul Lee opened the Winchester restaurant in Grand Rapids, Mich., 18 months ago and planted a garden for it on a vacant lot not from far his restaurant this summer.

"We made a commitment to do an urban garden and with the movement to grow local, to shop local, it was just a natural fit for us," said Lee, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Jessica.

The Winchester's 4,000-square-foot garden provided about 10 percent of the vegetables and herbs the restaurant used this year, Lee said.

"Everything we take out we use to create dinner specials," Lee said. "It's been overwhelmingly positive."

In the New York borough of Manhattan, the Bell Book & Candle is scheduled to open this fall, with 60 percent of the produce it uses coming from 60 hydroponic towers on the building's rooftop. Its owner and chef, John Mooney, is growing more than 70 varieties of herbs, vegetables and fruits on the roof.

The six-story building doesn't have an elevator so an outdoor dumbwaiter system will lower produce from the roof to the kitchen door at ground level, Mooney said.

He said the move toward more restaurants growing their own produce is likely based in chefs' desire to better control the ingredients they use.

"I believe that when you and your staff care about your ingredients from start to finish they have a better appreciation for it," said Mooney, who also once owned a Florida restaurant that had a 22-acre garden. "It has a very positive effect on the guest experience as well."

------

Online:

National Restaurant Association: http://www.restaurant.org/

Poste Moderne Brasserie: http://www.postebrasserie.com/

The Winchester: http://www.winchestergr.com/


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Oakland urban farming prompts plan to redo rules*
Matthai Kuruvila, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, May 9, 2011

It has been a tough row to hoe, but urban farming impresario Novella Carpenter appears to be on her way to legally growing chard and raising animals in Oakland.

The novelist enlisted readers of her blog to help pay the roughly $2,500 for a conditional use permit, the only way the city will allow her to continue running her horticultural haven, Ghost Town Farm.

But Oakland's agronomic angst is not over, said Carpenter, who wants all city farmers protected from the bureaucratic meddling she had to face.

"I can raise $2,500," said Carpenter, whose permit fees roughly equal what she makes per year off her farm. "But what about other people who can't?"

Oakland planning officials said they are about to embark on an ambitious plan to revamp the zoning code to incorporate the increasing presence of agriculture in the city.

The plan is to develop rules and conditions allowing anyone to grow vegetables and sell produce from their property without a permit. The Oakland plan would go beyond that of other cities, including San Francisco, because it would also set up conditions for raising farm animals without a permit.

"What we are trying to do is tackle the full dimensions of the urban food movement, which is animals and vegetables," said Eric Angstadt, the city's planning director.

Many of the zoning codes regarding agriculture were written in 1965, when cities were developing clear distinctions between life in the city and country. At that time, freeways were carving up Oakland and feeding a sense that urban life was for folk who preferred not to get their hands dirty farming.

That attitude has since changed. Urban farming has gained popularity nationally in recent years.

Popular trend

Carpenter took over a vacant lot on a hardscrabble corner of West Oakland eight years ago and turned it into a working farm of vegetables, goats, rabbits and, sometimes, pigs. She wrote a popular book, "Farm City," which made her into an icon in the region's influential urban farming movement.

Oakland's rules have always allowed the growing of vegetables and raising animals for personal use on residential property. But selling, bartering or giving away what you grow is not legal without a permit. The new rules will establish limits on distributing food, including food byproducts like jam, without a permit.

Animals are likely to be the most contentious issue because neighbors tend to be more bothered by bleating, honking, clucking and crowing. Complaints about vegetables are rare.

But urban farmers insist that animals are critical to the growing of vegetables. Manure functions as fertilizer. Chickens and ducks eat bugs and snails that can destroy crops and pecking hens can help till the soil, they say.

"They're instrumental to helping the health of our soil," said Barbara Finnin, executive director of City Slicker Farms, an Oakland nonprofit that runs produce markets and helps people start their own urban farms. "They're giving nutrients, but they're also getting rid of all the things that a farmer and gardener don't want in our garden."

Carpenter's troubles began when rabbit rescue activists, upset that she was killing bunnies for meat, complained to animal control officers. The complaint was sent to the city zoning department, which cracked down on her for not having a permit.

Angstadt said that part of the motivation for having clearer rules about raising crops and animals is to get the city out of political debates that have little to do with zoning, such as what happened with Carpenter's farm.

"We, the city, are being used as a blunt tool, a hammer, in another debate - whether or not rabbits are food," Angstadt said.

Emily Wood of North Oakland said animal abuse could occur if city officials sanction the raising and slaughter of animals in backyards and homes.

Concerns

"People are getting into this as a hobby, and they're not super well informed," said Wood, who complained about Carpenter's farm to the Oakland City Council. "I would like to stop animal suffering in factory farms and in my neighbor's backyard. But I have a lot more power over my neighbor's backyard."

Finnin said animal abuse is always possible whether or not urban farms exist.

"Somebody could raise dogs, be abusive and not eat them," she said. "If somebody is being completely abusive, there's already a process in place for that. But I don't want to create barriers for people to be able to feed themselves."

E-mail Matthai Kuruvila at [email protected].


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Raising chicks a growing trend in NM cities *
13 May 2011

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Hundreds of tiny fluffy chicks are cheeping their way into hearts and homes of an increasing number of city dwellers.

Every spring, Bernalillo Feed and Conoco gets a shipment of day-old chicks from hatcheries in eastern New Mexico and Kansas. People buy them for their eggs, for eating or their quirky personalities.

