There are two major reasons why urban agriculture (UA) has drawn people’s attention recently. One is the positive role that UA plays for the household security of the urban poor. In the Asian context, however, another reason seems more important – better land use between urban and rural. Unchecked sprawling of urban areas is causing a number of serious problems: upsurge in land prices and taxes, poor infrastructure, disruption of farming activity, pollutions, to name a few. Japan has a long history of encountering and tackling these problems. Various carrot and stick policies have been prepared. Most notable were the regulatory and economic measures taken under the “zoning” laws. They were however in many cases trials and errors. Each time a new measure or zoning was proposed, strong oppositions came out. Farmers wanted to protect their farmland as well as freedom of its disposal. Others insisted on imposing higher taxes on farmland to accelerate the conversion of farmland to residential use. Battle on zoning and related measures was almost over in the early 1990s. Farmland in Japan was split into three major categories: one in Agricultural Land Use area, one in Urbanization Promotion Area (UPA) and the rest. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) estimates that about 1.1 million ha of farmland exist in “urban-like areas” and are producing ¥2.6 trillion worth of products. Share in national output is particularly high for vegetables and flowers, both at roughly 40%. Some farmers are still continuing agriculture even in 3 UPA by shifting to organic farming, direct linkage with consumers or agro-tourism. It is ironical that the voice appreciating the multiple roles of UA is mounting after typical UA has almost disappeared from the urban center. Local governments are offering new measure to retain UA now. Japan’s experience may provide good lessons to other Asian countries where high economic growth, unchecked urbanization and emergence of modern citizens are taking place in parallel.
Kunio Tsubota wrote:
What Lessons can Cities in Africa Learn? – Urban Farming Takes off as Asian Cities Aim to change Their Food Systems Through Innovative Means
From Asia weekly:
The idea of growing fruit trees on the top of buildings, or producing fruit and vegetables inside multistory buildings using artificial light, might have been viewed as a fanciful idea once — but not anymore. From Beijing to Sydney and Tokyo to Singapore, urban farming is becoming an integral part of the urban landscape, not only in Asia but throughout the world...[more]
Gardening in Sacks Handbook | A technique of vertical agriculture
The Gardening in Sacks Handbook:
This handbook is part of the culmination of SI Technical and Programme Quality Department’s will to capitalise on its experience of sack-gardening in different countries. The first projects of this kind implemented in Kenya have proved successful, giving SOLIDARITES INTERNATIONAL a solid reputation on the domain. The NGO has since developed this sack-gardening project in 6 countries of intervention: Haiti, Thailand, Sudan, Myanmar, Cameroon and Somalia. This handbook thus aims at formalising these 8 years of experience, proposing a structured overview of the whole project cycle, from the assessment to the design and then the implementation of the sack-gardening activities. It identifies the different steps to follow and provides practical tools to best develop an implement the project...[more]
Afriyie Obeng-Fosu the oyster mushroom producer changing urban Ghanaian diets
via Miss Agriculture Ghana:
In Ghana, the Miss Agriculture contest led by the United Women in Agriculture Foundation and the Ghanaian Ministry of Food and Agriculture is a stage for young women with creative projects that have the potential to shake up the status quo of sustainable agribusiness – and to inspire more of their peers to take up the trade, too.
via
Here, Landscape News spoke with the current title-holder, Afriyie Obeng-Fosu about why oyster mushrooms are great for cities, how entrepreneurs can monetize industrial waste and the challenges facing West African agribusiness at large...[more]
Meet Purity Kendi and Phenny Omondi, founders of Kilimo Jijini which trains students in Urban Farming Techniques via @MastercardFdn
Vegetable gardens crop up in #TrinidadandTobago Entrepreneurship In Trinidad and Tobago, entrepreneur Jameel Phillip is promoting food security through the establishment of urban vegetable gardens
Spore reports:
Student entrepreneur, Jameel Phillip is creating adaptable food production systems in the Caribbean by setting up small urban gardens that maximise production using space-saving designs.
via
Jameel Phillip, 24, set up his urban agriculture business Green Thumb Gardens with his fiancé, Ciele Williams, in September 2015. The company combines sustainable agricultural practices together with landscaping principles to provide an aesthetic appeal to home-based food production, whilst helping to remove the stigma attached to traditional farming...[more]
Home Grown Garden Centre – #Kenya
Home Grown is an Edible Plant Nursery and Garden Centre that supplies salad, vegetable, herb and fruit seedlings and other gardening accessories. Our founder, Suraj Shah, started this project from his family home in Thika (Kenya) where he grew up surrounded by a family who were passionate about farming and gardening. With the green fingers passed down through generations, Suraj is a Permaculture Design Consultant and a passionate herb (amongst many other vegetables and fruits) gardener having grown herbs for over 10 years both commercially and for domestic use.
