Thursday, November 20, 2014

GILA words of the week: gated agriculture and cemetery farming

-Romania has it's first horticultural therapy program, but if doctors William Brid and Matilda van den Bosch had their way, horticultural therapy would be part of the publicly funded national health service!

-Everyone wants a Highline, an iconic green roof with seemingly unlimited appeal. But not everyone can have one. Read the comments at the bottom of this article, there are some undiscovered stand-up comedians waiting to be signed!

-Baltimore has a few interesting GILA ideas on the go. The first is called "Green Tracks". There are several component to he project, but the one I'll mention here is using the area along the Amtrak corridor for community gardens. I hope they keep an eye on possible existing contamination and contamination over time.
The second is allocating some of the 14,000 vacant lots in the city for flower production. Nice work Baltimore!

-We all know urban agriculture is huge. How big? Researchers have found all the farms together cover an area the size of Europe. And those 456 million hectares (1.12 billion acres), 15% is in the city proper. Urban agriculture will be crucial, especially in Africa. with half of the continents inhabitants living in cities by 2030. In Kenya a company wants to be a pioneer in providing the produce. The idea? Gate some land and lease it to prospective farmers.

Which gets me to wondering. With development pressures could we see more urban agriculture in marginal or previously taboo lands? In the Philippines a new urban agriculture garden has opened in a cemetery. It seems the cemetery has rich, unused pland within its gates. in the future, could we one day see food production happening anywhere soil is available?


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