Section » Urban Farming

On the trademarking of ‘urban homesteading’: The Original Best Most Complete Post on the Subject™

By • on February 23, 2011

By Mat Rogers, Director of Agrariana Language and terminology are an integral part of the food movement. Making distinctions between agricultural practices deemed vile and reprehensible, in favor of methods moral and healthful, is a critical organizing tool for activists. Thus the good-food lexicon

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Grow vacancies: Gene Fredericks is thinking inside the city’s big box

By • on September 1, 2010

They're the bane of urban and suburban areas alike: the vacant, boarded-up K-Marts and Home Depot Expos, squatting like concrete cowpies amidst a landscape of weedy parking lots. But where most people

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San Francisco set to approve zoning changes for backyard farming for cash

By • on August 13, 2010

Summer of urban-ag love: The Bay Area is known as a bastion of urban farming and the local food movement, but "laws governing land use are still stuck in another era, one that frowned on farming in the city, especially in residential areas," reports Zusha Elinson. When Little

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Foraging restaurant and suppliers adapt to new rules

By • on August 6, 2010

Forage gleans a new strategy: When Forage restaurant opened in Los Angeles's Silver Lake neighborhood, they used produce from customers' backyards to supplement their normal produce purchases, paying for the backyard produce with food or drink from the restaurant and often noting the donor's name on

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Want to grow food on City of Oakland land? Here’s how

By • on July 21, 2010

By Stephanie Paige Ogburn We’ve all seen it: the vacant lot down the street that gets full sun, or the underused city park choked over with weeds. And many of us have thought: I bet that would be a great community garden space, if some enterprising growers

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The new New Urbanism incorporates food growing into urban planning

By • on July 8, 2010

Let's rurbalize it!: While "farming is the new golf," in terms of surburban developments incorporating communal food-growing operations into their scope, urban planner Daniel Nairn sees many more advantages to embedding such land use into the fabric of a dense city block. In this interesting concept

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Chicken expert Gail Damerow answers newbie questions

By • on June 30, 2010

Cluck, cluck, cluck. Bwaak! These are not sounds I expect to hear on a stroll in my North Oakland, Calif. neighborhood -- the usual soundtrack is more like thumping bass, sirens, and the rattle of fast-food paper bags. And yet chickens are pecking in backyards on practically every block, in converted

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Unlocking Genetic Diversity with the Backyard Seed Vault Project

By • on April 27, 2010

By Mat Rogers The 1979 children’s book Ox-Cart Man describes a colonial family who spends all year raising a crop and an ox, building the ox’s cart, and making mittens, brooms, and candles. Then the ox-cart man sets off

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Bringing everyone to the table: A review of “PolyCultures”

By • on April 21, 2010

A handful of recent movies - most notably "Food, Inc." and "Fresh" - have undoubtedly boosted the number of people with something to say about national food policy. And just as the local foods movement emphasizes supporting local farms and producers, filmmakers are beginning to take a closer look at

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The ‘femivore’: New breed of feminist, or frontier throwback?

By • on March 14, 2010

Cross-posted from Grist, where I am serving as deputy food editor (part time). Have locavores and feminists -- factions that a few years ago, some

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What does asthma have to do with farm animals — or food?

By • on January 18, 2010

When government officials hear the words "backyard livestock," they tend to worry about disease outbreaks and sanitation crises. And for good reason, as improperly managed animals — including dogs and cats —

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Pets vs. livestock: Cracking open the myths about backyard chickens

By • on November 12, 2009

Last spring I decided that this was the year I was going to finally get some chickens. On a snowy Saturday in March I brought home six tiny cheepers that I bought at my local ranch store in Livingston, Montana. Two of

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Urban farmers confront zoning regulations in, around Kansas City

By • on November 9, 2009

Plowing up zoning restrictions: As urban farming grows, so do conflicts between city zoning laws and farmers. The Kansas City, Mo., City Council is looking to ease some restrictions, while other cities in the area stand firm. The issues — involving where these farmers can farm and sell produce, as

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Oakland has 1,200 acres of public land

By • on November 2, 2009

Ready, set, grow!: A new report released today by UrbanFood.org, with support from the HOPE Collaborative and City Slicker Farms, has identified 1,200 acres of vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland, California, that could potentially be used for food production. If only half of it were cultivated,

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City zoning rules squelch urban farm

By • on August 4, 2009

Zoned out: A few months ago, a restaurateur in Culver City (a small city adjacent to Los Angeles) managed to get permission to plant hundreds of tomato plants and a few dozen fruit trees on an abandoned lot next to his cafe. Whatever he didn't use in his restaurant or give away to those living next

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