Starting this month, Long Beach landowners who don’t convert their vacant parcels to small urban farms or community gardens will be billed a monthly fee to pay for city code enforcement officers to monitor the lots so they don’t turn into illegal dumping grounds or havens for crime.

The city will be charging owners a $53 dollar monthly fee to cover oversight of some 618 vacant lots, said Larry Rich, manager of Long Beach’s office of sustainability says.

“People will end up having to pay an additional fee to the city to have a vacant lot,” Rich said. They can avoid that fee if they do urban agriculture there instead.”

Read the FULL STORY at: “SCPR.org“

After 10 years as a software professional, Sriram Aravamudan found his calling in beautifying Bengaluru’s balconies with My Sunny Balcony. Read his inspiring #PassionToPaycheck story below.

My Sunny Balcony – the name conjures up images of warm sunshine on cold winter mornings, steaming cups of tea, and gently swaying palms and bright bougainvillea flowers in equally bright planters.

I could go on with the imagery, more so as it is so far from what it really is – it’s rainy in Bengaluru, my balcony is flooded, the swing is wet and my plants have hung their heads in defeat!

Read the full story at: “YourStory.com“

“Dave Chapman and dozens of other longtime organic farmers packed a meeting of the National Organic Standards Board in Jacksonville, Fla., this week. It was their last-ditch effort to strip the organic label from a tide of fluid-fed, “hydroponic” greenhouse-grown vegetables that they think represent a betrayal of true organic principles.

“It really goes to the foundation of what organic farming means,” says Chapman, who grows vegetables on his farm in East Thetford, Vt. Abby Youngblood, executive director of the National Organic Coalition, said that “we’re seeing, here in Jacksonville, a lot of support for the founding principles of organic, which are really about soil health, regenerating the soil,” rather than simply feeding plants the nutrients that they need.

Their protests, however, failed to convince a majority of the board, which voted, 8-7, against a ban on hydroponic methods in organic farming.”

Read the REST OF THE STORY, at: “NPR.org“

“Antarctica is no place for a tomato. But starting in January 2018, researchers at the German Antarctic research station, Neumayer III, will begin growing not only tomatoes but also lettuces, herbs, peppers, cucumbers, swiss chard, radishes and even strawberries inside a climate-controlled shipping container. Although other indoor gardens have existed in Antarctica, the EDEN ISS Mobile Test Facility will be the most advanced indoor farm on the continent — an experiment meant to push the limits of indoor agriculture, so that the technology can hold up for a long mission to Mars.

“Some of my colleagues like to say, ‘It’s no longer your grandmother’s garden anymore,'” says Matthew Bamsey, a research associate at DLR, also known as the German Aerospace Center, and a member of the EDEN ISS team, a multipartner project focused on developing plant cultivation technologies for future use in space.”

Check out the FULL STORY at: “Recipes.HowStuffWorks.com“

“For more than a decade, Laxmi Nadendla was fond of the vegetables she grew in her own garden in Hyderabad. Being a nutritionist, she knew the importance of consuming home grown healthy food.

In 2013, when Laxmi got to know about a local non-profit, Aranya Agricultural Alternatives (AAA), she enrolled for a permaculture design course and learnt how to apply permaculture practices in urban spaces, such as a home garden (about 280 sq yards). She soon stopped using pesticides and depended heavily on organic compost. Today, her family gets 60-70 per cent of their vegetables from the garden in winters. In fact, last summers, some days the output was about 17 kilos of fruits and vegetables per day.”

View the FULL Article at: “DownToEarth.org.in“

“Think of urban farming and the images that may come to mind are community garden, vertical greenhouse or even a rooftop garden.

The farm Steven Dring operates in south London isn’t like that. In fact, it’s not even visible from street level. The operation is situated in an air raid shelter 100 feet underground that has been left vacant since World War II.

Dring, his co-founder, Richard Ballard, and a team of a dozen people grow lettuce and microgreens hydroponically, year-round, in the shelter, which includes two tunnels. The produce is then sold to restaurants and stores around London.

“It does seem completely counterintuive to build a farm underneath the soil, but it’s actually one of the best environments to do it,” Dring said.”

Read the rest of the article at: “CBSNews.com“