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Urban agriculture


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Growing Vertical: Skyscraper Farming
Scientific American | News 29 09 2008 Atypical farm burns vast quantities of fossil fuels to plow fields, sow seeds, reap harvests and truck products many miles to population centers. It spreads heaps of petroleum-based fertilizers, which then run off into streams and watersheds. It also consumes rivers of freshwater and casts pesticides across the countryside. Raising chickens and pigs further insults the earth with unhygienic filth. Why not grow grains, vegetables and fruits right where the expanding crowds of consumers are: in the middle of a city, inside a tall glass building? Poultry and pork could be reared there, too. A vertical farm would drastically reduce the fossil-fuel use and emissions associated with farm machinery and trucking, as well as the spread of fertilizer and its runoff. Crops could grow and be harvested year-round instead of at the end of one season, multiplying annual yield by at least four times. Urban agriculture could also convert municipal wastewater into irrigation water, reducing a city’s refuse problem. And consumers would get the freshest food possible, without pesticides. [More]

Nibbles: Hops, Green Revolution, Leeks, Hemp, Ethical eating, Cuba, Farmers’ markets
Agricultural Biodiversity | Weblog 25 09 2008 Brewers vertically integrate themselves. Like Snoopy Miller.They met, we ate.Roman garden recreated in Wales, complete with leeks.“There are around 45,000 different uses for hemp.”Drawing the ecotarian line.Cuban urban agriculture sprouts anew after Ike.List of farmers markets in the US. Luigi asks: where’s the GoogleMaps mashup?

Nibbles: Hops, Green Revolution, Leeks, Hemp, Ethical eating, Cuba, Farmers’ markets
Agricultural Biodiversity | Weblog 25 09 2008 Brewers vertically integrate themselves.They met, we ate.Roman garden recreated in Wales, complete with leeks.“There are around 45,000 different uses for hemp.”Drawing the ecotarian line.Cuban urban agriculture sprouts anew after Ike.List of farmers markets in the US. Luigi asks: where’s the GoogleMaps mashup?

Assembling a Molecular Architecture: Mobile Dining
Treehugger | Green products and services 16 09 2008 mobile dining photo

"Arising out of mutual interests in urban agriculture, community engagement and a belief in social value of sharing food, Mount Dennis Community Kitchen has joined forces with Masters of Architecture students at the University of Toronto to design and build a mobile community kitchen for the historic Mount Dennis neighbourhood."Students at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design (full disclosure: my Alma Mater) built the mobile kitchen from recycled materials. ...

Millions eat food watered with wastewater
IWMI | News 05 09 2008 A study of 53 cities across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) showed 80% of those studied are using wastewater in urban agriculture.Revealing the results of the study at World Water Week, in Stockholm, Sweden, the IWMI said it is used more commonly for growing vegetables and cereals, especially rice.

Coming clean on wastewater irrigation
The New Agriculturalist 04 09 2008 Wastewater is an invaluable asset for urban and peri-urban agriculture, but also carries health risks for farmers and consumers. At World Water Week 2008, experts in water management, health and agriculture offered their views on the importance of wastewater and ways of preventing disease transmission. 03/09/08

The impacts and policy implications of air pollution on agriculture in urban and peri-urban areas of developing countries: a case study from India.
R4D | Agriculture 29 08 2008 Completed For increasingly large sections of the urban population, food security is becoming a luxury. In India, 80 per cent of urban households typically spend 70 per cent of their income on food (Mongeot, 1994). Several studies have shown the significance of urban agriculture as a survival strategy in the face of escalating food prices and decreasing incomes in sub-Saharan Africa, East and South East Asia and Latin America (for example, Drakakis-Smith, 1992; Mbiba, 1995; UNDP, 1996). However, little research has addressed these issues in the Indian context. Air pollution is one of the main threats to food production in these areas. Furthermore, the levels of damaging air pollutants in urban and peri-urban areas are rapidly worsening as urban concentrations of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide often exceed critical levels set to prevent adverse effects on crop performance. Increased numbers of motor vehicles, power generation, industrialisation, domestic fuel use, refuse burning and other sources, all contribute to the problem. These pollutants cause visible damage to crop plants, significantly reduce crop yield, the urban poor will be most affected. Industrial development is also often concentrated on the outskirts of cities, areas that are also very important for meeting urban food requirements. There are only limited examples of successful measures for addressing air pollution in developing countries. Whilst the necessary legislation may exist on paper, this legislation is rarely enforced in practice due to the wide variety of constraints facing many developing countries' governments, planning departments, industrial infrastructure and environmental enforcement agencies, and the rapid growth of emission sources. Furthermore, measures are usually aimed at reducing the direct pollutant impacts on human health; these measures are not necessarily those which would have the greatest benefit for urban and peri-urban cropping. The indirect effects of air pollution on human health, through reduced food availability, could be as significant as the direct effects. For these reasons a major challenge for this research will be to investigate and develop policies and other instruments which can work in this context, to reduce air pollution impacts on urban crops. To assess the impacts and losses of agricultural production due to air pollution on the livelihoods of the poor in developing country megacities, to identify the causes of these impacts, and to recommend policy measures to alleviate the effects. Assessement of the nature, extent and significance or urban and peri-urban agriculture in India.

