Urban Agriculture Notes
by City Farmer
Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture
Established 1978
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Prepared by Michael Levenston, Executive Directorcityfarm@unixg.ubc.ca
(C) Copyright City Farmer 1994-1996
On-line on the World Wide Web since October 15, 1994
Welcome to City Farmer's home on the World Wide Web. After 19 years digging in the fields of Urban Agriculture, we want to share with you what we have learned. The Web makes it possible for us to reach a much larger audience than we were reaching before the arrival of on-line publications.
Our non-profit society promotes urban food production and environmental conservation from a small office in downtown Vancouver, British Columbia and from our demonstration food garden in nearby Kitsilano, a residential neighbourhood.
Urban Agriculture is a new and growing field that is not completely defined yet even by those closest to it. It concerns itself with all manner of subjects from rooftop gardens, to composting toilets, to air pollution and community development. It encompasses mental and physical health, entertainment, building codes, rats, fruit trees, herbs, recipes and much more.
Our Office wants you to know about some of the issues we deal with from day to day. There are very few offices in the world that have our experience serving city farmers all year round or have done so for as many years as we have. These pages will grow as we select the latest breaking information that comes to us, as we review our large library of resources for useful documents to put on-line, and as we hook you up with other Urban Agriculture Web sites that most certainly will emerge.
Urban Agriculture Notes is written for those who want to start up their own "Office of Urban Agriculture", for those who have already done so, and for gardeners who are curious about what we refer to as political horticulture. So sit up, bear with us as we add to this site week by week and listen to the birds singing in our garden.
- More
About City Farmer's Work - Update December, 1996
- Our Compost Hotline has received 17,000 calls since 1992.
- 3000 visitors a year come to our Demonstration Garden.
- Since 1992, City Farmer has taught 431 children's wormshops for a total of 9771 "contacts".
- Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator
![[new]](http://cityfarmer.org/new01.gif)
- Our Compost Hotline has received 17,000 calls since 1992.
- "There was a foaming, brilliant yellow, mass oozing
across our big worm bins in the worm corner. What could it be?"
- Food Crops We
Grew In 1996
- City Farmer's head gardener, Wes Barrett,
demonstrates 12 month gardening at our Food Garden in Vancouver.
- City Farmer Donates
Garden Produce To Vancouver Hospice
To Predict The Future
Is To Invent It
- Article about Cuba's Urban
Gardens by the World Sustainable Agriculture
Association
- "In 1995, there were an estimated 26,600 popular garden parcels
(parcelas) throughout the 43 urban districts that make up Havana's 15
municipalities."
- Urban Agriculture
in Zimbabwe
- "...recommended to the serious student of either urban food security
and urban poverty, or urban planning and urban management in Africa."
International Planning Studies
- Yaounde, Cameroon:
Capital Becomes Garden City
- "In the past, urban agriculture had been discouraged by officials of
the ministries of health and environment, who saw farms in towns as
breeding grounds for mosquitoes, snakes and rodents."
- Urban Agriculture in
Nairobi, Kenya
- "The case of Mama S., a single mother with six adult children serves
to illustrate the role food production can have in the education of
children from low-income households. Mama S. states that revenues from
food sales allowed her to put all her children through school."
City Farmer
Included in 1997 Web Calendar
- "Urban Agriculture Notes" has been included as one of 365 sites in
the world's first Web Calendar. The 1997 Daily Webpage Desk
Calendar by (R)evolutionary systems includes our web site as the
July 10th site for 1997. Why that day? Vanity. It is the date of this
webmaster's birthday.
Buy a calendar by following the link and our non-profit society receives a $2 commission!
- International Group Supports Urban Agriculture:
New Web Site!
- Urban agriculture group forms a Global Facility: to reduce food insecurity, create jobs and improve the environment in cities. A new WWW site introduces the work of the international Support Group for Urban Agriculture (SGUA).
- Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities
- Landmark publication just released (February 1996) by the United
Nations Development Programme. Written by Jac Smit and his team at the
Washington based Urban Agriculture Network, this book marks the
beginning of a new age in the development of Urban Agriculture.
