A rare orchid sprouts on a green roof

The biggest news of the last couple of weeks has to be the ReGen development in Almere, outside Amsterdam. The five pillars of the community are:

+Energy positive homes;
+Door-step high-yield organic food production;
+Mixed renewable energy and storage;
+Water and waste recycling;
+Empowerment of local communities.

Once completed this pilot project will be one of the most resilient and sustainable in the world.

-Here’s an update on Virginia State University’s Urban Agriculture Centre a year after receiving their $1.5 million dollar grant. Food production, both indoors (aquaponic systems) and outdoors (micro farms, orchards and vineyards), is in full swing and the aims to have classes and training for local residents as well.

-A delightful visitor has landed on a green roof in the UK. The very rare orchid, pictured above, is the only one to grow on a green roof.

-Last week Saskatoon (!) became the latest city to offer tax breaks for residents to grow food on vacant lots.

-Pittsburgh is doing something very unique, foodies are turning invasive species, like Japanese knotweed, into beer, paper, kimchi, tinctures, ice pops and honey. They figure with so much out there, why not consume it! Hopefully this becomes a trend worldwide!

-If you needed more reasons to grow your own food, here’s one: people who garden at home, eat more veggies which means they'll be healthier!

Singapore's supertrees

Last week Philadelphia's city council introduced resolutions calling for the expansion of urban and vertical farming. What that means is still unclear, does anyone know what happens next in this process?

The grand opening of Europe's largest urban farm, capable of churning out 45 tons of vegetables and 19 tons of fish, May 20. The founding company is expanding to the US, they hope to open 10 sites in the New York Tri-State area. 2016 will be an interesting year rooftop farming!

-The USDA announced a urban agriculture toolkit for aspiring urban farmers. Wow!

-A $6.5 million dollar private-public partnership in New Mexico will create 14 permanent jobs and another 35 construction jobs to build an urban aquaponic system capable of feeding 16,000 people. And the micro-algae which grows as well will be supplied to another company to produce omega-3 nutritional supplements!

-Hamilton, Ontario's first legal marijuana production facility is capable of producing 2,700 kilograms per year.  And because it's marijuana, they have bank level security.

-This is really fantastic. Vacant lots in Germany are being turned into public gardens and I mean truly public. Anyone can, even tourists, can pick a tomato or two.

-Did you know in the UK sustainable drainage systems (like water retention ponds, green roofs, permeable paving) for all new developments is now the rule? Perhaps we should look to places like Singapore for the next wave in water usage. Faced with tremendous constraints, they have innovated unlike any other place. Two desaslination plants produce a quarter of the city's needs. And wastewater is being reused in all sorts of fantastic ways. Check out these super trees:

Jackson, Mississippi plants a food forest

The biggest story of the past two weeks details the world's biggest aerogation project to date. When installed in 2017, this 4 square meter living wall system in London will be able to purifying 2 million liters of air every day!

-If you read nothing else, check out this story on CHIRPS (Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation With Station data). By managing food use and distribution better, we could reduce 14% of emission produced by agriculture in 2050. It blends data from weather stations and satellites, from the past three decades, to hopefully give farmers an idea of how the current growing season might look. An early warning system, so to speak.

-Add Jackson, Mississippi to the list of communities with food forests!

-Another fantastic story, this time from Indiana, about how aquaponics is helping employ those with social needs and give back to the community.

-Tucson, Arizona has been named a City of Gastronomy in the Creative Cities Network by UNESCO. It's the first American or Canadian city to get this award and joins a list of 116 cities in 54 countries. Fun fact, Tucson has had urban agriculture, in some form, for over 4,100 years!!!

-Frustrating news for urban agriculturists from Moscow, because the 150 year old Timiryazev Agricultural Academy, will be moved and the 100 hectares of land used constantly for education and experimentation at the agrarian university will now become residential buildings. Some experiments have been ongoing for over a century!

The Great Green Wall gets creative

 

Africa's Great Green Wall has thankfully received more attention as of late. Branding is always helpful for selling products and programs, it's wonderful to see what these students created, like the poster above, to publicize the campaign.

-As many of you know, China is attempting their own green wall, affectionately called "the Green Wall of China", to hold back desertification. And they've done a lot, 66 billion trees planted since 1978. The problem? Fast-growing and thirsty, non-native species were planted making things worse! And they were all cuttings, meaning they are all dying at the same time. Encroaching deserts threaten 400 million people in total with poor agricultural land, water shortages and air pollution from giant sandstorms. Officials are even worried about civil unrest. If you have a chance, read the story.

