Posts Tagged ‘Food’
Urban Agriculture Potential: Report
Posted in Movements, Research by Kate Archdeacon on August 23rd, 2011
Source: The City Fix
Sembradores Urbanos in Mexico City, photo by K. Archdeacon
From “New Report: The Potential for Urban Agriculture” by Itir Sonuparlak:
A new report by the Urban Design Lab (UDL) of Columbia University’s Earth Institute explores the potential for urban agriculture in New York City. The report, “The Potential for Urban Agriculture in New York City,” complements the existing discussion on sustainable cities. Developing agricultural spaces within or near urban areas has a great potential to reduce food transportation costs and environmental effects, as well as provide opportunities for economic development and diminish the disparities in access to healthy foods. In order to become a viable option to food production for the masses, urban agriculture must overcome challenges of scalability, energy efficiency and labor costs.
To understand the capacity of New York City’s crop production, UDL’s report aims to answer how much land could be productively used for agriculture and how much crop could realistically be grown in the given land. When it comes to the benefits of urban agriculture in New York City, the study also considers factors like food security, storm water runoff and sewer overflow mitigation, urban heat island effect, energy consumption, waste reduction, as well as opportunities for composting for agricultural purposes.
The study highlights 12 key findings:
- Urban agriculture can play a critical role as productive green urban infrastructure.
- Urban agriculture can play an important role in community development.
- There is a substantial amount of land potentially available for urban agriculture in NYC.
- Intensive growing methods adapted to urban spaces can result in yields per acre which greatly exceed those of conventional production techniques.
- While urban agriculture cannot supply the entire city with all of its food needs, in certain neighborhoods it can significantly contribute to food security.
- There is a need for cost/benefit analyses that reflect the full complexity of the city’s social and environmental challenges.
- NYC’s rooftops are a vast, underused resource that could be transformed for food production.
- Bureaucratic challenges are a major barrier to the expansion of urban farming.
- Existing infrastructure has the potential to support the expansion of urban agriculture.
- Urban farmers are establishing viable businesses by taking advantage of multiple revenue streams.
- Urban agriculture is part of a broader horticultural approach to urban greening that encompasses more than fruits and vegetables.
- Urban agriculture functions as a catalyst for larger food system transformations.
Read the full article by Itir Sonuparlak for a summary of the above points, or download the report.
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Local Harvest: Metasite for organic & local food
Posted in Models, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on July 26th, 2011
From the LocalHarvest website:
LocalHarvest is America’s #1 organic and local food website. We maintain a definitive and reliable “living” public nationwide directory of small farms, farmers markets, and other local food sources. Our search engine helps people find products from family farms, local sources of sustainably grown food, and encourages them to establish direct contact with small farms in their local area. Our online store helps small farms develop markets for some of their products beyond their local area.
The richness, variety, and flavor of our communities, food systems, and diets is in jeopardy. The exclusive focus on economic efficiency has brought us low prices and convenience through large supermarkets chains, agribusiness and factory farms, while taking away many other aspects of our food lives, like our personal relation with our food and with the people who produce it. More and more people are realizing this and actively working to turn the tide and to preserve a food industry based on family-owned, small scale businesses. They are our best guarantee against a world of styrofoam-like long-shelf-life tomatoes and diets dictated from corporate boardrooms. The Buy Local movement is quickly taking us beyond the promise of environmental responsibility that the organic movement delivered, and awakening the US to the importance of community, variety, humane treatment of farm animals, and social and environmental responsibility in regards to our food economy.
LocalHarvest was founded in 1998, and is now the number one informational resource for the Buy Local movement and the top place on the Internet where people find information on direct marketing family farms. We now have more than 20000 members, and are growing by about 20 new members every day. Through our servers, our website and those of our partners serve about three and a half million page views per month to the public interested in buying food from family farms. LocalHarvest is located in Santa Cruz, California, and was founded by Guillermo Payet, a software engineer and activist dedicated to generating positive social change through the Internet.
www.localharvest.org
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Ethical Consumer is setting up a similar resource in Melbourne, Australia, and is seeking local involvement. KA
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Urban Farming: Video showcase
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on July 22nd, 2011
Source: Bright Farm Systems
Brightfarms was featured in the Wall Street Journal, in a video piece on the growing urban farming industry. Paul Lightfoot, BrightFarms CEO, savors the taste of locally grown tomatoes at The Science Barge.
