The urban farming explosion

[fishrose]

Originally Posted by CentralGrad258

I have a hard time reconciling this version of events to reality. In my experience, most American cities outside of a select few "superstar" cities have vast stretches of unused or deindustrialized land. I think an urban farm in some of those plots is better than letting the land law fallow or hope for some distant recovery. An acre here and there is not going to seriously effect the city's ability to attract residents, in fact our local urban farm http://www.greensgrow.org/farm/index.php is actually a big selling point to potential residents.

It's all about where the farms are located, and how they're implemented. There's nothing wrong with an acre here or there, you're right. But if farms were to planted on dozens of continuous blocks as many have suggested for Detroit, it would have a very negative effect on the region in the long term.

[pseudolus]

How many San Franciscans were let down by the utopian vision of myfarm.com? (me raising hand)

[M II A II R II K]

http://www.bkfarmyards.com/

bk farmyards is a Brooklyn based decentralized farming network providing local food to reduce the city’s reliance on fossil fuels and offering local jobs to boost the economy. We are seeking partnerships with developers willing to temporarily transform their idle land to farmyard; homeowners who want to eat from their own yard; and city agencies holding under-utilized land. Our strategy is to stay nimble, growing food between the cracks of urban development.

bk farmyards mission is to bring communities together around the dinner table: our educational agenda includes eating seasonally, growing food locally, storing and preparing food, species biodiversity, and food democracy. We aim to build a local food network that enhances the health of our culture, our people, and our environment.

http://www.bkfarmyards.com/map/map.html

Video Link

[M II A II R II K]

A Self-Sustaining Urban Fish Farm


April 26, 2010

By Phil Fairbanks

Read More: http://www.buffalonews.com/2010/04/2...od-system.html

On a sunny weekday morning, with a half-dozen Buffalo police cars, lights flashing, answering a call just a few blocks away, Jesse Meeder walked around his West Side greenhouse, talking anxiously about his first-ever harvest. The young urban farmer, seemingly oblivious to the cops down the street, pointed proudly to his watercress, parsley and basil — and the 2,000 tilapia swimming around inside.

Fresh fish being raised in Buffalo's inner city?

"My dream is to have several greenhouses," said Meeder, a self-taught fish farmer. "Of course, the ultimate goal is to change the food system and to show people: "This is something you can do.' " Ambitious goals for a lot of groups but not at the Massachusetts Avenue Project, where locally produced food that's both healthy and affordable is at the heart of its West Side mission.

It's a mission that will grow dramatically next month when the organization breaks ground on a greenhouse big enough to raise and harvest 30,000 fish a year. And not just tilapia. The plan is to introduce catfish and yellow perch to the menu of products being offered to local restaurants and neighborhood residents, many of them low-income families with little access to healthy food.

"We're definitely here because of those issues," Meeder said of the crime and poverty around him. "It's a great neighborhood — there are 30 different languages spoken here — and we want to invest in it and make it better." The first formal pitch for customers will come next month when Growing Green, MAP's urban agriculture and youth development arm, invites local chefs and restaurant owners to a taste test of sorts. "We have a very good local market," said Markets Manager Zoe Hollomon. "And that's because our fish are about as fresh as you can get. Straight from the West Side."

[M II A II R II K]

Urban farms herald green city 'revolution'


By Thair Shaikh



Read More: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/eu...ood/index.html

As the world's urban population continues to grow at a rapid rate, communities around the world are increasingly turning to "city agriculture" to produce cheap, locally grown fruit and vegetables. Among skyscrapers and housing estates, previously vacant lots are being used to produce millions of tons of organically grown food that experts say are "greener" and cheaper than commercially grown produce. But while many countries are in the early stages of their urban agriculture development, China, Japan and Cuba have had successful city farms for decades.

Cuba's model of environmentally friendly and sustainable urban agriculture has been an inspiration for numerous city projects around the world. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba's supplies of cheap oil suddenly dried up, plunging the country into a severe recession referred to as "the Special Period." Farming in Cuba until then had relied heavily on oil to drive tractors and other heavy machinery, so there was a fundamental reorganization of food production, leading to a boom in urban organic agriculture.

