Articles Archive for September 2010
Stories and Quotes »
How much food is growing in NYC community gardens? We’re really close to finding out.
We’re proud and excited to release a new tool that we’ve been talking about and working hard on for months – a tool that will allow folks to estimate food produced in community garden by borough, neighborhood, and even by veggie.
Just in time for our debut at the Living Concrete/Carrot City opening tonight, Farming Concrete is proud to present a map of our results so far – a dynamic map that we will continue to add to (data as well as functionality) as the season progresses through the fall.
Across a broad sample of 40 food-producing community gardens, we have calculated nearly 6 tons of fresh produce so far, worth more than $30,000. While not surprising, our results are still humbling and immense – with September, October, and possibly even November and December still to go of raising edibles from the soil, we’re dancing with our measuring tapes and spreadsheets in anticipation.
So far, this map includes 40 out of the nearly 500 community gardens in NYC, and it includes yields of only July and August. Both of these parameters will continue to grow as we continue our work. To help us add more gardens to this map, please check out our Mappers’ Map. If you are a community gardener, please contact us directly at gardens (at) farmingconcrete (dot) com.
We owe an enormous amount of gratitude to the gardeners and volunteers who helped make this happen. Their guidance and support has been no small force, and we absolutely could not have done any of this without them.
So without further ado, please visit harvest.farmingconcrete.com, and check back often to watch the map grow and blossom with added gardens, harvests, and functionality!
Design and programming for the Farming Concrete Map by Eric Brelsford. Contact eric (at) farmingconcrete (dot) com.
Events »
We’re honored to have been invited to two great urban agriculture happenings this month. Come check out the first of the results of Farming Concrete at these two events:
Farm City Forum (more info here)
Living Concrete/Carrot City (more info further down)
SUMMARY: Farm City concludes with an “unconference” of targeted discussions exploring how to shape the future of urban agriculture produced in collaboration with Eyebeam Art and Technology Center. Sessions will bring together artists, farmers, urban planners, architects, food activists, and authors. Novella Carpenter, author of the widely-acclaimed book, Farm City: An Education of An Urban Farmer, will be a featured speaker.
Farm City Talk provides an online discussion area for comments or questions prior to the Forum — so you can participate — whether or not you can be there in person!
Theme: The Future of Urban Agriculture
Primary Goal: To engage participants in a visioning process about transformative possibilities of urban agriculture as a means to generate new thinking and experimental action positively impacting a more sustainable future.
Secondary Goal: To explore how artistic interventions transform and illuminate urban agricultural endeavors and vice versa.
A non-traditional “unconference” format is aimed at engaging the knowledgeable attendees in order to better achieve more meaningful outcomes and real results.
FULL PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Framing: Welcoming: 1:00-1:05 p.m.
Plenary Address: 1:10-1:20 p.m.
Opening Presentation: Novella Carpenter 1:20-2:00 p.m.
A narrated slide show entitled “One Woman’s Descent into Urban Farming Madness,”
Talk Back Panel: Where you growing? 2:00-2:30 p.m.
Megan Paska, Brooklyn Homesteaders and Karen Washington, NY Community Gardening Coalition react to Carpenter’s presentation. Questions from audience and from web considered for discussion. Dialogue encourages sharing of experiences growing food in unusual urban places.
BREAK 2:30-3:00 p.m.
PechaKucha*: 10 x 10: Visionary Urban Agriculture Projects 3:00-4:10 p.m.
10 presentations: 20 slides show for 20 seconds each. 6 minutes & 40 seconds total.
1 Dan Wood, Artist/Architect, Work.AC – P.F. 1 and Brooklyn Edible Schoolyard
2 Francesca Miazzo, Planner/Professor, CITIES the Magazine – Farming the City
3 Mary Mattingly, Artist – “The Waterpod”
4 Meredith TenHoor, Writer – Farm Cities: History of Urban Utopianism
5 Jennifer Nelkin, Farmer, GothamGreens.com
6 Gita Nandan, Architect/Planner, ThreadCollective.com — FiveBoro Farm
7 Daniel Bowman Simon – Activist – WHO Garden and People’s Garden NYC
8 Mara Gittelman, cartographer/project director — Farming Concrete
9 Stacey Murphy, Farmer/Architect, Bk Farmyards
10 Adam Prince & Christina Wiles, Artists/Writers – Artistic & Social Practices in Urban Farming
Possible addition of two surprise presenters . . . . TBA
* devised and shared by Klein Dytham architecture.
Lightning Skill Share: How does your garden grow? 4:10-4:30 p.m.
Moderator takes one question for each of the ten presenters from the audience.
BREAK 4:30-5:00 p.m.
Crowd Source Panel: Envision Urban Agriculture in 5 Years 5:00-6:30 p.m.
