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Inner-city children visit working farms in the UK
Nick Duerden, second left, and school friends plant a tree at Nethercott farm, Devon.
Nick Duerden recalls his first – and best – school trip to a farm run by writer Michael Morpurgo and his wife, Clare, who have given thousands of inner-city children a taste of nature since the 1970s
By Nick Duerden
The Guardian
12 May 2012
Excerpt:
I was 10 and it was my first school trip – my first time away from home. It was to Nethercott farm in Devon, where, our teachers promised us with a certain sinister relish that we would be working as farmers for a full week. We were city children, urban ones, with at least some of the attributes that such a term implies. We lived on council estates, mostly, and many of us had never seen animals that weren’t cats and dogs (and, out by the bins, rats), much less such wide-open spaces. We had no idea, consequently, what working as farmers would really entail. But, with the misplaced confidence typical of all 10-year-olds, we reckoned it would be a doddle. Bring it on.
My mother, though raised in Milan, was born in the former Yugoslavia, in a tiny village where all anyone did was toil the land. We visited once, a year before my farm trip, and stayed with distant relatives. I remember stout women with moustaches and muscles, who found much mirth in my ignorance about what a hoe was and quite how to use it, and thought me sweet when I refused to wring our imminent dinner’s neck – an unsuspecting chicken – much less pluck it afterwards.
Rouses Markets is the first grocer in the country to develop its own aeroponic urban farm on its own rooftop
Rouses Markets Creates Sustainable Aeroponic Rooftop Garden Above Downtown New Orleans Store
Press release
05/17/2012
New Orleans: The new rooftop garden on the Rouses Market in downtown New Orleans doesn’t look like your typical herb garden; but this isn’t your typical grocery store. Parsley, basil and cilantro are among the herbs the company is growing to package and sell on the building’s ground floor.
Rouses Markets is the first grocer in the country to develop its own aeroponic urban farm on its own rooftop, says managing partner Donny Rouse. And they could not have picked a more picturesque location. “The flat rooftop on this store is perfect for urban farming,” says Rouse. “And the view of downtown is postcard-perfect. I imagine we will do a lot of dinners up here on the farm.” Rouses Markets downtown store sits just blocks from the Superdome, French Quarter, and Mississippi River.
The vertical aeroponic Tower Garden(TM) uses water rather than soil, and allows you to grow up instead of out. It was developed by a former Disney greenhouse manager, and is used at Disney, the Chicago O’Hare Airport Eco-Farm and on the Manhattan rooftop of Bell Book & Candle restaurant. “This is very cutting edge for urban farming,” says Rouse. His company has aptly named the farm Roots on the Rooftop.
Chef Louis “Jack” Treuting, Rouses Culinary Director, first saw Roots on the Rooftop as a way to provide fresh herbs for the food Rouses chefs prepare, but quickly saw potential to expand the program to include retail. “I knew if our chefs wanted it, so would our customers.” Treuting worked with New Orleans-based A.M.P.S. on the Rouses system. “Aeroponics makes sense for the space,” said Treuting. “It is lighter than soil-based operations, and the towers recycle water and liquid nutrients through their own reservoirs, so they’re sustainable.”
Roots on the Rooftop will officially launch on May 31st, one day before New Orleans kicks off its second annual Eat Local Challenge. “The locavore challenge is to eat food grown within a 200 mile radius,” says Rouse. “In our case, we’re growing herbs less than 100 feet from our store.”
While this is Rouses Markets first foray into urban gardening, the company’s roots are planted in the local produce business. Anthony J. Rouse grew up working for his father’s produce shipping company, City Produce, before opening his first grocery store in 1960. “My grandfather was a farmer at heart,” says Rouse. “He would have loved everything about this.”
Rouses Markets is one of the 10 largest independent grocers in the United States. Owned and operated by a second and third generation of the Rouse family, the Louisiana-based company has 38 locations in two states, and employs over 5,400 team members. Rouses Markets has been consistently voted best supermarket and best place to work.