Today, Cuba's capital Havana, which has a population of just over 2 million, has about 200 city farms that grow lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, sweet potatoes, spinach, herbs and other crops that are sold cheaply in local markets. Wendy Emmett of the UK-based Cuba Organic Support Group, told CNN: "Cuba has been an inspiration, especially in the U.S. and the UK. They showed us what could be done when there is community will and a political will." A similar community-based initiative has just been launched in Germany's financial capital Frankfurt. Groups can lease land from start-up company Meine Ernte, which provides tools and even sows the seeds, although the lease holders have to take care of the crops.

[M II A II R II K]

Agriculture is the New Golf: Rethinking Suburban Communities


April 18, 2010

Allison Arieff

Read More: http://www.good.is/post/agriculture-...n-communities/

It has often been observed that suburbia is a place where the developer displaces animals and rips out trees, and then names the streets after them. Whether you see that as destruction or reinvention, the tendency is nothing new. All of America was built on this sort of land transformation, some of it smart, much of it not. But the devastation wrought from decades of intervention by heavy equipment has manifested itself in a range of ills from economic collapse to loss of biodiversity. So today we’re faced with a strange scenario: Our relentless pursuit of the American Dream now has us scrambling for a return to Eden.

“We’re at a watershed in terms of reaching the limits of sustainability both environmentally [and in] time and expense,” says June Williamson, coauthor with Ellen Dunham-Jones of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs. “There are many dynamics pushing and encouraging a rethinking of our development patterns. The opportunity is there to reshape those settings in a way that will reflect changing demographics, recognize climate change, and acknowledge the need for new suburban development patterns.”

Look at Google Maps images of any platted but unbuilt or unfinished subdivision—all remaining evidence of what stood before erased, replaced with flattened house lots with nothing on them, paved streets including curvy cul-de-sacs, and even street signs, but no signs of life—and you’ll understand the impulse to do things differently. According the American Farmland Trust, more than 6 million acres of agricultural land in the United States were lost to development between 1992 and 1997 alone. Consider that many of those acres were lost to developments that never saw the light of day. Is it too late to restore that acreage? And is it possible that agriculture could be suburbia’s best hope?

Well, sort of. It’s not as if Orange County, California, despite its dire decline in home values, is going to revert back to acres of orange groves. But around the country, there’s a growing interest in looking at the ways agriculture might help retrofit ailing suburbs and cities, and offer an alternative way of thinking about new developments. Growing Power, run by the urban farming expert, MacArthur Foundation “genius,” and GOOD 100 honoree Will Allen, has already demonstrated the potential of urban (and suburban) farming with six greenhouses on nearly two acres of land in Milwaukee as well as a 40-acre rural farm 45 minutes away in the suburb of Merton. And in Detroit, the entrepreneur John Hantz is moving forward with an ambitious but controversial plan to build the world’s largest urban farm—and with it, create green jobs, help the environment, and supply food to the region.

There is new movement to plan suburban communities around farms instead of golf courses. Can it catch on?

[brickell]

New Ruralism has been a going on for a while now. There's nothing new about it and from what I've seen it's mostly geared to horse hobbyist and nature lovers.

I've brought this up before, but farms don't make the best neighbors. Let's leave them out there by themselves.

[M II A II R II K]

Food Among the Ruins: Should Detroit Be Converted Into a Farming Mecca?


April 30, 2010

By Mark Dowie

Read More: http://www.alternet.org/vision/14666...a_?page=entire

Were I an aspiring farmer in search of fertile land to buy and plow, I would seriously consider moving to Detroit. There is open land, fertile soil, ample water, willing labor, and a desperate demand for decent food. And there is plenty of community will behind the idea of turning the capital of American industry into an agrarian paradise. In fact, of all the cities in the world, Detroit may be best positioned to become the world’s first one hundred percent food self-sufficient city.