- Urban Farms: How Green Is My Barrio
"A nationwide inner-city revival brings jobs, fresh produce, and soon, goats?" reports Dec/96 Christian Science Monitor article. "Some 750 cities have community garden programs, up from 23 in 1976."- 21st Century Cities
What Would the World be Like in the 21st Century if Cities Were Nutritionally Self-Reliant? Paper delivered by Jac Smit in Marmaris, Turkey on April 20, 1996 - Urban Farms: How Green Is My Barrio
- City Farmer's Net
Bulletin Board
- As announcements of upcoming events cross my desk, I'll thumbtack
them up here.
- Jerry Seinfeld's Worm Bin
- "What's The Deal With Worm Composting?"
- Urban Home Composting
- If all our urban organic waste was turned
back into crop nourishing humus, think how fertile the ground would
become.
- America's First Composter
"As evidence of George Washington's devotion to composting, he erected a highly unusual building specifically designed to compost "manure" and to facilitate its "curing" into usable fertilizer." - America's First Composter
- Composting With Red Wiggler Worms
- The great advantage of worm
composting is that this can be done indoors and outdoors, thus allowing
year round composting. It also provides apartment dwellers with a means
of composting.
- City of Vancouver Distributes Worm Bins!
Newsweek magazine, Feb. 12, 1996, reports "Entire cities are getting into the act. Vancouver sells worm bins, wrigglers included at half price." (Kitchen Help: Wrigglers Under the Sink, page 76) - City of Vancouver Distributes Worm Bins!
- Dealing With a Rat in a Compost Bin
- An individual who calls the Compost
Hotline is usually quite shocked that he has a rat on his property.
- Community Gardens.
- By far the largest collection of information
on this subject can be found amongst the membership of the American
Community Garden Association (ACGA)
- Northwest Territories' Community Garden
"Our greatest advantage is the long day length: June 21 has 21 hours of daylight and we only start to get a true night by mid-August."- Garden Policy Approved
Vancouver Park Board approves a unique community garden policy. Spring, 1996- Politics of Community Gardening in Germany
Lecture given by Professor Gert Gröning at the 1996 ACGA conference in Montreal. [8500 word document (56K) published on one page.] - Northwest Territories' Community Garden
- International Urban Agriculture.
- A number of
excellent publications have come out which show International Urban
Agriculture being treated very seriously by development professionals.
- City Farming in Albania
"The pigs ate the family's kitchen waste: bread, leftover food, vegetable parings, etc. If their neighbours minded the smell or noise, they said nothing; most people are in the same situation and understand that people do what they have to in order to survive."- Combating Hunger in Mongolia
Using Urban Agriculture
In 1990/1991, 850 families grew vegetables in the city. This year (1996) the number has increased over 20 times reaching 21,000. More and more families have begun to realize that home gardening might be a way to improve their standard of living. - City Farming in Albania
- City Farms in United Kingdom
- Things you can do here include: daily
feeding and mucking out, milking and cheese making, beekeeping and
general animal care.
- Report Highlights and Promotes the Benefits of Urban Agriculture in the UK
"In the UK, many poor urban neighbourhoods have become food retailing deserts, where access to good food shops and markets is rare. Parts of the countryside too are becoming desertified - economically - with farming employing only 2.2% of the population." - Report Highlights and Promotes the Benefits of Urban Agriculture in the UK
- Bangkok Food Gardens
- Short-life vegetables are lettuce, phak
khana, khuenchai, phak bung (morning glory), tang-o,
scallions, cucumber, and cauliflower.
- Urban Agriculture in Philadelphia
- The hundreds of garbage strewn vacant
lots have stimulated citizens to create what has been called "the
largest comprehensive urban greening program in North America."
- Montreal Community Gardens
- Pierre Bourque, community garden
champion and a 30 year veteran of Montreal's civil service, was recently
elected Mayor of Montreal.
- Food Gardens in South Africa
- The Foundation sells a wide variety of
resources in a number of different languages including English,
Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, and S. Sotho.