Urban farming is on the rise in Baltimore
Whitelock Community Farm Manager Elisa Lane (Far Left) and a group of neighborhood supporters display produce from the farm. Photo by Frank Klein.
Farm Alliance of Baltimore City has a current membership of about eight urban farms.
By Andrea Appleton
City Paper
May 16, 2012
Excerpt:
Urban farming is hotter than a home-grown habanero these days, and Baltimore’s abundant vacant lots are perfect for homesteaders. Small urban farms have proliferated recently, though city government has only just begun to streamline regulations governing them. Nearly a dozen—perhaps more—are already in operation. “Right now the people doing it are slightly crazy—you sort of have to be to do it,” says Maya Kosok, an Open Society Institute Community Fellow who this winter formed an umbrella organization called the Farm Alliance of Baltimore City (facebook.com/farmalliance), with a current membership of about eight urban farms. “It’s really hard. A lot of the resources aren’t in one place.”
The Alliance—through the auspices of local nonprofit Civic Works—is seeking to change that. It has two main goals: making urban farms in the city more viable and making sure the food they produce is more accessible to residents. Starting June 9, member farms will have a shared stand at the Waverly Farmers Market, and the organization is crafting a set of farm standards covering everything from soil quality to food handling. The collective approach also allows the farms to share equipment they otherwise could not afford, like an EBT/debit/credit machine, which accepts food stamps.
Kitchen Garden design, a winner in Italy
Winner of the national competition for the “1° Garden Festival-2012″ in Pordenone Italy
Excerpt from press release:
One of the most appreciated gardens by visitors and by specialists was called “IN THE HEART OF A CITY”, a project by the architects Sara Cosarini, Silvia De Anna, Gianluca Sanguigni with the agronomist Chiara Filippetto (surface nearly 180 squared meters).
Inspired by an ancient map of the Pordenone city (Bassi e Tosoni,1809), the garden looked at the memory and at the territory. As a miniature model wanted to quote the woods, the fields and the kitchengardens, the river and, as a secret room in the center, the city with its buildings, the main road, the squares and the ancient walls. Like a dedication to the city.
The Kitchengardens; On small banks there are lines of beautiful vegetables, with the name written on pottery labels. Pumpkins, cabbages, salad and giant onions, proud of the local farmers (Azienda Agricola Casara Marco e Azienda Agricola S.Q.S. Sr) caused hunger and even surprise.
The vegetable lines, with their drop watering implant (Tutor International) are divided by paths paved with metal circles and by white pebbles (Granulati Zandobbio) with big vases containing Olea europaea and cherry and apricot trees. Either vases, from metal barrels, and paving elements are leftovers from metal factories (DE ANNA Srl , DE ANNA AMBROGIO Snc and PORDENONESE ROTTAMI Srl.)
The landmark in the kitchengarden is the roofed counter, reminding one of a market, it is at the same time a portal and a welcoming point. (from specific project of the architects, realized by Gava Imballaggi from wooden pallets).
Another SOLEfood Urban Farm being built in Vancouver
Soiled is ‘hosed’ into the grow beds at SOULfood Farm.
A large urban farm on Vernon Drive near Terminal and Clark
Photos by Michael Levenston
We’ve linked to news reports about SOLEfood Farm’s exciting new development on the EXPO lands in Vancouver. SOLEfood is also building another large farm next to the busy cross streets of Clark Drive and Terminal Avenue in Vancouver.
After searching the area for some time, we discovered the site on Vernon Drive just under the Terminal overpass and watched an employee ‘hosing’ soil into the unique grow beds built on pallets. The pallets can be moved with a forklift if the farm needs to change location.
This farm, along with the other sites being developed, makes this one of the largest urban farms in North America.
SOULfood’s grow beds.
Denbow brings the soil.
The soil comes from Eco-Soil (it’s their “Organic Veggie Mix”) and the ‘blown-in installation’ of the soil was contracted to Denbow.