- Right now, Detroit is as close as any city in America to becoming a food desert, not just another metropolis like Chicago, Philadelphia, or Cleveland with a bunch of small- and medium-sized food deserts scattered about, but nearly a full-scale, citywide food desert. (A food desert is defined by those who study them as a locality from which healthy food is more than twice as far away as unhealthy food, or where the distance to a bag of potato chips is half the distance to a head of lettuce.) About 80 percent of the residents of Detroit buy their food at the one thousand convenience stores, party stores, liquor stores, and gas stations in the city. There is such a dire shortage of protein in the city that Glemie Dean Beasley, a seventy-year-old retired truck driver, is able to augment his Social Security by selling raccoon carcasses (twelve dollars a piece, serves a family of four) from animals he has treed and shot at undisclosed hunting grounds around the city. Pelts are ten dollars each. Pheasants are also abundant in the city and are occasionally harvested for dinner.

- One obvious solution is to grow their own, and the urban backyard garden boom that is sweeping the nation has caught hold in Detroit, particularly in neighborhoods recently settled by immigrants from agrarian cultures of Laos and Bangladesh, who are almost certain to become major players in an agrarian Detroit. Add to that the five hundred or so twenty-by-twenty-foot community plots and a handful of three- to ten-acre farms cultured by church and non-profit groups, and during its four-month growing season, Detroit is producing somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of its food supply inside city limits—more than most American cities, but nowhere near enough to allay the food desert problem. About 3 percent of the groceries sold at the Eastern Market are homegrown; the rest are brought into Detroit by a handful of peri-urban farmers and about one hundred and fifty freelance food dealers who buy their produce from Michigan farms between thirty and one hundred miles from the city and truck it into the market.

- There are also proposals on the mayor’s desk to rezone vast sections A-something (“A” for agriculture), and a proposed master plan that would move the few people residing in lonely, besotted neighborhoods into Detroit’s nine loosely defined villages and turn the rest of the city into open farmland. An American Institute of Architects panel concludes that all Detroit’s residents could fit comfortably in fifty square miles of land. Much of the remaining ninety square miles could be farmed. Were that to happen, and a substantial investment was made in greenhouses, vertical farms, and aquaponic systems, Detroit could be producing protein and fibre 365 days a year and soon become the first and only city in the world to produce close to 100 percent of its food supply within its city limits. No semis hauling groceries, no out-of-town truck farmers, no food dealers. And no chain stores need move back. Everything eaten in the city could be grown in the city and distributed to locally owned and operated stores and co-ops. I met no one in Detroit who believed that was impossible, but only a few who believed it would happen. It could, but not without a lot of political and community will.

- Detroit now offers America a perfect place to redefine urban economics, moving away from the totally paved, heavy-industrial factory-town model to a resilient, holistic, economically diverse, self-sufficient, intensely green, rural/urban community—and in doing so become the first modern American city where agriculture, while perhaps not the largest, is the most vital industry.

[pseudolus]

From yesterday's SF Chronicle, about a new 'urban farm' just a few blocks from my house:


Little City Gardens makes a go of urban agriculture in San Francisco

Can two people earn a living wage growing and selling produce within the city of San Francisco? This is the question that Brooke Budner and Caitlyn Galloway set out to answer when they launched Little City Gardens in the Mission District of San Francisco.



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...itygarden.DTL&

[M II A II R II K]

Fish Are Jumping—Off Assembly Line


MAY 14, 2010

By JOE BARRETT



Read More: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000..._WSJ_US_News_5

MILWAUKEE—Josh Fraundorf remembers when yellow perch were so plentiful in Lake Michigan that people pulled out all they could eat with just a bamboo pole and some worms. Now, they have to come to places like this old factory south of downtown. With the lake's population of wild perch decimated, Mr. Fraundorf is helping the fish make an unlikely comeback, raising about 80,000 yellow perch and tilapia in tanks inside a cavernous former crane factory that sat empty for decades.

That's not all the factory produces. Stacked over the 10 four-foot deep tanks are hydroponic planting beds lit by lamps. The fish waste produces ammonia that microorganisms convert into food for lettuce and other plants, cleaning the water for the fish. "It's like an indoor wetlands," said Mr. Fraundorf, 35 years old, who co-founded Sweet Water Organics Inc. with James Godsil, his partner in a separate roofing and construction business. Yellow perch have dark stripes and grow up to 12 inches in the wild. In Milwaukee, the firm, sweet fish is usually served battered and fried with German potato salad, rye bread and beer.

