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April 2019
Selector: Brooke Lowe
"Urban agriculture can be defined shortly as the growing of plants and the raising of animals within and around cities. The most striking feature of urban agriculture, which distinguishes it from rural agriculture, is that it is integrated into the urban economic and ecological system: urban agriculture is embedded in -and interacting with- the urban ecosystem. Such linkages include the use of urban residents as labourers, use of typical urban resources (like organic waste as compost and urban wastewater for irrigation), direct links with urban consumers, direct impacts on urban ecology (positive and negative), being part of the urban food system, competing for land with other urban functions, being influenced by urban policies and plans, etc. Urban agriculture is not a relict of the past that will fade away (urban agriculture increases when the city grows) nor brought to the city by rural immigrants that will lose their rural habits over time. It is an integral part of the urban system."
Documentary - Grown in Detroit
Grown in Detroit focuses on the urban gardening efforts managed by a public school of 300, mainly African-American, pregnant and parenting teenagers. In Detroit alone, there are annually more than 3,000 pregnant teenagers who drop out of high school. This school is one of three that focus on urban gardening and this population located in the United States. As part of the curriculum, the girls are taught agricultural skills on the school's own farm which is located behind the school, in what used to be the playground. The young mothers, often still children themselves, learn to become knowledgeable about the importance of nutritional foods, the process by which these foods arrive at their plates, and ultimately, to become independent and self-empowered through the process of farming.
Documentary available in full by request from our Storage Collection.
Call Number: DVD GRO
Videos
There's something amazing growing in the city of Detroit: healthy, accessible, delicious, fresh food. In a spirited talk, fearless farmer Devita Davison explains how features of Detroit's decay actually make it an ideal spot for urban agriculture. Join Davison for a walk through neighborhoods in transformation as she shares stories of opportunity and hope. "These aren't plots of land where we're just growing tomatoes and carrots," Davison says. "We're building social cohesion as well as providing healthy, fresh food.
As Plant This Movie vividly illustrates, the ingredients for scaling up urban farming and reconnecting people to the food we eat are now all around us. The movement provides hope that people across the nation and the world will once again have access to healthier, locally grown food, using the land near where they live as a primary source. World Premiere, Portland Film Festival
See the full episode at http://video.pbs.org/video/2214315175 Meet the ordinary people who bring food production back to basics in this clip from AMERICA REVEALED "Food Machine."
eBooks
Global Urban Agriculture by ISBN: 9781780647326Publication Date: 2017-07-06There has been growing attention paid to urban agriculture worldwide because of its role in making cities more environmentaly sustainable while also contributing to enhanced food access and social justice. The book covers the nature of urban agriculture and how it supports livelihoods, provides ecosystem services, and community development. It also considers urban agriculture and social capital, networks, and agro-biodiversity conservation. Concepts such as sustainability, resilience, adaptation and community, and the value of urban agriculture as a recreational resource are explored. It also examines, quite fundamentally, why people farm in the city and how urban agriculture can contribute to more sustainable cities in both the Global North and the Global South.
Integrated Urban Agrictulture by ISBN: 9780993370625Publication Date: 2016-07-01Intended as a "one stop shop" of a veritable who's who of leading urban agriculture authors and scholars, this book brings together seventeen contributions on the design, development, science, and society of the rapidly expanding, multi-disciplinary field.
Designing Urban Agriculture by ISBN: 9781118073834Publication Date: 2013-04-22This full-color guide offers a complete overview of edible landscapes from the planning, designing, and funding to the management and maintenance of these communal spaces and ecodestinations. Featuring case studies of innovative projects, it offers complete coverage of a dozen typologies including community gardens, CSA farms, edible estates, edible roof gardens, guerilla gardens, vertical wall gardens, and farm-to-table gardens, among others.
Cities of Farmers by ISBN: 9781609384371Publication Date: 2016-11-15Full-scale food production in cities: is it an impossibility? Or is it a panacea for all that ails urban communities? Today, it's a reality, but many people still don't know how much of an impact this emerging food system is having on cities and their residents. This book showcases the work of the farmers, activists, urban planners, and city officials in the United States and Canada who are advancing food production. They have realized that, when it's done right, farming in cities can enhance the local ecology, foster cohesive communities, and improve the quality of life for urban residents. Implementing urban agriculture often requires change in the physical, political, and social-organizational landscape. Beginning with a look at how and why city people grew their own food in the early twentieth century, the contributors to Cities of Farmers examine the role of local and regional regulations and politics, especially the creation of food policy councils, in making cities into fertile ground for farming.