-Aquaponics and marijuana are two of the hottest trends in agriculture. What happens when you combine the two? I'm predicting really big things for this Hamilton, Ontario outfit.

-Building owners in Geelong, an hour long drive south from Melbourne, Australia, have a chance to win $10,000 for their green roof. If you live there, throw your hat in the ring!

-A design competition in Italy has yielded some fantastic renderings and further interest from local cities to make a combination pre-school/urban farm.

-Two weeks ago France banned supermarket waste, this means companies must find other ways to dispose of their food. Hopefully they won't dispose of it, but it becomes another revenue stream if they sell it to supermarkets, which exist in Denmark, which only sell second hand food.

Politics meets horticultural therapy + underground greenhouses

Politics is top of mind for everyone in the USA and beyond as well. So it was interesting to see the Republican National Congress, Real Clear Politics and several credit unions in Ohio have joined forces to create a year-round horticultural therapy program. The Democrats are doing the same soon!

-Solutions for Change has been the leader in aquaponic education and production. They are tripling their size this year thanks to a $1,000,000 dollar grant.

-In Minneapolis an experimental sunken greenhouse has come through the winter, none the worse for wear, while still producing vegetables. This could be a turning point for those in colder climates.

-The insect farming industry has just reached the next level, as Mark Zuckerberg's sister has invested in a leading company. 

Vertical farming's biggest story of the year!

A company has leased several 100 foot silos to try their hand at true vertical farming. The company is being very cautious and rightfully so. Most of the time when you read about vertical farming, the operation is a few feet tall, at most 2 stories. If cities are ever going to be able to sustain themselves, as vertical farming pioneers, architects and urbanists have dreamed, we'll need to cover whole buildings...fill a skyscraper or two would be helpful. And this is the biggest experiment to date on the planet, by a long shot. Keep your eye on this one in the coming months and years!!!

Five important things to know:

-Five year lease starting March 1, $42,000/year, which can be extended up to 35 years.
-24,650 square feet in total available; they are starting "small" with 1 silo.
-Hydroponically and aquaponically grown vegetables could be available as early as September.
-The silos have been leased "as is" and the company is responsible for cleanup (primarily asbestos, lead paint, spent rotting grain).
-The company will invest at least $500,000.

Brain scans show gardening is good + GILA predictions for 2016

More evidence that gardening is good for mental health, this time brain scans show that it's true...which is a first! Horticultural therapy advocates rejoice!

Another $20 million euros has been given to the Great Green Wall programme by the European Union! Finally serious money is heading their way, this is on top of 5 billion dollars from France last month for various greening projects, including building the Green Wall.

-I know, I know, it's very late, but Foodtank.com had it's list of the most exciting stories for 2016. Here are four things I see in my crystal ball...

-The aquaponics movement will continue to develop in landlocked and import dependent countries and regions (like the Caribbean).
-We'll see the beginning of neighborhood scale urban agriculture projects, aquaponics and urban gardening designed to fill the food needs of a urban block or two, further decentralized food production. Those shipping containers? Yeah, they'll be big.
-This year will also mark the true beginning of the miniaturization of the insect growing movement, as tabletop systems, designed for a family, begin to take off.
-I also predict you'll see more green roof funding, specific in it's focus, get moved to general stormwater management funding for gardens and the replacement of lawns.

What do you think?

Community gardens raise property values

Wisconsin has been at the leading edge of the aquaponics movement for quite some time and their state's resume keeps getting more accomplished. The Aquaponics Innovation Center, is not even a year old, but they've received almost 3/4 of a million dollars to study aquaponic systems. 

-Ohio doesn't have the resume, Canton is hoping to change that. They have a $150 million dollar agri-business energy project design to bring 1,300, some of those in the aquaponics field.

-Over 1 million trees have been planted in New York City, more than any other city in the world. Here's how they did it.

-I haven't seen many articles of this type, but this landscape architect is wondering whether we need to start favoring xeriscapes and the "beauty of drought", or at least less water dependent creations, if landscape architecture is going to reflect the realities of a future, thirsty world.

-A fully automated growing system has just hit the market, on the low end the farm cube takes only 6 weeks to grow 200 pieces of your favorite vegetable.

