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In Switzerland, practical and stunningly beautiful green rooftops serve to restore a piece of what architecture displaced. In Basel, Switzerland's third most populous city, an eco-friendly hospital roof overlooks the Rhine River. In recent decades, architects, builders and city planners all across the planet have begun turning to green roofs not for their beauty — which is almost an afterthought — but for their practicality. In particular, plant-covered roofs in Switzerland are a common strategy for meeting the country’s robust environmental standards. ...
In his day job, Dimitris Koutsolioutsos crunches numbers for his uncle's firm, which deals in jewellery and duty-free. In the early mornings and late evenings, he helps people become farmers. Not literally, but it does seem to be catching on. The idea behind www.gineagrotis.gr (the name means 'Become a farmer') is straightforward: citydwellers rent a patch of land from a farmer, tell him what they would like grown on it, and get their own fresh vegetables delivered to them weekly. And unlike some services elsewhere, it costs them on average 70% less than at the supermarket or greengrocers. The benefits to the farmer are considerable: he knows in advance what he has to plant, how much of it, and when to harvest. The crops can be grown at a discount, because the farmer knows he will sell all he grows, with no waste. And he gets a regular, guaranteed, stable income. It works like this: customers go online, and state the size of plot they want (generally between 70m2 and 100m2, depending on the size of the household). At least a month in advance, they select the produce they want, choosing from a list of 10 summer and 10 winter vegetables. The produce is then delivered weekly, on one of two pre-agreed days, and within 24 hours of being picked.
Birmingham is a huge conurbation but, within the urban sprawl, pockets of productive growth can be found. In fact there are more allotments in this city than in any other UK local authority – 115 sites and almost 7,000 plots. Alongside the allotment scene are scattered a few projects that are using urban food growing as a way of connecting with communities, ranging from kitchen gardens in school grounds to brand new veg plots in the city’s art quarter.
Some might tell you that it’s not as simple as this, but the difference between traditional farming and hydroponics growing is the choice between potentially contaminated soil and clean water. A hydroponics growing system, on the other hand, is set up using clean water that stays self-contained in the system and never has to be contaminated by harmful pesticides or chemical seepage. Your fruits and vegetables won’t be growing in land once sprayed by DDT or other harmful poisons and there’s no chance that corrosion of underground storage tanks will leak petroleum hydrocarbons, solvents, or lead into your water supply. You, the grower, control the purity and quality of your crop yields. ... DDT, a pesticide that nearly wiped out the American bald eagle population, was banned in the United States in 1973 and in theUnited Kingdom in 1984. The chemical’s in DDT have a soil half life estimated to be anywhere from six months to thirty years. In human metabolism that half life is believed to be six to ten years, but the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported in 2005 that nearly all the blood samples they tested in the US that year contained some traces of it – over thirty years after it was banned
Welcome to the English capital – a beautiful, hulking behemoth filled with would-be farmers. Research suggests half of the UK’s urban agriculture projects are found here and that demand for food growing land is as high as ever. It is in London that a single borough can grow and sell 28 tonnes of salad, and land in the wake of Heathrow Airport can be squatted and made productive again.
he Liberian Government has received a US$15 million credit from the World Bank to increase access to finance, inputs, technologies and markets for smallholder tree crop farmers in Liberia, and to develop a long term development program for the tree crops sector. This Smallholder Tree Crops Revitalization Support Project (STCRSP) would be implemented over a period of four years in several districts of Liberia's main tree crop producing counties. This project, which is to be managed by the Liberian Ministry of Agriculture, has three components. The first is the Smallholder Tree Crops Revitalization: rehabilitating, replanting and newly planting cocoa and coffee farms (7,500 ha); revitalization of an oil palm plantation run by smallholders and an oil palm outgrowers scheme around a concessionaire (1,200 ha of rehabilitation/replanting); and replanting and extension of rubber farms (2,600 ha) in partnership with one concessionaire and one large Liberian estate. The project will support technical and management advice to smallholders and their Farmers Organizations, quality promotion and marketing enhancement; access of farmers and their FOs to adapted financial services; development of small scale processing for cocoa, coffee and oil palm; and rehabilitation of critical farm access roads.