While up front capital costs are higher, the Journal reports, rooftop greenhouse farms pay off with lower operating costs, an improved environmental impact and tastier vegetables. The other enterprises featured in the 5-minute film are Brooklyn Granges and Gotham Greens.
Watch the video on the Brightfarms blog or over on WSJ.
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FARM:Shop – Growing Food in a London Shop
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on July 18th, 2011
From “Urban Farm in a Shop” on Urban Gardens:
FARM:shop is a workspace, cafe, and events venue packed to the rafters with living and breathing food–literally a farm in a shop. Asking themselves “how much food can we grow in a shop?” FARM:shop opened its doors in March and aspires to become the meeting place of choice for London’s food lovers and urban farmers, as well as a special place to rest one’s feet, have a coffee, and smell the countryside without ever leaving the city. Busy growing their idea, FARM:shop folks have filled the old space with a mini fish farm, vegetable garden, and are raising chickens and livestock.
The first FARM:shop, in Dalston, is the start of [a planned network of shops and grow sites across the UK.]
FARM:shop aims to:
- Excite and inspire city dwellers to grow their own food, fabric and medicine and make an income doing this.
- Create direct links between farms in the countryside with urban communities
- Grow food commercially via a network of FARM:’s across cities and retail this food at FARM:shops
Read the full article on Urban Gardens
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Flexible Trading Systems: Mobile Phones as Debit Cards for Farmers
Posted in Movements by Kate Archdeacon on July 11th, 2011
Source: Nourishing the Planet: Worldwatch Institute
Image: Energy For All 2030 via flickr CC
From “Phone Banking for the Unbanked“, by Matt Styslinger:
You might have a few dollars in your wallet, but chances are most of the money you spend is through your credit or debit card. The cashless system we’ve grown accustomed to across North America, offers consumers instant access to products and services—giving us the freedom to buy whatever we want whenever we want it. Much of the developing world still relies solely on cash and barter transactions.
But now entrepreneurs in Africa are pioneering a remote electronic money network for the continent’s “unbanked” rural people, allowing customers to use their cell phones like a debit card. Investing in this social entrepreneurship could bring prosperity to markets that need it most. Over the past decade, cell phone use has increased fivefold in Africa. Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project traveled across sub-Saharan Africa over the last year, and has found that nearly everyone, from remote villagers in Ethiopia and Uganda to poor farmers in Niger, has a cell phone.
Farmers are using their phones to gain access to information and other things they didn’t have before. They can check crop prices before investing time in long trips to city markets, for example, giving them the option to wait until prices increase. Agricultural extension agents and development agencies use cell phones to inform farmers about changes in weather that could affect crops.
Thanks to the efforts of companies like Mobile Transactions in Lusaka, Zambia—which Worldwatch highlights in its recently released, State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet—Zambian cotton farmers without bank accounts can now electronically receive payments for their crop direct to their mobile phones. About 80 percent of Zambians, particularly in rural areas, don’t have bank accounts. By using mobile banking, farmers are not only able to get paid more quickly and transparently, but they can also use their mobile accounts to send money transfers, buy phone credit, pay school fees for their children, and order agriculture inputs such as fertilizer and seed. Electronic payments also allow them to build up a credit history over time, which will make getting loans easier in the future.
The cashless system has several benefits. First, money stored electronically is less likely to be stolen or misused. Second, electronic transactions can be instant—lowering transaction costs—whereas in-person cash transactions often mean investing time and money in transportation. Electronic money can benefit more marginalized people who often have to rely on middlemen to help them access markets.
But Mobile Transactions does not have the luxury of riding off of the coattails of highly successful ventures like Twitter and the iPhone. “We’ve faced similar challenges to any start-up of trying to do a lot with a little,” says the company’s CEO, Mike Quinn. “The investment funds are out there, but we are a new business in an emerging industry in a country that few people know much about.”
The investment needed to firmly establish mobile banking in Zambia is large, and even more is needed for it to go international. But the models are there. The technology is there. The expertise is there and growing daily. And according to Quinn, “There is no better place or time to be an entrepreneur in an emerging mobile payments industry.”
From “Phone Banking for the Unbanked“, by Matt Styslinger.