Closing the Food Gap by ISBN: 9780807047309Publication Date: 2008-01-15In Closing the Food Gap, food activist and journalist Mark Winne poses questions too often overlooked in our current conversations around food: What about those people who are not financially able to make conscientious choices about where and how to get food? And in a time of rising rates of both diabetes and obesity, what can we do to make healthier foods available for everyone? To address these questions, Winne tells the story of how America's food gap has widened since the 1960s, when domestic poverty was "rediscovered," and how communities have responded with a slew of strategies and methods to narrow the gap, including community gardens, food banks, and farmers' markets.
The Public Health Effects of Food Deserts by ISBN: 9780309137287Publication Date: 2009-07-02In the United States, people living in low-income neighborhoods frequently do not have access to affordable healthy food venues, such as supermarkets. Instead, those living in "food deserts" must rely on convenience stores and small neighborhood stores that offer few, if any, healthy food choices, such as fruits and vegetables. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) and National Research Council (NRC) convened a two-day workshop on January 26-27, 2009, to provide input into a Congressionally-mandated food deserts study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service. The workshop, summarized in this volume, provided a forum in which to discuss the public health effects of food deserts.
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SOM Display
Documentary - Farming Detroit
A documentary special following the pioneer Detroiters who are spearheading the city’s urban farming revolution. While urban farming has been called “the new hip thing” everywhere from Brooklyn to Seattle, nowhere are the stakes higher than in Detroit. With over 150,000 empty lots and an estimated 30% of locals living in poverty, determined residents are reclaiming unused land in their communities and planting seeds of growth in one of the most groundbreaking, ambitious, and surprisingly controversial grassroots movements America has ever seen.
Detroit Urban Farming Groups
KEEP GROWING DETROIT
Keep Growing Detroit was founded to promote the idea of making Detroit a food-sovereign city, meaning the majority of fruits and vegetables consumed are grown within the city’s limits. As well as providing education and resources to those looking to get involved in urban farming across the city, it also operates the Plum Street Market Garden, which grows fresh fruits, vegetables, and flowers for local farmers’ markets and restaurants.
THE MICHIGAN URBAN FARMING INITIATIVE
The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative (MUFI) is another nonprofit organization engaging members of the community through sustainable agriculture. Based in Detroit’s North End community, it has produced over 50,000 pounds of produce since 2011 while also redeveloping a local property and its surrounding area as a model of sustainability and urban renewal. Volunteering for MUFI is extremely flexible, with all ages and abilities welcome to show up without needing to sign up and stay for as long as they’d like.
OAKLAND AVENUE URBAN FARM
In the same North End neighborhood as MUFI, the Oakland Avenue Urban Farm is also teaching residents to grow and cook their own food alongside its urban farming. From June to September, it also hosts its own farmer’s market every Saturday, contributing to the local economy and providing fresh produce for locals. They also host events such as concerts, exhibitions, and workshops throughout the summer, giving you many more chances to contribute.
Earthworks URBAN FARM
The Capuchin Soup Kitchen’s Earthworks Urban Farm is a 2.5 acre certified organic farm located in the City of Detroit. We seek to build a just, beautiful food system through education, inspiration, and community development. As a working study in both social justice and in knowing the origins of the food we eat, Earthworks strives to restore our connection to the environment and community
Michigan Radio Article- Detroit’s Urban Farms
- Detroit’s urban farms: engines of growth, omens of change
"Detroit is in Wayne County, which is the most food-insecure county in Michigan. That means that many households have uncertain access to adequate food. More than 35 percent of the city’s residents are living below the poverty line.
Many of the farms that have been in the city for a long time, like D-Town, place a lot of importance on social justice and something they call “food sovereignty,” defined as the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the people’s right to define their own food and agriculture systems."
