Agriburbia in Missouri

If you know foraging, you know Wildman Steve Brill. Rarely do we get background on his life, here's a little bit. And check out his old school website!

-Remember that urban farm in Vancouver which shut down and then was taken over by a company to possibly grow marijuana?  Business in Vancouver has an update on the situation

-Agriburbia hits Columbia, Missouri with the construction of a new housing development with an urban farm as it's focal point.

-If you're an urban farmer in Baltimore, rejoice, there's a new 90% property tax break for urban farmers!

-Sydney, Australia is getting an urban farm. The Daily Telegraph doesn't like that at all!

Living architecture movies galore!

On April 14th a Toronto filmmaker will release (via youtube) a 20 minute long film about a man who "has single-handedly planted a 1400 acre forest" over the last 35 years. The preview looks incredible, a GILA sleeper hit of the year?

Here's a second film in the Kickstarter phase; it looks promising indeed!

And one more to check out, it's all about Singapore and its vertical (I can NEVER type vertical, without typing verticiel these days!!!) farming revolution.

Dropping by Seneca College for a living architecture talk

Tomorrow I'll be the closing speaker for Seneca College's Green Citizen Conference. The topic, living architecture of course!

-And I'll give you some advanced notice so you can prepare, Friday don't forget to celebrate National Pumpkin Day!

Urban agriculture - come up edition

It's time for one of those "fell through the cracks" posts, where I elevate a few of the stories which are worthy of more attention, but somehow fell off the radar of other blogs and publications.

The first is a really new story and deserves a round of applause. The Rid-All Green Partnership has been a Cleveland success story. Buoyed by tremendous support from the local community, various for and non-profits and several hard working team members, they have become the centerpiece of a 23 acre Urban Agriculture Innovation zone.

-The St. Mary's Urban Farm in Harlem, NY should get a tip of the cap as well. In just a few months they have gone from 0 to harvesting over 700 pounds of food for their community. Okay, you say, there are lots of urban farms doing that. Well, how many of those farms have chosen to remediate their contaminated soil, instead of using raised beds, by utilizing Bokashi?

Harlem is filled with social innovators. See the Corbin Hill Farm's CSA. Pay only a week in advance, put your share on hold and any form of payment accepted including food stamps!

-Underreported urban agriculture story number four, and the last one for today: Behold the work done by City Growers in Pittsburgh.

National Eggplant Day is tomorrow!

 For all those in the USA, don't forget to celebrate National Eggplant Day tomorrow and Corn Day (chiefly in Mexico) on September 29.

The Farmery - an urban farm featuring aquaponics and more

Last year a colleague introduced me to The Farmery. A duo from North Carolina is trying to solve a big problem facing urban farmers: lack of supply. In a clever reuse of old shipping containers, they have mushrooms growing inside and plants growing outside.   But there's more, room for the farmer to sell their produce and the wares of others. They are hoping with a successful Kickstarter campaign to build their third prototype.

Check them out!

Green roofs, a symbol of bad or good architecture + breathless in France over urban ag

A ton happening on the urban agriculture front around the world:

-Urban ag enthusiasts in Vermont have another week to voice their opinion on the recommendations made by Burlington's Urban Agriculture Task Force. A stone’s throw away, Somerville Massachusetts is encouraging its residents to grow by planting an urban garden at its city hall. 

-In France, they are just beginning to investigate this thing called “urban agriculture” and the author of this article seems amazed by it all. It made me chuckle at first, but when I step back for a moment and think about it, it is pretty amazing. Maybe 10 years ago the nutty neighbors were the ones growing vegetables, these days its less and less likely that your neighbors would label you so and in places where urban gardens were slashed and burned, they are now less often targeted.  

-How a week can change things! Green roofs on this New York City building go from being possibly good to very bad when community groups take a look at some renderings. 

-Last month the National Resources Defense Council released a paper detailing how California could reduce its energy expenditure with green and white roofs. Sorry for not posting that sooner, it has been waiting in the queue! 

New Jersey says "yes" to green roof incentives; Sydney says "maybe"

Some great green roof news in the last few days. We can now add New Jersey to the list of North American cities (soon to be) offering incentives for green roof installations. 

Sydney, Australia is also considering adopting various green roof and green wall incentives. Fun fact of the day, although just a city, Sydney has a population 1/2 the size of New Jersey in 1/900th of the space!

-In other green infrastructure news, Pittsburgh will be making a deep investment in their tree canopy. Hurray!!! 

-Last year I wondered what the hold up in Detroit was for the Hantz urban agriculture project. After years of waiting Hantz may finally get approval from the city, but this article describes some of the reasons for opposition to the farm. Does this seem familiar, Fort Lauderdale?

