Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
Sustainable Intensification of Small Crop Growing
Drip irrigation.
From the FAO here’s ways to save water and energy when growing food.
The Green Revolution in agriculture, which swept much of the developing world during the 1960s, saved an estimated one billion people from famine. Thanks to high-yielding crop varieties, irrigation, agrochemicals and modern management techniques, farmers in developing countries increased food production from 800 million tonnes to more than 2.2 billion tonnes between 1961 and 2000. Intensive crop production helped to reduce the number of undernourished, drive rural development and prevent the destruction of natural ecosystems to make way for extensive farming. Those achievements came at a cost. In many countries, decades of intensive cropping have degraded fertile land and depleted groundwater, provoked pest upsurges, eroded biodiversity, and polluted air, soil and water. As the world population rises to a projected 9.2 billion in 2050, we have no option but to further intensify crop production. But the yield growth rate of major cereals is declining, and farmers face a series of unprecedented, intersecting challenges: increasing competition for land and water, rising fuel and fertilizer prices, and the impact of climate change. More…
New Food and Environment Class at UW
A big thanks to Elaine for sending this on:
Program Supporting Urban Ag at Seattle Central Community College
Lots can happen in a planting strip.
From US News and World Report here’s info on a great program going on at our own Seattle Central Community College.
The concept of urban agriculture may conjure up images of rooftop, backyard or community gardens scattered among downtown city streets and surrounding neighborhoods. But in the Seattle area, and within and beyond the Puget Sound region, it means a great deal more.
“Urban agriculture doesn’t necessarily equate to production that occurs only in a metropolitan urban area,’’ says Jason Niebler, who directs the Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAgE) Initiative at Seattle Central Community College. “It means we are providing for growing population food needs from surrounding rural landscapes, as well as from the core urban landscape.’’
Picture a series of concentric circles, with an urban core that produces some food at varying capacities, surrounded by a series of outlying rings of small farms that become increasingly more rural with distance. The hope is that such land use planning, from the inner core to the outer rings, will encourage local ecologically sound sustainable food production. This, in turn, will create local jobs and decrease reliance on distant food products that originate from petroleum intensive large scale farms.
That’s the idea behind SAgE, believed to be the nation’s first metropolitan-based community college sustainable agriculture program that emphasizes farming practices across diverse landscape types from urban centers to surrounding rural environs. “It’s small scale agriculture with an urban focus,’’ Niebler says. “Any urban population, large or small, can practice sustainable agriculture, improve food security and protect the environment, which ultimately results in resilient food systems and communities.” More…
New Research Show Community Gardens Increase Produce Consumption
Happy Summer Solstice!Am J Public Health. 2011 Jun 16. [Epub ahead of print]
The Influence of Social Involvement, Neighborhood Aesthetics, and Community Garden Participation on Fruit and Vegetable Consumption.
Source
1 Colorado School of Public Health.
Abstract
Objectives. We considered the relationship between an urban adult population’s fruit and vegetable consumption and several selected social and psychological processes, beneficial aesthetic experiences, and garden participation. Methods. We conducted a population-based survey representing 436 residents across 58 block groups in Denver, Colorado, from 2006 to 2007. We used multilevel statistical models to evaluate the survey data. Results. Neighborhood aesthetics, social involvement, and community garden participation were significantly associated with fruit and vegetable intake. Community gardeners consumed fruits and vegetables 5.7 times per day, compared with home gardeners (4.6 times per day) and nongardeners (3.9 times per day). Moreover, 56% of community gardeners met national recommendations to consume fruits and vegetables at least 5 times per day, compared with 37% of home gardeners and 25% of nongardeners. Conclusions. Our study results shed light on neighborhood processes that affect food-related behaviors and provides insights about the potential of community gardens to affect these behaviors. The qualities intrinsic to community gardens make them a unique intervention that can narrow the divide between people and the places where food is grown and increase local opportunities to eat better. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 16, 2011: e1-e8. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2010.300111).
Bastille Rooftop Garden Tours
From Seattlest here’s news on a great tour.
Yesterday kicked off the first rooftop garden tour at Bastille in Ballard with Colin McCrate of Seattle Urban Farm Company who designed the 4500 square foot garden. Every Wednesday, he’ll cover growing an edible, seasonally-based urban garden. The forty-five minute tour concludes with a seasonal cocktail with ingredients from their garden.
Wednesdays through end of September, 5-6pm // Bastille Café & Bar (5307 Ballard Avenue NW) // $10 per person, limited to 10 people. Reservations recommended. Call (206) 453-5014.
Bring Your Own Bird Class
By Andrew Plotsky
Have your layers stopped holding up their end of the bargain? Guzzling the tasty treats to graciously offer only to lounge around, watch television and contributing nothing to the household? Have you gotten frustrated then angry then vehement then sorry then sympathetic then frustrated again? Are you at the end of your rope, tried all the tricks in the book and still just don’t know what to do?
WELL!