Follow link above for full article
Electronic Journals, April 2019
- Urban farming in the North American metropolis: Rethinking work and distance in alternative food networksThis article examines the role of manual work in bridging the distance between production and consumption in alternative food networks, particularly in urban farming. Scholars and public commentators often draw on Marxian theories of alienation to suggest that manual work constitutes a key strategy for reconnecting production and consumption, and overcoming the ecological rift between natural processes and modern, agro-industrial production.
- Fertile cities: Nutrient management practices in urban agricultureCities are increasingly targeted as centers for sustainable development and innovation of food systems. Urban agriculture (UA) is advocated by some as a multi-faceted approach to help achieve urban sustainability goals as it provides possible social, economic and environmental benefits. The role of UA in restoring resource cycles receives increasing attention, especially with regard to assimilating urban waste.
- Cultivating citizenship, equity, and social inclusion? Putting civic agriculture into practice through urban farmingCivic agriculture is an approach to agriculture and food production that—in contrast with the industrial food system—is embedded in local environmental, social, and economic contexts. Alongside proliferation of the alternative food projects that characterize civic agriculture, growing literature critiques how their implementation runs counter to the ideal of civic agriculture. This study assesses the relevance of three such critiques to urban farming, aiming to understand how different farming models balance civic and economic exchange, prioritize food justice, and create socially inclusive spaces.
Books in Print
Food and the City by ISBN: 9781616144586Publication Date: 2012-02-21A global movement to take back our food is growing. The future of farming is in our hands--and in our cities. This book examines alternative food systems in cities around the globe that are shortening their food chains, growing food within their city limits, and taking their "food security" into their own hands.
Cities, Poverty and Food by ISBN: 9781853397097Publication Date: 2011-02-10The numbers of the urban poor are on the increase; at the same time their position has been made more vulnerable by the recent food and economic crises. City authorities need to find innovative strategies to eradicate urban hunger and improve the livelihoods of the urban poor. Urban agriculture provides such a strategy by enhancing access to fresh and nutritious food, and contributing to local economic development and social inclusion of the urban poor, especially women.
Public Produce by ISBN: 9781597265881Publication Date: 2009-09-23Public Produce makes a uniquely contemporary case not for central government intervention, but for local government involvement in shaping food policy. In what Darrin Nordahl calls "municipal agriculture," elected officials, municipal planners, local policymakers, and public space designers are turning to the abundance of land under public control (parks, plazas, streets, city squares, parking lots, as well as the grounds around libraries, schools, government offices, and even jails) to grow food.
Farming Cuba by ISBN: 9781616892005Publication Date: 2014-04-29Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Cuba found itself solely responsible for feeding a nation that had grown dependent on imports and trade subsidies. With fuel, fertilizers, and pesticides disappearing overnight, citizens began growing their own organic produce anywhere they could find space-- on rooftops, balconies, vacant lots, and even school playgrounds. By 1998 there were more than 8,000 urban farms in Havana producing nearly half of the country's vegetables. What began as a grassroots initiative had, in less than a decade, grown into the largest sustainable agriculture initiative ever undertaken, making Cuba the world leader in urban farming. Featuring a wealth of rarely seen material and intimate portraits of the environment,Farming Cuba details the innovative design strategies and explores the social, political, and environmental factors that helped shape this pioneering urban farming program.
Agriculture in Urban Planning by ISBN: 9781844076680Publication Date: 2008-11-28This volume, by graduate researchers working in urban agriculture, examines concrete strategies to integrate city farming into the urban landscape. Drawing on original field work in cities across the rapidly urbanizing global south, the book examines the contribution of urban agriculture and city farming to livelihoods and food security.
Transforming Agricultural Education for a Changing World by ISBN: 9780309132213Publication Date: 2009-11-16During the next ten years, colleges of agriculture will be challenged to transform their role in higher education and their relationship to the evolving global food and agricultural enterprise. If successful, agriculture colleges will emerge as an important venue for scholars and stakeholders to address some of the most complex and urgent problems facing society. Such a transformation could reestablish and sustain the historical position of the college of agriculture as a cornerstone institution in academe, but for that to occur, a rapid and concerted effort by our higher education system is needed to shape their academic focus around the reality of issues that define the world's systems of food and agriculture and to refashion the way in which they foster knowledge of those complex systems in their students. Although there is no single approach to transforming agricultural education, a commitment to change is imperative.