Beetle-infested lawns a bonanza for urban farmers in Vancouver
Camil Dumont (left), head farmer, co-owner and co-founder of Inner City Farms, and intern Michelle Radley convert a chafer beetle-infested lawn to commercial agriculture in Vancouver on Monday. Photograph by: Glenn Baglo, PNG, Vancouver Sun.
Homeowners fed up with turf pests are turning over a new leaf by having their sod replaced with organic vegetable crops
By Randy Shore
Vancouver Sun
May 16, 2012
Excerpt:
Urban farmer Camil Dumont and his partners couldn’t be happier about the chafer beetle epidemic ravaging lawns across the city.
Dumont’s Inner City Farms – a partnership of five young farmers – is growing organic vegetable crops on 19 residential yards in Vancouver, most of which had been laid waste by voracious predators of chafer larvae. Skunks, raccoons and crows eat the grubs, but the animals have to tear up the sod to get at them and they have devastated thousands of lawns from New Westminster to east Vancouver.
The larvae prefer to feed on the fibrous roots of grass sod and are seldom a problem to vegetable gardens.
The produce the Inner City farmers grow feeds 62 families – as well as the five farmers and five interns – through the growing season and provides a variety of full-and part-time jobs. Inner City will also begin selling produce to a handful of restaurants this season and is a regular contributor to Oppenheimer Park Community Kitchen on the Downtown Eastside.
“I’m the biggest fan of the chafer beetle that there is,” said Dumont. “This is the beginning of the end of the front lawn.”
Residents embrace terrace farming in Kochi, India
Collecting cherry fruits from a terrace organic farm garden in Kochi. Photo by Dr Sageer.
Around 500 families will be provided with seedlings
The Times of India
May 15, 2012
Excerpt:
KOCHI: Giving thrust to organic farming and self-reliance in vegetable cultivation, a terrace vegetable farming initiative was inaugurated here on Monday.
Jointly organized by the Ernakulam District Agricultural Society, Horticultural Society, Ernakulam District Resident Association’s apex council, residents association apex council and the Vegetable and Fruit Promotion Council Keralam ( VFPCK), the programme was inaugurated by district collector Sheikh Pareeth.
Nearly 2,50,000 seedlings were distributed in the city. The aim is to distribute seedlings to 500 families before Friday. The second phase, which aims to bring one lakh families under the programme, will be implemented in Tripunithura, Kakkanad, Maradu, Kalamassery and Thrikkakara.
Organic methods will be used for this green endeavour, and though the primary experiment began in Kochi, people from Alappuzha and Thrissur can also join the initiative. As part of the drive, guidance will be given to people. There will also be a follow-up along with a 50% subsidy to select families. The implementation committee headed by the collector as chairman and the monitoring committee chaired by the joint director of agriculture and deputy director of horticulture will check the progress of the programme and make necessary amendments.
Urban agriculture behind the Altenheim senior residence in Forest Park, IL
Purple Leaf ‘mini-farm’ will sell fresh produce, flowers at farmers market
By Jean Lotus
Forest Park Review
5/15/2012
Excerpt:
Jessica Rinks, president and founder of the Forest Park Community Garden, is turning over a new leaf. She’s also turning over 12,000 square feet of sod behind the Altenheim senior residence and creating a pesticide-free vegetable and flower garden this summer – to sell produce at the Forest Park Farmers Market.
Rinks contracted with the village to lease a 240-by-50-foot sliver of Altenheim land to grow fresh produce for the market. She’s calling her venture Purple Leaf Farms.
“I’ve done market growing before but not with a lot of space,” Rinks said. The plot will be situated west of the buildings abutting the cemetery, and probably will not even be visible from Van Buren Avenue, she said.
“I want people to know that I’m going to be offering really local, pesticide-free stuff that’s grown in Forest Park.” When she says local, she means grown 100 yards from the market itself. That guarantees it’ll be fresh. “This is a little dream of mine,” she said.