"They're very smart. They make great companion animals," said Frances Garcia. She and her husband, Johnny Garcia, run the store her parents opened in 1967.

Once common in urban and rural areas, poultry keeping is enjoying a resurgence in popularity. Numerous websites such as urbanchickens.org tout the benefits of keeping chickens, which include having your own source of protein from eggs, a natural form of pest control (chickens eat bugs) and a ready supply of fertilizer from nitrogen-rich chicken manure.

Bernalillo Feed carries a selection of popular breeds such as Ameraucanas, which lay blue- and green-tinted eggs, Rhode Island reds and silver- and golden-laced Wyandottes, which have a reputation as good egg producers. It also sells baby ducks, geese and rabbits.

Poultry are on sale from spring through fall. Garcia estimated they sold about 5,000 birds in 2010.

Customers come from all Albuquerque and Santa Fe and smaller Sandoval County communities.

Albuquerque limits the number of chickens to 15 hens and one rooster; Santa Fe allows one rooster but has no limit on hens. The Rio Rancho City Council is soon expected to approve an updated animal ordinance that will allow poultry-keeping on 1-acre properties.

Rio Rancho Councilor Kathy Colley said there were inquiries from people in densely populated neighborhoods like Cabezon, Enchanted Hills and Rivers Edge about keeping chickens. But councilors were concerned that allowing poultry-keeping in that type of neighborhood might bring rodents.

Garcia keeps the chicks in large aquariums warmed by heat lamps. The fist-sized birds are delicate in their first few days of life and have to be kept at a temperature of about 90 degrees. That's one of the reasons she advises people against buying chicks as gifts for children.

"They need adult supervision," Garcia said.

Customers in New Mexico appear to be following the national trend. Garcia has seen an increasing number of people who want chickens to ensure a regular supply of eggs. Some buy and raise chickens for their own dinner table.

"They want to know where their food is coming from," she said.

Others become attached to their chickens and treat them as pets. Garcia has seen customers carry their hens in their arms like a small cat.

Bernalillo Feed sells female chicks, called pullets, for $2.99. For the first few weeks, they eat food specially made for young birds called "chick crumbles." When they start laying at around 16 weeks, they need to eat "poultry scratch" with a small amount of ground oyster shell added to ensure firm egg shells. Several varieties of organic chicken feed are now available, she said.

------

Information from: Albuquerque Journal, http://www.abqjournal.com


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Museum starting seed library for urban farmers*
20 May 2011

CHICAGO (AP) - The Jane Addams-Hull House Museum in Chicago is expanding its urban farming initiatives with a public heirloom seed library.

The University of Illinois at Chicago's museum will be relying on a $15,000 federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to open the library.

Urban farmers and gardeners will be able to get free, regionally adapted sees if they agree to grow them and return some seeds from the next generation of plants at the end of the season.

Museum director Lisa Lee says a seed library can foster sustainable food systems throughout Chicago.

The museum is a memorial to social reformer Jane Addams, the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. It's located in two of the original settlement house buildings on Chicago's West Side.


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## Spookvlieger (Jul 10, 2009)

Some articles are really interesting! Thanks for posting!


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## trainrover (May 6, 2006)

trainrover said:


> Really! your whole metropolis smelling like some bestial pooh pot, it's truly decrepidating!


٨٧


trainrover said:


> which makes one wonder if the state of the local Montreal _foody_ scene's really truly all that that happens to be said & written about it hno:​


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## spongeg (May 1, 2006)




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## spongeg (May 1, 2006)




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## spongeg (May 1, 2006)




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## erbse (Nov 8, 2006)

hkskyline said:


> The idea that you can feed Manhattan with crops grown in a skyscraper is the craziest of my allies' many miracle solutions


Talking about urban agriculture, the NYC farming skyscraper (Dragonfly) comes to my mind first:














































Credits of them all to: http://jokamfamily.com/future-ultra-modern-vertical-farm-design-ideas/


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

Hope those $100 cucumbers will taste any good.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

Growing some produce for direct sporadic low-scale consumption like cucumbers, maybe onions and lettuce is not the challenge. The real stuff is about raw agricultural products like oil, cotton, corn, all meat production (and the stuff to feed the livestock), logging, cellulose etc. That will never be accommodated on an urban environment.


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## trainrover (May 6, 2006)

Dragonfly makes me wonder if engineering food to be growing down or sideways might be answers :nuts:


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## Linguine (Aug 10, 2009)

this is an interesting and informative thread....thanks for the nice posts...


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban farming is in season*

California cities craft modern urban farming regulations, following others like Seattle.

By Lee Romney
9 August 2011
Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO — In a dense pocket of San Francisco's Mission Terrace neighborhood, a quiet grid of streets near the city's southern edge, the afternoon fog rolls in over a rare sight: nearly an acre of land sandwiched between homes and planted with kale, exotic salad greens, bursts of flowers and fragrant herbs.

The women who work this plot are pioneers. Their Little City Gardens recently became the first legal commercial farm within city borders. Thanks to them, San Francisco leaders revised zoning laws to allow the cultivation and sale of produce in all neighborhoods.

Other cities are following suit.

Berkeley, Calif., soon will take up a measure to allow residents to sell raw agricultural products from home without a costly permit. And Oakland, Calif., has pledged to one-up its neighbors by tackling the raising of backyard animals as a personal food source.

More than 300 people packed an Oakland community center this month to weigh in. While a handful of attendees — some carrying bunnies rescued from an overcrowded backyard meat venture — spoke out against residential slaughter, the majority were urban farming trailblazers who blend the Bay Area's zest for organic locally sourced food with a do-it-yourself sensibility.