Assessment of the importance of air pollution to agriculture in urban/peri-urban areas in India.

Assessment of the significance of this issue to the local community and economy.

Identification of policy measures to ameliorate these effects and assessment of their potential effectiveness. This will include the development of tools to synthesise analysis of impacts of air pollution on urban agriculture alongside those on health and materials.

Improved capacity to link grass roots organisations with researchers and government bodies to influence environmental policy in India.

Increased awareness of both impacts and policy implications at local, national and global levels.

Untreated wastewater used in agriculture
IWMI | News 26 08 2008 The 53-city International Water Management Institute survey showed 80 percent of those cities regularly use untreated or partially treated waste water for urban agriculture.Officials said the practice is often critical to farmers' incomes and urban food security but raises health concerns."Irrigating with wastewater isn't a rare practice limited to a few of the poorest countries," said IWMI researcher Liqa Raschid-Sally, lead author of a report on the survey. "It's a widespread phenomenon, occurring on (49 million acres) across the developing world …"

Much of world agriculture depends on waste water
African Agriculture | Web log 20 08 2008 Vegetables, rice and other cereals in at least 53 cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America may someday come with warning labels that read "this is a byproduct of raw sewage."

Against the backdrop of rising food prices and a shortage of drinking water worldwide, urban farmers are being forced to use either untreated wastewater or polluted river water both for their agricultural needs and for their economic survival.

A 53-city survey finds the practice most common in some of the world's poorer nations where wastewater use is critical both to farmer's incomes and urban food security while simultaneously raising critical health risks.

The study conducted by the Sri Lanka-based International Water Management Institute (IWMI) -- and released to coincide with World Water Week in the Swedish capital of Stockholm -- indicates that about 80 percent of the cities surveyed are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture.

In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams. The use of waste water, which usually includes sludge, industrial effluent, kitchen and bathroom waste, is a widespread phenomenon, occurring on 20 million hectares across the developing world, according to the survey.

This is particularly prevalent in Asian countries, including China, India and Vietnam, but also around nearly every city of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as in many Latin American cities, including Lima, Santiago, La Paz, Bogota and Sao Paulo.

The study says that wastewater is most commonly used to produce vegetables and cereals, especially rice, raising concerns about health risks for consumers, particularly in vegetables consumed uncooked. At the same time, wastewater agriculture contributes importantly to urban food supplies and helps provide a livelihood for the urban poor, especially women, and recent migrants from the countryside.

As a notable example, the study points out that Accra, Ghana's capital city with an urban population of nearly 2.0 million people, illustrates those tradeoffs particularly well. An estimated 200,000 of the city's inhabitants make daily purchases of vegetables produced on just 100 hectares of urban agricultural land irrigated with wastewater.

Consumers across the 53 cities said they would prefer to avoid wastewater produce. But most of the time, they have no way of knowing the origin of the products they buy. Farmers too are aware that irrigating with wastewater may pose health risks both for themselves and the consumers of their produce, but they simply have little choice, since safe groundwater is seldom an accessible alternative, according to the IWMI report.

Liqa Raschid-Sally of IWMI-West Africa and lead author of the study, told IPS there are no comprehensive studies on benefits versus risks. "But it is abundantly clear that if you put an immediate stop to this, you will certainly cut off supplies of some types of vegetables to cities, as almost 75 percent of the cities source at least some of their vegetables from urban and peri-urban agriculture which uses wastewater." Simple economics, she argued, will indicate that this would cause a rise in vegetable prices in cities.