-The UK has a brand new pop-up cafe, called Stroud Food Surplus Cafe, which sells "surplus food", food from restaurants that's perfectly fine, just past the expiration date.

-Two important studies came out last one. One quantifies how much land would be needed to feed Seattle, a city of about 650,000 people, 58 kilometers. Urban food crops, at the maximum, could fill 4% of the city's food needs.If you've been following the blog you know feelings towards community gardens have been changing, positively, over the last few years. Some towns/cities are still a bit reluctant. That should change with the first report indicating neighboring property values rise by as much as 9.4% points within five years of a garden's opening and the gardens can lead to increases in tax revenues of about half a million dollars per garden over 20 years.

Solutions for Change takes aquaponics higher

San Diego's largest aquaponics farm will triple its size, making it one of the largest in the country. This is a tremendous success story for the industry and Solutions for Change.

-This was a good week for green jobs, as another innovative green jobs training program pairs New York residents in public housing developments to work on environmental sustainability and energy efficiency programs.

-Mesa Community College continues to revolutionize as they now offer an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Sustainable Agriculture, the first of it's kind in Arizona and really one of the first nationwide.

-This isn't really about sustainable agriculture, living architecture or green architecture, but is still amazing all the same. Look at the many ways the Colorado River effects the American West.

-The City of Halifax has released a handbook for community gardening on municipal lands. Very handy!

-Let's finish up with the best stuff last. The rising popularity of Freight Farms container gardening system makes me wonder if one day we'll see these systems for community (by block...neighborhood?) food security.

San Diego's climate change mandate

San Diego has just mandated, by law, the most ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions. It includes drought tolerant landscaping and urban tree planting. Interestingly their urban agriculture incentive zone proposal was not included.

-The University of Hawaii Maui College is now has one of the first aquaponics business courses. The two evening courses entitled Aquaponics Entrepreneurship and Marketing Aquaponics and only $220 each, meet for 16 weeks. You can register here and here.

-Germany's Association for Vertical Farming asked students to come up with a "certification system to assess the sustainability of vertical farms." They settled on nine key principles for the very diverse industry, which includes start-ups and huge ventures like AeroFarms, which just raised $20 million in venture funding. What do you think?

• Health and safety
• Food safety and quality assurance
• Pest management and pesticide use
• Nutrient management and fertilizer use
• Water conservation and management
• Community relations
• Waste management
• Energy and climate
• Site and facility characteristics

The week of big urban agriculture hits!

It's the week of big hits!


I'm sure many folks have heard about Serenbe in Georgia. But here's one of the first news stories about the development, 2 hours south of Atlanta, which gives you a feel for the houses surrounding the urban farm and the farm itself.




-Right on cue is another article about how food one of the hot trends in real estate is...can you guess?...food!


-What's happening in the Vancouver urban agriculture scene? What are the guidelines, standards and policies? What is being farmed, how is pest management handled? Which farms have staff and volunteers? Everything you want to know is here.


-We've seen lots of urban agriculture farms made out of shipping containers. The next step in the evolution is having a farm shipped, IKEA flatpack style, in a shipping container and ready for assembly.

-In Guyana a bold new collaboration has sprung between universities in Chile, the United Kingdom and Guyana to pioneer aquaponics education in the Caribbean.


-North American researchers have said to beware of the soil in urban settings, heavy metals may be present. It seems that the same could be true in Spain.


-Finally the biggest news of all, Gotham Greens opened the world's largest urban greenhouse facility in Chicago.

GILA word of the week: Zfarming

A couple of tasty tidbits for the week. A nice collective term, courtesy of the Germans, for vertical farming, rooftop farming and indoor farming: Zfarming. Here's a paper about perception and acceptance about the phenomenon.

What do you get when you mix tasteful architecture, aquaponics and leisure. Have a look:

Indonesia shows us how to save urban trees

Nigeria's fight against desertification, the Great Green Wall Project, is looking for international support to help move things along. Let's see if an NGO steps up to help out.

-Indonesia's "One Soul One Tree" has been a smashing success as city dwellers have found new ways to preserve their urban trees for the benefit of all.

-Virginia State University pioneering aquaponics work got a huge vote of confidence, last week, in the form of a $900,000 check to support the construction of an aquaponics production center. Well done, VSU!

São Paulo's green roof and wall incentive & agrihoods take off

If there's one thing I learned this week, all good things come from the NY Times.