"There's been a huge change in how we look at food and food production," said Eric Angstadt, Oakland deputy planning and zoning director.

That selling a bunch of backyard basil to a neighbor — or even sharing it — violates most urban planning codes may come as a surprise. But the decades-old rules date to a time when neighborhoods were zoned for living and rural areas for farming. That has resulted, for example, in a woman in Oak Park, Mich., recently being charged with a misdemeanor for growing vegetables in her front yard.

Although San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland are the first California cities to craft modern urban farming regulations, they follow others nationwide that have done so, including Kansas City, Mo., and Seattle.

The changes may lead to a proliferation of discrete neighborhood farm stands. But for Little City Gardens co-founders Caitlyn Galloway and Brooke Budner, they will test the economic viability of small-scale market gardens in a place that pays plenty of lip service to sustainability.

"The movement can become a lot more inclusive if people are able to at least supplement their income," said Galloway, 30, as she prepared bouquets packed with dahlias, wild fennel and sunflowers for tables at a nearby restaurant.

— — —

Former art students who each had interned at sustainable farms, Galloway and Budner teamed up more than a year ago to take their gardening venture to the next level

Using Google Earth, they located a suitable three-quarter-acre lot. They signed a lease and started digging — and immediately hit a snag when a neighbor complained to the city.

In 2009, former Mayor Gavin Newsom issued an urban farming directive requiring, among other things, that city departments convert unused lots, median strips and rooftops into gardens. Yet Budner and Galloway learned that growing food for sale would require a special hearing and a permit costing several thousand dollars.

"The Bay Area considers itself so progressive around food," Galloway said. "It seemed like a pretty significant gap."

City officials agreed. To ensure quicker approval of amended regulations, the raising of farm animals was excluded from the conversation.

As of April, growing and selling produce on less than an acre is allowed citywide, with the only requirement being a relatively low-cost permit. Larger operations are permitted in designated nonresidential zones, as are sales of value-added products like jam.

The urban farming movement is driven by people's craving for a connection to their food source and for more affordable organic fare, said San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance co-coordinator Eli Zigas, and it "is forcing cities to think about how to bring back activities that we pushed out of cities a long time ago."

— — —

Across the San Francisco Bay, Esperanza Pallana is party to what may be a broader set of changes. Her compact yard abuts a gas station in Oakland's Lake Merritt neighborhood and overflows with hops for beer, kale, peanuts, dwarf pears, bees, hens and Vienna Blue rabbits — first cultivated for meat in the early 20th century.

For Pallana, raising food offers a connection to her Mexican roots. She chooses seeds and breeds that are fading from use to enhance the gene pool. Raising her meat, she said, gives her some independence from "corporate food systems."

"More and more people are rethinking what our local economy is going to look like," said Pallana, a trim 36-year-old with dark curls who helped form the East Bay Urban Agricultural Alliance and provides her household with about 20 percent of its food.

Still, the push for change in Oakland is controversial. Earlier this year, West Oakland resident Novella Carpenter, who gained national acclaim with her book "Farm City," gave away rabbit potpies during a fundraiser. The move spurred a complaint, exposing a deep rift around backyard food animals.

Critics argue that animals raised for food spread disease and that eating meat leads to poor health — something city policy should not encourage.

Angstadt said he was determined to present a plan for Oakland that "deals with the entirety of the problem. Otherwise, vegetables will sail through and animals will get stuck forever." The rules will probably determine how many animals could be kept and whether or not slaughter for personal-use only would be allowed. The sale of meat, milk and other processed foods is regulated by counties and state and federal agencies, not cities.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

I don't like the idea of ad-hoc agricultural produce stands in neighborhoods. It gives an impression of a run-down, third-World place. But, then, one have to wait just until the first death from food poisoning happens and some neighborhood amateur grower, having ignored sanitary norms, is sued and maybe jailed for involuntary manslaughter.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

So even the farmers' markets and fresh produce stands at highway exits portray a Third World feel? I've seen some really nice ones in North America before - not exactly run-down. I've travelled along the countryside in India and I have never seen an ad-hoc produce stall. I see them at major highway rest stops and in urban areas though.


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## Suburbanist (Dec 25, 2009)

hkskyline said:


> So even the farmers' markets and fresh produce stands at highway exits portray a Third World feel? I've seen some really nice ones in North America before - not exactly run-down. I've travelled along the countryside in India and I have never seen an ad-hoc produce stall. I see them at major highway rest stops and in urban areas though.


Farm markets out of residential areas are ok. No problem with them (though I don't like to shop food in a place without air conditioning, exposed to dust in the open air and so). My issue is with people selling produce from their own house in a professional manner, like making a tranquil residential street a hotspot for neighbors who want to go to a given house where someone transformed its garden into a mini agricultural facility. But the real risks, IMO, come not from vegetables, but domestic slaughter of animals for meat, which, if done improperly, can easily introduce life-threatening pathogens.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

Suburbanist said:


> Farm markets out of residential areas are ok. No problem with them (though I don't like to shop food in a place without air conditioning, exposed to dust in the open air and so). My issue is with people selling produce from their own house in a professional manner, like making a tranquil residential street a hotspot for neighbors who want to go to a given house where someone transformed its garden into a mini agricultural facility. But the real risks, IMO, come not from vegetables, but domestic slaughter of animals for meat, which, if done improperly, can easily introduce life-threatening pathogens.


