Archive for the ‘Urban Farming’ Category

Mar27

Aquaponics: An Interview with Sweet Water Organics’ Matt Ray

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Nourishing the Planet’s Kimberlee Davies spoke recently with Matt Ray, the principal farmer for Sweet Water Organics, an aquaponics training organization in Milwaukee, about his experience in the field of aquaponics.

Sweet Water Organics uses aquaponics technology to grow food in downtown Milwaukee.

What is aquaponics? How did you become involved?

Aquaponics has been around for centuries. It was traditionally a technique in tropical climates, using floating bamboo rafts with vegetation in fresh water pools. This was simply the adaptation of agriculture to the tropics. The technique has become cutting edge over the last 20 years. We can adapt aquaponics to today’s geographies and culture.

Aquaponics is a blending of aquaculture (the raising of aquatic animals) and hydroponics (growing plants in water without soil). In aquaponics, aquatic animals serve as the nutrition base for the plants. The great thing about aquaponics is that it is a closed system; it doesn’t have to flow in one pipe and out of another.

I saw it begin to pop up in the late 1980s, starting with the Virgin Islands, Australia, and even Asia, where fish are grown symbiotically with rice paddies. Forward-thinking farmers and activists began to develop the practice in non-tropical climates, and academics began researching the field. Twenty years later, we have a lot more people doing it. Scientific data has emerged to support the spread and success of this technique. It’s possible to take the nuts and bolts and adapt them to wherever you are. It’s going to work and it can be replicated.

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Posted by Laura Reynolds in Agriculture, Fish, Food, Gardening, Innovation, Interview, Local, organic, Sustainable, Technology, Urban Farming, Water

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Jan24

Documentary Sheds New Light on Thriving Community Gardens

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By Carol Dreibelbis

There are an estimated 18,000 community gardens in the United States and Canada, according to the group Why Hunger, and thousands more worldwide. Designing Healthy Communities, a project of the nonprofit Media Policy Center, notes that community gardens “can play a significant role in enhancing the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being necessary to build healthy and socially sustainable communities.”

Naasir Ali participates in the “Growing Food…Growing Together” program at the Washington Youth Garden. (Photo credit: Cintia Cabib)

In her 2011 documentary A Community of Gardeners, filmmaker Cintia Cabib offers an intimate look at the vital role that seven community gardens play in Washington, D.C.

At Common Good City Farm, a work-exchange program enables local residents to volunteer in the garden in exchange for fresh produce. One volunteer explains just how important the garden is for her: “The garden plays a big role in my life because it feeds me. I live out of this garden: whatever I get every Wednesday, that’s what feeds me for the whole week.”

At Fort Stevens Community Garden, an organic garden run by the National Park Service, immigrant gardeners from around the world grow fruits and vegetables that are native to their homelands in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The Park Service also provides land and water for the Melvin Hazen Community Garden, which was once a World War II victory garden.

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Posted by Laura Reynolds in Agriculture, Children, Development, Diet, Education, Food, Gardening, Local, organic, Sustainable, Urban Farming

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Jan17

Urban Agriculture Helps Combat Hunger in India’s Slums

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By Catherine Ward

In 2010, nearly 830 million people around the world lived in slums, up from 777 million in the year 2000, according to the United Nations.

Back street of an Indian slum. (Photo credit: http://shabanaadam.wordpress.com/)

The New York Times describes Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, as a “cliché of Indian misery,” with approximately 1 million slum dwellers living on 8 percent of the land in the western city of Mumbai. Although Dharavi lacks sufficient infrastructure to provide sewerage, water, electricity, or housing for residents, this dense community in the heart of India’s financial capital has a thriving informal economy with an annual economic output of up to US$1 billion.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development observes that “slum dwellers may be at the bottom of the urban heap, but most are better off than their rural counterparts.” Urban centers, both in India and around the world, offer economic opportunities that rural areas do not. For this reason, some migrants voluntarily move to slums in hopes of learning new skills, setting up businesses, and sending their children to school.

India has a massive population of 1.2 billion, second only to China, and is home to an estimated 93 million slum dwellers. According to WaterAid, the country’s slum population has doubled in the past two decades. Slum communities can be hotspots for hunger, with an estimated 36 percent of slum children in Mumbai malnourished, reports the website Urb.im.