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Sustainable Restaurant Association (UK): Network for Restaurants, Suppliers & Diners
Posted in Models, Movements by Kate Archdeacon on July 6th, 2011
Via Food Climate Research Network (FCRN)
The Sustainable Restaurant Association is a not for profit membership organisation helping restaurants become more sustainable and diners make more sustainable choices when dining out. We help our member restaurants source food more sustainably, manage resources more efficiently and work more closely with their community. Our independently verified star rating system means diners can choose a restaurant that matches their sustainability priorities. We recognise restaurants as one, two or three star sustainability champions depending on how they rate against a wide range of criteria covering 14 areas of sustainability. So, whether a diner’s main concern is animal welfare or carbon reduction, the SRA and its members are committed to a change for the better. We also help keep sustainability on the news agenda at a local and national level, running campaigns on issues such as finding more sustainable fish supplies, food waste and energy efficiency.
Ways in which we’ve helped restaurants be more sustainable.
Since our launch in March 2010 we’ve provided restaurants with hundreds of practical, cost saving, sustainable solutions across our three sustainable categories. Here are just a few examples of the varied ways in which the SRA has helped our members:
- Society – Ping Pong, with 12 sites in London, wanted to engage with a local charity working with homeless people – we put them in touch with St Mungo’s and now they are working together.
- Environment – Quo Vadis, in Soho, asked to us solve their waste problem. The restaurant recognised it was sending too much to landfill. We introduced them to Harrow Waste. Now nothing goes to landfill, they have installed a glass crusher, cardboard and glass is separated from the rest and they are starting to recycle paper and plastic, saving thousands of pounds in the process.
- Sourcing – In early 2011 all 11 Leon restaurants introduced a new item on its menu – the fish finger wrap and wanted to be sure that the cod was from a sustainable source. Our extensive research proved positive and now the wrap is Leon’s bestseller – making it sustainable in every sense.
www.thesra.org/
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Well worth reading the SRA 2010 Report for more detail on the way it’s been working. KA
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Combining Local Shop Deliveries: Last Mile Freight Solution
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on May 30th, 2011
Source: Springwise
From “Combined deliveries from small, local grocers“:
London-based Hubbub lets customers place online grocery orders with multiple local shops and receive a single, aggregated delivery to the door. Consumers in most parts of Highbury, Islington, Finsbury Park, Stoke Newington, Tufnell Park and Kentish Town begin by creating an account with Hubbub and then shopping online at their favorite greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers, bakers and more. Shopping can be conducted online shop by shop, or consumers can search for a particular product. Either way, prices are the same as those charged in the shops themselves, and consumers can even choose when their order will be delivered. When that time comes, Hubbub visits the shops in question, picks up the items ordered and delivers them in a single delivery to the consumer’s door. Delivery takes place only on weekdays, and it’s free on the consumer’s first order and for all orders over GBP 75. Otherwise, it costs GBP 3.50, regardless of the order’s size. With the eco-benefits of combined delivery runs and the (still) made here appeal of local sourcing — not to mention the compelling convenience involved — we’re betting there will be plenty more services like this to come.
Check out the original article on Springwise for links to other ideas like this one.
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Information Technology Supporting Transparent Future Food Policy
Posted in Movements, Opinion, Tools by Kate Archdeacon on May 13th, 2011
Source: Projects To Finish Someday via Sustainable Cities Collective
From “Information Technology: Coming to a Food Policy Near You” by Mari Pierce-Quinonez:
There are currently dozens of smartphone and internet apps designed to bring good food to tech-savvy consumers. You can now type in your location, the type of food you want and immediately get both directions to the best restaurant to go and the story behind the food they’re serving. If buying food in bulk to cook at home is more your thing, beta versions of a wholesale purchasing app is now available by invitation. Or if you want to grow your own, there are applications to aid you in planning your garden, sites to find a yard if you don’t already have one, and mobile apps with maps to fruit-bearing trees on public property. But the food system is more than foodies finding their next fix: the modern tech-movement goes beyond consumer-oriented apps. Food advocates and academics are using technology to connect the food system dots and are making good food policy decisions easier.
[...]
In the past, federal policymakers kept track of their own program-specific data: how many acres of farmland they had preserved, the nutrition status of the US population, the amount of vitamin D available in a particular type of milk. By moving everything online and opening this data up to everyone, all sorts of sophisticated policy recommendations can be made. The USDA’s Food Environment Atlas was released last year to much fanfare for the interactive maps that could show the state of the national food system. Much more exciting was the fact that this data was all available for download, and the site continues to act as a datahub for food policy advocates. Advocates and technophiles are using this data to produce reports and visualizations that help rally support as they begin to mobilize around the 2012 farm bill.
[...]
Read the full article by Mari Pierce-Quinonez over on Projects To Finish Someday.