True, although it's hard to envision the typical suburbanite trying to slaughter a chicken or cow on-site ... perhaps selling vegetables and fruits is more likely.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban agriculture advocates claim success in drive for city consultations*
Montreal Gazette
November 15, 2011

MONTREAL - A coalition of 50 organizations has made history in Montreal by collecting the required 15,000 signatures on a petition to force the city to hold public hearings on the state of urban agriculture here.

Members of environmental, gardening and social groups spent the last three months gathering the signatures from Montreal residents. On Tuesday, they announced they had amassed 25,000 signatures.

"This shows the interest that Montrealers have in urban agriculture," said Marie-Eve Chaume, a spokesperson for the Groupe de travail en agriculture urbaine, which organized the signing drive.

"We would like the consultations to happen as quickly as possible."


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Urban agriculture: Seeds of self-sufficiency*
Montreal Gazette
November 15, 2011

MONTREAL - On the sidewalk in front of Marci Babineau’s house, I craned my neck to see if I could spot the birds.

In the backyard, just beyond her root-vegetable garden and several fruit trees, a chicken stretched out a wing, then ruffled her black feathers back into place.

Not exactly what a passerby would expect to see on a quiet, tree-lined street minutes from downtown Montreal (I can’t say exactly where; more about that later).

But it’s what urban agriculture enthusiasts across North America would like to see – micro-farms where city dwellers could produce fruits, vegetables, eggs and honey, milk from goats, and meat from rabbits.

Some Montrealers have already enthusiastically embraced the growing urban agriculture movement, which took off after Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn two years ago.

Chickens are pecking away in Montreal backyards, bees are buzzing around hives in industrial areas, lettuce is growing in container gardens downtown, and the Lufa Farms rooftop greenhouse near Marché Centrale is producing enough fresh produce to feed more than 1,000 people a week.

It’s not easy, though. Municipal bylaws ban most island residents from keeping livestock, like chickens, and bees, and people are more used to seeing grass in front yards than tomatoes and peppers.

Still, if urbanites, who rely on food grown dozens, even thousands of kilometres away, want to try to become as self-sufficient as possible, how would they do it?

Using my own yard as a test case, I set about to find out.

My family lives in Notre Dame de Grâce, an area that used to be some of Quebec’s best farmland. Our “land” – front and back yard – measures about 2,800 square feet, or about one-15th of an acre.

According to The Backyard Homestead, a guide for would-be farmers, it would take a quarter of an acre – nearly double what I have – to produce enough food for a small family. That includes fruit, vegetables, a grain like wheat or oats, a dozen chickens, two pigs, rabbits and two beehives.

It’s tough for people in cities to become completely self-sufficient, said Michael Levenston, who has grown vegetables in Vancouver for more than 30 years with an urban agriculture organization called City Farmer. Like me, most people in cities don’t have enough space to grow staples like rice or wheat, for example, he said.

Still, urbanites can be more self-sufficient than they are now, by growing anything from herbs in pots on a windowsill to full-blown vegetable gardens, he said.

In Pasadena, Calif., the pioneering Dervaes family is practising self-sufficiency at their suburban home. They’re able to produce about 6,000 pounds of food a year, growing more than 350 varieties of fruits and vegetables in their front and back yards – about one-10th of an acre.

“They’re making a case for a great deal of self-sufficiency on the property,” Levenston said. “There are people pushing those boundaries, but for the people living in a city in Canada, you’re just trying to get them to feel comfortable taking out a little patch of lawn and putting in a seed and feeling comfortable that they can grow anything.”

Babineau hopes one day her yard and her second-floor balcony will yield enough fruit, vegetables, eggs and honey for her family of four to be self-sufficient, although she says she’s far from growing everything they need. She’s been working toward that goal for eight years, after seeing artichokes growing at the Jardin de Luxembourg park in Paris.

“There was an apiary and fruit trees, and I just thought, damn, why aren’t we doing stuff like that? What’s wrong with having food around us?” said Babineau, a yoga teacher who raised chickens when she lived in Georgia and California. “Parisians just think it’s ordinary.”

Our property just isn’t big enough for us to grow enough fruits, vegetables and grains to live on. We can’t grow plants everywhere: our backyard is nearly always shady,

thanks to a huge maple tree. While the tree hampers our gardening efforts, we put it to good use in the spring, tapping it to make maple syrup. It also shades the house, keeping it cool in the summer.

It only took Julie Richard a few minutes in our yards to sum up what our approach should be toward trying to be self-sufficient city farmers.

“You have to plant where the sun is,” said Richard of Action Communiterre, a community organization that runs five collective gardens in N.D.G. Most vegetables should go in our front yard, Richard said, where there is full sun for about six hours. The shady backyard would be fine for leafy greens, lettuces and herbs.

I can take my cue from Melanie Stuy, who, along with and some green-thumbed friends, transformed her front yard in N.D.G. into 9-foot-by-12-foot garden. Last year she grew strawberries, sunflowers, herbs, beans, snow peas, garlic, kale, tomatoes and blueberries.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s nice to be able to go outdoors and pick fresh food,” said Stuy, who teaches English as a second language at McGill University. While she doesn’t expect to become self-sufficient, Stuy managed to reduce the amount of fresh produce she had to buy last year to feed her family.

If we want to raise enough food to feed our family, we face one problem – our driveway takes up almost a third of our front yard.

In Côte des Neiges-Notre Dame de Grâce borough, you can plant vegetables in the front yard but a bylaw prevents homeowners from digging up driveways, a borough official said.

Doing so could net us a $100 to $300 fine.