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Posted by Laura Reynolds in Agriculture, Culture, Development, Food Security, India, Poverty, Sanitation, Urban Farming

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Dec04

Supporting Climate-Friendly Food Production

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By Laura Reynolds

This summer, record temperatures and limited rainfall parched vast areas of U.S. cropland, and with Earth’s surface air temperature projected to rise 0.69 degrees Celsius by 2030, global food production will be even more unpredictable. Although agriculture is a major driver of human-caused climate change, contributing an estimated 25 to 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, when done sustainably it can be an important key to mitigating climate change.

Agroforestry is one practice that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while adapting to the effects of climate change. (Photo credit: Christensen Fund)

Because of its reliance on healthy soil, adequate water, and a delicate balance of gases such as carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, farming is the human endeavor most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. But agriculture’s strong interrelationships with both climatic and environmental variables also make it a significant player in reducing climate-altering emissions as well as helping the world adapt to the realities of a warming planet.

The good news is that agriculture can hold an important key to mitigating climate change. Practices such as using animal manure rather than artificial fertilizer, planting trees on farms to reduce soil erosion and sequester carbon, and growing food in cities all hold huge potential for reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the global agricultural sector could potentially reduce and remove 80 to 88 percent of the carbon dioxide that it currently emits. By adopting more-sustainable approaches, small-scale agriculture in developing countries has the potential to contribute 70 percent of agriculture’s global mitigation of climate change. And many of these innovations have the potential to be replicated, adapted, and scaled up for application on larger farms, helping to improve water availability, increase diversity, and improve soil quality, as well as mitigate climate change. (more…)

Posted by Laura Reynolds in Agriculture, Biodiversity, carbon, Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change, Conservation, Drought, Environment, Erosion, Farmers, Indigenous, Indigenous Vegetables, Irrigation, Land, Livestock, organic, Permaculture, Research, Soil, Sustainable, Trees, Urban Farming, Water

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Oct04

Toronto Declaration Calls on City Leaders to Get Growing

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By Charlotte Litjens

At an urban agriculture summit in Toronto this August, a diverse group of advocates produced the world’s first declaration for integrating food production into the urban environment: the Toronto Declaration. Calling for “good food, green buildings, and great cities growing together,” the declaration not only proclaims the intentions of summit-goers from around the world, but also passionately calls upon city officials and others to join them in action to make agriculture a legitimate part of urban development.

The Toronto Declaration calls for “good food, green buildings, and great cities growing together” (Photo credit: FoodShare Toronto)

“Too many governments still divide and separate food, water, shelter, health, energy, education, waste, transit, community, and economics,” the declaration reads. The document explained that when cities are developing their infrastructure, they need to engineer more creative space for growing food. By creating space for agriculture within green buildings and urban landscaping, city dwellers will benefit from both an enhanced quality of life and food security. Not only is food produced in urban agriculture-scapes, but these green spaces also provide what economists call “ecosystem services,” which include the absorption of greenhouse gases and support for species like honeybees and other pollinators. The declaration also discusses the potential of urban agriculture to create jobs, educate youth, improve public health, and empower communities.

To promote this “growth industry of the future,” the declaration proposes several action items for cities, which include the following:

  1. Official food charters, plans and food policy councils;
  2. Urban agriculture offices within local and regional governments;
  3. Green roof laws and codes;
  4. Government support for food-producing buildings and landscapes;
  5. Scaling-up of nutrient recycling from waste streams;
  6. Provide food-based curriculum to all youth.

These actions items were developed during the closing plenary session of the Urban Agriculture Summit on August 19 of this year, which welcomed participants from around the world and featured Growing Power’s Will Allen, Nourishing the Planet columnist and urban agriculture expert Wayne Roberts, and Luc Mugeot from The International Development Research Center. The Declaration’s authors include representatives from the meal-providing NGO Foodshare, the Toronto Food Policy Council, Ryerson University, and Roberts.

How can we advance the action plan of the Toronto Declaration in cities around the world? Is it already taking place in some cities?

Charlotte Litjens is a Food and Agriculture Research Intern with The Worldwatch Institute.

To purchase State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet please click HERE.

Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Agriculture, Culture, Economy, Environment, Food, Innovation, Local, Policy, Urban Farming

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Sep25

Five Tips for City Growers

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By Molly Redfield

Asphalt-strewn streets and blank-faced skyscrapers dominate city landscapes. But in recent years, cities have also become places where anything from rooftop pumpkin patches to herb-crowded windowsills flourish. With the right ingredients—healthy soil, enough sunlight, plenty of water, seeds, and, of course, the space to throw it all together—it seems as if urbanites can now grow a garden anywhere.