“We’re surrounded by agriculture here but most of the production is of commodity crops. We started to think about what interventions we could make to show that producing our own food was possible. FarmShare was born out of Transition Norwich’s Food Group and is part of a larger Norwich Resilient Food Project, which is basically a big experiment” he explains. They found a seven acre site on the edge of the city with a sympathetic landowner. The Norfolk Broads are on one side and a flyover, rail track and business park on the other. The plan is to acquire another acre in 2012, by which time they hope to be growing enough food to feed 150 households.
Germany's consumer minister has vowed to fight European moves to relax its current zero-tolerance stance towards genetically modified food. Currently, all food containing plant matter faces rigorous testing to make sure there is nothing that has been genetically modified – before it enters Germany. But the European Commission wants to change the rules so that food with traces of genetically modified ingredients would be allowed through, and could crop up in German shops, the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday.
Since 2009, Sall has practised farmer-managed natural regeneration (FMNR), protecting wildlings and pruning stumps that coppice so they rapidly grow or regrow into trees. The conventional wisdom is that trees compete with crops, but FMNR has increased millet harvests from 430kg to 750kg a hectare, according to World Vision, which supports 39,000 hectares (96,000 acres) of FMNR in Kaffrine. At a conference at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi in April, scientists endorsed FMNR. "Fallowing used to take care of fertility, contributing 80-90% of all organic material in soil," said agro-ecologist Roland Bunch. "But today 80% of African farmers have under two hectares and cannot rest their land. Restoring soils with trees is key." Trees such as Faidherbia albida fix nitrogen in the soil.
Forfeiting their summer vacation and even the possibility of earning some money, Schlesinger and his roommate, Alex Steinberg, are volunteering as unpaid farmhands for the next couple of months. Members of Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), the pair joined the ranks of more than 70 such workers who tend fields and animals at Runnymede. "We used to have to turn people away," says Runnymede co-owner Teri White. But as the organic and, more recently, eat-local movements have picked up speed, the number of WWOOF farms — more than 1,500 in the United States — also has grown. WWOOF farms in Oregon tripled in number to 92 over the past six years. More than a third of those are in Jackson and Josephine counties. ... WWOOFing began in the early 1970s in England as a way for farmers to get weekend help. Back then, the name stood for Working Weekends on Organic Farms. It was started by a London secretary who thought city people needed a convenient way to enjoy the countryside and learn a little about the organic movement. A trial weekend of work in Sussex quickly led to others and, eventually, WWOOF chapters in other countries. The movement was soon embraced by young adventurers as a cheap way to travel and receive room and board. All they had to pay was their transportation to the farm. Neither volunteers nor hosts are vetted by WWOOF, which warns both to check out comments and ratings on its website, www.wwoof.org.
Sustainable tourism has the capability of being a feasible tool for biodiversity conservation by providing economic alternatives for communities to engage in other than destructive livelihood activities, creating new revenue streams to support conservation through user fee systems and other mechanisms, and building constituencies that support conservation priorities by exposing tourists, communities, and governments to the value of protecting unique natural ecosystems.
Grow Sheffield was born out the UK’s first ever ‘Abundance’ fruit harvesting project. It now acts as an umbrella over that and two other projects – community growing and a local food network. Art is a big part of what they do and ‘Allotment Soup’ is a series of events they run every year, as Coralie explains. “We bring artists onto allotments and invite them to make installations. We then hold gallery style open days, where there’s always soup and a fire. It’s about showing allotments in a new light. We don’t want to just preach to the converted. We need to give people new ways in. I come from an environmental background and I know some people can be switched off by green hectoring. Grow Sheffield was attractive to me because its approach felt different and fresh.”
Greenpeace sums up the threat: GE canola is mainly cultivated commercially in Canada and in the US, where it has contaminated non-GE canola. In fact, herbicide tolerant GE crops are generally causing havoc for farmers that face new problems with superweeds. [...] GE canola contamination is already spreading in the European Union, even though it has not been approved for commercial cultivation in the EU. If released into the environment, the germination of canola seeds cannot be contained. A Swedish study has also shown that GE canola seeds could survive and be viable for germination even 10 years after their release into the wild.