The board voted Monday to lease the land for $300 plus 7 percent of Purple Leaf’s net profits.
In an unusual vote, Mayor Anthony Calderone voted with commissioners Chris Harris and Rory Hoskins to approve the vote 3 to 2. Commissioners Mark Hosty and Tom Mannix voted against the resolution.
Both opposing commissioners said they did not want to set a precedent of leasing portions of the Altenheim land because it might interfere with its sale. Hosty said allowing one lease was, “the camel under the tent.” He warned that Illinois real estate law prevented landlords from evicting farmers until all crops were harvested.
Thailand – Mapping urban farming
Urban agriculture forms close to a fifth of the world’s food production. Image by Stephane Brelivet/IRIN.
“Developing urban agriculture is crucial, given demographic trends.” – FAO
IRIN – Integrated Regional Information Networks
Humanitarian news and analysis, a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
BANGKOK, 16 May 2012
Excerpt:
A Geographical Information System (GIS) is being used to map vegetable production in the greater Bangkok region, seat of Thailand’s capital, to analyse how urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) contribute to food security in the city of more than 14 million.
“UPA produces around one-fifth of world’s food, with 800 million people involved in it. Our project aims at giving decision-makers more elements to harness this potential,” Yingyong Paisooksantivatana, the associate dean of the agriculture faculty at Kasetsart University in Bangkok, told IRIN.
The V-GIS (vegetable-GIS, or “veggies”,) project is a computerized information system that analyses data gathered on the ground and via satellite about crop species, production, land surface and workforce, launched in April 2012 by Kasetsart University and the German University of Freiburg, with funding from the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).
Researchers, urban planners and policymakers can access the information for free, said David Oberhuber, the GIZ country director in Thailand.
“The cultivation of fruits and vegetables inside Greater Bangkok is necessary for many inhabitants but very little is known about it,” said Narin Senapa, a research and training assistant at the Taiwan-based NGO, AVRDC-The World Vegetable Centre (AVRDC), previously known as Asian Vegetable Research Development Centre, which is participating in the project.
My Urban Farm – Chris Thoreau
Meet your Urban Farmer – Vancouver BC
By Shaun Mavronicolas
Creative/Technical Director
Fire and Light Media Group
Meet Chris Thoreau of My Urban Farm in this second short film in our Meet your Urban Farmer series. This is the extended interview version.
Chris is a creator, papa, urban grower of sunflower, pea, and buckwheat shoots which are then cut and pedaled to you within hours of harvest, bike-powered. Chris likes soil, compost, and microgreens.
From 2001 to 2006 Chris operated Influence Organics – a small, certified organic farm, on Vancouver Island. “Too much work”, he thought, “I’m going back to school”. He now holds a BSc. in Agroecology from UBC where his studies focused on soils, urban farming, and plant breeding. Chris still works too much, but that’s ok.
Rooftop education program in São Paulo, Brazil
15 beds, each 15 feet in length. In Portuguese.
A salada vem do telhado
Quer umas verduras? Vá buscar lá no telhado. O agrônomo Marcos Victorino, vem desenvolvendo projetos de hortas sobre telhas em espaços pouco valorizados da metrópole, como lajes, quintais e terrenos de imóveis comerciais e residenciais. As hortas foram plantadas em varios locais da cidade de São Paulo, como exemplo na foto acima, no campus da Faculdade Cantareira, no bairro do Belém-São Paulo Capital, sobre uma laje no telhado.
A produção das hortas trás a participação dos alunos de escolas, e tem como objetivo ajudar na mudaça do hábito alimentar a ao mesmo tempo servir de uma sala de aula em campo aberto para a construção do conhecimento e valorizar as atividades transdisciplinares, transformando a educação em um processo agradavél para o professor e para as crianças.
Esse é apenas um dos benefícios! Os vegetais vão direto da terra para o prato e conhecimento para a vida toda.