City gardeners must take into consideration uniquely urban concerns when growing food (Photo Credit: the Thrive Post)

But cities are still unique growing environments. Tall buildings can shade out the sun and block or redirect wind. Heavy metals or other pollutants may contaminate the soil. And space in a densely populated city might be difficult to come by. These are some of the concerns, among others, that urban agriculturalists must keep in mind to grow healthy and productive gardens.

Today, Nourishing the Planet highlights five tips that are especially relevant to farmers, gardeners, and other agriculturalists growing gardens in cities around the world.

Soil:Because many cities have a past of rapid industrialization, or are currently industrializing, their soils can contain toxic heavy metal byproducts such as lead or cadmium. Plants uptake these heavy metals through their roots and then incorporate them into their vegetative tissue. When people consume fruits, vegetables, and other products grown in toxic soils they are, often unknowingly, exposed to these contaminants. Children are especially vulnerable to heavy metals and, according to the World Health Organization, a blood lead concentration in children exceeding 10 µg/dL (micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood) is associated with cognitive impairment.

Urban growers have several ways to avoid contaminated soil. One method consists of simply overlaying healthy soils, manure, and loam over contaminated city ground. Instead of completely replacing soils, though, another remedial effort includes mixing organic matter and limestone with city soils. By decreasing the acidity of soils and making lead bind more readily to non-living organic matter, this technique prevents heavy metal uptake in plants. In fact, treating and replacing a depth of only seven inches of city soils can effectively protect the root layer of most common garden plants from heavy metals like lead. Lastly, growing produce out of raised beds or containers with healthy soil is another way for farmers to be certain that their produce is safe.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Agriculture, Environment, Food, Gardening, Local, Sustainable, Urban Farming

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Aug08

The Greenhouse Effect: Plantagon’s Urban Vertical Farm

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By Edyth Parker

By 2050, Earth’s population will grow to 9 billion, according to the United Nations. This population growth, coupled with a rabid global urbanization rate, is increasing the pressure on urban areas’ infrastructure and services. Cities will need to find ways to adapt to absorb their new populations, who may become vulnerable to poverty and food and water shortages. One movement that looks to address urban poverty and food insecurity is vertical urban farming, and the Plantagon greenhouse in Sweden is one of the latest examples of this innovation.

The Plantagon Greenhouse: the future of urban framing? (Photo credit: Plantagon)

Plantagon officially broke ground on their vertical greenhouse in Linköping in 2012. The Plantagon Greenhouse Project aims to develop a sustainable vertical farm that can function by using excess heat and waste from the nearby industries for energy and fertilizer. For this, Plantagon has three different vertical farm models: the integrated greenhouse, the parasite, and the stand-alone greenhouse.

The integrated greenhouse is not just a greenhouse. In this model, there will be a façade system of panels on the exterior of the building that will host the cultivation boxes for the crops. The building itself will be used for other industrial purposes as well as urban farming, maximizing land productivity. The façade system will have a conveyor belt that moves each plant in and out of sunlight as the cultivation boxes are carried downward floor by floor.

These boxes or pots will be fitted with an ebb-and-flow irrigation mechanism as well as nutrient reservoirs. The crops will grow as they slowly move down the conveyor belt, arriving mature and ready for harvesting in the basement levels. Harvesting will be done using an automatic harvesting machine, after which the pots will be reused for a new generation of crops. The parasite model was created as a façade or exterior system that could be attached to existing buildings.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Agriculture, Climate Change, Environment, Food, Food Security, Gardening, Innovation, Urban Farming

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Aug07

Five Cities and the Organizations That are Making Them Green

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By Jenny Beth Dyess

Currently over half of the world’s 7 billion live in urban areas and according to the United Nations (UN), that number is expected to reach 65 percent by 2050. Dramatic population growth strains food resources and raises the challenge of feeding urban dwellers, particularly the poor. According to the UN, poverty is now growing faster in urban areas than in rural areas—there are currently 1 billion people living in urban slums.

Urban agriculture is cropping up in major cities worldwide. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

Today, Nourishing the Planet highlights five cities and the organizations that are helping these cities become food-sufficient.

1. Dar es Salaam: Over 45 percent of Tanzania’s 2.3 million unemployed people live in the commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. Studies by the Tanzanian Department of Rural Development and Regional Planning have found that there is significant reduction in poverty among residents who practice urban gardening in Dar es Salaam. In 2011, 68 percent of residents are growing food and raising livestock in the city. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, 90 percent of vegetables and 60 percent of the milk supply are produced locally.