To avoid a ticket, we could plant vegetables on what’s already green in our front yard, park our car on the street, and use the driveway for container gardening.

Even though it’s early in the season, one crop is already coming up in our front yard – dandelions. Our Greek-born babysitter taught us how to collect and cook the delicate green leaves, now a springtime ritual at our house.

Dandelions do great without any help from us, but what’s an aspiring urban farmer to plant if they want to live off their land?

Plant things you like and that yield a lot of produce, Richard said. That includes herbs, lettuce, arugula, beans, tomatoes, zucchini and peas. Watermelon, potatoes and corn aren’t great choices with limited gardening space, she said.

How much would we need to plant? Landscape designer and gardener Rosalind Creasy set out to answer that question in 2008 when she weighed everything she harvested from her 100 square foot garden. From two tomato plants, six pepper plants, four zucchini plants, four basil plants and 18 lettuces, she got 235 pounds of vegetables – 126 pounds of zucchini alone. She estimated their value at $742.

We have about three times as much space in our front yard, without including container gardening on the driveway. We could plant double what Creasy did, and fill the rest of the space with beans, cucumbers, peas, onions, carrots and beets and come pretty close to meeting our vegetables needs – in the summer and fall, anyway.

While vegetables are great, sometimes you need a piece of fruit.

On Île Perrot, farmers Steve Leroux and Ken Taylor have shown it’s possible, even with our chilly winters, to grow grapes, kiwis and apricots, as well as traditional fruit like apples and pears.

Babineau likes fruit, too, and has several fruit-bearing plants. There are strawberry plants, blueberry and raspberry bushes in the front yard, a peach tree on the balcony and cherry, plum, and pear trees not far from where her chickens like to roam.

Now back to the animals.

With the small size of our property, we’d be limited to chickens and bees. The Backyard Homestead suggests three or four chickens – giving us three or four eggs a day – would be enough to start with, while one or two beehives would supply enough honey. But that’s just hypothetical, for us, anyway.

Montreal has, for at least 30 years, banned raising farm animals. That means no chickens, rabbits, goats, cows or sheep. Bees aren’t allowed in N.D.G. either.

Where Babineau lives, the rules aren’t as strict, but she still asked me not to name the municipality where she lives. Although her closest neighbours are fine with her backyard coop, she says others would likely be shocked to know chickens live nearby.

Babineau got her five chicks last year from a hatchery north of Montreal. Her 12-year-old son Sebastian enthusiastically recounted how he built a chicken run in the backyard to let the chickens roam between a closed-in run and the coop under the deck where they roost and lay eggs.

The chickens made little noise during my visit, clucking and cooing quietly as they wandered around their run. The family gets about five eggs a day from the birds, and Babineau collects food scraps from nearby businesses and neighbours to feed them.

“I grew up with chickens, they’re not hard to deal with,” she said.

But municipal officials aren’t so sure. While some cities, like Vancouver, have changed bylaws to allow chicken farming, Montreal is not ready to go down that path, said Alan DeSousa, the executive committee member in charge of sustainable development.

DeSousa, like other municipal officials interviewed by The Gazette, said Montrealers aren’t burning up the phone lines asking the city to change bylaws to allow livestock. Some people are keeping farm animals, though, he said, adding he once saw one of his neighbours in St. Laurent walking a pet rooster down the street.

“I think it’s under the radar, and where people do do it, it’s done discreetly, and obviously it’s being tolerated by local communities,” he said. “There’s a kind of live and let live attitude.”

Some boroughs are considering allowing more urban agriculture. Rosemont-La Petite Patrie is working on guidelines. Municipal officials in Plateau Mont Royal borough are observing the experience some residents are having with beehives in that neighbourhood, because the insects are important for pollination, said borough councillor Richard Ryan.

The borough is also launching a new feature at one of its public markets next month: extremely-locally grown produce from the community organization Santropol Roulant’s container and rooftop gardens at McGill University. It’s part of a program to raise awareness about urban agriculture, which by greening parts of the city can help to deal with problems like heat-island effect, Ryan said.

Rising gas prices and transportation costs may force cities to look at new ways to produce food, he added.

“We’re far from being like some countries in the developing world, where up to 50 per cent of the food is produced in urban centres,” like Havana, Cuba, he said. “But maybe over the long term, we could gradually help people to get to a certain level of self-sufficiency in terms of fruits and vegetables.”


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Toronto committee votes to uphold backyard chicken ban*
2012/01/25 21:37:00
Toronto Star

The city is preparing to go after 14 backyard chicken farmers because a committee refused Wednesday to even contemplate lifting a ban on urban egg layers.

“We will be following up with enforcement on all of our pending complaints,” Elizabeth Glibbery, manager of animal services, said after the 5-0 vote at the licensing and standards committee.

The vote shelved a motion from councillors Joe Mihevc and Mary-Margaret McMahon asking staff to study the feasibility of allowing urban hens.

“If you want to have chickens, then buy a farm, go to a farm. You can’t have chickens in your backyard,” said committee member Councillor Frances Nunziata. “Do we have to retrain our police officers to catch the chicken thieves that you’re going to have in the middle of the night? … We have enough to worry about.”

McMahon countered that a staff report wouldn’t obligate the city to do anything. “Why are we afraid of information?” she said.

The vote came after several hours of deputations, mostly from supporters of legalizing the growing urban chicken movement. They included impassioned pleas from children in two families who have backyard birds.

In a small, plaintive voice, Georgina Hewitt, 7, said of her family’s four chickens: “They are like family to us. I don’t want them taken away.”