O método da produção nas telhas pode ser adaptado a qualquer espaço, desde que haja incidência de sol. As telhas da foto, por exemplo, têm quatro metros e sessenta centimetros de comprimento, e cada uma custa em torno de R$ 250,00. Fora isso, há ainda o custo com terra e sementes, normalmente encontradas a um preço acessível.
O que barateia a horta suspensa é que a própria telha garante uma impermeabilização adequada, até porque é feita para isso mesmo. O escoamento de água é feito diretamente para uma calha ou ralo que já exista no local.
Como hoje a tendência é a busca da sustentabilidade, estamos trabalhando no reaproveitamento da água drenada para retornar no sistema de irrigação.
The Changing Face of Urban Farming in London
Site for Vauxhall City Farm in 1978. Source: Vauxhall City Farm.
Urban farming is so much more than adorable animals and markets; it is a symbol of modern London’s approach to making sustainable food sources and community spaces.
By Idroma Montgomery
Sustainable Cities Collective
May 14, 2012
Idroma Montgomery is a freelance researcher and earned her M.A. in Culture, Globalisation and the City from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Excerpt:
Recently I’ve noticed that London embraces urban farming in a way I haven’t seen in other cities. Last month, I attended the Oxford-Cambridge Goat Race at Spitalfields City Farm in East London, a popular annual event that raises money for the farm. It is housed on a side street off the trendy and boisterous Brick Lane, and like many other city farms in London, offers a study in how to effectively utilize small amounts of urban space.
Spitalfields City Farm resides alongside a small park and a residential area, including council flats and primary schools. The sound of the Overground is ever present as trains rush past, visible behind the small playground and vegetable patches. The farm contains a small menagerie of rare breeds, a weekend community market, a greenhouse and small plots for non-professional gardening. It is a farm that is connected to its community and surroundings. Throughout the week, people can easily buy a range of eggs, plants and compost, as well as other locally made goods. Most of the other urban farms in the area follow a similar template, acting as hubs of community activity and knowledge exchange across central and greater London.
8 Extraordinary Greens by Jenna Spevack
An urban agricultural design project
Jenna has designed an efficient, sub-irrigated system for growing energy-packed plants (microgreens) in small, urban spaces. Her aim: to provide healthy greens to extraordinary people with ordinary incomes.
As an urban agricultural design project, she envisions a way to grow food in an anthropogenic landscape for all strata of citizens, but as an art project, she hopes to facilitate conversations about different values: convenience vs creative effort, regenerables vs disposables, neighbors vs strangers.
This participatory exhibition, which includes a series of “domestic microfarms” and a “farmstand”, explores, through interactions with gallery visitors, the value placed on food, community, and creative effort.
The Incredible, Edible Jenna Spevack: 8 Extraordinary GreensAmy Sung
Brooklyn Cleanplates
May 15, 2012
Excerpt:
Brooklyn-based Jenna Spevack is an artist, foodie and sustainability advocate who combines all of these passions simultaneously in her work.
Her ideas are conceived in a studio residing in a corner of a 45,000-square-foot space on the top floor of the seven-story building known as the Metropolitan Exchange, or MEx, on Flatbush Avenue. The building’s rich history boasts a variety of creative entrepreneurs who let their genius juices flow.
Countries visiting ‘City Farmer News’ in the past two and one half months
All coloured areas of this map (yellow, orange, red) show visiting countries where people are reading about urban agriculture.
‘City Farmer News’ is now averaging over 100,000 pages-views per month
Back in 1994 when City Farmer began publishing on the web, we were excited to find each new country viewing our site. The Internet was in its infancy and many countries had not hooked up. As the decade closed and we’d seen over 200 nations visit, we stopped watching these statistics.
But it’s interesting to see how things look today. The statistics on the following page, show page-views per country for the past two and a half months, from Feb 25 – May 13, 2012. The top countries visiting ‘City Farmer News’, with over 2000 views are: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Australia, Netherlands, Germany, Philippines, France, Italy, Republic of Korea, South Africa and Singapore.
‘City Farmer News’ is now averaging 100,000 pages views per months, which shows the explosion of interest in city farming.