Via Alan Yoshioka
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We need a LOCAL food industry to replace the anti-social national food industry where supermarkets are charging consumers too much for food, but giving farmers too little to stay in business.
A local food industry will reconnect producer with consumer and encourage trade and communication. More people will eat seasonal produce and in so doing encourage further production. By cutting out the middle men and supply chain, food becomes cheaper and all the revenue stays in the local economy.
So far we have 7,000 producer/retailer icons on our map, all with a password to update their page including; video, photos, online shop, etc. We have 21,000 consumers receiving our postcode specific newsletter, and 440 producers in our online MarketPlace. We also have around 90 other websites hosting our map and MarketPlace. ... Start growing your own and sell any excess via your local Crop for the Shop outlet. If there isn’t one on your local map ask your local shop or post office to set up a table and print off our poster. They are then eligible to join BigBarn. (This concept has been a life saver for some small shops increasing their stock and becoming the centre of the community).
A biofuel venture set up by Shell in Brazil is to give up plans to buy sugar cane grown illegally in ancestral indigenous lands. A biofuels company set up in Brazil by oil giant Shell has signed a landmark agreement giving up plans to buy sugar cane grown on indigenous lands. The company, Raizen, was obtaining some of the raw material for ethanol from farmers who encroached on the lands of the Guarani tribe in Mato Grosso do Sul state. The deal comes after months of pressure by the Brazilian authorities. Indigenous leaders have welcomed the agreement.
Research has shown that hormone concentrations in livestock wastes are 100 to 1,000 times higher than those emitted from human sewage treatment plants, and that large dairy farms are a primary source of estrogens in the environment. Studies have also detected estrogenic hormones in soil and nearby watersheds after dairy wastewater was used to fertilize crops. Lead researcher Wei Zheng explained: “These estrogens are present at levels that can affect the (reproductive functions of) aquatic animals.” He also noted that these estrogens can “feminize” aquatic animals, causing male fish to have low sperm counts or to develop female characteristics, thus undermining their ability to reproduce. If unchecked, hormones in surface or groundwater could also begin contaminating our food and water supply. Zheng noted that these estrogens could easily be taken up by plants, thus entering the food chain.
The country has also officially asked the EU Commission to re-evaluate its regulation of neonicotinoid pesticides to increase protection for bees. Following the publication of several studies that show neonicotinoid pesticides have a negative impact on dwindling honey bee populations, France has announced it plans to ban Cruiser OSR, an insecticide produced by Sygenta. French Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll has also officially asked the EU Commission to re-evaluate its regulation of neonicotinoid pesticides to increase protection for bees. ... n a US study, bees from 16 outdoor hives were fed tiny doses of neonicotinoid pesticide-laced high-fructose corn syrup, while four hives in the same field were left untreated. After around six months over 90 percent (15 out of 16) of the hives fed with the pesticidal corn syrup had collapsed, while the four control hives not exposed to pesticides remained healthy. France has said it will give Sygenta two weeks to prove the pesticide is not linked CCD.
"The share of organic vs conventional production in Bulgaria registered a 30% annual increase in 2011, according to Tsvetan Dimitrov, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Food. "Speaking Tuesday at the opening of a seminar on the benefits of organic products, he said that the control system indicated a total area of 26 622 hectares used for organic farming in 2011 due to the increased demand for such products on the European and global markets. ... Radio Netherlands Worldwide: "The economic affairs ministry announced on Wednesday that turnover for the organic food sector had increased by about 30 percent compared to the year before for the second time in a row. ... "The total market share of organically produced food in 2011 grew from 3.5 to 4.5 percent."