The health risks can be managed because there are various interventions on farms, markets and households which can effectively reduce the health risks. In Indonesia, Nepal, Ghana and Vietnam, for example, farmers store wastewater in ponds to allow suspended solids to be eliminated. And inadvertently, this practice also permits worm eggs to settle out, possibly reducing bacteria in the water.

In Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, farmers using water from a brewery build storage basins for wastewater and fill them only when they judge the quality of the wastewater to be acceptable (that is, not acidic), based on its appearance, odor and even taste.

So the message to the poorest nations is that they can apply these methods to reduce the risks and it just needs to be incorporated within agriculture extension services, Raschid-Sally said. "This is not an encouragement to use wastewater but a push to improve practices," she added.

To maintain the urban supply with these vegetables, the WHO is recommending multiple barriers which can easily reduce the pathogen level on the crop.

An officiall said there is a significant water quality dimension which is interlinked: "On the one hand, where wastewater is not or only partially treated it is polluting and further diminishing our clean water resources. On the other hand, where we are able to make an asset out of wastewater, we are gaining a valuable resource back."

IPS

New 52-city Report Examines Use Of Wastewater In Urban Agriculture
ScienceDaily | Earth and Climate news 20 08 2008 As developing countries confront the first global food crisis since the 1970s as well as unprecedented water scarcity, a new 53-city survey conducted by the International Water Management Institute indicates that most of those studied (80 percent) are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture. In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams.

Wastewater 'widely used' in urban agriculture, report finds
SciDev | Latest news 19 08 2008 Wastewater is widely used for irrigation in farmland around many developing country cities, a report finds.

New report finds that in most cities wastewater dumped into environment ends up in urban agriculture
Africa Science News Service | Headlines 18 08 2008 As developing countries confront the first global food crisis since the 1970s as well as unprecedented water scarcity, a new 53-city survey conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) indicates that most of those studied (80 percent) are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture. In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams.

New 52-city report examines use of wastewater in urban agriculture
Brightsurf | Science | News & current events 18 08 2008 As developing countries confront the first global food crisis since the 1970s as well as unprecedented water scarcity, a new 53-city survey conducted by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) indicates that most of those studied (80 percent) are using untreated or partially treated wastewater for agriculture. In over 70 percent of the cities studied, more than half of urban agricultural land is irrigated with wastewater that is either raw or diluted in streams.

Roadside cultivation - a heavy metal health hazard?
The New Agriculturalist 11 08 2008 A study in Kampala has shown that some roadside crops, particularly leafy vegetables, contain dangerously high levels of heavy metal contamination. The findings have helped in the development of new ordinances for urban agriculture, to achieve the right balance between risks and benefits. 28/07/08

More on 'lazy locavorism'
Gristmill | Environmental news and commentry | Web log 31 07 2008 By Maywa Montenegro Monday's New York Times had a great opinion piece about My Farm's Trevor Paque -- the same guy recently profiled in the Times' Style section. In fact, I had to look twice to make sure it was the same T. Paque because the two articles emphasized such different aspects of the urban CSA mission. Kim Severson, in the style piece, describes it thus:

Call them the lazy locavores -- city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.

She devotes so much time and script to the eco-chic aspect that I, like Tom Philpott, was initially put off by the idea of armchair gardening. But just like Tom, who later posted that he was "too hard" on it, I softened after reading Allison Arieff's opinion piece. She writes:

Though some may see this as a "lazy locavore" trend -- wherein couch potato clients, glass of biodynamic Syrah in hand, observe the hard labor of city farmers while lounging with their laptops -- the urban agriculture movement seems to me to be slowly transcending its elitist associations. It is truly growing into something that is wholly about collaboration, community and connection to food, to neighbors, to land.

That's certainly been my experience both in my yard, as neighbors and friends come by to help harvest (and to eat), and in my city. Earlier this month, my family spent a Saturday at San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza, helping to plant a 10,000-square-foot Victory Garden sponsored by Slow Food Nation, a nonprofit organization that will be celebrating American food through art, music, lectures, tastings, school programs and the like over Labor Day Weekend.

To me, the most interesting thing about organizations like My Farm -- a point that came across more clearly in Arieff's article than in Severson's -- is that they aren't just bringing food from nearby farms into the city; they are actually building new farms -- miniature urban agro-scapes (okay, gardens) where once there was concrete or grass. Not only does this virtually eliminate the transportation costs (in dollars and in emissions), but it also brings the living plants that produce our food back into close proximity. Who knows? Perhaps after a few months of watching Paque carry in boxes of mustard greens and sweet tomatoes, some curious couch potatoes will be tempted to get a little dirty.