Perch once dominated Friday fish fries, a Midwest tradition especially prominent in this heavily Catholic city. But the perch population in Lake Michigan collapsed in the mid-1990s, partly because of the proliferation of zebra mussels. The voracious mussels, which hitchhiked to the lake in the hulls of ocean-going ships, choked off the food supply for baby perch. In 1996, Wisconsin joined other Lake Michigan states in halting commercial fishing for perch. Commercial fishermen caught 7.9 million pounds of perch in the other Great Lakes in 2005, compared with 18.1 million pounds in 1980, according to the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. While efforts to help the perch in the lakes continue, entrepreneurs are trying to revive the fish on shore, in part because it can command a hefty $16 a pound.

[sirrob]

Detroit could become THE leader in the "Green Revolution" like it was with the Industrial Revolution. It just needs the right city and state leaders in place to make it happen.

[brickell]

By farming?
Wouldn't being green necessitate building up the city, implementing mass transit and reducing consumption?

Organic,locally sourced arugula is fine if that's what you're into. I'm sure the suburban soccer moms and new age hipsters love it, but there's a lot more to being "green".

[pico44]

Originally Posted by brickell

Wouldn't being green necessitate building up the city, implementing mass transit and reducing consumption?

Oh. My. God. You just figured it out. You just figured out how to save detroit. They should just build it up and implement mass transit. You're such a genius! Where were you when detroit started to decline 40 years ago?

So let me get this straight, you're plan consists of several simple steps:


1. ????

2. Build city up

3. ????

4. Implement mass transit

5. Prosper

Lets get the word out there!

[trvlr70]

Buldoze the most blighted, beyond repair neighborhoods and make a nice golf course. They tend to make money and the grounds can revert back easily if the city ever recovers. Farms would be a great idea as well.

[brickell]

Originally Posted by pico44

Oh. My. God. You just figured it out. You just figured out how to save detroit. They should just build it up and implement mass transit. You're such a genius! Where were you when detroit started to decline 40 years ago?

So let me get this straight, you're plan consists of several simple steps:


1. ????

2. Build city up

3. ????

4. Implement mass transit

5. Prosper

Lets get the word out there!

I'm not the one trying to turn Detroit into a "green leader".

[Jasonhouse]

Originally Posted by pico44

Oh. My. God. You just figured it out. You just figured out how to save detroit. They should just build it up and implement mass transit. You're such a genius! Where were you when detroit started to decline 40 years ago?

So let me get this straight, you're plan consists of several simple steps:


1. ????

2. Build city up

3. ????

4. Implement mass transit

5. Prosper

Lets get the word out there!

Please stop trolling threads in this manner. Your posts (not this one. I found this one on my own while reviewing your post history) have been reported several times for being needlessly antagonistic of others. Further issues are going to result in disciplinary action.

[M II A II R II K]

Little Green Thumbs


05.17.2010



Read More: http://www.archpaper.com/e-board_rev.asp?News_ID=4532

The Fifth Street Farm Project has it all: It addresses childhood obesity, stormwater runoff, and climate change. Conceived by a grassroots organization of teachers, parents, and green-roof advocates, the project’s plan calls for a roof farm atop the Robert Simon Complex, a massive public school building on the Lower East Side that houses elementary schools P.S. 64 and the Earth School, as well as the Tompkins Square Middle School.

Construction is due to commence this fall, and by next spring, school children should be planting vegetables on a 3,000-square-foot roof deck with spectacular views of the surrounding neighborhood. This experiment in urban agriculture, led by the World Trade Center Memorial designer Michael Arad, will be integrated into existing school courses on science and nutrition. The children will also have the opportunity to eat the food grown on the roof in their school cafeteria.

There is a lot of discussion about roof farms taking place at public schools throughout Manhattan. At several schools, parent groups are developing proposals and hiring architects. In addition to the schools at the Robert Simon Complex, plans are moving forward for roof farms atop P.S. 6 on the Upper East Side and at P.S. 41 on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village.

