Farmers Markets Enjoy Popularity, Face Challenges
Cinamon Vann, Sacramento Press
Living in one of the world's most productive agricultural regions has its perks. Sacramento residents can stroll through a farmers market and buy fresh fruits and vegetables—and meet the farmer who grew them—year-round.

By all accounts, the popularity of farmers markets is on the rise, not just in Sacramento, but nationwide. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are 4,800 farmers markets in operation, an increase of almost 400 markets since 2006.

California is home to about 520 certified farmers markets, featuring the produce of nearly 3,000 farmers. Sales are up, too. California’s farmers markets took in $163 million in 2007 (the latest figure available), up from $114 million in 2002.

"We’re seeing increased demand, increased participation from younger people and families. You see a lot of baby buggies at the farmers market. People are realizing that food is an important part of their lives," says Dan Best, of Certified Farmers Markets of Sacramento County...
(22 Oct 2009)

Hoop Dreams
Joe Tropea, Baltimore City Paper
"This is a great day for city schools," says Tyler Brown, the 24-year-old project manager of Real Food Farm, a new agricultural endeavor located in Lake Clifton Park. On a recent fall day, Brown is working with a group of 30-40 volunteers, students, and construction workers who are building three hoop houses, or high-tunnel greenhouses, on a stretch of land next to Lake Clifton High School. Between the school's parking lot and its track and football field, a semi is dumping a load of compost that has to be spread across three large plots, while three men use a pipe bender to make the skeletons of the hoop houses. The set up, Brown says, should take less than a week. Then, after the first three demonstration models are complete, Civic Works, the city's nonprofit youth-service organization, will build 20 more just beyond the football field. Located in the Herring Run watershed, Lake Clifton High has plenty of ground to spare.

The food grown in these greenhouses--all manner of vegetables and other produce--will be tended by students, educators, volunteers, and individuals training to be master gardeners. The food will be sold and distributed to schools, farmers' markets, and possibly through a CSA (community supported agriculture) that may be set up at Lake Clifton High.

If Real Food Farm is successful--and there's reason to believe it will be considering the success of a similar endeavor in the city called Great Kids Farm ("The New Meal," Feature, June 3)--it could mean the dawn of an agricultural economy within city limits that provides locally produced, fresh food to inner-city neighborhoods. The new greenhouses will offer learning opportunities for students, and if the effort takes off, it could also mean new "green" jobs for city residents.

Three days later, two of the hoop houses are finished. They are huge tunnels, 148 feet long by 20 feet wide. They're much like traditional glass greenhouses, only far less expensive--at $5,000 per house, they're priced at about one quarter of what a smaller glass greenhouses would cost. They're also greener, as they can operate without built-in electric fans and heaters. Inside tunnel number one, it's hot and steamy--more than 20 degrees hotter than it is outside on a recent 68-degree day. Brown demonstrates the house's venting system, which works by spreading overlapping plastic sections open, letting in refreshing gusts of cool autumn air...
(X Sept 2009)

Farmers’ markets for seed savers
Pamela Cuthbert, macleans.ca
It’s for the birds, right? Saving and spreading seed is what Mother Nature does while we’re not looking. So why is there an increasingly popular grassroots movement of seed swappers, most of them new, urban growers, who are taking matters into their own hands? It’s the latest chapter in the local foods craze that meticulously traces sources: “field to fork” has now become “seed to spoon.”

“There’s a garden revolution going on,” says Vandana Shiva, the world’s leading seed-saving activist, on the phone from her home in Dehra Dun in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. Shiva, who earned her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Western Ontario and who is making a rare appearance at the University of Toronto this month, ranks as the grand protector of small-scale farmers and gardeners. In 1987, the pre-eminent powerhouse, author and environmentalist founded the Navdanya association in India that supports farmers with seed banks, educational programs and what she calls the “right to seed.” Says Shiva, with unblinking conviction, “For every urban gardener who keeps exchanging seed, that’s the highest duty and governments will have to bend to this.”