BBC takes on urban agriculture
Agricultural Biodiversity | Weblog 26 07 2008 The BBC’s One Planet programme visits Hyderabad to talk to urban vegetable growers and buffalo keepers. This seems to be part of a series. A previous programme visited Kampala. The podcasts are here. But it’s weird. I can’t find a decent, detailed description of the programme(s) online, much less a place to get transcripts. That [...]

In this issue...
The New Agriculturalist 24 07 2008 In many developing countries, urban agriculture continues to be illegal and many local authorities have been slow to recognise its value. In this issue, we focus on the political, social and health aspects of cultivating land and rearing livestock in a city environment. Policy, education, infrastructure and recognition of farmer innovation are just some of the strategies for increasing agricultural productivity and competitiveness, as suggested by participants at a recent conference for the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), and summarised in Points of View. Identifying new products and markets is another key strategy, reflected in articles on African plum and bamboo - and In pictures, which highlights the expanding trade in native flowers from South Africa. This colourful business, and the increasing involvement of smallholder farmers, is also featured in our podcast, along with highlights from the recent South Africa Day held at the Irene Campus of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC). 06/07/07

Urban agriculture: balancing risks and benefits
The New Agriculturalist 24 07 2008 Farmers are often evicted, dismissed, ignored and even condemned for promoting waste, pollution and illness within the city. But beyond its value as a survival strategy among the urban poor, there is growing evidence that urban farming increases the availability of fresh food, provides green spaces to combat pollution, and supports agritourism initiatives. 06/07/07

Guardian Daily podcast: Davis attacks 'scared' Labour; plus EU-US deal on personal data
The Guardian | World news 30 06 2008 In our daily audio show, Jon Dennis and guests discuss David Davis’s byelection campaign; an EU-US deal on personal data; and urban agriculture

Nibbles: Maize, Climate change, Erosion (not), Bees squared, Cordyceps, Apples, City gardens
Agricultural Biodiversity | Weblog 28 06 2008 Maize origins investigated.Plants climb mountains.Rice endures, too.“How would our federal government respond if 1 out of every 3 cows was dying?“Bees in trouble in India too, but maybe not for same reason.We’ve blogged about 冬虫夏草 before, but I personally can never get enough of the stuff.Apple breeding bears fruit in India.Videos of urban agriculture in Washington DC. [...]