While reading about São Paulo mayor, who is trying all sorts of things to reduce gridlock, I stumbled upon other initiatives he has enacted including the stipulation that companies must pay for "environmental conservation works" and can do so by installing green walls or green roofs, like the one above.

-Two weeks ago in Santa Clara a plan was selected for a 1.5 acre parcel. It includes 165 affordable senior rental units and much, much more. If you want a list of prominent agrihood/agriburbia developments across the nation, one was convenient posted last week.

That article is one of three I saw over the next 10 days detailing newish and future agrihoods.

-An interesting pairing has Back to the Roots teaming with Sodexo to supply 2,300 schools with garden tool kits, including aquaponics kits, mushroom mini-farms and their “garden-in-a-can”. There’s curriculum for the toolkits as well.

-Vancouver is now offering $10 trees to encourage home owners to build up their urban forest. Fruit trees are available too, including prunes!

-India is working on creating a green wall of their own, this one featuring palm trees to stop sea coast erosion.

Aquaponic and rooftop farming news from Egypt

This operation has been operational for a couple of years, but they rarely release updates. What they have accomplished in a few years is very impressive!
There was another article about Egyptian living infrastructure this week, the missive takes a look at the rooftop garden operations.

-Here's a very long and well-written article from Business Insider about America’s largest crop, the American lawn. The thirsty crop drinks Nine billion gallons of water A DAY and covers more than 3 times the amount of area corn does!
Several of those interviewed believe it will be harder to get people to quit watering their lawns because the lawn is a symbol of the American dream. Subconsciously, letting your lawn die may be akin to giving up on the American dream, conspicuous consumption, social contract and multi-billion dollar industry, combined. Look for lobbying groups to fight restrictions as they pop up around the USA and beyond. It has already begun...

-A recent study suggests there are 3 trillion trees worldwide! That’s incredible! On the bad side, that’s half of what was there a few hundred years ago and 10 billion per year are currently lost.

-In a very, very curious story, the Vancouver Aquarium has decided to start raising fish...for sale at local stores! Wow!

-In other aquaponics news we learned something amazing, by accident. It appears the US is creating a Hydroponic and Aquaponic Task Force. The press release states "aquaculture, aquaponics and hydroponics being the fastest growing sector in agriculture"!

You need 34 city lots to sustain an urban agriculture business

How would you like to have one of these on your block?

Here's a tree which grows 40 different kinds of fruit. Wouldn't it be great if city trees were grafted to produce fruit. And not via the Guerilla Grafters?

-No doubt the information is out there, however it's great to see the Michigan State University Extension post information illuminating the financial stress of farming. And for urban farmers this particular fact is sobering: "The single farmer would need to accumulate and manage approximately 34 city lots, to achieve scale that has the potential reach the poverty threshold." Wow!

-Of course all municipalities need money to operate. It's a bit sad when "user fees" are applied to accessing your local community garden. After reading this story I was naturally thinking about
the "paying for things" and we've seen many municipalities support growing vegetables and herbs on lawns, while others are not so keen. So when I read this headline I immediately thought "How disappointing is that, a woman is giving a citation for doing horticultural therapy?" But it's the good kind of citation.

-I love the alliteration of this new offering from an aquaponics operation: "salad subscription".

One less green roof bylaw + the world's largest vertical farm breaks ground

 It looks like construction started long ago, but last week was the official ground breaking for the largest vertical farm in the world. Politicians galore stopped by for the photo-op, here's hoping they can deliver on 80 jobs for the citizens of Newark, New Jersey!

Are you involved in urban farming? Then a Dutch grad student wants your help in filling out a survey to find out what role innovation has on urban agriculture.

China has big, big plans. Earlier this week was a story about their mega city, Jing Jin Ji, which would join several big cities to make a GIGANTIC one, as big as all of New England and with over 130 MILLION PEOPLE! Several of these cities have begun installing porous bricks and bio-swales, I hope the entire region gets the green infrastructure!

-Barbados becomes the latest island nation to embrace aquaponics.

-Jakarta has added 66 urban farming spots in the last year. It has been reported they are "modest" plots. Regardless of the size, that's a big commitment.

-If you have an environmental business based in Canada, ECO Canada just announced their internship program. With almost a $1 million dollars in wage subsidies for over 100 jobs, it's a great way to introduce a young person into your green field.