Esther Ndumi Ngumbi on Vertical Farms
From The Conversation:
Vertical farms is one possible way of meeting the challenges of urbanisation and the rising demand for food. The farms are built as vertically stacked layers in unlikely places – from skyscrapers to warehouses and containers. Esther Ndumi Ngumbi, a post-doctoral researcher and food security fellow, explains how they’re being used to great effect around the world. And why they could work in Africa...[more]
In #Kenya Mushroom Farming Provides Better Option For Farmers With Little Or No Land #Nigeria
The power of Enterprise…A #Mushroom Revolution Takes Root in the Middle East and Africa
Tafline Laylin reporting for the Ozy:
Embed from Getty Images
Palestinian friends Sameer Khraishi, Wadia Nassar, Tayeb Akel and Mahmoud Kuhail were unwilling to purchase Israeli produce, so they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to establish their own mushroom farm, Amoro, in Jericho in 2013. For the first time, markets in Ramallah, Nablus, Jericho and Bethlehem could offer locally produced whitecap mushrooms.
Like most of the nine mushroom farms in neighboring Israel, Amoro too needed containers full of spore-infused compost from the Netherlands. When — unlike Israeli companies — Amoro’s containers were held up at Ashdod Port for up to 82 days at a time without explanation, and the friends had to pay around $240 for each day of that delay, they were forced to shutter operations in mid-2016. The port did not respond to a request for comment. But now, the first Palestinian mushroom farm is rising again after drawing $17,000 through crowdfunding.
Amoro is joining a growing number of organizations across the Middle East and Africa that are cultivating mushrooms as a form of economic empowerment and resistance...[more]
Egypt Turns to Urban Agriculture to Revive Historically Powerful Sector – The Emergence of Agricultural Cities
In Cityfarmer:
Egypt is turning to urban agriculture by establishing its first agriculture city in the southeast part of the Qattara Depression, northwest of the country, as part of efforts aimed at reviving a sector that goes back to the time of the pharaohs.More here
Tanzania Food Gardening Network (TaFoGa Net)
Over at CityFarmer
Harare’s Urban Farmers
Urban Farming in Zimbabwe, from Al Jazeera:
Forum in Kigali, Rwanda: Growing Food In African Cities
City Farmer reports
Kenya: Kitchen garden that you eat from and carry
From City Farmer News:
Oliver Ndegwa of Agrotunnel International says there are several design options when settling on a mobile kitchen garden.
image via
“The portable kitchen garden options depend on tastes and preferences. Basically, these are edible mobile wall unit designs made using gutters and zip grows as well as the mini greenhouse option,” he says.
The edible wall unit can be made of wood or stainless steel and comprises shelves arranged in a stair-case manner where one can put soil and grow plants...[more]
Urban Farming Accelerator – Square Roots.
Business Insider reports:
Entrepreneur Kimbal Musk — yes, he's Elon Musk's younger brother — is trying to grow a variety of things inside the old Pfizer factory in Brooklyn. Among them: a new agricultural venture, hundreds of pounds of leafy greens, and the next generation of young farmers.
Starting fall 2016, he and fellow entrepreneur Tobias Peggs are planning to launch a new urban farming incubator program, called Square Roots. Musk tells Business Insider that it will give young food-tech entrepreneurs spaces to develop and accelerate their vertical farming startups...[more]
Urban farms are changing lives in Johannesburg.