Cuba's urban farming success story
African Agriculture | Web log 27 06 2008 For Miladis Bouza, the global food crisis arrived two decades ago. Now, her efforts to climb out of it could serve as a model for people around the world struggling to feed their families. Bouza was a research biologist, living a solidly middle-class existence, when the collapse of the Soviet Union _ and the halt of its subsidized food shipments to Cuba _ effectively cut her government salary to $3 a month. Suddenly, a trip to the grocery store was out of reach. So she quit her job, and under a program championed by then-Defense Minister Raul Castro, asked the government for the right to farm an overgrown, half-acre lot near her Havana home. Now, her husband tends rows of tomatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach, while Bouza, 48, sells the produce at a stall on a busy street. Neighbors are happy with cheap vegetables fresh from the field. Bouza never lacks for fresh produce, and she pulls in between $100 to $250 a month _ many times the average government salary of $19. "All that money is mine," she said. "The only thing I have to buy is protein" _ meat. Cuba's urban farming program has been a stunning, and surprising, success. The farms, many of them on tiny plots like Bouza's, now supply much of Cuba's vegetables. They also provide 350,000 jobs nationwide with relatively high pay and have transformed eating habits in a nation accustomed to a less-than-ideal diet of rice and beans and canned goods from Eastern Europe. From 1989-93, Cubans went from eating an average of 3,004 calories a day to only 2,323, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, as shelves emptied of the Soviet goods that made up two-thirds of Cuba's food. Today, they eat 3,547 calories a day _ more than what the U.S. government recommends for American citizens. "It's a really interesting model looking at what's possible in a nation that's 80 percent urban," said Catherine Murphy, a California sociologist who spent a decade studying farms in Havana. "It shows that cities can produce huge amounts of their own food, and you get all kinds of social and ecological benefits." Of course, urban farms might not be such a success in a healthy, competitive economy. As it is, productivity is low at Cuba's large, state-run farms where workers lack incentives. Government-supplied rations _ mostly imported from the U.S. _ provide such staples as rice, beans and cooking oil, but not fresh produce. Importers bring in only what central planners want, so the market doesn't correct for gaps. And since most land is owned by the state, developers are not competing for the vacant lots that can become plots for vegetables. Still, experts say the basic idea behind urban farming has a lot of promise. "It's land that otherwise would be sitting idle. It requires little or no transportation to get (produce) to market," said Bill Messina, an agricultural economist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "It's good anyway you look at it." And with fuel prices and food shortages causing unrest and hunger across the world, many say the Cuban model should spread. "There are certain issues where we think Cuba has a lot to teach the world. Urban agriculture is one of them," said Beat Schmid, coordinator of Cuba programs for the charity Oxfam International. Other countries have experimented with urban farming _ Cuba's initial steps were modeled after a green belt surrounding Shanghai. But nowhere has urban farming been used so widely to transform the way a country feeds itself. "As the global food crisis receives attention, this is something that we need to be looking at," Murphy said. "Havana is an unlikely, really successful model where no one would expect one to come from." Now that Raul Castro is president, many expect him to expand the program he began as an experiment in the early 1990s. One of the first plots he opened was the "organoponico" on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street in the ritzy Havana neighborhood of Miramar. The half-block farm _ owned by a government agency _ is surrounded by apartment buildings and houses, but also offices of foreign companies, a Spanish bank and the South African Embassy. Long troughs brim with arugula, spinach, radishes and basil, and few of the 20,000 square feet are wasted. One technician tends compost that serves as natural fertilizer, while another handles natural protection from pests, surrounding delicate spinach shoots with strong-smelling celery to ward off insects. Such measures have ecological benefits but were born of necessity: Neither commercial fertilizer nor herbicide is reliably available. Three workers tend the crops and another three sell them from a brightly painted stall. Key to the operation is something once unheard of in Cuba: 80 percent of the profits go straight to the workers' pockets, providing them an average of $71 a month. "Those salaries are higher than doctors, than lawyers," said Roberto Perez, the 58-year-old agronomist who runs the farm. "The more they produce, the more they make. That's fundamental to get high productivity." Customers say the farm has given them not only access to affordable food, but also a radical change in their cuisine. "Nobody used to eat vegetables," said David Leon, 50, buying two pounds of Swiss chard. "People's nutrition has improved a lot. It's a lot healthier. And it tastes good." Huffington Post

S.F. firm harvests potential of unused land.
Environmental Health News 23 06 2008 City dwellers already raise vegetables in tiny outdoor spaces, but MyFarm fits into the larger nationwide urban agriculture movement, in which urban spaces are reclaimed for food production.