-One of the first cities to adopt a green roof bylaw, Port Coquitlam, has now rescinded it. This is big news for the green roof industry. There are only about 20 bylaws in North America. It seems their City Council how to decide which program to greenhouse gas program to support, so they went with something more general which targets an increase in building insulation and overall energy efficiency.
We'll keep watching to see if this is a one-off for the industry or a trend.

President Obama releases comprehensive plan to save American bees

Kibera, Kenya has one of the largest slums in the world. To combat food insecurity the National Youth Service (NYS), a government agency that promotes youth affairs through the ministry of devolution and planning, has begun distributing a series of sacks that are filled with manure, soil and small stones to create simple, and cheap, urban gardens.

-New Jersey has signed into law that the third week in March is now, statewide, know as “Horticultural Therapy Week”.

-D.C. wants more green roofs to ameliorate their overburdened stormwater system and now, they will certainly get more! Speaking of D.C., on the federal side, President Obama has created the first "National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators". As everyone is aware by now, this is definitely needed!

-Historically farmers turned to agricultural colleges, usually in rural areas because that's where the farms are, for assistance on questions like "What crops can I plant (and how) to diversify?" and "Where can I have my soil tested?" With the rise in urban agriculture, perhaps urban operations need similar, expert help...which is local?
The Sustainable Cities Collective is trying to chip in by offering a free webinar on how to start and run a sustainable urban agriculture company.  They were incredibly thorough!

-Costa Rica is now the most recent nation to give aquaponics a whirl.

-And lastly for today is NPR tackling food forests. Look at all the comments!

Quezon City signs incentives for green roofs and green walls

 
Quezon City, the Philippines largest city, recently approved tax discounts for residential, industrial or commercial buildings which install green roof or green walls! This makes it the first, and only municipality on Earth, to offer incentives for both green technologies!

Last week was filled with so many big news stories...

-In Montreal an organic farming initiative was launched to cultivate vacant land. The hope is by 2019 to have an operation "the size of 55 football fields"!

-Across the province in Quebec City the first rooftop farm on a homeless shelter began it's growing season. It will supply about 1/3 of its growing needs.

-In Wisconsin, the Aquaponics Innovation Center opened last week. With the help of $677,000 in federal funding, the "center will provide education and resources for economic and workforce development". If you're really interested in a career in aquaponics as a career, have a peek at this new job site.

-Yesterday was National Permaculture Day in Australia. I'll have a roundup later in the week on the best activities in Oz.

-A new agrihood is sprouting up in North Carolina on 230 acres of functioning farmland. The developers envision educational events for students, in addition to the working community farm.

-The vertical farming sector is growing every day. However for most people some of the most basic facts are hard to find out. For instance, how big is vertical farming or indoor farming worldwide? In China, according to one researcher, they grow 25% of their food indoors already!
How much does it cost to start a vertical farming operation? In South Korea at least we know it's roughly 10 times the cost of a standard, glass greenhouse.

$46 million for 1,800 urban farms in Seoul

Lots to talk about over the last week, municipalities across the world are doing some incredible things revolving around urban agriculture and green roofs:

-The government of the city of Seoul will inject about $46 million dollars into urban agriculture to hopefully build 1,800 gardens in parks, schools and rooftops, all of which will be within a ten-minute walk!

-Staying abroad, a small aquaponics project has been funded in Trinidad, it's great another island nation is jumping on board. But I wanted to discuss semantics. What do you think looks better, $.5 million or $500,000? Intuitively I know it's the same, but there's something about seeing the decimal which makes me think it's smaller than if we saw all those zeros.

Stateside the biggest news of the last week comes from Houston...let me repeat, Houston!...has given the go ahead and favorable terms, for an aquaponics operation in an abandoned building. The company agrees to apply almost $5 million dollars into the project.

-Living architecture has reached new heights when towns like Traverse, the tart cherry capital of the world with 15,000 people, is considering green roof credits!

-In California's Napa Valley one of the country's most eco-friendly developments just got the green light.  They are calling it a "housing experiment", Napa Creek Village promises greener design (LEED platinum complete with green walls) and a path to home ownership via a rent-to-own mechanism!
 
-Oregon's state legislature is considering property tax credits for those who start urban agriculture operations.

-Up the coast a bit Vancouver will convert some of the caretaker houses for their parks system into food hubs, to plant gardens, share ideas on producing, preserving and preparing food and more. It seems they have been also used for art over the years, hopefully that continues as well.

-And this last story comes from a college. Cornell University now has a college level course, from which you get credits AND a permaculture certificate once you are done!