From Al Jazeera:
Use Urban Agriculture to grow the Economy
This is a point that most people miss:
From IOL
Pierre Heistein writes:Urban agriculture makes use of human aptitude rather than machinery and develops skills that can be applied to other industries in the long run
Credit: INDEPENDENT MEDIA
Initially the provincial programme will help households to bolster their income and diversify their dinner table. But thereafter the number of small farming operations will conglomerate into a larger economic system. Resellers and wholesalers will appear, possibly co-ordinating the production of small farmers and collectively marketing and selling their produce. The economy will grow from the bottom.via City Farmer
From IOL
Urban agriculture may be inefficient, but it’s a model for a sustainable future
City Farmer reports
Attend the Songhai Leadership Academy
From the Songhai Centre:
One may have a university education, but,to acquire the skills needed to manage a rural development plan based on the Songhai model is not easy.Graduates of conventional institutions are not prepared for the specific tasks that are a part of this model.To be an effective manager under the Songhai model, individuals must be able to relate their skills and experience to an interdependent,integrated rural development program. This requires long-term training in such varied disciplines as mathematics, statistics, agriculture (all branches), the economy, environment, sociology, administration,planning,etc...[more]
FarmBot | Open-Source CNC Farming
In the desktop machines space:
FarmBot Genesis is humanity's first open-source CNC farming machine designed for at-home automated food production.
Umgibe Vegetable-Growing System
Another take on sack farming, from the Umgibe Farming Organics Training Institute:
What is Umgibe®?
Umgibe Farming Organics is a carbon-saving, ecological, organic, income generating vegetable-growing system which provides a platform to market vegetables grown by grassroots farmers from the sub-economic townships of South Africa.
image via
Aminata Niang’s Urban Farm
In Mali from Deutsche Welle.
Giant snails: A winning combination
Anne Guillaume-Gentil writing in Spore:
Eating giant African snails, predominantly the Achatina achatina and Archachatina marginata species in Central and West Africa, has outstanding health benefits. They are rich in protein, low in fat and contain amino acids and iron. They also help to combat anaemia. With demand for snails generally outstripping supply, agricultural development, deforestation, slash-and-burn farming and over-harvesting are presenting an increasing threat to the wild population.
image via
Vertical agriculture: Suspended horticulture in towers
From CGIAR:
Suspending horticulture activities above the ground can result in high production of vegetables when the challenges of unfertile or saline soil, flooding, waterlogging, and land and water constraints are encountered. A vertical tower is a cylindrical structure made from bamboo, live wood, soil, coconut coir, brick chips, compost and cow manure for growing vegetables. The size and shape of the tower depends on the geographical location, land space, availability of resources, and intensity and height of waterlogging, flooding or salinity. The vertical tower allows for yearlong vegetable production in the homestead, where vegetables can grow on top of or within other structures, such as the roof of a house, nets or trees.
Sack Farming in Kampala
Mathias Wandera writing in The Monitor:
via City Farmer“We need people, especially in the urban areas to engage in agriculture, regardless of limited land. And the answer is sack farming.”
image via
“I started by collecting huge sacks that had been dumped around my neighbourhood. Given that I have always had a poultry house, I was able to compost chicken manure that had accumulated in the coop. This I mixed with black soil to enrich the soil. But I did not just fill the sacks with the soil, I had to place small pebble stones at the middle of the sack, right from bottom to top, then filled the sack with soil leaving the stones erect in the middle,” the mother of three says.
Farming in Kenya becomes ‘sexy’
We wondered if this was beginning to happen. It looks like it has in Kenya at least.Andrea Dijkstra reporting from Beacon Reader:
While many youngsters in Africa don’t want to become farmers anymore and migrate to cities to find a job, in Kenya a growing group of highly educated young people starts to realize that there’s actually a future in agriculture. They start their own farms while using innovative techniques, growing new products and using their smartphones and tablets to quickly find information about agriculture on the Internet. And they earn good money doing so...[more]
image via Beacon Reader
Farming on a tenth of an acre, In Kenya
Bernadette Murgor reporting from Smart Farmer:
His farm is only 30 metres by seven metres in size. But this leased piece of land that is enclosed by a greenhouse and is less than an eighth of an acre has two fish ponds that hold more than two tonnes of fish and a crop that could fill an acre if planted in the traditional way.
image via Beacon Reader
But what is even more interesting is not only that his strawberries on about three quarters of the space or the mudfish in the two ponds would require much more space, but the whole technology around it.
On arrival at the farm in Kinja, Nyandarua County, there is nothing particularly striking. Milking is going on, on one side of the farm that is divided by a road. On the opposite side, a series of empty concrete fishponds dot the space adjacent to the greenhouse.
