Author: UOG

CHICAGO — Urban farming has become more common in Chicago neighborhoods, and now lawmakers have begun pushing for stricter legislation that could regulate the number of animals for each household and impose more requirements.

A recently proposed ordinance would ban roosters from residential areas in the city and allow no more than six hens and two livestock animals per household. Livestock animals are considered four-legged farm creatures, including pigs and sheep, the Chicago Tribune reported.

A pro-chicken lobby in Chicago is rallying against these proposed laws, arguing such issues already are addressed by existing laws, including a ban on cockfighting and fines for excessive noise.

READ THE FULL STORY https://wgntv.com/2019/10/19/chicago-lawmakers-push-stricter-legislation-for-urban-farming/

Rising from the ashes of decades of urban decay, the US city of Detroit is fast becoming an urban farming capital.

Many residents are now producing organic food locally – reducing the environmental footprint of their food by cutting down on carbon emissions from transport and on chemical inputs.

They are also helping revive communities as new green spaces and farmer’s markets crop up, providing neighborhoods with fresh fruits and vegetables.

Plots of land range from backyards, to seven-acre (2.8 hectares) community farms, to plans for large-scale commercial farms.

In 2012, Al Jazeera met the local residents at the center of the city’s urban farming revolution. Several years on, Rewind returns to visit them to see how the movement has progressed.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/rewind/2019/10/motown-growtown-detroit-urban-farming-revolution-191014065733719.html

Jerry and I recently rented an excavator, and I found a brand-new thrill unearthing the large root balls of cut gorse, which had created an almost impenetrable wall of shrubbery 15 feet tall at our new place in Bandon before we spent the last year leveling it to stumps. Although I was excited about clearing away the last remnants of gorse, I was less than thrilled about the dry, sandy earth from which the highly invasive shrubs had finally released their formidable grasp.

What a discouraging stretch of dead dirt! It made me long for the sticky black clay in my yard in east Medford.

Yet, it’s no wonder the disturbed soil that allowed the gorse to thrive was so depleted. The area used to be a network of dusty tractor paths on a farm that was split into smaller acreage decades ago.

Not much else but gorse could grow over the abandoned compacted roads, so the noxious mighty-weed proliferated for 30 years. Its expansive root system exhausted the sand of precious nutrients and moisture. And the greedy gorse gave nothing back but fallen, highly flammable, dead needles and countless seeds, which can germinate after lying dormant for 40 years.

If ever a soil was in dire need of remediation, this is it. As it turns out, fall is an ideal time to replenish the soil, after growers have harvested their summer crops (or 30-year-old gorse shrubs) and before winter crops are planted.

I recently spoke with Scott Goode, environmental scientist and founder of the soil replenishing group Nourishing Systems. Scott made me feel more hopeful about improving the soil through a process called regenerative gardening.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE https://mailtribune.com/lifestyle/home-and-garden/improve-soil-and-reduce-greenhouse-gases-through-regenerative-gardening

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Iyeshima Harris surveyed the bounty of an urban farm on a Brooklyn block with more greenery than buildings: rows of Swiss chard and collard greens, trellises wrapped with long bean vines, and fig trees drooping with fruit.

Harris is the project director of East New York Farms, which operates three urban farms and a garden, along with nurturing a network of 40 community gardens in the neighborhood. Several of its growers sell produce at the organization’s market just outside of one of its farms, dubbed UCC Youth Farm (after United Community Centers, the nonprofit that operates ENYF⁠), which is the only place in East New York where residents can find local and organic produce. The half-acre farm on Schenck Avenue produced 7,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables last year, much of which went back into the farmers market.

“We’re a community that doesn’t have a lot of access to healthy, fresh food, so the community tries to fend for themselves with the gardens,” Harris says. She grew up in Jamaica, but has lived in New York City for much of her life, and has spent that time teaching her neighbors how to grow produce. To her, the work of a community-based urban farm—big or small—goes beyond simply sowing the soil; it’s has to do with cultivating a healthy neighborhood.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE https://ny.curbed.com/2019/10/7/20887684/nyc-agriculture-urban-farming-community-gardens

IRVINE, Calif. — Eunice and Olive, two resident chickens at the Farm + Food Lab in Irvine, just returned to a nice clean roost thanks to a volunteer team from the community-based, global design and architecture firm, Stantec.

Throughout the year Farm + Food Lab hosts countless volunteers who come to help maintain the site and to learn sustainable gardening techniques from what is being billed as a “zero waste urban farm.”

Stantec team member Jeff Crawford said he jumped at the chance to get his hands dirty and give back to the community.

“I do enjoy gardening,” said Crawford. “It’s always been a passion. So, when I saw this is one of the three activities that our Irvine office was doing this week this is the one I jumped on. We’re actually getting to see the full cycle from how produce is grown here locally, but also to be a part of the sorting and distribution of that food at local food banks.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/news/2019/10/09/farm—food-lab-inspiring-creative-approaches-to-urban-agriculture

Downtown Brooklyn may seem like an unlikely staging ground for the future of farming — but at Gotham Market Hall in late September, 75 attendees at a “Shark Tank”-style pitch contest bore witness to just that.

The Future of Farming Pitch Contest featured five finalists from the urban agriculture industry, each presenting a three-minute pitch, complete with slideshow and video, to five discerning judges armed with follow-up questions.

At stake: $5,000 in seed money, $20,000 worth of server storage credits for Google’s Cloud for Startups and a free sit down with a consulting firm.

The victor: FoodFul, a company that builds sensors and software for dairy farmers that monitor their cows’ health and feed intake.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2019/10/04/the-future-of-farming-how-urban-agriculture-could-make-big-money/

With her background in advocacy, welcoming smile, air of refinement, and down-for-doing-business demeanor, it would be easy to assume that when Gail Taylor visits Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., every Wednesday, she’s going to meet congressional staffers for high-stakes legislative deal making.

But instead of heading into the halls of Congress in a power suit, Taylor drives into the parking lot of a condo complex near the U.S. Capitol, where she pitches a tent, sets up tables, and unpacks heaps of vegetables. On a recent day, they included orange and purple carrots, dark green cucumbers, heads of green cabbage, green beans, and a milk crate of hardneck garlic. This mid-summer week, she also has baskets of blueberries, red gooseberries, yellow plums, heirloom tomatoes, Presidio rice, and bags of hand-milled flour.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE https://civileats.com/2019/09/26/the-woman-leading-the-way-for-urban-farming-in-the-nations-capital/