Farmstead Meatsmith is offering a BYOBird chicken processing class on Saturday, June 11th. You can bring up to three of your own chickens to process, and we particularly encourage bringing old laying hens (which have been deceptively marketed by the Bad Guys as tough and tasteless).
BEWARE! You should only sign up for this class if you are interested in acquiring veritable oceans of traditional knowledge and furthering your pursuit of a sustainable sovereign lifestyle in personal food production.
We will be learning how to do everything necessary to process a chicken – slaughter, scalding, plucking, evisceration, wrapping and cookery. There will be lunch. It will come from your chickens. It will be delicious. Promise.
The class will begin at 9 am at la Biondo Farm & Kitchen on Vashon Island. Fee for the entire day plus lunch is $125 per person and you should come prepared with outdoor clothing, cutting boards and knives.
Farmstead Meatsmith is a custom slaughter, butchery and charcuterie business that serves the Puget Sound region. We offer a full variety of services to meet small farmers’ livestock and poultry processing needs.
We frequently offer classes in all of the areas that we process. Check out our Classes page to find the right fit for you. Currently, we’ve have scheduled:
Three more chicken processing/cookery classes scheduled for June 28th, 29th and July 20th
Two Sheep Harvesting Classes: July 14th and 16th
Two Sheep Butchery Classes: July 21st and 23rd.
If you’ve got questions or would like more information, feel free to contact us at: farmsteadmeastmith@gmail.com. Hope to see you on the island!
Sun!
Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun
By Walt Whitman
GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;
Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;
Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows;
Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape;
Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content;
Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars;
Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk
undisturb’d;
Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should never tire;
Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural, domestic life;
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for my own ears only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities!
See complete poem here.
Paying to Muck Out Stalls
Many years ago my great-grandfather arrived in Iowa with several English friends to learn to farm. They were all lesser sons of good families who wanted to take care of animals and grow things. Despite the image of the gentleman farmer, their fathers thought them crazy so over they came. Upon arrival they found that they had paid a lot of money to muck out stalls and serve as unpaid farm hands. Some went back home but my great-grandfather bought a line of dray horses and stuck it out. I wonder what they would have thought of this new line of pricey summer camps?
From Time .com here’s news on kids lining up to pay to do chores.
With the end of school around the corner, the options for summer camp have gotten endlessly niche: there’s rock-star camp, circus-arts camp, Hollywood-stunt camp. But in what may be a backlash to the glitz of it all, the hippest new kid on the block is the lowly farm camp, with tilling the earth now seen as a wholesome and character-building respite from video games and texting. The American Camp Association (ACA) has surveyed its members to report that 83% of day and resident camps have added gardening activities in the past five years, and 19% have launched farming and ranching programs, which include raising animals. “People think kids intuitively wouldn’t be interested,” says CEO Peg Smith. “But we’re seeing the pendulum swing back.” More…
Introduction to Permaculture Weekend Workshop
When: May 20 – 22, 2011
Where: At the Bullock’s 30 year old Permaculture Homestead, Orcas Island, WA
Instructors: Douglas Bullock, Sam Bullock & Dave Boehnlein
Includes:
Tour, lecture, hand-on projects, presentations, group discussion, and
networking. We will cover Permaculture design theory & practice,
forest gardening, perennial food systems, plant propagation, efficient
water & energy systems, fertility management – beneficial
plants/healthy soils, and ecological systems as a model for human
communities.
Course Tuition: $200; includes delicious, mostly organic meals &
materials. Camping space is provided. Payment is due upon course
registration. Course is limited to 50 participants.
For more info or to register contact:
Dave Boehnlein
360-840-8483
info@permaculturepo rtal.com
http://permaculture portal.com
New Research on Health Benefits of Gardening
From Pub Med here’s a new article on health benefits of gardening.
“Connecting food environments and health through the relational nature of aesthetics: Gaining insight through the community gardening experience.”
Current environmental and health challenges require us to identify ways to better align aesthetics, ecology, and health. At the local level, community gardens are increasingly praised for their therapeutic qualities. They also provide a lens through which we can explore relational processes that connect people, ecology and health. Using key-informant interview data, this research explores gardeners’ tactile, emotional, and value-driven responses to the gardening experience and how these responses influence health at various ecological levels (n = 67 participants, 28 urban gardens). Our findings demonstrate that gardeners’ aesthetic experiences generate meaning that encourages further engagement with activities that may lead to positive health outcomes. Gardeners directly experience nearby nature by ‘getting their hands dirty’ and growing food. They enjoy the way vegetables taste and form emotional connections with the garden. The physical and social qualities of garden participation awaken the senses and stimulate a range of responses that influence interpersonal processes (learning, affirming, expressive experiences) and social relationships that are supportive of positive health-related behaviors and overall health. This research suggests that the relational nature of aesthetics, defined as the most fundamental connection between people and place, can help guide community designers and health planners when designing environment and policy approaches to improve health behaviors. More…Department of Environmental Health, Colorado School of Public Health, 13001 E. 17th Place, Mail Stop, B119, Aurora, CO 80045, USA.
Categories
Copyright Urban Farm Hub 2010 | Designed by Woonerfs