- Australian City Farms
- For the first time, a booklet has been produced
to document the activities, focus and set-up of Australian city farms,
community gardens and creative living/enterprise centres.
- City Farm in Perth, Australia
- "We all wanted to move out of the city and find some greenery. Then we thought, 'Why not bring the greenery to the city?'"
- City Farm in Perth, Australia
- School Gardens
- "The food garden increases their sense of
wonder. It's pretty magical, but at the same time, it demystifies the
concept of food production."
- Setting Up These Pages On The World Wide Web
- City Farmer doesn't need
a mailing list, a layout artist, a printer or publisher, a distributor,
tons of paper or postage to produce this new publication. (This article
was written in the early days of web publishing, May 1995, just a year
or so ago. Much has changed. See following article.).
- UPDATE: Setting Up Pages On The World Wide Web - A Case Study
This revised piece was originally published in the May 13, 1996 edition of Canada Internet Daily. - UPDATE: Setting Up Pages On The World Wide Web - A Case Study
- Cities Feeding
People Homepage
- This site provides information about the program
initiative on urban agriculture (UA) at Canada's International
Development Research Centre. UA projects in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Uganda,
Morocco, India, Cambodia, Kenya, Ghana, are described. The site also
describes a Latin American UA organization named AGUILA
currently grouping nearly 40 institutions from Argentina, Bolivia,
Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador,
Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru.
- Canada's IDRC Produces 'Cities Feeding People' Series
- Copies can be obtained free of charge.
- Urban Food Production: Evolution, Official Support and Significance by Luc J.A. Mougeot
- A major paper (16,479 words) by the Senior Program Officer, Environment and Natural Resources Division at Canada's IDRC.
- Canada's IDRC Produces 'Cities Feeding People' Series
- Victory Gardens: The Garden Warriors of 1942
- In 1943, there
were 209,200 Victory Gardens in Canada, and on the average they produced
550 lbs. of vegetables each. One gardener in seven was a city dweller.
- Rooftop Gardens
- Toronto's Rooftop Gardens Resource Group
delves into roofing, structural considerations and building codes.
- Masters Thesis: The Potential of Rooftop Gardening
Joseph St. Lawrence has written eloquently about his work creating a roof garden on a warehouse in downtown Toronto. We have published 15,000 words of his 22,000 word paper.- Rooftop Gardening in St. Petersburg, Russia
"This year we also started a ground level garden in the Artificial Limb Institute which rehabilitates invalids who lost legs or arms in the War in Chechnia (mostly boys of age 18-25)." - Masters Thesis: The Potential of Rooftop Gardening
- Funding an Office of Urban Agriculture
- Some people assume that City
Farmer is a government department and address their letters to "The
Minister of Urban Agriculture".
- New York Gardens
Threatened With Destruction!
- "Many of the 750 community gardens in New
York City are now under threat of destruction as the City sells off
11,000 lots. Almost all of the 50 gardens on the Lower East Side of New
York City, 25 gardens in Harlem and Coney Island, and 20 gardens in
Brooklyn and the Bronx are slated to be bulldozed."
- Photographs of Community Gardening in New York
- Operation Green Thumb celebrates the beauty and joy of New York's community gardens in an exhibition of 43 photographs. Published in conjunction with the show is a wonderful booklet titled Tales From The Field II, Stories By GreenThumb Gardeners
- Photographs of Community Gardening in New York
- Tree Mushroom Cultivation Relieves Poverty
- Su Decheng, a mushroom scientist from China,
reports that in one county he worked in, "the average annual income per
capita reached 1,800 Chinese yan (CN $300) in 1993, and 75% of it came
from mushrooms." Just a few years earlier before mushroom growing
technology had been introduced, the yearly income of the population was
less than 300 Chinese yan (CN $50)
- $$$ From Your Garden
- "Design information for a model garden that
will produce over $10,000 of vegetables from less than 1/3 acre."
- Arable Acres Within City Limits
- It's amazing to discover that the City of
Vancouver has enough land available so that its inhabitants can grow all
their own vegetables within city limits.
- Julie McCarroll's Horticultural Delights
- Beautiful posters and cards
created by this Toronto watercolour artist.
