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City Farmer's Urban Agriculture Notes



http://www.cityfarmer.org/
Title: City Farmer's Urban Agriculture Notes
Urban Garden Poster
  

Urban Agriculture Notes

by City Farmer

Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture


Established 1978
Vancouver, BC, Canada

Prepared by Michael Levenston, Executive Director
cityfarm@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 new home on the World Wide Web. After 17 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.

Please note our new web address http://www.cityfarmer.org

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.

  

The Easiest Way
To Predict The Future
Is To Invent It

  
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.

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

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.

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)

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)

Garden Policy Approved
Vancouver Park Board approves a unique community garden policy. Spring, 1996

International Urban Agriculture.
A number of excellent publications have come out which show International Urban Agriculture being treated very seriously by development professionals.

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.

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.

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?'"

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 (May 1995).

UPDATE: Setting Up Pages On The World Wide Web - A Case Study
This revised piece is published in the May 13, 1996 edition of Canada Internet Daily.

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.

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.

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".

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

$$$ 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 soon to be completed 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 each day to see what new additions can be made to this list.

Anguilla Argentina Austria Australia Bahrain Belgium Bermuda Brazil Brunei Darussalam Canada Chile Costa Rica Croatia (Hrvatska) Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hong Kong Hungary Iceland Indonesia Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea(South) Latvia Luxembourg Malaysia Malta Mexico Netherlands Norway New Zealand Philippines Poland Portugal Romania Russian Federation Singapore Slovenia South Africa Spain Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Turkey United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay USSR

  

  

Recognition Of Our Site

  
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.


Frank Severa's Useful URLs

Pick of the week for January 28, 1996


GardenNet's Guide to Internet Resources says:

Urban Agriculture Notes is "the only urban agriculture site on the Internet."


Urban Agriculture Notes is reviewed in six new books:

1996-97 Edition
Microsoft Bookshelf Internet Directory
With CD-ROM

1996 McKinley Internet Yellow Pages
by Christine Maxwell

Que's Mega Web Directory
by Rositano, Rositano and Stafford
1996

1996 Canadian Internet Directory
by Jim Carroll and Rick Broadhead
Prentice Hall, Canada

1996 Edition
New Riders' Official World Wide Web Directory

Over 8,000 Web Sites Described

The International Internet Directory
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.

"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!"


NetGuide Magazine reviewed Urban Agriculture Notes
in their August, 1995 issue and in their January, 1996 issue.

"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."


NutForce awards Urban Agriculture Notes

The "Webnut Seal of Approval".

"City Farmer...Coolest way to handle trash and tons of links! "


COMMENTS

Marching Gardeners

What would you like us to add to Urban Agriculture Notes ® ?
Tell us about Urban Agriculture activities in your city.

Send comments here cityfarm@unixg.ubc.ca


revised, June 26, 1996

E-mail us at: cityfarm@unixg.ubc.ca
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