Cuba's urban farming success story
African Agriculture | Web log 19 06 2008 For Miladis Bouza, the global food crisis arrived two decades ago. Now, her efforts to climb out of it could serve as a model for people around the world struggling to feed their families. Bouza was a research biologist, living a solidly middle-class existence, when the collapse of the Soviet Union _ and the halt of its subsidized food shipments to Cuba _ effectively cut her government salary to $3 a month. Suddenly, a trip to the grocery store was out of reach. So she quit her job, and under a program championed by then-Defense Minister Raul Castro, asked the government for the right to farm an overgrown, half-acre lot near her Havana home. Now, her husband tends rows of tomatoes, sweet potatoes and spinach, while Bouza, 48, sells the produce at a stall on a busy street. Neighbors are happy with cheap vegetables fresh from the field. Bouza never lacks for fresh produce, and she pulls in between $100 to $250 a month _ many times the average government salary of $19. "All that money is mine," she said. "The only thing I have to buy is protein" _ meat. Cuba's urban farming program has been a stunning, and surprising, success. The farms, many of them on tiny plots like Bouza's, now supply much of Cuba's vegetables. They also provide 350,000 jobs nationwide with relatively high pay and have transformed eating habits in a nation accustomed to a less-than-ideal diet of rice and beans and canned goods from Eastern Europe. From 1989-93, Cubans went from eating an average of 3,004 calories a day to only 2,323, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, as shelves emptied of the Soviet goods that made up two-thirds of Cuba's food. Today, they eat 3,547 calories a day _ more than what the U.S. government recommends for American citizens. "It's a really interesting model looking at what's possible in a nation that's 80 percent urban," said Catherine Murphy, a California sociologist who spent a decade studying farms in Havana. "It shows that cities can produce huge amounts of their own food, and you get all kinds of social and ecological benefits." Of course, urban farms might not be such a success in a healthy, competitive economy. As it is, productivity is low at Cuba's large, state-run farms where workers lack incentives. Government-supplied rations _ mostly imported from the U.S. _ provide such staples as rice, beans and cooking oil, but not fresh produce. Importers bring in only what central planners want, so the market doesn't correct for gaps. And since most land is owned by the state, developers are not competing for the vacant lots that can become plots for vegetables. Still, experts say the basic idea behind urban farming has a lot of promise. "It's land that otherwise would be sitting idle. It requires little or no transportation to get (produce) to market," said Bill Messina, an agricultural economist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "It's good anyway you look at it." And with fuel prices and food shortages causing unrest and hunger across the world, many say the Cuban model should spread. "There are certain issues where we think Cuba has a lot to teach the world. Urban agriculture is one of them," said Beat Schmid, coordinator of Cuba programs for the charity Oxfam International. Other countries have experimented with urban farming _ Cuba's initial steps were modeled after a green belt surrounding Shanghai. But nowhere has urban farming been used so widely to transform the way a country feeds itself. "As the global food crisis receives attention, this is something that we need to be looking at," Murphy said. "Havana is an unlikely, really successful model where no one would expect one to come from." Now that Raul Castro is president, many expect him to expand the program he began as an experiment in the early 1990s. One of the first plots he opened was the "organoponico" on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street in the ritzy Havana neighborhood of Miramar. The half-block farm _ owned by a government agency _ is surrounded by apartment buildings and houses, but also offices of foreign companies, a Spanish bank and the South African Embassy. Long troughs brim with arugula, spinach, radishes and basil, and few of the 20,000 square feet are wasted. One technician tends compost that serves as natural fertilizer, while another handles natural protection from pests, surrounding delicate spinach shoots with strong-smelling celery to ward off insects. Such measures have ecological benefits but were born of necessity: Neither commercial fertilizer nor herbicide is reliably available. Three workers tend the crops and another three sell them from a brightly painted stall. Key to the operation is something once unheard of in Cuba: 80 percent of the profits go straight to the workers' pockets, providing them an average of $71 a month. "Those salaries are higher than doctors, than lawyers," said Roberto Perez, the 58-year-old agronomist who runs the farm. "The more they produce, the more they make. That's fundamental to get high productivity." Customers say the farm has given them not only access to affordable food, but also a radical change in their cuisine. "Nobody used to eat vegetables," said David Leon, 50, buying two pounds of Swiss chard. "People's nutrition has improved a lot. It's a lot healthier. And it tastes good." Huffington Post

Nibbles: No-dig, Joe, Gritty Veg, Insect food, Forests, Finger millet, Bees
Agricultural Biodiversity | Weblog 17 06 2008 No-dig, (almost) no-water surplus veggies in Lala land. Via.Smell the coffee and wake up.Yet more urban agriculture reviving neighbourhood culture.Giant grasshopper is good for you.And speaking of Google Earth (see below): you can use it to track disappearing forests as well as disappearing gourds.“Our mother who grinds ragi at home is far more superior to [...]

