Category — Articles

This utopian essay is playing out twenty years from now (in 2041) and is grounded in on-going research (in 2020) on the new urban gardening commons in Stockholm City, Sweden

By Nathalie Bergame|
Shareable
January 14, 2021

Excerpt:

A cry for autonomy and “the right to the city” through gardening

With rather high initial investments for establishing a good soil quality, buying fruit-bearing bushes and other perennials as well as seeds and the looming risk of being evicted from the plot of urban land, residents who were engaged in park management in the 2020s began to demand more long-term based public land leases from the City District Administrations. Viewed from the perspective of the “right to the city,” conceptualised more than seventy years ago in 1967 by urban theorist Henri Lefebvre, the residents performed their urban duty and demanded the full rights to their labor on public land and by that claimed their right to the city.

These four modes also can curtail two major and related sources of greenhouse gas emissions: motorized transport and carbonized industrial agriculture: Walking, Bicycling, Active transit and Urban Agriculture

By Mark Cramer
Fakeville
Jan 3, 2020

Excerpt:

Urban agriculture works in synergy with pollution-free transportation, reducing the food supply distance from an obscene 400-mile average to some five miles, with many city farmers bicycling produce to the local farmers’ market.

Visionary municipalities, like Austin, Texas, offer grants and landscaping items to help you create your earthwise garden.

Food security, food equity, food miles, social engagement, mental health, growing consumer preference for local, land-water scarcity: urban agriculture has many drivers.

By Elizabeth Farrelly
Brisbane Times
Nov 20, 2020

Excerpt:

Urban agriculture has been dreamed of for years – probably ever since my grandfather stopped being able to grow everything the family ate or drank in the big backyard of a small state house. But regulators are slow to catch up.

For one thing, it implies a whole new take on city planning. Canberra always makes me itch to fill its gaps – not with cookie-cutter high rise, as it’s now doing, but filling every mile-wide median strip and verge with tight little urban villages and bustling markets. The myriad ideas of the food-nerds, however, flooded this dreaming with new possibilities. The light rail on Northbourne was suddenly flanked with fruiting pears and feijoas. The new but empty student residences were stacked with the succulent green leafage of vertical farming. Aquaculture in the ponds; bok choy and silverbeet lined every verge.

In the highlands around the town, Bedouin tribes have a long history of small-scale farming and goat herding before a boom in package tourism

By Menna Farouk
Thomson Reuters Foundation
Nov 9, 2020
Saint Catherine, Egypt

Excerpt:

“The capacity to live from the land is something that sets the Bedouin apart and its economic advantages – and the extra safety it gives – is more clear than ever in a pandemic,” he added.

South Sinai’s governorate launched a series of agricultural projects in August in Saint Catherine to support Bedouin communities, including plans to build greenhouses, training programs, and the distribution of olive seedlings.

“Urban farming isn’t going to feed the world in the same way that larger scale farming does, but it does connect people to their food,” says Eric Tomassini

By Felicity Crossland
Sierre Club Los Angeles
26 October 2020

Excerpt:

Avenue 33, a 1.2 acre urban farm that sits on a hillside in Lincoln Heights, 3 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, is working to prove this. The farm produces fresh cut flowers and a couple hundred varieties of both vegetables and herbs, supplying them to restaurants, chefs and the local community.

How is it possible to have a farm in the middle of Los Angeles? The answer lies in regenerative agriculture, a system of farming principles and practices that look to increase biodiversity, enrich the soils, improve watersheds, work with the ecosystem and produce healthier and more sustainable crops.

“Vertical farming is a modern version of what ancient Romans called ‘villa farming’,” she says.

By Carolyn Steel
Monacle
Nov 2020

Urban farming is gaining new relevance this year as the pandemic shines a light on our food sources and vulnerable supply chains. That’s why, for Monocle’s November issue, we profiled four of the most promising such projects around the world, ranging from Asia’s largest urban rooftop farm in Bangkok to a sprawling Parisian space (pictured) that aims to become the European equivalent. Although these options won’t be able to replace bulk food production, urban farms could help to ease the potential shortage of fresher products such as fruit and vegetables, which proved hard to come by during lockdowns.

“We host a lot of events out here,” Givens said, and they are a main revenue stream.

By Kathy Coatney
Organic Farmer
August 17, 2020

Excerpt:

Stacey Givens, owner, farmer and chef of Side Yard Farm and Kitchen (thesideyardpdx.com) has a one-acre farm in northeast Portland, Ore. She feels strongly that urban farms are important because of their accessibility.

“We’re near bus lines, we’re really easy to get to, and we host a lot of schools,” Givens said, from grade school, to college, to culinary schools.