Her organization has also taken on global seed-patent fights. In the past 25 years, commercial seeds for industrial farming have steadily come under copyright law. The patents, now a multi-billion-dollar business, are owned by multinationals such as Bayer and Monsanto. Navdanya has stopped three seed patents to date.

The small-scale seed-sharers aren’t generally dealing in patented goods—a lot of that is genetically modified, which they tend to avoid—but these efforts, tied in with improved access for urban agriculture at schools and community gardens, are part of an increasingly vocal protest against the ownership of seeds. Ian Aley is with FoodShare, a non-profit focused on hunger and food issues in Toronto. “The reason we do seed saving and include it in our urban agriculture program,” he says, “is because of a broader issue: having autonomy and having control over our own food sources.” These urban farmers are also proving effective guardians of biodiversity, whether that means saving rare plums or out-of-style varieties like yellow corn...
(22 Oct 2009)

Food Advocates Envision Rooftop Gardens and Vertical Farms
New York Times, Bao Ong
New Yorkers flock to one of the city’s Greenmarkets or upscale grocery stores when they want to buy ripe heirloom tomatoes or crisp heads of lettuce. But for proponents of urban farming, local food from upstate or even just miles into New Jersey is too far. (City dwellers can relate.)

Urban farming may seem improbable in a metropolis where real estate is at a premium and green space is virtually nonexistent outside Central Park. But as Americans grow increasingly interested in where their food comes from and how it is grown in this Michael Pollan-inflected era, small plots of farms dotting New York’s rooftops could be the new wave of agriculture, according to urban planning experts and farmers.

“People care deeply about being green,” said Jennifer Nelkin, a greenhouse director and one of the founders of a small company called Gotham Greens. “Whether it’s the food, environment, renewable energy or any other issue, people want to do something to help out.”

In 2006, Ms. Nelkin helped run a sustainable farm that sat on a barge in the Hudson River. The 5,000-square-feet hydroponic greenhouse was powered by wind turbines, solar panels and used vegetable oil to grow peppers, squash, herbs, strawberries and more for restaurants and organizations like City Harvest.

Now she and her partners at Gotham Greens plan to build a 10,000-square-foot greenhouse atop a church in Jamaica, Queens, before the end of the year, and to harvest the first crops they will sell in early spring.

“It’s more than local food — everything from creating green jobs to creating green space. It’s really something people are looking for, ” Ms. Nelkin said. “Ultra-local food would be from urban farms.”
(23 Oct 2009)

all of the above articles courtesy of kalpa!

Will Allen and the Urban Farming Revolution
Ethan Zuckerman, Worldchanging
Will Allen is redefining farming. His farm is a set of greenhouses in a corner of Northwest Milwaukee, walking distance from the city’s largest housing project. His farm doesn’t just feed 10,000 local residents – it’s a source of jobs, of training in polyculture and transformation of waste into food, and a model for the future of urban farming.

Will’s a soft-spoken guy, a former Proctol and Gamble executive, who’s been transformed into a farming innovator. He thanks Michael Pollan for being “the world’s greatest framer” in explaining the global food crisis, and especially in our inner cities. The global migration into cities means we’ve got to figure out how to feed these folks in the future, without totally destroying our environment.

Allen’s talk is focused on solutions – how do we bring good food into “food deserts”, places that have been redlined by grocery stores. It’s a social justice issue, not just an health and environmental issue. There are now ten farms in Allen’s project, over 100 acres in the city of Milwaulkee. The farm is located in a food desert – the nearest grocery store is four miles away, and his neighbors, living in housing projects, often don’t have access to transportation.

His solution is to produce food in cities, year-round. In the process, these farms grow communities. The project began in 1993, when Allen bought the last working farm in Milwaulkee. He shows us a photo of local kids in those days – we can tell the photo’s dated, he tells us, because the kids have their pants pulled up.

The farm was built around greenhouses and composting. This moved to aquaponics, growing fish and plants in the same system. The farm produced tilapia, vegetables and also bedding plants that could be used to landscape the community. The youth that got involved with the project ended up bringing in the parents...
(26 Oct 2009)