- The Tele-Garden
- No garden space whatsover? Then garden
through your computer screen! "This tele-robotic installation allows WWW
users to view and interact with a remote garden filled with living
plants. Members can plant, water, and monitor the progress of seedlings
via the tender movements of an industrial robot arm."
- Composting Toilets
- In Vancouver, British Columbia, a 30,000 sq.
ft. office complex, utilizes composting toilets and urinals for human
waste disposal. The new building is not connected to the city's sewer
system.
- City of Vancouver, Compost Capital
- Vancouver is a model city
when it comes to composting. The City's Engineering Department supports
both a yard and worm bin distribution program, a Compost Demonstration
Garden and Hotline, and large-scale yard waste composting.
- Gardening Questions? Visit one of these sites.
- The Internet is
a treasure chest full of gardening secrets and these excellent sites
will link you to many of them.
- Horticulture Therapy
- Strolling along a path in her electric
wheelchair, she paused, and a gleam came to her eye. Glancing
mischieviously over her shoulder, she leaned closer to confide, "I like
getting dirty the best."
- The Spirit of Healing. This piece was presented at "The Healing Dimensions of People-Plant Relations Research Symposium" in March 1994. It follows the course of the presenter's experience with cancer and how environment, landscape and gardens played a vital role in the recovery process from her illness.
- The Spirit of Healing. This piece was presented at "The Healing Dimensions of People-Plant Relations Research Symposium" in March 1994. It follows the course of the presenter's experience with cancer and how environment, landscape and gardens played a vital role in the recovery process from her illness.
- World's Urban Population
- Majority of world's population will live
in urban centres by 2015, UN report says.
- Rain Barrels
- The City of Vancouver is providing subsidized
rain barrels for up to 1,000 residents under a pilot program to conserve
water.
- Vancouver Begins Disconnecting Downspouts
Disconnecting residential roof downspouts from the combined sewer system may be an important way to reduce water pollution caused by Combined Sewer Overflows. - Vancouver Begins Disconnecting Downspouts
- Chickens In Soup
- Some people believe that an egg-producing hen is
of greater value than a barking dog or a noisy lawnmower, but City Hall
doesn't agree.
- Urban "Animal" Agriculture Comes to Chicago
For 52 years, Heifer Project International has brought livestock to rural communities throughout the world to combat hunger and poverty and help restore the environment. Now they are bringing dairy goats and honeybees to the inner city. - Urban "Animal" Agriculture Comes to Chicago
- Condo Farming
- Victoria urban farmers work with developer to
build "edible" three-storey condominium.
- Sprouting at Home
- Fresh organic vegetables every day from a square
foot of counter space.
- Improving Nutrition Through Home Gardening
- The U.N.'s Food and
Agriculture Organization publishes Improving Nutrition Through Home
Gardening: A training package for preparing field workers in Southeast
Asia.
- Dietary, Social and Economic Evaluation of Philadelphia Urban Gardens
A 1991 report in the Journal of Nutrition Education found "that gardening is related to an increased frequency of vegetable consumption and to the reduced frequency of milk product consumption." - Dietary, Social and Economic Evaluation of Philadelphia Urban Gardens
- Waterwise Gardening
- Even in rainy Vancouver water-saving,
gardening techniques are recommended for coping with summer droughts.
City Farmer in cooperation with the City of Vancouver has opened a new
public garden which demonstrates conservation methods such as contouring
of the ground, soil conditioning using compost, collection of rain
water, the use of native plants, and passive watering.
Readers in the following countries have accessed our web site since February 12, 1996. We will be looking at our web stats every day to see what new additions can be made to this list.
- Average number of files transmitted from our site each month totals more than 45,000. In the month of January 1997 we reached a new record... 68,690 files transmitted! In the past 12 months over one half million files have been transmitted from this site!!
Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Aruba Austria Australia Bahrain Belgium Bermuda Bolivia Brazil Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia (Hrvatska) Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Guatemala Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Kenya Korea(South) Kuwait Latvia Lebanon Lithuania Luxembourg Malaysia Malta Mexico Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Norway Panama Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russian Federation Saudi Arabia Singapore Slovak Republic Slovenia South Africa Spain Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay USSR Venezuela Yugoslavia Zambia
Recognition Of Our Site
February 7, 1997. 'Urban Agriculture Notes' has been chosen as the "Farm" link for this week's Homesteader's Links of the Week. (http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Plains/3346)
'Urban Agriculture Notes', has been listed as the Site of the Day for February 5, 1997 on Ithaca Gardens (http://www.woodny.com/garden)
December 11, 1996 "Congratulations! Your site has been chosen for our Best of the Internet Department on Progressive Farmer Online (http://pathfinder.com/PF)! We choose the best non-commercial sites on the Internet that we feel will be of interest to our readers. Your site provides services we think our readers can use and will enjoy."
"Pick of the Crop"
November 13, 1996 "Congratulations! Your gardening website
has been named a "Pick of the Crop" as one of the best gardening sites
on the Internet. The editors of Virtual Garden (http://vg.com)
have reviewed more than 500 gardening sites for inclusion in our Dig the
Net link directory, and we've singled out the best for special
recognition."
World Wide Web Top 1000
"We're delighted to tell you that your site was nominated
as one of the elite 1000 included in this book. The reviews are
modified and expanded versions of our Website entries, and some also
include screen shots." See page 434.
"Your site, full of great reading material and information, has been named Canuck Site Of The Day for September 30, 1996! It promotes excellence in technology and design in Canada."
Plant Science
"You were one of Planet Science's Sites of the Day on 2
April, 1996. Planet Science is the award-winning online voice of the
world's leading science and technology news weekly, New
Scientist."
August 22, 1996
"MGI Software Corp. will be launching a new automated Internet Guide Book designed to make it easy for users to find the best sites on the Web. After evaluating thousands of candidates we have selected your site for inclusion in our Guide Book facility. We will be limiting the size of our guide book to about 500 sites this year."
August 9, 1996
Bell Atlantic Internet Solutions has identified your site to be included within its Internet Access Service as a best of the net site.
Frank Severa's Useful URLs
Pick of the week for January 28, 1996
Urban Agriculture Notes is
"the only urban agriculture site on the Internet."
1996-97 Edition
1997 Canadian Internet
Directory
1996 McKinley Internet Yellow
Pages
Que's Mega Web
Directory
1996 Edition
The International Internet
Directory
"Uptown hipsters will dig this back-to-nature guide to urban
agriculture."
"Your home page has been rated by Point Survey as one of the 10 best (in
its category/content/presentation/overall) on the Internet. Only the
best 5% of all Web sites are included in Point Survey, and we believe
your site is among the best of the best!"
"City Farmer has created a 'demo' garden in the heart of the city that
gives novices hands-on experience and skeptics a flourishing example of
what can be done."
"City Farmer...Coolest way to handle trash and tons of links! "
What would you like us to add to Urban Agriculture Notes ®
? Send
comments here cityfarm@unixg.ubc.ca
Harley Hahn's
Internet and Web Golden Directory
Osbourne
Microsoft
Bookshelf Internet Directory
With CD-ROM
by Jim Carroll and Rick Broadhead
Prentice
Hall, Canada
by Christine Maxwell
by Rositano, Rositano and Stafford
1996
New Riders'
Official World Wide Web Directory
Over 8,000 Web Sites
Described
by Mitzi Waltz, Ziff-Davis Press, 1995
Over
3000 sites from around the world
rating by The McKinley Internet Directory
Point Survey rates Urban Agriculture Notes
in
the top 5% of all WWW sites.
NetGuide Magazine reviewed Urban Agriculture
Notes
in their August, 1995 issue and in their January, 1996
issue.
NutForce awards Urban Agriculture Notes
The "Webnut Seal of Approval".
COMMENTS
Tell us about Urban Agriculture activities in your city.
revised, February 19, 1997
Snail-mail at:
City Farmer
Canada's Office of Urban
Agriculture
#801-318 Homer St.
Vancouver, B.C. V6B 2V3
Phone: (604) 685-5832
Fax: (604) 685-0431