Dar es Salaam in action: The Mikocheni Post Primary Vocational School is training students how to make a sustainable living and grow food in the city. The vocational school has become a learning center for waste separation, composting, and urban farming. The composting chambers are built by the masonry students, the cooking and carpentry students contribute organic waste to the compost, and all students take turns attending the gardens. The school also offers free training seminars on composting to the local community.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Africa, Agriculture, Cuba, Culture, Diet, Economy, Food, Food Security, Gardening, Infrastructure, Land, Local, South Africa, Sustainable, Tanzania, Urban Farming

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Aug04

City Orchard: Nourishing the Capital

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By Jameson Spivack

Bread for the City, a nonprofit group dedicated to providing food, medical care, and other necessities to D.C. residents who cannot afford them, recently began its newest project, City Orchard. City Orchard is a program that grows fruits and vegetables, which are then used to stock the shelves of Bread for the City’s food pantry. Whereas most food pantries rely on donations, Bread for the City is growing its own fresh, local produce, in partnership with Casey Trees, a group that protects the plant life in the D.C. area.

The City Orchard project grows fruits and vegetables for a D.C. food pantry. (Image credit: Bread for the City)

The project has already planted 200 apple, Asian pear, and persimmon trees and blueberry and blackberry bushes, and plans to have 800 more in the ground over the next year. Once they have matured in 2014, they will provide up to 40,000 lbs. of fruit per year, all of which will be given to the needy.

The idea for City Orchard came from Bread for the City’s nutrition consultant Sharon Feuer Gruber, who noticed there wasn’t enough fresh fruit on food pantry shelves. She then teamed up with Casey Trees, who had already been in talks with the University of the District of Columbia’s College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES) about using some of their property to create a community garden.

Through a USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant, Bread for the City received the funding it needed to get the garden started. City Orchard will provide fruits and vegetables to Bread for the City’s “Glean for the City” project, which collects fresh, free surplus produce. It will then distribute the nutritious food to the hungry in D.C. through its food pantries.

The project also provides a place for both D.C. residents and Bread for the City clients to learn about nutrition, urban farming, and the benefits of local, nutritious food. Through programs like nutrition and cooking workshops, residents can become more knowledge about and involved in the food they are eating.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Agriculture, Culture, Diet, Food, Food Security, Funding, Health, Hunger, Local, Nutrition, Poverty, Seeds, Trees, Urban Farming

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May11

In Anticipation of the Brooklyn Food Conference: An Interview with Nancy Romer

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By Laura Reynolds

Name: Nancy Romer

Affiliation: Brooklyn Food Coalition

Bio: Nancy Romer is the General Coordinator at the Brooklyn Food Coalition and a psychology professor at City University of New York’s Brooklyn College. She was instrumental in organizing the first Brooklyn Food Conference in 2009, and established the Brooklyn Food Coalition in the same year after becoming inspired to transform the way people produce, distribute, and consume food.

Nancy Romer is the General Coordinator of the Brooklyn Food Coalition. (Photo credit: Encore.org)

The Brooklyn Food Coalition is hosting its annual Brooklyn Food Conference this Saturday, May 12, at the Brooklyn Technical High School. Over 5,000 people are expected to attend the conference, including the prominent speakers Vandana Shiva, world-renowned environmental activist; Lucas Benitez, Co-Director of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers; and several others. Events and workshops such as “The Future of New York City Food Policy” and “Faith and Feeding the Hungry” will run from 8:30am until 6pm. The conference will also feature cooking demonstrations, film screenings, kids’ activities, and an expo of non-profit and for-profit organizations.

With community gardens and farmers markets sprouting up all over the place lately, why do we still need events like the Brooklyn Food Conference?

We need the Brooklyn Food Conference, and other events that draw together all the actors working to reform the food system, because we need to change policy. We now have a range of activities, like farmers markets in certain neighborhoods, that can improve the lives of individuals or communities—but we still need far-reaching, major changes in policy that will spread these improvements across New York and the country. It is clear that the will to change policy is not going to come from the top; we need a heavy lift from the bottom to tell policymakers what we need and demand from our food systems, and the Brooklyn Food Conference is a major step in sending that message.

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Posted by Nourishing the Planet in Agriculture, Children, Cooperatives, CSA, Culture, Diet, Economy, Education, Events, Farmers, Food, Food Sovereignty, Gardening, Infrastructure, Land, Local, Meat, organic, Policy, Sustainable, Urban Farming, workers, Youth

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