516019 Mon May 05 10:47:19 -0700 2008 5 33 Food Media and News 0 3657936 Bay Area Backroads is a locally produced show that does segments on various places of interest around the Bay Area. This week's edition had a segment on urban farms, specifically in poor/blighted neighborhoods -- two in West Oakland and one in San Francisco -- that are either bringing fresh, high quality food to areas where that's lacking or empowering people to grow their own foods (or both). Even though I was vaguely aware of one of the Oakland projects (People's Grocery), I thought it was interesting, especially the idea that even in the middle of highly urbanized areas there's still space to grow significant amounts of food (one Oakland farm also has chickens that produce 20 dozen eggs a week). http://www.alemanyfarm.org/ http://www.peoplesgrocery.org/ http://www.cityslickerfarms.org/ And a couple of weeks ago there was a story on Chow.com about a guy who is raising food in his and his neighbors' yards -- sort of a neighborhood CSA. I wonder if this is the wave of the future, especially as there's more and more global competition for food, food prices rise, transportation costs increase, etc., which will make it both more desirable and more cost-effective to grow a larger proportion of food close to home. I know during WWII my grandmother and father (then a teenager), grew over a ton of produce in one year in their backyard Victory Gardern. It makes me wish I had the time and inclination to do the same. Mon May 05 10:47:21 -0700 2008 10159 Ruth Lafler 1 3658225 One of the very first organic farms in Austin Texas, Boggy Creek Farm, started their East Austin Farm in 1992. They had another farm in Milam County in 1981. The East Austin farm is within 10 minutes of downtown Austin, in a mostly latino neighborhood, so this isn't exactly a new thing. www.boggycreekfarm.com Mon May 05 11:46:57 -0700 2008 3657936 11826 Phaedrus 2 3658440 Not a new thing, but something that has new ramifications in the current world economic and environmental situation. I said my family had a victory garden -- I forgot to mention it was in the backyard of an ordinary house in a densely developed neighborhood. Over the weekend I was also talking to some people about how the current mortgage crisis has hit hardest in new developments that have been eating into agricultural land on the outer fringes of the Bay Area and in the Central Valley (where much of the produce not only for the state but for the country is grown). Maybe it's time to stop building sprawling housing developments that people can't afford without unrealistic loans and start developing in a way that integrates more compact housing with greenspace provided by agricultural land. I'd buy a house that didn't have much of a yard if it was next to an orchard! Mon May 05 12:33:42 -0700 2008 3658225 10159 Ruth Lafler 3 3899036 Ruth, I had heard last month about the Allotments in the UK and what a great tradition it is. The idea is similar to what you described, a win-win situation, for the cities, for the neighborhoods, for the people living in the neighborhoods and for the health of the people in the community. Unfortunatley, part of the reason that the Kitchen Sisters on NPR did the story was because a major allotment has been plowed under to make way the London's Olympic construction. They hope they can get the land back after 2012, but for some of the old people living there, it would all be too late. Very sad indeed. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91805611 Thu Jul 24 16:57:22 -0700 2008 3658440 11826 Phaedrus 1 3898701 Here's a link to the video: http://www.bayareabackroads.com/RecentShows/May342008/tabid/110/Default.aspx (Urban Farms). BTW, since I first posted, I'm having an edible/ornamental garden installed in part of my backyard (it turns out one of my tenants is interested in installing and maintaining it). Since we're also having a drought in California, I'm hoping to water it with a combination of greywater and captured/stored rainwater. Thu Jul 24 15:10:49 -0700 2008 3657936 10159 Ruth Lafler 1 3900199 The Capuchin monks in Detroit have been doing this since before it was trendy... http://www.cskdetroit.org/EWG/index.cfm Fri Jul 25 06:05:41 -0700 2008 3657936 109573 coney with everything