Published 1850 – Woodbine Arbor; Or the little gardeners.
With the same care and industry which you have bestowed upon your garden, cultivate your minds, and raise in them the lovely and unfading flowers of piety and virtue.
Published by S. Babcock
New Haven
1850
Excerpts:
Let me tell you, my dear young reader, about a happy little family of three brothers and three sisters, who lived in a pleasant home, not far from the great city of New-York.
They had a complete set of garden tools, just the right size for such little folks: spades, hoes, rakes, watering-pots, and a wheelbarrow. I assure you they did not let these tools lie idle. Their garden, which produced flowers of all kinds, and many varieties of fruit, always presented a neat and workman-like appearance. The boys usually took upon themselves the most laborious part of the work, such as digging, and hoeing, and raking, while their sisters planted and transplanted, and watered, and pruned and trimmed, as occasion required.
“My dear little ones,” said Mr. Howard, “let the care which you have bestowed upon this sweet little spot, and the success which has attended your efforts, incite you to higher and nobler aims, which will most certainly be rewarded with higher and nobler results. With the same care and industry which you have bestowed upon your garden, cultivate your minds, and raise in them the lovely and unfading flowers of piety and virtue. Root out from them the noxious weeds of vice and evil habits, and train all your thoughts upward to your heavenly Father and Benefactor. Assist each other in this mental cultivation, with the same kindness which you have all shown in cultivating your garden; be ready at all rimes to share with the poor and needy the blessings which you enjoy, as freely as you have this day shared the productions of your garden with your parents. Then, like the plants which you have here cultivated, you will bear fruit and flowers to bless and cheer your fellow-men; and when you are removed from earth you will be transplanted in heaven, and blossom forever in the Garden of the Lord.”
Urban Vertical Farming: Generative System for a Vegetable Growing Infrastructure
Agriculture 2.0 designed by Appareil.
Evolo
May 2012
Excerpt:
It consists of a generative system for the design of the infrastructure for urban vertical farming, which can be used in any city of the world.
It is defined as a parametric model which necessitates three pieces of information as inputs to produce the local design for the vertical infrastructure:
The climatic conditions of the city in which it is to be inserted.
The area of the city, in m², to be covered in vegetable production.
The specific site on which the tower is to be constructed.
The building itself is composed of a support structure for plant incubators which travel down the full height of the tower. Their journey last the necessary time of the plants’ growth from crop to maturity. 45 days in the case of the lettuce. The incubator is an expandable 4-8 m² closed pool which contains a controlled environment collecting rain water, regulating sunlight, temperature, air quality and CO2 concentration. Although limited in terms of species, the agricultural production include most lightweight crops such as lettuce, tomato, peppers, eggplant, marrow… In its largest and most dense version, a single tower can reach a production rhythm of 42 kilograms of vegetables per day, which can cover a city area of approximately 1.5 km².
“Kitchengarden” Event 2006/7
From Patrizia Pozzi’s new book ‘Contemporary Landscape’
“Kitchengarden” Event in conjunction with the “Fuori Salone” Design Week in Milano (2006 and 2007)
An outdoor event held in Milan to accompany the Fuorisalone, “Kitchengarden” at the Vivaio Ingegnoli, was an installation by the architect Patrizia Pozzi with the scenografer Angelo Jelmini( Studio Aaahhhaaa) for the Villegiardini magazine, where the world of the garden connected with the world of the Kitchen.
With humour the garden was about food, the plants consumed as part of life. The result was a contemporary design, a “sustainable garden of delights”, where vegetables mixed with flowers.
As an ecological manifesto, promoting homegrown food, “Kitchengarden” was an example of a better world, an experiment designed to make people think about an environmentally compatible way of life, foster dialogue, and stimulate an intense relationship between us and nature, which needs to happen in our cities.
