The BBC can tell you a bit more about the plan.

Mr Benn said: “Soil is one of the building blocks of life. Good quality soils are essential for a thriving farming industry, a sustainable food supply, and a healthy environment.
“Britain’s soils hold more carbon than all the trees in Europe’s forests – and their protection is critical if we are to successfully combat climate change.
“This is an important step in increasing the value we place on soil, and will safeguard this vital resource now and in the future.”
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) spokesman said: “England’s soil has suffered over the last 200 years from the impacts of intensive farming and industrial pollution, and today is under threat from erosion by wind and rain, a loss of organic matter and nutrients, and pressure for development.”

Alemany Farm is on the forefront of a renewed interest in urban farming nationwide, from Michelle Obama’s garden on the South Lawn of the White House to the proliferation of backyard chicken coops in New York City.

“I do think there is something like a movement afoot,” said Mark, 34, who chronicles environmental trends in the Earth Island Journal and can rattle off the names of urban farms from Milwaukee to Philadelphia.

In the grittiest, grimiest, most unlikely neighborhoods, in cities that include Los Angeles, Detroit, Baltimore and Miami, volunteer farmers are growing food that provides not only for those who work the gardens, but also for neighbors, food kitchens and school lunchrooms.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says there are thousands of community gardens throughout the country, though no one keeps an exact tally. Localharvest.org, a Web site about community gardens, lists more than 2,500 in its database.

In 2008, 557 new gardens signed up with LocalHarvest, according to the site. In the first two months of 2009, 300 more joined.

If cities needed to be redesigned to fit a changing environment, a design like this one for the city of San Francisco would not only be environmentally friendly, but this one is estimated to be able to feed over 7 million people.

The world of vertical farming could offer so much to the world as it concerns food, the environment, and our living space issues, as its estimated that we could have as many as 9 billion people on the planet by 2050. It will take a lot of planning, and a lot of energy, but if most of these buildings can be somewhat self energy sufficient, vertical farming could be viable within a relatively short period of time.

Designed for the Hudson Yard area of Manhattan, Eric Vergne’s Dystopian Farm aims to provide New York with a sustainable food source while creating a dynamic social space that integrates producers with consumers. Based upon the “material logic of plant mechanics”, the biomorphic skyscraper is modeled after the plant cells of ferns and provides space for farms, residential areas, and markets. These organic structures will harness systems such as airoponic watering, nutrient technology and controlled lighting and CO2 levels to meet the food demands of future populations.

Well, opinion formers such as Monty Don showing the way forward is always going to help. That’s why I really like the idea of the WHO Farm Project in the US. It’s an attempt to convince Barack Obama to also reach for the spade when he takes the keys to the White House in January and symbolically dig up the famous front lawn in order to toss in some vegetable seeds. It’s exactly what the Roosevelts did during the second world war and it helped to inspire over 20m so-called “Victory Gardens” across the US.

The garden at 10 Downing St isn’t blessed with quite as many rods of prime growing land, but Buckingham Palace, and other world-famous sites across the UK, certainly are. It’s not as if a decent veg patch needs to take up that much room. And just think of all those other wasted spaces where veg could easily be grown – parks, verges, roundabouts (OK, that might be a little dangerous) and all those monoculture corporate HQ landscaped gardens.

And if Gordon Brown, or any other leader, is thinking about their legacy, what would be better than knowing a vegetable variety has been named after you in recognition of your services to vegetable gardening. The problem for the grateful public would be deciding which vegetable should represent which leader …

Urban agriculture should not be confused with gardening, says Field. The main difference is the scale – the plots are larger – and the food is sold, not shared among a community or taken home at the end of the day by one gardener.

The harvest from FoodShare’s rooftop garden and greenhouses is included in its urban agriculture, as well as its bounty from city soil. And, as urban farmers such as Matchbox Garden and Seed Co. and The Cutting Veg begin to set up stalls at farmers’ markets, Toronto joins a larger movement that recognizes living in the city doesn’t mean you have to live miles from your food.

On Wednesday, Michael Ableman, the granddaddy of urban farming, is to speak at the Robert Rose lecture series From the Ground Up, a fundraiser for the Gardiner Museum. Ableman’s talk will be followed by a panel discussion on urban agriculture with Field from FoodShare, food columnist and author Elizabeth Driver and architect Stephen Teeple, who is designing community housing with green spaces for agriculture.

“What Michael did in his big garden in Los Angeles was to go from community garden to urban agriculture and he showed he could do it,” says Field.

This is no ordinary Welsh mountain farm – and yet, until five years ago, that is exactly what it was. In 2003, intensively grazed and in the aftermath of the foot and mouth outbreak, its 320 acres were unable to support the farming tenant. But when the estate owner decided the farm should be sold – possibly for holiday accommodation – the local community had different ideas. Residents from Tregarth, Rhiwlas and Mynydd Llandegai, the three villages that surround Moelyci, in the shadow of Snowdon, dug deep and bought it.

Around 200 people invested in the farm, forming a not-for-profit industrial and provident society (IPS), with the help of loans from Triodos Bank and ICOF, a community development finance institution that invests in areas of deprivation. It was the first venture of its kind in Wales and one of just a handful in the UK.

Five years on, Moelyci IPS supports around 16 jobs and has 500 community shareholders. The original loans have been replaced by a mortgage, and when that is paid off, in 18 years’ time, the farm and its mountain – much of which is now designated a site of special scientific interest and a special area of conservation – will really be theirs.

Because when you consider the fact that most people have never had the opportunity to watch tens of thousands of insects working together towards a positive, natural result I think it becomes obvious the kind of impression it will leave. And a lasting impression provides their teachers with a great opportunity to teach math, art, literature, social studies and science to them in various ways around the theme of environmental sustainability.