Guerrilla gardens going mainstream.

Will Allen is in Vancouver rallying the urban agriculture troops.

Today it included a meeting at City Hall, where Mayor Gregor Robertson is a former organic farmer himself. Even though inspirational Dutch urban planner Jan Gehl was in City Hall speaking in another room at the same time about sustainable urban [...]]]>

Urban Agriculture Guru Will Allen

Will Allen is in Vancouver rallying the urban agriculture troops.

Today it included a meeting at City Hall, where Mayor Gregor Robertson is a former organic farmer himself. Even though inspirational Dutch urban planner Jan Gehl was in City Hall speaking in another room at the same time about sustainable urban design, guess which topic had the buzz? Will Allen’s room was packed with city councillors, senior city staff, Vancouver Food Policy Council members and others hanging on every word. Which included the following:

Right now there’s more excitement than action in urban agriculture. We need to get going with action.

We have hundreds of thousands of urban farms. We need millions.

It isn’t enough to talk about it. You need to have an actual project that you can show people, then they’ll get it.

Aesthetics are important. You don’t want ugly farms with weeds growing around the edges.

Look at the Growing Power example in Chicago’s Grant Park. We grow a mix of 159 kinds of vegetables, edible flowers, herbs and edible fruits. We’ve been there seven years, farming two acres of park that used to be run by the city’s landscape department. It looks so good some people don’t even understand it’s food growing there.

In urban agriculture every square foot is valuable. If you can make $5 per square foot, you’re making $200,000 per acre.

It isn’t easy growing professionally. It takes a lot of skill to know about things like multiple cropping. Training is important.

Sprouts are an easy way to get started. At Growing Power I grow 3,000 trays of sprouts every week.

The most important thing you need is passion.

You can never get too cocky and think you’ve got it made. I just had a talk with an 80-year-old farmer, and I asked him, Jake, how’s it going? He said, I’m just learning how to farm. You have to stay humble, and be willing to learn. It becomes a lifestyle.

You need to hire professional people who like what they’re doing. You can’t make money using interns and students. It’s an important principle to have everyone you hire make a living wage. Otherwise you won’t be able to keep them.

The most important connection is with your local community. You have to get them engaged. If they don’t want you there, you shouldn’t even start farming.

How can you explain to business people that urban farming is a viable business? It’s not a viable business at this point. We’re just at the infancy stage. You have to educate people. You can’t do it just by saying urban agriculture. You need to connect them with projects.

We’re at a prime time to make this work. The situation has never been better.

Home Grow-In, that cool little corner store on Columbia and 18th Ave that Spring Gillard and I podcasted about [...]]]> Marilyn Tower, owner of Abbotsford’s Tower Foods, with some of the products seized from Vancouver’s Home Grow-In Grocer by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency due to alleged inadequate labelling. Credit: Doug Shanks — From the Weekender

Home Grow-In, that cool little corner store on Columbia and 18th Ave that Spring Gillard and I podcasted about (because it sells only local goods and supports organic growers and lets you “buy” stuff with a goodwill promise to pay later) is being hassled by our ever-diligent bureaucrats. Hard to believe, I know, but not entirely surprising, is it?

I’d planned to whip myself up into an appropriate froth for a sardonic response, but Herb Barbolet did it so well already I’m going to quote his post to the BC Food Networks listserve. First a link to the story in the Westender.

–
RE: GROCER’S STOCK SEIZED

Had George Orwell read this story he might not have believed it. It is Animal Farm and 1984 rolled into one.

The Canadian government refuses public demand for labelling of genetically modified foods, closes small abattoirs (putting farmers and ranchers out of business), lets Chinese food with melamine into the country and “watches over” Maple Leaf.
But if a small neighbourhood grocery is selling quality local products without proper French on the label… woe to them, the full force of the federal government will set things right.

Hell, “the store wasn’t even the target”. It was the supplier!
Makes sense from a government that shoved HST on to the province.

And the CFIA spokesperson has the gall to say that the rules are applied evenly and “we can’t be everywhere at once”.
Who is pulling the Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors’ strings?

Herb Barbolet
–

Not so with award-winning American journalist Amy Goodman. She not only got stopped on the [...]]]> It’s never fun getting stopped and questioned by the border guards heading into the States, even when you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s usually more relaxing coming back into Canada. You promise you aren’t carrying any forbidden fruit, and you’re in.

Not so with award-winning American journalist Amy Goodman. She not only got stopped on the way up to give a public speech in Vancouver. She was questioned for an hour and half about…her speech. The border guards, to her amazement, were not interested in her opinions on the economic meltdown, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They wanted to know what she intended to say about the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Is this  what the Vancouver Olympics are going to be remembered for?

We know we’re going to spend $1 billion on security, not just to keep terrorists from blowing things up but apparently also to crush the idea of free speech and eliminate the prospect of political dissent. I wonder how many gold medals it would take to get the bad taste of that out of our systems?

Here’s her report on the fabulous Democracy Now! show.

Can Urban Agriculture Save the World?

I’m doing it together with famed compost aficionado Spring Gillard, author of Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator, Edible Essays on City Farming.

Hope you [...]]]> We’re up and running…well not really running. But standing, and talking, to all kinds of lively people for a podcast series out to answer a simple question:

Can Urban Agriculture Save the World?

I’m doing it together with famed compost aficionado Spring Gillard, author of Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator, Edible Essays on City Farming.

Hope you like the first one…we’re still just feeling our way around, cautiously, in this case, as we’re on a roof. It’s in downtown Vancouver, where we meet a guy growing tons of food, when he can harvest it before the punk crows and roof rats show up.

Skyfarmer Ted Cathcart