Home Tags California

Tag: California

Feeding the Future of Agriculture with Vertical Farming

Field farming requires labour, amenable weather conditions, adequate sunshine for photosynthesis, irrigation, and often pesticides to protect crops. Vertical farming, a term coined by Dickson Despommier, is the practice of producing food in vertically-stacked layers. These “farms” make use of enclosed structures like warehouses and shipping containers to provide a...

Urban Edge Farm Programme Offers Immersion Learning

To First Generation Farmers Executive Director Alli Cecchini and head farmer Eleanor VanHof, a 13-acre section of the prime farmland in the Bay Area’s east Contra Costa County is the site of the long-dreamed-of Urban Edge Sustainable Farming (UESF). For the first cohort of students, many of them women, people...

A Garden And A ‘Share Shed’ Build A More Inclusive Neighborhood

Last summer, Wen Lee and her husband Chris Stratton, had a surplus of vegetables growing in their garden. The couple built what they call a “Share Shed” using donated paint from neighbors, scrap wood, and other material leftover from previous projects. The shed allows community members to take what they...

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...

California’s Long Beach Will Tax Empty Land to Encourage Urban Farming

A California law to give tax breaks to landowners who convert vacant lots to small urban farms has gone largely unused in the four years since it was passed. But now Long Beach is adding a stick to the carrot of incentives. Landowners who don’t convert their vacant parcels to...