The Fifth Street Farm Project, located atop the Robert Simon school complex on the Lower East Side, is the latest student farm to arrive in the city.

[sirrob]

Originally Posted by brickell

By farming?
Wouldn't being green necessitate building up the city, implementing mass transit and reducing consumption?

Organic,locally sourced arugula is fine if that's what you're into. I'm sure the suburban soccer moms and new age hipsters love it, but there's a lot more to being "green".

Of course there's more to it. I'm not just talking about urban farms. It's just a part of "being green". The opportunities to build upon that are endless. But I guess most people would rather just leave all those large areas with the burnt out houses and empty lots, as-is. Or maybe they're hoping the auto industry will come back full swing like the way it was in the 50/60's and will become Detroit 2.0.

[M II A II R II K]

Delray Beach man wants city to allow backyard chickens


May 20, 2010

By Maria Herrera

Read More: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/pal...445,full.story

If Pablo del Real has his way, a morning omelet wouldn't involve a trip to the grocery store. He'd get the eggs from his backyard. Del Real wants the city of Delray Beach to change its livestock ordinance to allow residents to have a small number of chickens that could produce eggs for food. "There is certainly a trend," del Real said of keeping backyard fowl. "I'd like the city to recognize the uniqueness of chickens. Right now the code has them lumped in with cattle, goats, sheep and pigs. "If you can do it in major cities, why not Delray Beach?"

Keeping chickens for pets or as an egg source is becoming increasingly popular as the sustainable food movement gains momentum. People are returning to basics, planting backyard vegetable gardens, shopping at local organic farmers markets, gathering rainwater for irrigation, and overall becoming more aware of the resources they use and where they come from. Just how many people keep chickens in their backyards nationwide is hard to track, said Brigid McCrea, a small-flock expert and poultry specialist who is an assistant professor at Delaware State University.

McCrea said she's constantly fielding calls from cities as far as British Columbia, Canada, asking "scientific facts" before officials move to approve or deny changes in livestock ordinances. She said a workshop about backyard chicken-keeping last year brought 325 people to Delaware from as far as New York. Seattle, Baltimore, San Francisco and Chicago all allow a small number of backyard chickens. In South Florida, Miami allows up to 15 chickens in areas zoned nonresidential. "This is big and is not a fad," McCrea said. "And cities are beginning to recognize people want to go green by using a flock of chickens to help with waste management and have a wonderful byproduct, which is eggs, and know how the animals are being treated."

[M II A II R II K]

Why urban beekeeping is all the buzz


May. 19, 2010

Michael Posner



Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...56/?cmpid=rss1

The Paris Opera House has one on its roof. So does London’s famed food emporium, Fortnum and Mason. And the Obama White House recently added one to the historic South Lawn. This week, the Canadian Opera Company joined the rapidly growing urban bee phenomenon – installing two new honey bee hives on the roof of its home at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. “The planet is losing honey bees at an alarming rate,” explains the COC’s general director Alexander Neef, “and we are happy to provide a place for them.”

The Paris Opera House has one on its roof. So does London’s famed food emporium, Fortnum and Mason. And the Obama White House recently added one to the historic South Lawn. This week, the Canadian Opera Company joined the rapidly growing urban bee phenomenon – installing two new honey bee hives on the roof of its home at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. “The planet is losing honey bees at an alarming rate,” explains the COC’s general director Alexander Neef, “and we are happy to provide a place for them.”

There are several reasons. A principal goal is to help offset the effects of colony collapse disorder, a global epidemic that has caused the annual loss of some 30 per cent to 40 per cent of honey bees in many countries, including Canada. Although no specific cause has been identified, most scientists blame a combination of factors, including Varroa mites, insect diseases, exposure to pesticides and, possibly, cellphone radiation. Cities often provide a happier bee-scape for honey bees, because there are fewer pesticides being sprayed and a more diverse range of plants and flowers. Raising colonies of the Apis mellifera (honey bee) family also complements the rise of the locavore movement – those dedicated to sustainable ecologies and to eating only foods grown and distributed within a 160-kilometre radius.