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Mandela Market Place: Urban Food And Community Initiative in Oakland
Posted in Models by Kate Archdeacon on May 3rd, 2011
Source: Mandela Marketplace via this article on Sustainable Cities Collective
The WYSE Team delivers fresh food to the sales point at the local bottle shop.
Mandela Marketplace is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with local residents, family farmers, and community-based businesses to improve health, create wealth, and build assets through cooperative food enterprises in low income communities. Mandela Marketplace uses a community-driven economic framework to improve health, create wealth and build assets in low-income communities. The organization evolved since 2001, first as a project of the Environmental Justice Institute – Tides Center, until incorporating in 2005 as a stand-alone 501c3 organization. Mandela Marketplace innovates the assessment, development, and application of a community food system economy that strengthens community health, integrity and identity through economic opportunity and empowerment for inner-city Oakland residents and businesses, and local family farms.
Projects Include:
- Mandela Foods Cooperative: A worker- and community-owned retail grocery store and nutrition education center in West Oakland that addresses economic empowerment and community health. It offers fresh, affordable produce from local family farms, food preparation classes and healthy prepared foods, as well as profit sharing with the community through community-investment accounts.
- West Oakland Youth Standing Empowered (WYSE): An afterschool program with a mission to teach leadership skills to youth and young adults. WYSE’s goal to advocate for healthy communities focuses on the built environment and food security through projects like: Healthy Neighborhood Stores Alliance, Burbank Garden, and WYSE Streets.
- Healthy Neighborhood Stores Alliance (HNSA): An alliance between store owners, community members and Mandela MarketPlace that works to improve community physical and environmental health by not only improving the affordability and quality of produce in convenience stores, but also by improving the store environment and its relationship in the community.
- Family Farmers: Mandela Foods and Mandela MarketPlace have a strong commitment to local, under-resourced and minority producers. We have long-term working relationships with farmers who use sustainable farming practices from Bakersfield, Fresno, Dinuba, Watsonville, Salinas, Gilroy, Livingston and Modesto. Our Produce Distribution Center supports small, local farms by establishing a local, alternative distribution network that passes on wholesale prices to networks of neighborhood stores and other community based businesses.
- Senior Market Booths: Mandela Marketplace operates weekly fresh produce market booths at area Senior Centers and residential facilities. Seniors are able to purchase farm fresh produce and wholesome basic staples at affordable prices in a convenient, friendly, and helpful atmosphere.
- Burbank Garden East Oakland: Early in 2009 we met a man by the name of Bill Richie, who worked for the city of Oakland. He had been left in charge of the sprawling Burbank Garden. Bill offered WYSE the opportunity to revitalize the garden and reconnect the school and community to the garden. Our goal is to renovate the garden and grow pesticide-free produce there. We plan to organize the community around self-sustainability by growing food locally with their own resources and those available through Mandela MarketPlace.
- Building Blocks Collaborative: The Building Blocks Collaborative (BBC) is a partnership of multi-sector community organizations in Alameda County. We are developing a blueprint to improve community conditions in order to support the well-being of our children, starting from the earliest stages of life.
At the USSF2010, Mandela Marketplace’s Quinton Sankofa and James Berk of Mandela Foods Cooperative presented to a workshop hosted by Permaculture.coop called Pathways to Sustainable Self-Governance. Check out these videos to find out more.
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CERES: Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies
Posted in Models, Research by Kate Archdeacon on May 2nd, 2011
CERES – Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies, is an award winning, not-for-profit, environment and education centre and urban farm located by the Merri Creek in East Brunswick, Melbourne, Australia. Built on a decommissioned municipal tip that was once a landfill and wasteland, today CERES is a thriving, vibrant community. Over 300,000 people visit CERES each year. Many more connect with us through our innovative program taking sustainable education directly to schools across the State.
CERES is recognised as an international leader in community and environmental practice. CERES Organic Farm, Market, Shop, Co-ops and Café and Permaculture and Bushfood Nursery are unique social enterprises that offer new solutions and ways to combat climate change. Community groups such as the Bike Shed, Community Gardens and Chook Group that call CERES home are also vital to CERES culture.
All waste and water on the site is recycled and much of the site is powered by renewable energy such as wind and solar. CERES is now working towards making the site completely carbon neutral by 2012. CERES is a model for a possible future where innovation, sustainability, equity and connectedness are valued. Both as a place and a community, CERES is striving to create a new way of being.
Watch a video about CERES here or visit the website to explore the enormous range of projects, enterprises and opportunities CERES supports: www.ceres.org.au
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