The hot rancher speaks
Gristmill | Environmental news and commentry | Web log 10 06 2008 By Glenn Hurowitz Fresh from an overwhelming primary victory in Nebraska's U.S. Senate race, 32-year-old rancher, Yale Ph.D., and college history teacher Scott Kleeb spoke with me on the phone about his "brand of change" for a clean energy economy and the environment. Kleeb shocked the political establishment in 2006 by getting 45 percent of the vote in Nebraska's 3rd Congressional District, one of the most Republican districts in the country. Then, as now, he ran as a clear progressive on most economic and environmental issues (while staying coy on some contentious social issues). One of Kleeb's core concerns has been meeting the challenge of the climate crisis through a clean energy revolution on the prairie and through aggressive use of domestic and international forest and farm carbon credits. Through it all, Kleeb has been aided by a huge renewable resource of his own: megawatt good looks that won him "The Hot Rancher" award from Young Voter PAC. Now Kleeb is hoping his unique combination of deep Nebraska roots, Ivy League cred, and movie star charm will help him overcome his opponent: President Bush's former agriculture secretary (and former Nebraska governor) Mike Johanns, who's based his career on support for Big Ag, free trade, and fossil fuels. Q. Where do you see Nebraska's economic future, and what role do you think clean energy will play in it? A. We've got to transform the way we produce and consume energy. There's a failure of leadership we've seen at all levels of government. We've got to figure out how to do more with less. That's true of our elected officials and true of ourselves as individuals. This is a generations-long process. We are on the cusp of it right now. Biofuels and wind energy and solar energy and algae-based energy is just the tip of the iceberg. Nebraska's economy is going to be transformed by that revolution. Farmers will find new ways of feeding or, once we get to cellulosic ethanol, fueling the world. Q. Recent studies have suggested that devoting American land to growing biofuels instead of food is causing massive deforestation in carbon-rich tropical forests. How can switchgrass and cellulosic ethanol be viable if it's just causing food to be grown in these highly sensitive ecosystems thousands of miles away? A. The rainforests are the world's largest carbon sink. The impact [of deforestation] there is much more important than what we're talking about in this country. You saw it in the farm debate on what we do about Conservation Reserve Program land [agricultural land that's set aside for conservation purposes]. You're even seeing an internal battle. Many farmers are members of the Farm Bureau or the Farmers Union, but are also members of Ducks Unlimited or Pheasants Forever. On one side, they're being lobbied by their farm organizations who talk about $5 [a bushel] corn or $6 corn and talk about how great it is and how we should produce more of it. On the other side, they're being lobbied by the organizations they're members of like Ducks Unlimited talking about increasing the CRP acreage. Farmers are personally conflicted about it. That's only going to get bigger. These are not easy questions that we're trying to deal with. The advantage of switching to switchgrass is that you can do it because you don't harvest it the same way you harvest soybeans or corn or other row crops. You don't have to plough up the ground or disrupt the soil. With switchgrass, it's a little bit like mowing your yard. You never actually dig the roots out of the system. You never actually turn over the soil in any way, you just sort of mow off the top part of it. You don't actually disrupt the soil underneath it. You can raise switchgrass in areas we now consider marginal lands, low water lands so that it would not be competing with the river systems like the Mississippi or the Platte or some of the Corn Belt states where they do have a lot of rain or wherever it might be. You're competing on a different set of areas than you would be for food production. Q. You talked a lot about carbon sequestration. Could you talk about how that fits into your vision of a new energy economy? A. We've got to not only work on the production side. We've got a tremendous amount of carbon. We talked about the sink of the rainforest. We've got to discourage taking down of the rainforest as well as our trees in this country. There should and can be sequestration. The Chicago Carbon Exchange should be built up much larger so that companies can begin to invest. It's also benefiting farmers and ranchers as they embrace the notion of not tilling their land and getting a carbon credit. But we need to also encourage business to capture some of that CO2 and return it underground. I don't understand the science as much on the potential of sequestration, but there's no doubt we can actually find a way to take out the CO2 from the top of a smokestack and find a way to sequester it once we've done so. I know there's been work done to pump it underground or otherwise neutralize it. Q. But these coal carbon-sequestration techniques haven't proven cost-effective. A. The cost of not doing anything about the CO2 in our atmosphere is far greater, so we've got to work on it. Q. A lot of environmentalists say it's a lot easier and cheaper to invest in efficiency, clean energy, biological carbon sequestration than continuing our reliance on the dirtiest source of energy of all, coal. What do you think of coal's future? A. I think that there is going to be a part of coal in the equation for a long time and there are cleaner ways of burning it. But I'm all about the other stuff, too, if we actually challenge industry and challenge ourselves and if we talk about green-collar jobs. When we talk about the potential of green-collar jobs, it's not just a farmer out here in Nebraska, it's not just a person building a cellulosic ethanol pipeline across our country, not just someone rebuilding infrastructure for train travel because it's more efficient, it's not just a way to produce energy more efficiently; it's all of this. The spin-off from this is fantastic. It's beyond what we can actually imagine. Coal is going to be a part of it because there's going to be a lag time. A magazine like yours, Grist, has a tremendous advantage and we have a need for it in its ability to think long term. Coal is something we're going to need in the short run. Longer