Andrew and Matthew Patel, Grade 9 students at Upper Canada College, said a farm visit got them interested in animal welfare. They contrasted the lives of hens that can barely move in factory-farm “battery” cages with those of their four pampered egg producers.

The twins appeared to charm committee members but, after the councillors’ concluding remarks and vote, Andrew Patel said: “I’m upset how close-minded they were and how rude they were. We’ll keep going.”

The children are not among 14 chicken owners who received notices last year that, as a result of a neighbour’s complaint, they had to get rid of their birds. The eviction notices had been put on hold pending the outcome of Wednesday’s vote.

“If they come after me, I’ll have to abide by the bylaw and move the ‘girls’ to a safe house outside the city,” said Trish Tervit, an Upper Beach chicken owner featured in Wednesday’s Star.

Liz White of Animal Alliance applauded the ban, raising concerns about the welfare of backyard birds. She also fears any added strain on a city animal services department trying to cope with both a budget cut and an overwhelming number of feral dogs and cats.

Lorraine Johnson, author of City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing, tried to dispel “the huge amount of misinformation” about disease, smell, predators and more.

Most major U.S. cities allow backyard chickens in some fashion, she said, and none of the common objections has been found to be rooted in reality.

After the vote, McMahon noted recent council flip-flops on waterfront development and budget cuts, and predicted the issue will come back to roost.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*Charlottetown trades grass for gardens*
CBC News
Posted: May 22, 2012 12:17 PM AT

People in Charlottetown are turning more of the city's green spaces into food-producing gardens.

Karen Murchison, coordinator of Inspired Farmers, a new group of people organizing urban farming activities in Charlottetown, said growing your own food in the city is more than just a fad. 

"I do think there is a real momentum around growing our own food," said Murchison.

"Healthy local food is not as inaccessible as they think it is. And it's really just again about recognizing what a local food economy can look like."

The group will be starting a new garden in front of Murphy's Community Centre.

"More productive urban landscapes has been a growing trend in cities around the world," said Laura MacPherson, sustainability coordinator for the City of Charlottetown.

"The past few years community gardens have grown in popularity and even our parks and recreation department has introduced a lot of edible landscapes." 

Some plots in the popular Adopt a Corner project in Charlottetown have vegetables in them, said MacPherson.

The Culinary Institute of Canada started a garden for use by the school four years ago. It's been getting bigger every year, and is now part of the curriculum.

"It's grown to the point where now we are harvesting product through the use of this greenhouse over the winter," said instructor Jack Wheeler.

"[We're] selling it back to the school in order to supplement the money that we need to continue growing here."

Food harvested from the garden goes straight to the kitchen where it is prepared by students, and it can be on a plate in the dining room within an hour of being picked.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*As Cuba struggles to feed itself, lack of cash slows rise of urban farming*
4 February 2016
_Excerpt_ 

HAVANA, Feb 4 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Sitting beside a decaying Soviet-built housing complex on the outskirts of Havana, the Rotondo de Cojima farm grows several thousand kilos a month of carrots, lettuce and root vegetables, part of Cuba's drive to feed its people through organic farming.

Like many of its Caribbean neighbors, communist-governed Cuba imports more than two-thirds of its food, despite having rich farmland and hundreds of urban farms sprouting up in old parking lots, rooftops, or other small plots of unused land.

The country spends more than $2 billion a year importing rice, meat, grains and other foods which analysts and local farmers say could be produced at home.

*The government, under President Raul Castro, says it is serious about producing more food for Cuba's 11 million citizens, and some environmentalists have praised it for supporting organic urban farming, which uses no chemical pesticides or fertilizers.*

But local farmers and analysts say Cuba will not achieve self-sufficiency in food in the near future, despite improved trade with the United States after Washington re-established diplomatic relations last year with its former Cold War foe.

"The government is trying to make more of these organic farms," urban farmer Antonio Loma told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "But it's a lot of work for very little money."

The 10 employees who work with Loma at the Rotondo de Cojima farm, a 10-minute drive from central Havana, earn the equivalent of $25 per month, making it difficult to attract qualified workers or capital to expand production, Loma said.

ORGANIC BY NECESSITY

Taking a break beside the store where all the farm's food is sold directly to local residents, Loma said Cuba turned to urban agriculture because it had to.

"It's organic because we couldn't get fertilizer," he said.

Founded in 1994, the Rotondo de Cojima farm and hundreds of others were set up after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had supplied its Cuban ally with energy, pesticides and machinery on preferential terms and paid above-market rates for Cuba's staple sugar crop.

"Organic agriculture was essentially forced upon Cuba," Sinan Koont, an economics professor at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Cuban food output plummeted and the economy shrank after the breakup of the Soviet Union. With little fuel for trucks or tractors, state-paid farmers had to start growing vegetables close to cities, using oxen and other animals to till the fields, Koont said.

Most observers in the United States assumed Cuba's communist government, then led by the current president's brother Fidel Castro, would collapse too.

Between 1989 and 1995 the average Cuban's daily caloric intake fell to 1,863 calories from 2,908, according to U.S. government data. By 1994, the average Cuban had lost about 20 pounds in weight due to food shortages, aid group Oxfam said.

The government responded to the crisis by bringing farmers like Loma from rural areas to the cities to help grow food close to the population, distributing under-used plots of land and seeds.

"I had to build all the beds for the vegetables," said Vladimir Echazabal, another urban farmer who came from the countryside to Havana to create an organic garden on 400 square metres of unused land.

"There was only grass here when I came - a lot of farms in Havana are like this," he said, while selling yucca and carrots to local residents.