Nothing strikes you as you walk towards the greenhouse; it is just like any other farm. But that is where the similarity ends.
Once you step into Mr Daniel Kimani’s greenhouse, the surprises begin to emerge right at the door. It is like an industry, fully equipped to start and finish a product. The whole place is wired...[more]
Ukulima Vertical Farm Systems:
In Kenya:
Ukulima Tech designs, develops and installs Vertical Farm Systems, Tower Gardens, Kitchen Gardens and garden automation systems, with multi-level growing systems for the year-round arable and commercial growing of leafy green crops and herbs with minimal inputs of water, labour and land area.
image via FB
Urban Farming with Ukulima Tech
Brian Moseti reporting from Farmbiz:
Three innovative young Kenyans, Hansel Wangara, Elizabeth Onyango and Brenda Awuor, have come up with ingenious vertical gardening setups that are bound to inspire more interest in urban farming.
image via FB
Through their company, Ukulima Tech, the trio design, fabricate, install and maintain unique farming systems that maximize on the usage of space, without compromising on the quantity and quality of harvests...[more]
How To Start A 1-Acre, Self-Sustaining Homestead
From the Mind Unleashed:
(Mother Earth News) Expert advice on how to establish self-sufficient food production, including guidance on crop rotations, raising livestock and grazing management. Your 1-acre homestead can be divided into land for raising livestock and a garden for raising fruits, vegetables, plus some grain and forage crops...[more]
Illustration by: Dorling Kindersley
Building a Permaculture Network by Tichafa Makovere
Tichafa Makovere answers a question 'What is your Vision of a Sustainable World?', for the Brave Collaboration:
Visions of a Sustainable World - Tichafa Makovere Shumba from InsightShare on Vimeo.
"Lou Bess? Dakar Farmers Market"
In Senegal:
Lou Bess? Dakar Farmers Market is a monthly event that promotes local consumption and well being of the community. Held the first Saturday of each month, the fair allows the encounter between local food producers and consumers á looking for quality food, Senegal. More than just a market, Lou Bess? (Wolof term for what's new?) is a community event with all-day activities for youth and adults. On the menu of music, dance, cooking workshops, and abundant, fresh products and meals prepared by independent farmers, bakers, chefs and health contractor and well being.
Building the Mushroom industry with Kigali Farms
In Rwanda:
Kigali Farms...produces the raw material that is at the foundation of the mushroom industry: mushrooms substrate, often referred to in Rwanda as mushroom tubes because the substrate is packaged in small plastic bags that look like tubes. Mushroom substrate is essentially the fungus itself, with all its supply of food and nearly all its supply of water, sufficient to sustain the fungus for a period of 12 weeks, all of it packaged in a plastic bag. This bag, nurtured under the right conditions by the farmer, will produce mushrooms continuously for 12 weeks, much like a chicken would produce eggs.
Business-wise, we sell this substrate to mushroom farmers, many of whom are first-time mushroom farmers whom we train and help set up. We also offer production assistance. We then offer to buy back the mushrooms from the farmer, and commercialize these mushrooms.
What Cuba can teach America (and the rest of us) about farming
From PBS:
Urban Farming
From the African Slum Journal:
Urban farming brings food, money and life in Kibera. With a fast rising population in Nairobi, the demand for more and better food is growing tremendously. Still, many people from rural areas come to the city because they don’t want to farm. They think farming is something for old people, but there’s money in farming. Knowledge is the key, especially about good agricultural practices, knowledge about the market and knowledge about the fun of farming. Only if people enjoy farming, the image of farming will change...[more]
"Make your own liquid fertiliser" from SoilCares
Anja Weber of SoilCares writes in Daily Nation:
To make a liquid fertiliser rich in phosphorus, you should use tithonia, a shrub that grows as a weed or hedge in most parts of the country.
Another very useful plant is comfrey (symphytum), which is especially rich in potassium and provides Vitamin B12, which stimulates rapid root growth at transplanting.