The Green Roof news just keeps coming

Who knew I would have to update Wednesday’s post this quickly?

I was made aware that last week Mayor Vincent C. Gray, of Washington DC announced Sustainable DC.

The Mayor wants DC to be the  “healthiest, greenest, and most livable city in the United States”, which would include installing over 1.5 million square feet of green roofs on buildings in the city within a few years. He's psyched about urban farms too. Is it too late to give them another star?

According to Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, DC is 2011’s green roofing champ. Overall GRHC reports a 115% leap in green roof installations. Wow!

-You have my summary on Toronto’s recent green roof battle, if you want another perspective check out NOW Magazine.  

And lastly is an interesting report on San Francisco’s urban agriculture movement. In my view the most interesting tidbit is that Seattle spends almost twice as much per plot!

The federal farm bill is up for renewal!

The federal farm bill is up for renewal this year, how will this all shake out?
Utne reader’s blog does a commendable job of collecting resources to get Americans up to speed. With this election being even more contentious than previous ones, I wonder if this will be hardly a blip on the radar, a middling issue or lead to a massive battle. My guess, the nation will be caught up in presidential election fever. There will be the normal level of house and senatorial acrimony (not “let’s shut down the government level”), a slightly leaner budget will get passed, but neither Obama nor Romney (the odds on favorite) have ties to this battle so it will not draw big presidential focus or headlines.

-Public hearings into urban agriculture and its place in Montreal are scheduled from June 11-14. The Office de consultation publique de Montréal's has 24 videos up displaying various urban agriculture techniques. Don't forget to look for an urban agriculture expo on May 12 and a conference on May 17.

-BrightFarms is ready to go with a 100,000ft2 facility in Brooklyn. It may be the world’s biggest rooftop farm, for now (that title seems to change hands every 6 months), regardless, it's still epic.

-School gardening coordinator, love the concept and hope that the title and practice spreads beyond Portland. Anyone know how much a school gardening coordinator makes per year or are (substitute) teachers taking on the roles in addition to their normal duties?

-Wind power is not really related to green infrastructure, but I had to share this really cool wind power capacity map.

Of compost cuisine and Qatar conservation

-While reading an article about compost cuisine the other day, I thought how much dining out has changed.
Ten years ago a vegan restaurant made some people utterly confused. Now, it's not the most "far out" out there; there are gluten free restaurants, raw restaurants, restaurants that serve only cereal (!), and now restaurants which use every last bit of what they buy. Truly sustainable restaurants. What's the next food frontier? Perhaps "feel good" restaurants... a restaurant which donates all of it's proceeds to a partner organization??? Wouldn't that be great?

-Seattle University's school farm produced and donated 7,000 pounds of food last year. With a $100,000 grant, they'll be able to grow a whole lot more.

-A few weeks ago I wrote a bit about Qatar buying farmland abroad and exploration into aquaponics. Connecting the dots a bit, I wonder could this need for viable farmland far from home make a country like Qatar more supportive of global conservation, because degradation could be seen as a national security threat? Could we see a country like Qatar be the first to link currency to natural capital?

Occupy LA wins...an urban farm???!

The Occupy movement is diverse, however, a general dislike of greed and corruption unites most Occupiers. As does a belief in non-violence. So it makes sense that in Los Angeles a deal may be brokered to encourage the group to disperse if...

-shelter is given some of the homeless Occupiers;
-an office building is leased to the Occupiers;
-an urban farm is built outside city hall.

HUH??????

Green roofs and Devens, Mass.

As someone involved in living architecture and green roofs in particular for some time now, it is great that more and more cities are recognizing the value of having a green roof professional as part of the design team. Joining Calgary and DC Devens, Massachusetts now requires an accredited green roof professional (ahhm, you know how to contact me) on the job.

-Pee Wee the red wriggler is back. If your kids loved the previous books on composting, this is bound to be a treat as well.

-If you're in Roanoke, Virginia and have an opinion about the proposed
urban farm scheduled to be built where Countryside Golf Course used to be, you...umm...missed a chance to talk about it on Thursday, September 22. If you still want to share your thoughts, it looks like you can talk to the Planning Administrator.

-For all of the entrepreneurs out there, this list of the biggest food deserts means while citizens do not have equal access to fresh fruit and vegetables and there are folks waiting for your business!

-This article makes me so, so, nervous for a few reasons:
1) Folks are growing vegetables in tyres American translation: tires).
2) The numerous citations of Wikipedia as their main source of information.
But I wish them all the best and hope those tire planters are lined!!!

-To round out this my most eclectic blog post yet, we get a peak inside why Japan is embracing urban agriculture.