Urban agriculture
Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers: Community sustainability requires community's support
The Union / Eric Dickerson / 14 January 2012
Character and individuality are just nice side effects of local sustainability. The real reason we should all care about local sustainability is the strength of our local economy. A strong local economy makes us more resilient to the ups and downs of the national economy.
It also creates a safety net for the future should we for some reason not have daily delivery of food and other essentials. If we are headed into peak oil, or a depression, we will find ourselves asking: “Why, in an area so perfect for growing food, don't we have any local farms?” and “Where did all those local shops and restaurants go?”
Plant Chicago: Farming for the Future
Plant Chicago is a nonprofit dedicated to promoting sustainable food production, entrepreneurship, and building reuse through education, research and development. To this end, Plant Chicago is repurposing a 93,500 sq. ft. retired meatpacking facility, The Plant, into a net- zero energy vertical farm. A complex and highly interrelated system, one-third of The Plant will hold aquaponic growing systems and the other two-thirds will incubate sustainable food businesses by offering low rent, low energy costs, and a licensed shared kitchen. The Plant will create 125 jobs in Chicago’s economically distressed Back of the Yards neighborhood – but, remarkably, these jobs will require no fossil fuel use. Instead, The Plant will eventually divert over 10,000 tons of food waste from landfills each year to meet all of its heat and power needs.
Land Use Policies to Promote Urban Agriculture
“Urban agriculture” refers to a wide range of activities involving the raising, cultivation, processing, marketing, and distribution of food in urban areas.
Communities around the country are looking to promote healthier eating by encouraging urban agriculture, especially through backyard gardens, community gardens, and urban farms.
This toolkit provides a framework and model language for land use policies that local policymakers can tailor to promote and sustain urban agriculture in their communities.
Ten ways to turn from a consumer to a producer
Energy Bulletin / Christine Patton / 28 October 2011
Growing up in America, my generation was taught that any and every need could be met by a particular product or service, all of which were just waiting to be purchased. To afford these purchases as part of a "lifestyle," the proper career path for middle class people was to attend college, learn an intricately detailed specialization in order to make a salary, and buy whatever we might need or desire, from childcare to lawn services to fast food to psychiatric services.
While specialization can certainly make economic sense, the pendulum swung too far. We grew up to be thoroughly knowledgeable in a very narrow field, yet helpless and unempowered in every other walk of life, at the mercy of a cheap-energy growth economy supported by underpaid or slave labor and ongoing environmental destruction. While we grew up believing that having the money to purchase all of our needs equaled independence, many of us have learned that we've inherited a thinly-disguised dependence on the vast, complicated systems needed to support us.
In order to reclaim skills once lost, regain a sense of control over the process of your life, and withdraw your support from the often-immoral, often-unsatisfying industrial economy, consider becoming a producer of the things you want and need - in your home, your garage, your workshop and your garden.
Protect Your Garden From Deer, Rabbits, Moles and Other Critters
Mother Earth News / Lisa Taylor and the Gardeners of Seattle Tilth / August 11, 2011
The following is an excerpt from Your Farm in the City by Lisa Taylor and the Gardeners of Seattle Tilth (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2011). One of the biggest issues city famers have to confront: all the urbanite garden pests. Not all troublemakers have six legs, compound eyes, and an abdomen. Many urban gardeners must battle larger, four-legged pests. No matter what the size, understanding your enemies’ habits and habitats will help you know how best to keep them out of your garden. This excerpt comes from Chapter 9, "Loving Your Enemies."
Review: The Urban Food Revolution
Vancouver Sun / Randy Shore / 28 July 2011
A lifelong proponent of sustainable urbanism, [author Peter] Ladner brings his experience as a journalist, publisher, and civic politician and policy-maker to bear on a question that is burning brightly in the popular zeitgeist: How will we feed ourselves when global food systems falter?
The forces that are already undermining the systems that bring historically unprecedented abundance to grocery store shelves are torn straight from the headlines: soil erosion, childhood obesity, peak oil, diabetes and cancer, climate change, concentrated corporate control of agriculture (so-called Big Food), and deadly food-borne illness.
"People have a really hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that their food sources are not reliable," said Ladner. "It's hard for people who have always been able to go to the store and see the shelves to imagine that food may not always be there."
Local resilience is the only insurance against fragile food systems, he said.
Chicago Urban Farming: Mayor Plans Expansion Of City Agriculture
Huffington Post / 27 July 2011
In a pointed reversal of his predecessor's policies, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced on Tuesday that he is supporting an ordinance that would allow for a vast expansion of urban farms around the city.
Advocates say such projects have the potential to transform decaying vacant lots into vibrant farms producing healthy, locally-sourced foods that can be sold in neighborhoods where produce is otherwise hard to come by, and providing jobs in economically depressed areas.
