CitiesGoGreen » urban agriculture

Farmers’ Market Contest Winners Announced

Janet — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:21:47 +0000

Farmers’ markets are sprouting up like, well, weeds in urban areas across the country. Some are wildly successful. Some never really get off the ground.
Local Harvest, a website representing small farms, notes that there are two million farms in the U.S, about 80 percent of them small, often family-owned, farms. The website also has a listing of small farms and farmers’ markets by zip code.
Local food fans point out that buying produce from community farmers’ markets offers much more than health benefits. “Tomatoes that are grown in California and shipped to Georgia are picked green,” says Barbara Petit, president of Georgia Organics, an organization dedicated to the promotion of locally grown food. “They are chemically ripened, and they are put on trucks that burn tons of gasoline to get them to us. From an economic standpoint, it doesn’t make sense. From a taste standpoint, well, I don’t know anyone who would argue that a tomato bought in a chain grocery store tastes remotely like one grown on a farm 20 miles down the road.”
What is it that makes some farmers’ markets succeed while others struggle? Good magazine, The Architect’s Newspaper, The Urban & Environmental Policy Institute, CO Architects and The Los Angeles Good Food Network asked “designers, architects, farmers, chefs, vendors, and farmers’ market shoppers to think about how good design can improve upon the modern farmers’ market experience.”
The charge: Design a new venue, product, distribution method, or marketing mechanism that increases both financial returns to farmers and access to healthy foods for consumers of all scales—from the home cook to food service chefs. Innovations should help small family farmers bring good food to market and/or provide consumers access to good food. The contest was specific to Los Angeles, but the winning entries are adaptable to virtually any urban area. Winners were announced on Sept. 3.
Mia Lehrer, Astrid Diehl and Zhihang Luo with Los Angeles-based Mia Lehrer and Associates turned in the winning entry – the Farm on Wheels, which uses electric vehicles to disperse fresh vegetables and fruits to underserved areas. Runners up included an urban farming center that incorporates production, distribution, processing and education; an “Urban Field Farm Stop” that uses the city’s mass transit network to distribute fresh food; and a hydroponic farm that harvests San Francisco’s storied fog to produce fresh produce.
A group of architects, urban planners, journalists, city leaders, chefs, and farmers judged the entries.

Farm on Wheels took top honors in the competition.

NYC’s Urban Gardens Provide Food, Pride

Janet — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 19:13:04 +0000

Minority women in New York’s South Bronx are turning three acres of “scruffy marginal land” into an herb and vegetable paradise. According to Treehugger.com, La Finca Del Sur, the “Farm of the South,” is an urban farmer cooperative with a goal of providing affordable, fresh produce to the community, while encouraging healthy living and educating the public about the environment and social equity.

The women – volunteers and community groups – grow herbs like thyme, sage, oregano and basil, along with lettuce, tomatoes, peas, eggplant and pepper and a variety of flowers. The garden is supported by the Bronx Botanical Garden, Greenthumb NYC and For A Better Bronx (FABB).

According to a 2008 article on Scienceline, the South Bronx has the highest rates of asthma and diabetes in the city. The streets of the community are lined with fast-food joints, and residents often have no information about healthy eating and few options for purchasing fresh produce.

But groups like “Learn It, Grow It, Eat It” (LGE) are trying to change that. A collaboration of the Council on the Environment of New York City’s Environmental Education, Open Space Greening and Greenmarket programs, LGE is housed in four high schools and three community gardens in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. The group is incorporating high school health education with its support of community gardens (there are more than 600 such gardens in the city). The organization also offers high school credit for garden maintenance.

Van Jones Video on Green Roofs

Daimon — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:21:07 +0000

Here is Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, with Sara Loveland of DC Greenworks, on the site of a green roof installation. They introduce green roofs and discuss the grant funding the work. If building owners along a corridor who already have to replace their roof membranes put up the money for that, the city will add on a green roof, cutting energy expenses some 30%, cooling the city, mitigating stormwater, and training people in how to do the work. Green roofs in this case mean green jobs, environmental, economic, engineering and energy-saving benefits, and a potential food source: one solution to many problems.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iYIY9XHOUg&feature=player_embedded]

Greening the Grounds of Executive Mansions

Daimon — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:19:45 +0000

Green the Grounds, subtitled Bringing Nature into the Public Realm, sprouted from an inquiry by First Lady Michelle Obama’s office to author Susan Harris about ideas she had put about for a kitchen garden at the White House. Susan offered to pull together some suggestions. Thirty-four experts were consulted and the result is the illustrated 19 page Greening the White House Grounds (pdf). It summarizes ideas and discussion on all facets of the project. One conclusion it would be hard to argue with is, “… the prettier and the more people-friendly, the better.”

Susan provides number of resources on how to think about such projects here. Being a prolific writer, blogger, garden maven, and networker, the new blog is a further outcome, aimed at greening executive mansions at all levels, those being governor’s mansions and mayoral abodes. The idea is that examples at the top will inspire many others.

The mansions of New York and Maryland’s governors are presently featured. How’s your local executive manse? If there’s something to crow about, let Susan know.