News & Views

San Diego Becoming an "Edible City"?

Nancy Hughes envisions San Diego as America's first "edible city." Those of us with no palate for stucco may find that hard to swallow. But there it is, the incredible edible city.

Under Mayor Dick Murphy, Hughes is chair of San Diego's Community Forest Advisory Board. As winds shift at City Hall, her attention has turned toward her budding nonprofit group, San Diego Urban Farms. Its goals are to set aside tracts of land inside city limits for organic urban farming and to create a regional agriculture policy that would emphasize locally grown food for local consumption. Such a policy, she believes, would save energy, create jobs, and produce more healthful, better-tasting food. The average foodstuff, she argues, now travels over 1,500 miles from farm to table. "Why are San Diegans eating tomatoes from Florida when we are blessed with a year-round growing season?" she asks. Good question. Still, Hughes's dream of an edible city sounds a lot like the marginalized community gardens movement of decades past—until you consider the booming organic food industry and add another ingredient: the percolating Slow Food movement.

Read the full story at www.organic.com.au/news/2005.05.24/

Institutions turn to Local Farmers for Healthy Food

A growing number of institutions, including schools and hospitals, are looking to local farmers to supply them with healthy food alternatives for cafeterias and vending machines. The recent edition of the ATTRA (National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service) newsletter outlines many initiatives throughout the U.S. that seek to build local food systems and increase nutritional content of institutional food. Other innovative projects to improve community health include farmers markets that sell to employees at hospitals and urban school gardens that teach kids how to grow and prepare healthy food.

Learn more about how farmers work with school districts and the work of ATTRA, visit them online at http://www.attra.org/newsletter/attranews_0106.html.

Sustainable Agriculture Lifts Poor Farmers Out of Poverty

In spite of overall increases in worldwide agricultural production, a staggering 800 million people are considered to be malnourished, a majority of them subsistence farmers in developing countries. A recent study by Jules Pretty and others published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology and reported by the BBC, finds impressive gains by small-scale farmers who practice more sustainable forms of agriculture. The study, perhaps the largest of its kind ever conducted, examined 286 projects in 57 countries.

The researchers found that by practicing sustainable techniques such as integrated pest management, reduced tillage, and diverse cropping systems including integrated agroforestry, farmers were not only able to increase yields by 79%, but they were also able to have a much less harmful impact on the environment. Researchers found reduced water consumption due to growing regionally adapted crops in soils rich in organic matter. They also found dramatic decreases in the use of toxic pesticides and noted that carbon sequestration was increased on these farms, thereby mitigating climate change. Perhaps the most positive finding in this far-reaching study conducted over a four-year period, is that agricultural sustainability is spreading among the worlds poorest farmers.

To read the full BBC article, go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4716224.stm

To read the study published in Environmental Science and Technology, click this link to the publisher, ACS Publications

Idaho's First Permaculture Course Coming in April

From April 16th to 29th, veteran permaculturist and teacher, Larry Santoyo, will lead a fully accredited permaculture course at Sage Waters retreat center in Bliss, Idaho. The course will be taught in three 4-day segments with an overall emphasis on Eco-Village Design. Guest instructors, including Bill McDorman from SeedsTrust, will teach segments in natural building and restorative agriculture. Other topics include agroforestry, cultivating soil fertility, sustainable resource management, and building the home ecosystem.
For more information contact: www.idahopermaculture.com/

Two Day "Green Guerilla" Course on Organics in Westhampton, New York

This two-day intensive course on organic growing will be held April 26–27, by The Nature Lyceum in Westhampton, New York. The course touches on a wide range of topics including organic turf and tree care, biological responses to insect problems, soil biology, compost, disease control, and lots more.
For more information visit www.thenaturelyceum.org or contact Jeff Frank 631-283-1915.