Today Cuba has about 4,000 organic urban farms, Koont said.

Urban agriculture supplies about half Cuba's vegetables, according a senior official with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Food security is a global problem. Here’s how urban farming could help *
CNBC _Excerpt_
June 12, 2020

Around the world, cities and towns are getting bigger, with people moving to built-up areas in greater numbers in search of economic opportunity and success.

This mass movement looks set to accelerate. In 2018, the United Nations said that 55% of the planet was living in “urban areas” and forecast that this would rise to 68% by the middle of the century. 

Cities and towns are undoubted centers of finance, culture and politics, but will they also have a role to play when it comes to strengthening food security and feeding the planet? According to a recent study, published in the journal Nature Food, the answer could be yes.

Researchers from the University of Sheffield found that using only 10% of a city’s urban green spaces and gardens to grow food could provide 15% of the local population – which equates to 87,375 people in Sheffield – with five portions of fruit or vegetables per day.

“Urban areas are particularly well suited to growing horticultural crops – fruits and vegetables,” Jill Edmonson, from the university’s Institute for Sustainable Food, told CNBC.com via email.

More : Food security is a global problem. Here's how urban farming could help


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Why cities are planting more 'food forests' *
July 24, 2020
CBC _Excerpt_

Many of us see forests as places to walk, hike and enjoy nature. But more and more cities are planting "food forests" — not just for strolling through, but for growing fruits and veggies.

At the Cowichan Green Community Food Forest in Duncan, B.C., visitors can amble along green microclover pathways in the shade of big-leaf maple trees to pick herbs such as rosemary and savory, vegetables like asparagus, as well as fruits, including salmonberries, grapes, plums, kiwis and figs — for free.

"It's quite the jungle right now," said Janice MacKirdy, who runs the garden for the non-profit Cowichan Green Community Society, an environmental group focused on food security.

The roughly one-acre plot attracts families, who fill their baskets during berry season, and is a refuge and quiet thoroughfare for workers in the city centre. The community group also uses the harvest in its Meals on Wheels program for seniors and sells some at its "reFRESH Store," which rescues surplus and potentially wasted perishable food.

Similar edible landscapes are popping up across the country, from Hay River, N.W.T., to Sudbury, Ont.

Source : https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/what-on-earth-food-forests-1.5660211


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* INSIGHT-Black urban farmers in the U.S. sow seeds to end 'food apartheid' *
_Excerpt_ 

July 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In a backyard in the Bronx in the mid-1980s, a vine laden with sweet-smelling and delicious tomatoes came as a revelation to urban gardening guru Karen Washington.

"It was tomatoes that really got me hooked on growing food, because I hated tomatoes," she said, laughing at the memory.

Her homegrown produce got her thinking about the huge difference between the quality of food available to her white friends elsewhere in New York City and what was on sale at stores in her mainly Black neighbourhood.

Working then as a physiotherapist, Washington saw firsthand how poor diet affects health - regularly treating patients with conditions such as diabetes, strokes and heart disease.

"We got the junk food, the processed food, not the healthy food," said Washington, a straight talker with long blonde dreadlocks.

Alarmed by the disparity, she went on to coin the term "food apartheid" to describe the long-standing dietary inequity in the United States that has come into focus due to the Black Lives Matter movement and COVID-19's heavy toll on people of color.

More : Black urban farmers in the U.S. sow seeds to end 'food apartheid'


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Have You Ever Tried to Grow Something? *
New York Times _Excerpt_
Sep 18, 2020

What experiences have you had growing plants, vegetables, flowers or fruits? Have you ever grown something in your home or backyard? On a rooftop or a fire escape? Have you contributed to a community garden or a farm at your school, in your neighborhood or in your town?

When you think about the process of digging, planting seeds and watching things grow, what feelings or memories come up for you?

In “A Crop of Kitchen Gardens From Chefs Around the Globe,” Amelia Nierenberg writes about the Kitchen Farming Project:

When the pandemic shuttered restaurants, chefs across the world planted kitchen gardens.

More than 3,600 people joined the Kitchen Farming Project, a loose “recipe” for a garden — conceived by the chef Dan Barber and developed by Jack Algiere, the farm director of Stone Barns Center in the Hudson Valley. 

More : Have You Ever Tried to Grow Something?


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## Natasza K (Aug 22, 2020)

hkskyline said:


> When you think about the process of digging, planting seeds and watching things grow, what feelings or memories come up for you?


Impossible for me, but I respect those who do it in city conditions.


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Gardening in Katrina's wake: growing food helps rebuild New Orleans *
_Excerpt_
August 26, 2020

(Thomson Reuters Foundation) - New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward bears plenty of scars of Hurricane Katrina that devastated the city 15 years ago - overgrown vacant lots, broken foundations where houses stood and empty streets where people once lived.

Then there's the gardens of Jeanette Bell, plots of life she has built to teach people to grow their own food from the ruins.

"Once you start growing, you immediately recognize the difference, instantly, in your food and in your life," said Bell, 76, founder of the Garden on Mars urban garden project.

"It changes the way you view people and food and living. It changes your whole life."

Bell has five gardens in the Lower Ninth, the poorest and worst hit of New Orleans' 17 wards when the levees broke during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and 80% of the city was flooded.

More : Gardening in Katrina's wake: growing food helps rebuild New Orleans


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Quezon City idle lands turned into urban farms get tax exemption *
Manila Bulletin _Excerpt_
Nov 9, 2020

Idle lands in Quezon City that will be converted to urban farms are now exempted from Idle Land Tax by virtue of a new city ordinance.

Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte signed City Ordinance No. SP-2972 which exempts land owners from Idle Land Tax if they use the idle property for urban agriculture for a minimum period of three years.

The land should also bear produce for public or personal consumption.

“This Ordinance provides a much-needed push to our urban agriculture advocacy to help boost food security for our citizens, especially during the pandemic,” Belmonte said.

Quezon City Majority Flood Leader Franz Pumaren said the city, with a land area of 161.12 square kilometers, has numerous idle lands that can be used for urban agriculture.

More : Quezon City idle lands turned into urban farms get tax exemption - Manila Bulletin


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Thai landfill turned into urban farm to feed poor during pandemic *
_Excerpt_
Jan 7, 2021

CHIANG MAI, Thailand (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - An urban farm developed on a former landfill site in northern Thailand boosted the food security and livelihoods of poor families during the coronavirus pandemic, and can be a model for unused spaces in other cities, urban experts said on Thursday.

The farm in Chiang Mai, about 700 km (435 miles) from the capital Bangkok, took shape during a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the coronavirus last year, when many of the city’s residents lost their tourism-dependent jobs.

Supawut Boonmahathanakorn, a community architect who works on housing solutions for Chiang Mai’s homeless and informal settlers, approached authorities with a plan to convert the unused landfill into an urban farm to support the poor.

“We had previously mapped the city’s unused spaces with an idea to plant trees to mitigate air pollution. The landfill, which had been used for 20 years, was one of those spaces,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Poor families spend more than half their earnings on food, so when their incomes dried up, they were struggling to feed their families. This farm has been a lifeline for some of them,” he said, pointing to neat rows of corn and morning glory.

More : Thai landfill turned into urban farm to feed poor during pandemic


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* More than enough yard to have your lawn and eat too *
University of Adelaide News Release _Excerpt_ 
March 11, 2021

Research led by the University of Adelaide has found in a case study of Adelaide properties, households would need to give up less than a quarter of their domestic lawn areas to grow enough vegetables to become self-sufficient.

In the study published in Sustainable Cities and Society, researchers calculated self-sufficiency by measuring the capacity of private vegetable gardens to supply the recommended daily vegetable intake of residents. Then using airborne photography (similar to Google Earth) of properties across three sites representative of Adelaide’s geographical spread, Aldinga in the south, Gawler (north) and Burnside (central), they modelled whether there would be enough lawn area to grow a sufficient vegetable supply.

The researchers found that 93 per cent of the residential blocks in the study could be self-sufficient for vegetable production.

More : More than enough yard to have your lawn and eat too


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

*How urban gardening could be at the forefront of climate change adaptation in Canada's cities*
CBC _Excerpt_ 
May 20, 2021

Jewel Gomes is getting ready for another growing season in her tiny Toronto backyard, home to her many experiments in agronomy. This summer, she will try to grow crops such as bitter gourd and white strawberry — plants not normally found in Canada.

"I like to experiment with vegetables or plants that are almost impossible to grow here," she said. 

Gomes studied agriculture in university in the Philippines before moving to Canada in the 1980s. Unfazed by the fact the climate here is far from tropical, Gomes has managed to grow many plants that normally need warmer weather, including rice, which she successfully produced in 2019 and displayed at events in the city.

More : https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/urban-gardening-climate-change-1.6030711


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Vacant space repurposed into urban farm in Calgary's south end*
August 3, 2021
CBC _Excerpt_

A community garden in Calgary's south end has come alive this season as part of a city initiative to connect vacant land with urban growers. 

The CalgaryEATS! Food Action Plan was approved by council in 2012, and part of its objective is to increase accessible, affordable and local food production by activating vacant, underutilized city land for urban farming.

It partners the city with non-profits to find and develop spaces for agriculture. It aims to benefit communities through engagement, education and donations to food banks.

More : https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-city-urban-farm-auburn-bay-1.6128157


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## ckh5 (Sep 30, 2013)

We have this urban farming program in Syracuse NY: Syracuse Grows | Community Gardening & Urban Agriculture


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## hkskyline (Sep 13, 2002)

* Meet The High-Tech Urban Farmer Growing Vegetables Inside Hong Kong’s Skyscrapers *
Forbes _Excerpt_
May 23, 2022

In early February, residents of Hong Kong—an Asian financial hub home to 7.4 million people—faced a shortage of fresh food. Shelves stocking vegetables and the like were empty across supermarkets in the city as strict Covid-19 controls across the border in mainland China badly disrupted fresh food supplies.

Hong Kong, a densely populated city where agriculture space is limited, is almost totally dependent on the outside world for its food supply. More than 90% of the skyscraper-studded city’s food, especially fresh produce like vegetables, is imported, mostly from mainland China. “During the pandemic, we all noticed that the productivity of locally grown vegetables is very low,” says Gordon Tam, cofounder and CEO of vertical farming company Farm66 in Hong Kong. “The social impact was huge.”

Tam estimates that only about 1.5% of vegetables in the city are locally produced. But he believes vertical farms like Farm66, with the help of modern technologies, such as IoT sensors, LED lights and robots, can bolster Hong Kong’s local food production—and export its know-how to other cities. “Vertical farming is a good solution because vegetables can be planted in cities,” says Tam in an interview at the company’s vertical farm in an industrial estate. “We can grow vegetables ourselves so that we don't have to rely on imports.”

More : Meet The High-Tech Urban Farmer Growing Vegetables Inside Hong Kong’s Skyscrapers


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