Contemporary Landscape – New tales and new visionsBy Patrizia Pozzi
a cura di/ edited by
Luca Molinari & Viapiranesi
Skira EditorePress
28th February 2012
An invitation to reflect on eco-friendly life to promote the dialogue between mankind and Nature.
Contemporary Landscape, curated by Luca Molinari for Skira Editore, is the new book by Patrizia Pozzi, now in bookshops.
In Italy, few texts deal with Landascape, the design of open spaces. More than 300 colour images tell us about Patrizia Pozzi’s thirty years experience, about her Studio and her team of consultants. This book highlights the new international trends, many of which are still unknown, in our country.
The book describes the key issues examined in this field so far, and at the same time, it is a reflection about what still can, and must be done. It is an educational guide for the younger generation approaching this field, to learn the trends of the near future.
Luca Molinari states, in his introduction, that in the last sixty years, there has been an unreasonable consumption of lands without fully assessing the potential impact that all of these decisions have had on the environment and on our lives. A sad example is the last terrible environmental disaster in Italy, in the Liguria Region, last October.
Biography:
Patrizia Pozzi is a landscape architect, she won several competitions for the design of public green areas and for the redevelopment of parks. She is interested in creating low impact environmental projects, through LEED certification standards, as well as, improvements for public and private works, landscape rehabilitation and redevelopment.
She teaches at the Master course, Outdoor Experience Design, at the Politecnico university of Milan. Her works are published in international books and magazines and were shown in the last three editions of the Barcelona European Landscape Biennial (the Rosa Barba Prize 2006, 2008, 2010).
In all her works, Patrizia Pozzi tends to make connection between daily life and Nature. With device and irony, the environment becomes malleable through a clever design, which implies a deep knowledge of Nature and the site, the atmosphere, wind, smell, colour, changing light, fog, botanic of course, and much more.
Will Allen’s new book
Forbes: The New Green Revolution: A Vision For Small-Scale Urban Farming
The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities
Gotham Books
Publication Date: May 10, 2012
Excerpt from Forbes magazine:
On three city acres in the heart of an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood, we grow enough food year-round in our greenhouses to feed ten thousand people. At our facility five blocks from Wisconsin’s largest public housing project, we are taking city waste that would otherwise end up in a landfill-beer mash, food waste, coffee grinds-and composting it to create healthy soil. We are feeding this compost to millions of worms, who create a natural fertilizer. We are using this rich soil to grow intensively more than 100 varieties of vegetables. We are also raising 100,000 fish in “aquaponics” systems that resemble natural streams.
With the help of a broad solar array and a bio-digester, we are also slowly eliminating our reliance on fossil fuel.
Most private investment and government support for agriculture in the past century went to making large-scale agriculture more “efficient.” I think our energies in this century should be devoted instead to making small-scale farming economically sustainable.
See “Urban Farming Pioneer Will Allen is Leading a Food Revolution” here.
Interview: Rob Stephenson on Capturing the Farms of New York City
Hell’s Kitchen Rooftop Farm, Manhattan 2011. Photo by Rob Stephenson.
New York photographer Rob Stephenson spent last year documenting farms in New York City.
By Ariella Cohen
Next American City
05/10/2012
Excerpt:
Whether on a Manhattan rooftop or in an abandoned lot in the Bronx, these experiments in urban agriculture hold the power to change the way the city feeds itself. His lush, large-format photographs tell the story of this growing movement to farm the five boroughs. We interviewed Stephenson about his series, From Roof to Table,which is now on display at The Storefront for Urban Innovation.
Next American City: What inspired you to create this series?
Stephenson: I received a fellowship from the Design Trust for Public Space. They are currently working on The Five Borough Farm initiative examining urban agriculture in the New York City and the work produced during my fellowship was meant in part to supplement that project.
NAC: How did you select sites to photograph?
Stephenson: I spent hours researching possible gardens and farms in the city using google maps. Most of the work was shot on an 8×10 camera and, combined with the tripod and film holders, the setup weighs around 30 pounds. Having a good idea of where I was going to shoot beforehand was really important.