To start, you need a bucket, water, machete (panga) and a stirring stick. Collect the leaves of stinging nettle, comfrey, tithonia or any kind of weeds. Chop them and put the cuttings in the bucket. Add crushed eggshells to provide calcium. Fill the bucket with water so that the material is completely covered...[more]
‘Guerrilla Gardening’, Mali
It also about opportunity. Chris Arsenault in Reuters:
via City Farmer News
The small group of farmers working on a series of plots use makeshift plastic hoses to pump water from the Niger River onto their rows of broccoli, cabbage and other green vegetables.
Farmer Bakary Diarra believes urban vegetable gardens could be expanded to help feed hungry Malians. Image by Chris Arsenault. Mali, 2015.
On the green banks of the Niger River in downtown Bamako alongside heavily guarded foreign hotels, a group of urban farmers busily weed and water vegetables on some of Mali’s prime real-estate.More here
The “guerrilla growers” do not own the land they’re cultivating but property rules aren’t stopping them from trying to feed themselves in one of the world’s poorest countries.
In North America and Europe “guerrilla gardening” usually means an act of political protest against industrialised food production or a lack of green space but in Bamako and across Africa the growing trend for urban gardens is about survival.
“We don’t worry about being forced off the land,” said Bakary Diarra, a large balding man in his mid-fifties, as he rested in the shade, taking a break from pulling weeds. “We are occupying it.”
via City Farmer News
Sack farmers of Kibera
Lagos,Kinshasa,Cairo anyone? An expansion of a method covered earlier,Patrick Mayoyo in the Guardian:
In Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, residents have found a new way of responding to the challenge of food insecurity. In the heart of the bustling, informal settlement they are championing an unusual form of urban farming: the sack gardens of Kibera.
Ramadhan Abdulrahman, a member of the NYS Kambi Muruu sacking farming initiative in Kibera, taking care of his crop. Photograph: Patrick Mayoyo/Patrick Moyoyo
These urban farms consist of a series of sacks that are filled with manure, soil and small stones that enable water to drain. From the tops and sides of these sacks, often referred to as multi-storey gardens, farmers in Kibera grow kale, spinach, onions, tomatoes, vegetables and arrowroot.
The concept is a recent initiative of the National Youth Service (NYS), a government agency that promotes youth affairs through the ministry of devolution and planning. The approach is seen as a cheap and healthy solution to food insecurity and runaway unemployment in Nairobi’s slum. Kibera has thousands of sack gardens spread across 16 villages in the slum, according to Douglas Kangi, principal agricultural officer on the Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Project at the ministry of agriculture. The government plans to introduce the initiative to Kisumu and Mombasa counties.
At Kambi Maruu, one of the villages in Kibera, young farmers start their day at around 8am, in the open field where they have their sack farming project. They water the plants, weed and prune them where necessary and spray them with insecticide.
Ramadhan Abdulrahman, 25, is one of these farmers. Before being contracted by the NYS to take care of the vegetables in a local sack garden, he was unemployed. Today he earns a stipend of 6,592 shillings per month and saves up to Sh1,200 per week...[continue reading]
Quick Hits
A U.S. private-equity push into Ethiopia
A patent for the conversion of urine into flammable gases
Urban farming in Zimbabwe
Akua Wood founder of Shea Butter Cottage via Africa on the Blog
A patent for the conversion of urine into flammable gases
Urban farming in Zimbabwe
Akua Wood founder of Shea Butter Cottage via Africa on the Blog
Greening Congo
Bambanani Food and Herb Garden
In Jo East Express:
via City Farmer
Mr Amon Maluleke in the garden that used to be a bowling turf. Image courtesy of Jo Burg East Express
“For me, gardening is part and parcel of my life,” said Mr Amon (the name everyone knows him by). He cited gardening as way in which communities can sustain themselves and ensure that poverty can be kept out.More here
“My story is similar to that of the former president, Mr Nelson Mandela,” said a giggling Mr Amon. He said he had to run away from home in Venda and came to the city in order to avoid being the future Chief at his village.
He came to the city in the late ’80s and worked for companies in Betrams and Killarney. Even then, his green fingers kept reminding him of who he was.
It was in the year 2010 that he decided to start a garden that could create jobs in the community and also sustain the community. The Bambanani Food and Herb co-operative was formed.
“We supply to stores such as the local Spar and some hawkers come and buy from us as well,” explained Mr Amon. The co-operative also helps charities for a number of initiatives.
via City Farmer