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Window Farms: An experiment in urban agriculture
Olivia Chen, inhabitat
Gardening enthusiasts living in cities will certainly cheer for Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray’s Window Farms experiment. The artist-in-residence duo at Eyebeam have teamed up to develop a DIY system for creating “suspended, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield light-augmented” vertical gardens that will enable anyone to start their own garden right in their very own window. Britta and Rebecca were showcasing their prototype at Eyebeam last week and have enlisted a dozen or so volunteers that are building their own farms — all to go on display in windows throughout NYC from May 31 to July 14.
(23 May 2009)
Many Summer Internships Are Going Organic
Kim Severson, New York Times
Erin Axelrod, who graduated from Barnard College last week with an urban studies degree, will not be fighting over the bathroom with her five roommates on the Upper West Side this summer. Instead she will be living in a tent, using an outdoor composting toilet and harvesting vegetables on an organic farm near Petaluma, Calif.
… These three are part of a new wave of liberal arts students who are heading to farms as interns this summer, in search of both work, even if it might pay next to nothing, and social change.
They come armed with little more than soft hands and dog-eared copies of Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” which takes a dim view of industrial agriculture.
A few hope to run their own farms. Others plan to work on changing government food policy. Some are just looking for a break from the rigors of academia. But whatever the reason, the interest in summer farm work among college students has never been as high, according to dozens of farmers, university professors and people who coordinate agricultural apprenticeships.
(23 May 2009)
Washington State University cancels freshman reading of ‘Omnivore’s Dilemma’
Tom Laskawy, Grist
UPDATE 5/27 9PM EST: It’s official WSU announces that it “will reinstate the original plan for distribution of its Common Reading book, ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ as a result of a private contribution to support the program.” Nothing like a little help from your friends.
UPDATE 5/27 8PM EST: The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting that WSU has taken up food safety lawyer and alumnus Bill Marler on his offer to pay the costs of bringing Michael Pollan to the WSU campus to speak about Omnivore’s Dilemma. Marler, on his own blog, also claims that all 4,000 books will be distributed as planned.
So much for academic freedom—at least where books about our industrial food system are concerned. It’s hard to believe this really happened, but according to a report in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the president at Washington State University canceled a “common-reading” for all incoming freshman of Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma due to [political pressure] budgetary constraints. Really:
An explanation on the university’s Web site is vague and implies the withdrawal of the book was due to budget constraints. But some people on the campus say that the university, which has a prominent agriculture college, bowed to pressure from agribusiness interests.
They also question the budget argument, noting that the university has already purchased more than 4,000 copies of the book. …
Many people connected with the common-reading program were evasive; either they did not return calls or insisted that they could not talk about the issue.
And while there were reports that Pollan was proving too expensive to bring as a speaker (thus implying his greed was a factor in the cancellation), others observed that there was never any money budgeted for events—the cost of the books were the only expense. In other words, all the money that was to be spent HAD BEEN spent (on the books).
And if you still have any doubts that it was political, I offer this passage:
(27 May 2009)
Publicity makes a difference. -BA
Watermelons Tapped For Ethanol
USDA/Agricultural Research Service via Science Daily
… Agricultural Research Service (ARS) studies in Lane, Okla., have shown that simple sugars in watermelon juice can be made into ethanol. In 2007, growers harvested four billion pounds of watermelon for fresh and cut-fruit markets. Around 800 million pounds–or 20 percent of the total–were left in fields because of external blemishes or deformities.
Now, instead of being plowed under, such melons could get an economic “new lease on life” as ethanol. Normally, this biofuel is produced from cane crops like corn, sorghum or sugarcane as a cleaner-burning alternative to gasoline. The watermelon work reflects a national push by ARS to diversify America’s “portfolio” of biofuel crops that can diminish the reliance on petroleum, especially from foreign suppliers.
(27 May 2009)
As the price of food rises, some of those blemished and deformed fruit might start looking a lot more attractive as food. -BA
