farming

Urban Farming the USA is Growing in Popularity

- Adam Clare

People in urban centres in the USA are turning vacant lots into places for communities to grow in nearly every sense of the word.

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.

Residential Fruit Picking Program in Toronto

- Adam Clare

One of the reason I love Toronto is that there are so many small programs that do great things. It seems as if every month I find another community group making the world a better place. Today I found out that in Toronto there’s a group of people who harvest all the fruit they can in the city. They pick fruit from residential trees (with permission of course) and from city trees (again, with permission) then the fruit is shared. They are called Not Far From the Tree and they are having a tree tour on Saturday which hopefully I’ll be able to attend.

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The core of our programming is our residential fruit-picking program, where we pick fruit from trees that would otherwise go to waste. We help fruit tree owners make use of the abundance of fruit that their trees offer by dispatching teams of volunteers to harvest it for them. One third goes to the fruit tree owners, another third goes to the volunteers for their labour, and the final third is distributed (by bicycle or cart) to community organizations in the neighbourhood who can make good use of the fresh fruit.

Urban Farming for Fun and Profit

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

In the urban centre of Toronto, Sarah Nixon makes a living by growing flowers in other people’s yards and then selling the plants. She is part of a growing trend among sustainable urbanities who are farming in the city.

Nixon’s farm isn’t out near Milton or Orillia. It’s on Indian Rd. and Marion St. – just a few blocks from Roncesvalles in the city’s west end. She grows flowers in back and front yards around Parkdale and then sells them for weddings, office receptions and, perhaps this season, to one Ossington Ave. florist.

What do the landowners get in return?

“They get a free flower garden without lifting a finger,” says Nixon with a smile.

Nixon is part of the new wave of farming, called SPIN – small plot intensive farming – which is growing in cities across North America. Riding on the crest of the local food wave, SPIN is cashing in on a new eager market.

There are some surprising benefits to growing crops in the city, says the movement’s leader, Wally Satzewich.

You can’t turn a tractor in a tiny backyard, so there are fewer expensive start-up investments, for one. Then, there’s the city’s asphalt, which absorbs the sun’s heat and makes us all sweat more on hot summer nights. But, for farmers, it means a longer growing season in the spring and fall. And there is the garden hose.

“All I have to do is turn on the water faucet in the house and there is irrigation,” says Satzewich, who moved from his 20-acre farm outside Saskatoon into the city 10 years ago. “If I had to go back to getting my tractor to a river bank and getting the pump going … When you’ve learned the hard way out in the country you really appreciate the benefits of the city.”

Grow Your Own Food

- Adam Clare

Growing your own food is good for the planet and for your pocketbook – so why don’t people grow their own food? It’s a really good question (particularly for those who choose to live in the suburbs to have a backyard), and we really should be growing locally. There are more and more people saying that governments of all sizes ought to encourage people to grow their own grub.

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 …

Organic Farming Uses Less Water

- Adam Clare

In case you needed yet another reason to buy organic food it has come to light that organic farming uses less water than factory/industrial farming.

A study released by Cornell University Professor David Pimentel in 2005 reported that organic farming produces the same corn and soybean yields as conventional farming and uses 30 percent less energy and less water. Moreover, because organic farming systems do not use pesticides, they also yield healthier produce and do not contribute to groundwater pollution.

In addition to its conservation of water, organic farming has also been praised for the economic opportunities it creates for farmers in developing countries. Those farmers have not only found an international market for their organic products, but in draught-ridden India, organic rice farmers have found that using less water is not only a necessity, but is also financially practical. Indian rice farmers cited in a 2007 World Wildlife Foundation study claimed that the system of rice intensification (SRI) helped them yield more crop with less water.

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