Tag: Americas
Motown to Growtown: Detroit’s Urban Farmers (First screened in 2012, and a 2019 update)
Residents of the US city of Detroit are now producing organic food locally, reducing the environmental footprint of their food by cutting down on carbon emissions from transport and on chemical inputs. They are also helping revive communities as new green spaces and farmer's markets crop up, providing neighbourhoods...
Black Farmers Reviving Their African Roots
Xavier Brown formed a partnership with Boe Luther and Wallace Kirby, two gardeners from Ward 7 who started Hustlaz 2 Harvesters to offer people released from incarceration ways out of poverty into urban agriculture careers and other social enterprises. Brown, a certified master composter for the city, helped Luther...
A Rapper Grows Plants, Peace and Self-Esteem In Colombia
Luis Fernando Alvarez looks more like a rapper than a farmer. "El AKA" as he is known in Medellin, Colombia's second-largest city, has brought his two passions together with the initiative Agro Arte - agricultural art.
San Javier is a slum of mountainous Medellin, and one of the city's poorest...
The Direct-to-Consumer Model of Montreal’s Lufa Farms
One of Canada’s largest urban farming projects, Lufa Farms is the brainchild of Mohamed Hage and Lauren Rathmell. In 2011, Hage and Rathmell opened the world’s first commercial rooftop greenhouse, a 31,000-square-foot space atop an old Montreal warehouse. They now oversee three hydroponic greenhouses, each placed on a sturdy,...
Engaging Young People In Agriculture Can Curb Crime
Jamaica's Minister without Portfolio in the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, JC Hutchinson, says the active engagement of young people in agriculture can turn them away from a life of crime.
Relating his own experience, Hutchinson informed that 20 unattached and vulnerable youth in his north west St....
Why We Should Be Urban Farming (Video)
In our recent history, we have removed the growing of food far away from the places where more than half of humanity today lives - the cities (UN statistics from 2014 show that 54 per cent of human population is now in urban areas).
This video (below) makes a strong...
The Astonishing Scale Of Food Waste
There is one statistic in particular that might make us think when it comes to tidying up after the festivities: roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted every year.
At the same time, 795 million people around the world were...
The Urban Ecologist at Moonwater Farm, California
Kathleen Blakistone first became interested in gardening when her son was in third grade at McKinley Elementary School in Santa Monica. She joined a group of parent volunteers, known as the “Gardening Angels,” under the tutelage of Bonnie Freeman. Freeman led the Santa Monica School Garden Project, which created...
Regina Food Bank Connects People With Fresh Food
From the light crunch of lettuce to the earthy flavours of sweet basil, the Regina food bank's greenhouse is not only producing fresh food, but also putting people back in touch with where their food comes from.
"Growing our own food as a food bank is a really good way...
Farm-in-a-box Coming To A Distribution Centre Near You
Eric and Matt founded Local Roots four years ago. Their first purchases were broken-down, 40-foot shipping containers.
Local Roots upcycles the containers into modular, shippable, customizable farms, each of which can grow as much produce as five acres of farmland. The idea is to supplement, not supplant, outdoor agriculture.
Every aspect...