Moderator: Majora Carter, Activist, Majora Carter Group, Sustainable South Bronx, MacArthur Fellow
Christina Grace, Urban Food Systems, NY Agriculture & Market
Maria Aiolova, Architect, Terraform ONE
Rev. Robert Ennis Jackson, Farmer/Community Organizer – Bed Stuy Farm – Brooklyn Rescue Mission
Tattfoo Tan, Artist, Sustainable Organic Stewardship
Annie Novak, Farmer, Eagle Street Rooftop Farm
+ 2 more surprise additions . . . TBA
Breakout Discussions 5:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Panelists each create a small discussion group in the audience to feed knowledge back to the general group.
Wrap Up & Review 6:30 -7:00 p.m.
We created a web-based knowledge-sharing so that interested parties can discuss proposed topics prior to the Forum.
- Questions to be posed at each of three sessions.
- Where are you growing? Experiences growing food in unusual urban places.
- How does your garden grow? Real or imagined strategies farming the City.
- c. What is your vision for urban agriculture in 5 years?
- Ask the Author? Questions for Novella Carpenter, author of Farm City.
- Open Studio – Submit a real or imagined idea for enhancing urban agriculture and building a sustainable food system.
FARM CITY TALK: http://farmcityinfo.tumblr.com/
Summary: Schedule of Day
| 12:00 | Registration: Doors and Box Office Opens |
| 1:00 | Welcome by Lili Chopra and Amanda M. Crowley |
| 1:10 | Plenary Address: TBA |
| 1:20 | Opening Presentation: Novella Carpenter, Author, “One Woman’s Descent into Urban Farming Madness” |
| 2:00 | Talk Back: Where are you growing? |
| 2:30 | BREAK |
| 3:00 | PechaKucha: 10 x 10 Visionary Urban Agriculture Projects |
| 4:10 | Lightning Skill Share: How does your garden grow? |
| 4:30 | BREAK |
| 5:00 | Panel Discussion: Envision Urban Agriculture in 5 Years |
| 6:30 | Wrap Up & Review |
Saturday, September 25
Sessions at 1:00 pm, 3:00 pm, and 5:00 pm
FIAF, Le Skyroom
22 East 60th Street, New York, NY 10065
Single Discussions: $10 FIAF Members, $15 Non-Members
All Discussions: $20 FIAF Members, $30 Non-Members
_________________________________________________
Living Concrete/Carrot City at The New School
Living Concrete/Carrot City, a collaboration of Ryerson University and
the New School, explores the intersections of design, food systems and
communities.
Gallery opening:
September 30, 2010
6:30 – 8:30 pm
Fifth Avenue at 13th Street
Featuring:
Edible Cocktails by the Cross(x)Species Adventure Club: exploring
a biodiverse and tasty future. An on-going lifestyle experiment
presented by Natalie Jeremijenko, Mihir Desai, Emilie Baltz and other
intelligent creatures.
Cooking demonstration by students of Summer Youth Employment Program, a
partnership between BK Farmyards and Growing Leaders, Brooklyn
Hudson New York Corn Whiskey kindly donated by Tuthilltown Spirits
This exhibit will be open through December.
Farming Concrete will be sharing a sampling of each of the facets of our project as well as the interactive web map that we will continue to build as we continue to track harvests this autumn. Please come check it out!
We’re really excited to be part of both of these, and look forward to meeting you there.
Stories and Quotes »
FRESH the movie has placed us in the running to receive 1% of its profits this year! Please click here to vote.
From an article on Treehugger by Sami Grover, who gives us a nice shout out:
Leonora already got pretty excited about Fresh—a documentary about our broken food system, and the folks trying to fix it. But it’s not just the movie itself that’s exciting—the film makers are also putting their money where their mouth is, offering 1% of 2010 revenue to a nonprofit working for sustainable food. They just need your help to figure out who to give it to.
The Fresh 1% grant was created to take the momentum of the movie and turn it into direct action on the ground for greener, more responsible and healthier food. The film makers set up a submission process that attracted 43 non-profits, which were whittled down to a shortlist of ten. Now those of us who care about our food are being asked to vote for our favorite—but hurry, the competition ends on September 24th.
Included in the short-list are Ample Harvest—who featured on Jaymi’s list of 10 Techy Tools for Gardeners—and who aim to match excess garden produce with food pantries around the country; CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), which runs one of the oldest buy-local campaigns in the country; and Farming Concrete, which is aiming to quantify and track the amount of food grown in inner-city areas. Also included are Healthy Solutions; LifeCycles Project Society; Mobile Loaves and Fishes; National Family Farm Coalition; Our School at Blair Grocery; REAP Food Group, and WHY Hunger.
Please help us out! A little vote goes a long way.
