Author: UOG

Unfortunately, like many other wild animals, insects are under threat. A recent study warned that 40% of the world’s insect species face the prospect of extinction, amid threats such as climate change, habitat loss, and humanity’s overenthusiastic use of synthetic chemicals.

Australians use large amounts of pesticides to tackle creepy crawlies in their homes and gardens. But our fondness for fly spray has potentially serious impacts on urban ecosystems and public health.

READ MORE AT: https://phys.org/news/2019-02-bugs-chemical-warfare.html

One of Santa Clara’s biggest and most unique affordable housing projects in the pipeline promises to offer a blend of urban living and farm life.

The City Council last week granted final approvals to a housing project on a six-acre plot of land across the street from Westfield Valley Fair mall. The project, known as the “Agrihood,” will to provide 361 new homes, 181 of which will be below market rate. Of these 181 homes, 160 will be set aside for low-income seniors. The project will additionally feature a 1.7-acre urban farm and community retail and open space.

The Agrihood, which is on track to break ground by next year, consists of a partnership among real estate firm The Core Companies, the nonprofit California Native Garden Foundation and the city of Santa Clara. But it came to fruition in no small part because of its biggest champion, local business owner and activist Kirk Vartan.

“We wanted to make a vibrant place,” Vartan said. “Somewhere where people can engage. A place to go for people to unwind, meander, walkable and be human.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2019/02/07/after-years-of-planning-santa-claras-urban-farm-agrihood-is-set-to-break-ground-by-2020/

What is interesting about this younger generation, who are stereotypically labeled as harsh critics of our current food production system, is that on the surface most only seem to want to voice their dissatisfaction vicariously. It is easy and safe to go after genetically modified apples and Roundup in your Cheerios via your Facebook and Twitter accounts. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that there is a much, much lower percentage of this next generation that actually wants to “get their hands dirty” when it comes to becoming a part of the solution to the problem that they are essentially creating.

How bad is that problem?  Well according to a 2016 National Science Foundation survey, the percentage of adults who now find GMOs dangerous was at a staggering 79 percent. That is up dramatically from numbers from similar surveys taken in the previous years of 2010 and 2000.  Want more proof? A study last year by the International Food Information Council concluded that six in 10 consumers tagged food sustainability as important to them. The better question may be, do consumers really know what sustainability even means?

For something that is so dangerous and so important you would think there would be more bodies and minds actually flocking to the industry of agriculture to “transform” it more to their liking. Right now, the numbers are showing that not to be the case. In 2016, an industry study by food and agriculture conglomerate Land O’Lakes found that only 3 percent of college graduates and 9 percent of millennials have or would consider a career in agriculture. Such numbers, if true should not just be concerning but instead alarming. If according to recent statistics it takes 15 percent of the American workforce to produce, process and sell our nation’s food and fiber, then Houston we have a problem. A math problem.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.agweb.com/article/will-the-generation-that-wants-to-change-agriculture-show-up-to-work/

Plants use their roots to “listen in” on their neighbors, according to research that adds to evidence that plants have their own unique forms of communication.

The study found that plants in a crowded environment secrete chemicals into the soil that prompt their neighbors to grow more aggressively, presumably to avoid being left in the shade.

“If we have a problem with our neighbors, we can move flat,” said Velemir Ninkovic, an ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala and lead author. “Plants can’t do that. They’ve accepted that and they use signals to avoid competing situations and to prepare for future competition.”

Green walls, rooftop gardens, and urban farms are aiming to bring nature back into central Paris as the city looks to improve its air quality and create a more sustainable future.  

In the last few decades, manmade surfaces have taken over green space, leading to urban heat islands and more pollution in the air. It’s left Paris, like many other big cities, with higher urban temperatures and a greater risk of flooding as rain can no longer be absorbed into the ground.

To counter these issues, local authorities are increasingly looking to incorporate more greenery into both old and new buildings as well as developing public parks and gardens.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.jllrealviews.com/places/emea/france/urban-agriculture-gives-paris-breathing-space/

By the time Will Nash got to the Hart Community Homes (HCH) in Fullerton, California, he’d temporarily lived—and lost placement—in 19 foster and four group homes. Dealing with intense feelings of abandonment and anger in ways that caused those into whose care he’d been placed to label him “troublesome,” he was bounced from house to house. “You’re told you’re loved,” he says. “Then you get kicked out and you’re like, ‘Wait, I thought you loved me.’”