Zhou Jianmin, director of the China Soil Association, estimated that one-tenth of China's farmland was affected. "The country, the government and the public should realise how serious the soil pollution is," he said. "More areas are being affected, the degree of contamination is intensifying and the range of toxins is increasing." Other estimates of soil pollution range as high as 40%, but an official risk assessment is unlikely to be made public for several years. The government has spent six years on a soil survey involving 30,000 people, but the academics leading the project said they have been forbidden from releasing preliminary findings. Chen Tongbin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said the worst contamination was in Yunnan, Sichuan, Hunan, Anhui and Guizhou, but there were also parts of Beijing where the soil is tainted. Unlike in Europe where persistent organic pollutants are the main concern, Chen said China's worst soil contamination is from arsenic, which is released during the mining of copper, gold and other minerals. Roughly 70% of the world's arsenic is found in China – and it is increasingly coming to the surface with horrendous consequences.
Tiny amounts of unapproved genetically modified organisms (GMOs) will be permitted in food imports to the European Union under draft rules due to be proposed shortly by the bloc's executive, EU officials said on Monday. Exporters and European producers say the rules are needed to avoid disruptions to food imports, with global supply chains making it increasingly difficult to guarantee cargoes bound for Europe are free of GMOs not yet approved in the bloc.
Nationally, the concept of aquaponics — cultivating plants and fish in a recirculating ecosystem — is riding a swelling wave. Community-run farms are flourishing in Chicago and New York, and putting down roots in Baltimore. It "is a perfect way to grow in an urban environment," said Sylvia Bernstein, author of Aquaponic Gardening: A Step by Step Guide to Growing Fish and Vegetables Together. Because the system uses no soil, it can be plunked down anywhere, even on rooftops. And it requires only 10 percent of the water needed in traditional gardening.
Bristol is awash with examples of urban agriculture. The more you dig around, the more active Bristolians seem to be. “Bristol does feel proactive when it comes to food growing” says Irene Blessit from Fishponds Community Orchard. “The recession means more people want to grow their own, and people are also more interested in eating organically. And they’re concerned about fruit waste, orchard loss and disappearing knowledge about local varieties.” “Our plot is three miles from the city centre and very close to the M32, but it feels wild. We mainly grow apples, but also some soft fruits. We encourage members to get keys to the orchard and just come and sit here, have a picnic and bird watch. We offer a space for people who don’t have a garden of their own.”
Product DescriptionThis digital document is a journal article from Landscape and Urban Planning, published by Elsevier in 2005. There are approximately 2600 golf courses in the UK, occupying 0.7% of the total land cover. However, it is unknown whether these represent a significant resource, in terms of biodiversity conservation, or if they are significantly less diverse than the surrounding habitats. The diversity of vegetation (tree and herbaceous species) and three indicator taxa (birds, ground beetles (Coleoptera, Carabidae) and bumblebees (Hymenoptera, Apidae)) was studied on nine golf courses and nine adjacent habitats (from which the golf course had been created) in Surrey, UK. Two main objectives were addressed: (1) to determine if golf courses support a higher diversity of organisms than the farmland they frequently replace; (2) to examine whether biodiversity increases with the age of the golf course. Birds and both insect taxa showed higher species richness and higher abundance on the golf course habitat than in nearby farmland. While there was no difference in the diversity of herbaceous plant species, courses supported a greater diversity of tree species. Furthermore, bird diversity showed a positive relation with tree diversity for each habitat type. It was found that introduced tree species were more abundant on the older golf courses, showing that attitudes to nature conservation on courses have changed over time. Although the courses studied differed in age by up to 90 years, the age of the course had no effect on diversity, abundance or species richness for any of the animal taxa sampled. We conclude that golf courses of any age can enhance the local biodiversity of an area by providing a greater variety of habitats than intensively managed agricultural areas.
The French government has banned a pesticide linked to the decline of bees that is widely used to treat oilseed rape. Cruiser OSR, which contains the neonicotinoid insecticide thiamethoxam, was banned for use on oilseed rape by the French Ministry of Agriculture. Made by the Swiss agrichemical company Syngenta, Cruiser OSR is a seed treatment, which is coated onto the rape seeds. The decision to ban Cruiser follows two studies earlier this year, in the UK and France, which found evidence that neonicotinoids contain chemicals that disorientate bees and prevent them from finding their way back to hives, causing colony collapse disorder. Announcing the ban, France's Ministry of Agriculture said it would be pushing for a European-wide ban with the European Commission and the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA).
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