Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Partnerships between food banks and local agriculture are on the rise. Food banks are farming produce, recovering (or “gleaning”) agricultural surplus straight from the fields, building urban demonstration gardens and seed libraries, and teaching classes in underserved neighborhoods for those who want to grow food in their backyards or in balcony bucket gardens.
But what if a garden culture could flourish anywhere, regardless of how the structure of a city was designed? And what if, by allowing such a culture to flourish, we could begin to heal some of our most pressing ecological and social issues? During the past five years, my partner Suhee Kang and I have enjoyed the opportunity to engage somewhat deeply with these kinds of places—both in concrete-lined urban corridors and in lush fields of hillside natural farms.
With support from visionaries like you, CUESA is cultivating a sustainable food system that strengthens local farms and builds healthy communities. Join us in looking back on our exciting year, spring 2016-spring 2017. Together, we expanded our farmers markets and educational programs, and widened our community.
The 2009 report — which was sponsored by several organizations, including an urban agriculture organization called RUAF — helps me imagine how we could turn the gig economy into the subsistence-plus and self-reliance economy. Urban agriculture might just offer a pleasurable and affirming way to supplement incomes with sales or barter, or to offset the need to spend hard cash on food.
The “community of food practice” is maturing in Toronto as people in the city link local food, global foods, urban agriculture, community development, food security, food sovereignty, multiculturalism and interculturalism.
Public Produce: Cultivating Our Parks, Plazas and Streets for Healthier Cities is an unusually important book, if only because the topic is so unusual — how people in cities and towns can grow food on public lands.
Istanbul, like many other cities, is under heavy pressure from urban development projects. In the face of this threat, the DÜRTÜK collective supports small scale farmers in and around Istanbul by organising reliable demand for the produce from urban gardens, and by building a supportive community around them.
For the past five years, ProSpecieRara, in collaboration with the cities of Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich, has been producing tomato starter kits – seeds and a tutorial –, which can be ordered on their website and via social media.
So, for example, we have city discussions about the need for a city policy on urban agriculture, instead of city discussions about the need for city policies to support various forms of urban agricultures.
The Sole Food Project, now one of North America’s largest urban farm initiatives, has empowered dozens of individuals who are managing addiction and chronic mental health problems by providing jobs, agricultural training, and the chance to be part of a vibrant community of farmers and food lovers.
The urban farm is no longer a cloistered site of food production within the environs of the city, instead, it’s a fundamental part of the urban fabric.
Abalimi Bezekhaya is an organization focused on using urban agriculture to develop and improve food insecure communities in and around Cape Town, South Africa. Operating for more than 30 years, the organization has helped dozens of communities improve their health and lifestyles.
