Green Options » urban agriculture

Beehaus and Eglu Promote Urban Agriculture in Europe - Very Local Food!

Dave Harcourt — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:00:21 +0000

The scratching chickens that are found in and around many rural households provides cheap food at practically no cost - now its also happening in city and town houses in Europe and more recently the USA.

Bringing production to the household has no economy of scale but inputs including labour and part of the feed are essentially free. The reduction in transport and packaging cost have financial and environmental benefits.

Eggs from the Eglu

The Eglu is based on a plastic, waterproof box, where the hens shelter and lay their eggs. The box is attached to an enclosed run which can be placed on a lawn allowing the chickens to scratch for insects and grass. The run has a door to allow the hens a free range in the garden when its safe.

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Newsom Makes Eco News Again With Ambitious Sustainable Food Policy

Ryan Van Lenning — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:45:12 +0000

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently made waves in sustainable city news with the new mandatory recycling and composting initiative and yesterday proclaimed San Francisco as the epicenter of electric vehicle technology in the latest installment of what might be called the ’sustainability wars’ between San Francisco and Portland.

Continuing in that vein, Mayor Newsom yesterday issued an Executive Directive outlining San Francisco’s first comprehensive regional food policy. The press release reads:

“The stark reality is that hunger, food insecurity, and poor nutrition are pressing health issues, even in a city as rich and vibrant as San Francisco,” said Mayor Newsom. “From the alleviation of hunger, to the need to support local and sustainable agricultural practices, these recommendations form a comprehensive and strategic approach to addressing pressing needs in all sectors of the food system.”

In making the announcement, Newsom was joined by California Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura, representatives of the United State Department of Agriculture, Bay Area farmers, and members of local food advocacy groups such as Roots of Change at West Oakland Woods Farm, one of the several community urban gardens run by City Slicker Farms.

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Dervaes Family and Other Urban Homesteaders Remind Us of What We Can Accomplish

Adam Williams — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:59:58 +0000

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Spring is coming. In the Midwest, as in the other currently cold areas of the United States, that makes a difference.

As I think about expanding my own, as of yet, modest urban food and plant growing efforts, it’s a massive inspiration to review the work of the Dervaes family in Pasadena, Calif.

The family has popped up here and there on sustainablog.org in the past several months. You can listen to GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily’s conversation with them, or read about the family’s 100-Foot Diet Challenge, as posted by sustainablogger Brian Baughan last month.

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New Cities Join The Urban Chicken Movement

Meg Hamill — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:55:42 +0000

Across the country, cities are passing new laws to allow backyard chickens.

Cities across the country have shown new leniency in the urban chicken arena. Ann Arbor, Michigan, South Portland, Maine and Fort Collins Colorado, have all voted in the past year to allow backyard chickens. They join the growing number of U.S. cities to make legal the raising of poultry in the backyard.

Illegal or not, city chicken flocks are more popular than ever.

“It’s no longer something kinky or interesting,” said Jac Smit, president of the Urban Agriculture Network. “The ‘chicken underground’ has really spread so widely and has so much support.”

Though some worry that backyard chickens might carry and transmit avian flu, advocates of urban chicken farming claim that farming poultry on a small scale presents less of a risk of disease than large-scale production.

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The Newest Hedge Against Industrial Food, Bad Economy? Backyard Chickens

Shirley Siluk Gregory — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:39:40 +0000

I’ve written before about communities in the U.S. that have changed their laws to allow homeowners to keep chickens in their backyards. Now I’ve found some great resources for those in the pro-poultry movement,which a new report from the Worldwatch Institute describes as an underground “urban chicken” movement sweeping across the U.S:

“It’s no longer something kinky or interesting,” Jac Smit, president of the Urban Agriculture Network, tells Worldwatch writer Ben Block. “The ‘chicken underground’ has really spread so widely and has so much support.”

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Organic Grow Box: Grow Food Anywhere! Even on Your Fire Escape.

Bryan Luukinen — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:07:47 +0000

Using a nifty technique called sub-irrigation, the folks over at Inside Urban Green have been growing all sorts of things, including two tomato plants that yield a half-pint a day, in a Rubbermaid container, or grow box. They’re doing so while conserving water and taking up very little space.

Anywhere there is sun, you too can have fresh tomatoes, basil, eggplant, radicchio, sunflowers, whatever your heart desires, for less than the price of ten* local, organic heirloom tomatoes at your local farmer’s market. And it’s organic if you want it to be. And please believe it’s local. And it’s damn convenient if you ask me.

Though their specific technique involves Rubbermaid and polystyrene, there are a number of different ways to put together sub-irrigation, or self-watering pots. Learn how after the break.

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Urban Farming With a Twist: No Labor Required!

Paul Smith — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:08:55 +0000

Living in the city, it’s natural that your thoughts may turn at one point or another to daydreaming about having your own produce generating garden. But then they just as quickly get tossed in the mental recycling bin as an impossibility. Or maybe not, but with your erratic schedule, it sits there, limping along. Maybe you’ve been wanting to participate in an urban farm or a community garden , but there again, your life gets in the way. My Farm in San Francisco has come up with a solution: They partner with you to cultivate a specified plot of land in your own yard, from as small as 4′ by 4′ to as big as your whole yard. And the deal maker? You don’t have to do any gardening yourself!

My Farm does all the work, and depending on how much your garden produces, you can get a box of goodies weekly, and also have My Farm chefs make a fresh food feast out of what you and others produce. And what if you don’t have a back yard? The garden’s collective harvest exceeds the needs of the garden owners, so My Farm provides CSA style veggie boxes as well.

While this is all a lovely idea, their intention here is beyond that.

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Growing New Hope for Refugees

Beth Bader — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:29:54 +0000

A tough row to hoe. The old saying came to my mind immediately as I watched a woman working hard soil with hand tools. Each turn of the shovel was as likely to turn up construction debris as it did soil. Surrounding this agricultural vision, the landscape is anything but bucolic. The small urban farm is centered amidst some of Kansas City’s poorest of project housing.

Yet for this woman, the area is a considerable step up. She, like most of the other women farmers here, is from a refugee camp in Somalia. A place where armed guards stand by the few water taps to prevent fights among the refugees trying to secure enough drinking water for the day. Where the main food served is a tasteless gruel of corn and soy. As hard as it is for many of us to imagine, the refugee camps are places that make even this most desperate of American neighborhoods a source of hope.

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