September 2009
1 post
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August 2009
1 post
Instructions for Science Barge visit
The trip to the Science Barge is this Wed, Aug. 26! I’m so excited. Our tour starts at 12 noon and will be done by 2 pm.
Remember, the cost for the tour is $12 a person. Please bring cash. (Note that getting there on the Metro North will cost $13 – see below.)
Below are important instructions, so please read carefully and forward this to anyone else who is coming. I have sent...
July 2009
1 post
If you eat food in America, see "Food, Inc."
I (Nora) reviewed the movie at my sustainability blog, 2050ad:
The 90-minute documentary will disgust, infuriate, and inspire you. Multinational food conglomerates, with the help of their cronies in government, have spent millions of dollars to make sure the average consumer never learns the things you learn in this film.* As we watched pigs being roughly herded to their deaths in the...
June 2009
6 posts
Brooklyn Based on two urban agriculture projects →
Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint and BK Farmyards:
“a decentralized farming network that will grow vegetables in your backyard for sale to your neighbors. In exchange for the use of your land, they’ll give you a percentage of the freshly-grown vegetables for free. Their goal is to reduce Brooklyn’s reliance on fossil fuels by cultivating local food.”
What a unique idea: BK...
Gotham Greens: NYC's first hydroponic rooftop farm →
“We are trying to demonstrate that sustainable, urban agriculture can be economically viable in the city,” said the company’s greenhouse director, Jennifer Nelkin, 30.
Nevin Cohen, an assistant professor of Urban Environmental Studies at The New School, said Gotham Greens could be poised to catch the food wave of the future in the city.
“Growing food in cities is going...
WOW..Organic Rooftop Farm!?
Check it out! Restaurant opens a rooftop farm in Chicago Reblog
Restaurant opens 2,500-square foot Organic Rooftop Farm- first to be Certified Organic in the USA
Photo: Scott Stewart, Sun-Times. Helen Cameron inspects the veggies growing on the roof of her restaurant. “I come up once a day to see what’s ripe,” she said. Six tons of soil were carried up to the roof. Larger image here.
...
May 2009
16 posts
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Food Retail Expansion to Support Health →
“A study conducted for the Mayor’s Food Policy Taskforce by New York City Departments of Health and City Planning and the New York City Economic Development Corp. shows that many neighborhoods across the city are underserved by grocery stores. The resulting lack of nutritious, affordable fresh food in these neighborhoods has been linked to higher rates of diet-related diseases,...
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TURNIPS AND TATSOI: A FARM COMES TO FLATBUSH →
“This summer, affordable organic produce will be delivered straight from an upstate farm to this working-class Brooklyn neighborhood.”
Click through for the article.
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Websites we like
We should come up with websites we like on the topic of urban agriculture, and then we can post links on the side of this blog.
I’ll start with…
Civil Eats
Eat Local Challenge
U.S. Food Policy Blog
Have any more suggestions?!
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There is No Box: Big Ideas About Urban Agriculture... →
Writer Rose Hayden-Smith recently attended two food conferences and her thoughts on what’s going on with urban agriculture across the country are interesting.
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“[A]n industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in...”
– Definition of urban agriculture, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Via Wikipedia.
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Brooklyn Food Conference →
This took place on May 2nd, so unfortunately, we missed it. But I did get my hands on the program and learned that many CUNY students were involved. I’ve invited them to our meeting on May 15th, so hopefully we will be able to hear a report on the conference and learn what next steps conference organizers are taking to build a movement of people who care about where their food is from, how...
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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
One way for city-dwellers to support local farmers is by participating in a CSA. Members of a farm’s CSA program buy shares of the farm’s harvest. Customers get weekly deliveries of delicious, fresh produce, and farmers are able to spend less of their time selling the food (at farmer’s markets, etc.) and more time producing it. Plus, if a crop suffers for some reason, the farm...
Study finds that it's what you eat, not how far it...
Hey there! Nora here. :)
I attended a couple sessions at the Brooklyn Food Conference on Saturday; there was, of course, a lot of talk of one’s “foodprint” (GHG emissions generated by diet). I learned that one person eating local for one year saves the equivalent GHG emissions as a 1,000-mile car drive — honestly, that isn’t much. It’s the same as taking a few dozen less trips to the...
Green Apples and Bad Apples: NRDC's Annual 2009... →
The National Resource Defense Council highlighted an urban farm in this year’s awards. FIELD TRIP, anyone?! :)
They write:
RED HOOK COMMUNITY FARM (Brooklyn)
The roots of farming in New York go back nearly a thousand years. The first New York farmers were Native Americans who planted maize in Manhattan in the year 1100, according to the Encyclopedia of New York City. In the 1700s,...
A Food Revolution in the Making, from Victory... →
Michael Pollan is one of the heroes of sustainable agriculture. This is an article he wrote on Earth Day 2009 that sums up some of the big themes in urban agriculture.
For more on Pollan, read his open letter to the next president as well as my writings on him and any of his excellent books (The Omnivore’s Dilemna and In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto are especially important).
—...