But at HCH, Nash landed among 11 other similarly hard-to-place boys aged 13 to 18, the older of whom—those eligible to work outside the house—were granted an opportunity rare among foster kids: after-school afternoons and weekends spent on a farm at nearby California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), tending crops alongside college students, faculty, and retired volunteers. It was a welcome new world of hands-on learning, camaraderie, and tentative belonging.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://civileats.com/2019/01/15/a-farm-and-restaurant-program-that-helps-foster-kids-succeed/?fbclid=IwAR3gT2NdZ2C_gZeEInVF0xZOOZYWdXqkKSlOvZ5_gIW1JZ-R4AB_zdLfCUk

In Louisville’s Hazelwood neighborhood, where a third of the residents live in poverty, an urban farm has grown from the site of a former low-income housing complex.

It took two years for community members to remove truckloads of concrete from the 14 acres where the farm now resides. But come spring, the farm will produce crops that the nonprofit Food Literacy Project can use to teach youth leadership skills and engage with residents who want to reconnect with the land.

The farm has become central to a communitywide movement to improve food access within the Hazelwood and Iroquois neighborhoods, located in southern Jefferson County.

SEE THE REST OF THE ARTICLE: https://www.courier-journal.com

Growing Lots is a working farm tucked into an increasingly dense urban landscape.

It used to occupy three sites in South Minneapolis where co-owners by Taya Schulte and Seamus Fitzgerald grew vegetables, operated a community-supported agriculture program, or CSA, and sold produce to local chefs. In 2018 those three sites were reduced to two.

Growing Lots lost access to the third site after their Longfellow landlords decided to sell. Schulte and Fitzgerald had been leasing the property for a few years, but for the landowners, the process of renting out to urban farmers with a labor-intensive business and slim profit margins got too complicated. Add that to neighborhood development pressure and the outcome became almost inevitable.

Fitzgerald certainly wasn’t surprised.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.southwestjournal.com/news/green-digest/2019/01/urban-farmers-seek-stability/

Most people living in apartments are deprived of the luxury of owning a terrace or garden farm, where they can grow vegetables. Yet, many living in big cities dream of spending their time on a farm after retirement and eat the produce of their own farm. Now, to live that dream you won’t have to leave behind your city life nor live at a farm. Bangalore-based Farmizen — a farming Airbnb of sorts — is connecting urbanites to farmers who help you rent a mini-farm and grow your organic veggies.

What’s more, you get to see the harvest not only through pictures and videos but you can also visit your farm over the weekend. It was the question: whether the organic veggies we buy from the market are truly organic or not that got co-founders — Shameek Chakravarty, Gitanjali Rajamani and Sudaakeran Balasubramanian — thinking. In 2017, they founded Farmizen, an app-based service to rent a mini-farm and grow chemical-free vegetables. This concept not only helps the urban buyers but also provides regular income to farmers. After Bangalore, the startup has now expanded to Hyderabad and Surat. In the next phase of growth, it plans to enter Chennai, Pune, and Mumbai. The third phase of growth would take it to Delhi and other cities.

READ THE ARTICLE: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/326404

The garden is one of the keys to solving the two greatest problems facing humankind, namely rapid species extinction and the effects of our changing climate.

Gardens, plants, and the ecosystems in which they thrive will act as carbon sinks and filter the air that we breathe. It has never been more important that we realize this and that we protect our garden spaces, and by this, I don’t just mean our few square meters outside the back door. No, I also mean the wild public spaces. They are ours and they are helping us all to survive. We need to think about how, in our own gardens and in public spaces, by welcoming in nature, we can play an extremely important role in saving the planet.

Most of us don’t want to damage the natural world, the great outdoors, even though we sometimes unwittingly do. Thus, we need to educate ourselves as to what all of us can do with our gardens.

READ THE FULL STORY: https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/outdoorsandgarden/how-some-home-truths-can-help-save-the-planet-898556.html

A recent gathering of scientists on the upper west side of Manhattan enthused about a crucial element in the formation of the surrounding city. The substance talked about in revered tones? Soil.

In a fairer world, soil would be receiving reverence from people well beyond the fourth annual NYC Urban Soils Symposium, given that the slender outer layer of the planet supports the life that treads, grows and flies above it. As it is, though, it is up to soil aficionados to extol the urban importance of this crumbly manna.

“Soil is a neglected resource; it can solve a lot of the environmental problems we have,” says Richard Shaw, a US Department of Agriculture soil scientist who grew up in urban New Jersey but was drawn to the outdoors and found himself fascinated by soils.

For the past decade Shaw has been involved in the New York soil survey, plodding around the city’s parks and community gardens taking soil samples. This has usually involved digging a 4ft-deep pit, a process that has attracted police attention. “They’d ask what we are doing and then they’d spend half a day talking to us once we told them,” he says. “Others will say ‘sorry to hear that’, like it’s the worst job in the world.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jan/16/dirty-secret-can-urban-soil-help-solve-our-environmental-problems