term, I'm all about the other stuff. I'm about the stuff we haven't even thought of, Glenn. I'm about the fact that a few years ago we weren't even talking about algae, but now we are. You put scientists and engineers to work and ask them hard questions and let them figure it out. It's great. Q. What mix of technologies would you like to see? A. I've done a lot of work in the field with the environmental community and the agricultural community and was actually hired by the Natural Resources Defense Council to work on climate change and agriculture. We have the theoretical wind potential to supply the world's energy needs 15 times over. Although that's just theoretical, you're still talking about major potential from wind. Where does Nebraska fit into that? We're the sixth-biggest state in terms of wind-power potential. Wind is gonna be huge! The remarkable thing is that it goes all the way back to when people first homesteaded. Way back in the 1950s, farmers were using a wind charger and generator for electricity. Now when you drive around, you again see people with their own personal wind-powered generators. Q. What do you think about the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner climate legislation? [Editor's note: The bill hit a dead end on June 6.] A. I'd like to see market forces at play, the involvement of government and individuals at all levels, and a significant reduction in greenhouse gases. With a 71 percent reduction by 2050, this bill is a step in the right direction. The real challenge is that the devil is always in the details. When you talk about allocating the type of money that's going to be generated from a carbon cap-and-trade system, there's going to be a big impact on [lower-income] families. I've got them in my state. My neighbor was evicted from her house because she couldn't pay her fuel bills. What do you do for families who can't afford a $3 or $4 lightbulb now because they're deciding whether to eat or buy medical care, so they continue to buy their 60-cent incandescent lightbulb? While we all believe in climate change and that we need to do something drastic to fix it, we also can't increase the numbers of poor people in this country, and we have. In the last seven years, the numbers of poor people in this country have gone up because of the Bush administration. We need to do whatever we can. The short answer is that I like [Boxer-Lieberman-Warner]. I'm for a bipartisan agenda that looks at a cap-and-trade system that reduces our impact on this planet, and that has to start happening. Q. Is there a certain threshold of reductions in greenhouse gases that you'd like to see? Most scientists have said it's necessary to have an 80 percent reduction by 2050 if we're going to avoid the most serious consequences of the climate crisis. A. Well, then, that sounds pretty good to me. It's high time we started to look at the science again ... Let's start listening to the scientists again. You know, when 99 percent of scientists are saying something, then who am I to disagree with it? I have a Ph.D., but it's in history. Q. Urban agriculture and skyscraper agriculture are increasingly popular ideas because they'd offer ultra-energy-efficient, ultra-land-efficient ways of producing our food. What do you think about this technology and whether it could transform much of Nebraska once again into a giant wilderness? A. There are fewer people living in many counties here than when we had sustainable localized agriculture. When food becomes localized, then we are going to have to find ways to maintain our economy. The way we're living is not exactly energy efficient. The way we live is going to change. I don't necessarily think what we're talking about is an ultra-urbanization here. Many of these smaller towns have the potential of getting repopulated. Q. What inspired you to start working on environmental issues? A. The most obvious is that I have two little girls ... [E]ach of us is asking, what type of world do we want them to inherit? If we do something [to avert] the doomsday scenario, if we think about the upside of the world they could inherit -- not just environmentally but economically and in terms of national security too -- we've got to diversify the energy supply in this country so we're more able to withstand system shocks. Right now, we've got a system shock on oil and we're tied specifically to oil, which is why it's had such a tremendous impact across our economy. Think about the security they'll have in both their food supply and energy supply if we get to a sustainable food production model where it's much more localized production, and things she could potentially inherit and if I could work toward those things and I could help her to get those things and to live and operate in that world, then I have to. It's as simple as that. Where does this come from? It comes from my parents taking me out. My dad and I used to hike around the mountains for weeks on end. Living outdoors, going hunting, enjoying sitting by a river. I went around for more than a year and visited every national park and monument west of the Mississippi in my pickup. When you're sitting there in Glacier National Park and the guy is telling you that there's not going to be glaciers in 20 years -- it's a bit of a problem. That trip was fantastic. I lived in my pickup, which wasn't that carbon friendly, but just slept in the back of it. I built some shelves in the back. I just had a topper in it, not a camper or anything. I was doing research on the cattle trade in the late 19th century American West [for my Ph.D. thesis]. It was about foreign capital coming in and setting up these big ranches we all know from the period of the cowboys. I set off from Connecticut for the trip, but before I left I spoke with [Yale professor] Robin Winks about it. I said, "Robin I'm getting ready to go on this trip. For every day that I spend in an archive or library, I'm going to spend a day in a national park or monument." "That's great," he said, "but make it two days ... no, make it three days." Q. Outside of energy and climate, what do you want to achieve for the planet? A. Water is an increasingly important resource. We have whole river systems in our country that are important. The potential of oceans in biodiversity and what can come from them in medical research and science. Our oceans and our water systems are something that we need to focus on.

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