Archive for Green Building and Design

Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment (PART 3)

February 15, 2009 at 12:00 pm · Filed under Green Building and Design, Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aquaponics

Aquaponics is a relatively new approach to food production, combining both recirculation hydroponics and aquaculture (fish production). Some of the earliest research into aquaponics began in the 1970s at the University of the Virgin Islands, where James Rakocy, Ph.D., developed a commercially viable aquaponic system using raft hydroponics. The beauty of aquaponics is that it offers a balanced nutrient cycle that does not require the addition of fertilizers. It also solves one of the significant problems associated with aquaculture: what to do with fish waste.

In an aquaponic system, wastes produced by fish become beneficial fertilizer for hydroponically grown plants. According to Nelson and Pade, Inc., the leading North American firm involved with aquaponics (and publisher of Aquaponics Journal), ammonia-rich fish wastes are broken down by bacteria into nitrate—the form of nitrogen that plants use. This nutrient solution is used in a recirculating hydroponic system—most commonly raft hydroponics but occasionally NFT or Dutch bucket hydroponics. Due to the weight of fish tanks, aquaculture is rarely a rooftop enterprise, though it would be possible to locate the fish tanks at ground level with NFT hydroponics on the roof.

“Aquaponics has just incredible potential,” Rebecca Nelson, of Nelson and Pade, told EBN, especially if space is tight. “Even an eighth of an acre [500 m2] could be viable for a commercial operation,” she said, making aquaponics a good option in urban areas as long as there is adequate sunlight for the hydroponics.

Nelson and Pade sells packaged systems for aquaponic farming and provides estimates of annual yield. A small commercial system, occupying a total greenhouse footprint of about 16′ x 20′ (5 x 6 m) and selling for about $4,000, including all tanks and raft hydroponic trays, is estimated to produce over 180 pounds (82 kg) of fish and 1,500 heads of lettuce (without supplemental lighting) per year.

Fish waste from a dozen large tilapia tanks (in the background) fertilizes organic greens at this AquaRanch aquaponic facility in Illinois.

To date, there aren’t many commercial-scale aquaponic systems operating in North America. One of the most established is AquaRanch Industries in Flanagan, Illinois, where Myles Harston has been working with aquaculture since 1985 and aquaponics since 1992. In twelve 1,200-gallon (4,500 l) fish tanks and eight hydroponic trays measuring 4′ x 150′ (1.2 x 46 m) in a 12,500 ft2 (1,200 m2) greenhouse, AquaRanch grows tilapia (a freshwater fish favored by aquaculturalists because it does well in low-oxygen, cloudy water) and a wide variety of vegetables including lettuce, kale, chard, herbs, tomatoes, and hot peppers. All of the company’s vegetable produce is certified organic, and Harston is hoping to become certified for organic fish production as soon as that standard, currently under development, is finalized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Demand is strong for AquaRanch’s tilapia filets and organic produce, which the company sells through its website. “We are having trouble meeting the demand,” Harston told EBN.

Growing food inside buildings

What about growing food inside buildings? It’s an idea that has been gaining some attention. BrightFarm Systems is advancing an idea it refers to as the Vertically Integrated Greenhouse. Linsley explained that this technique was originally developed to be incorporated between the layers of glass in a double-skin façade of a commercial building, a system that is more common in Europe than North America. Plants would be grown in little pockets on a vertical frame and managed hydroponically; the inner glazing would separate the greenhouse area from the occupied space.

BrightFarm Systems suggests that the same idea could be implemented on the inside of the glazing, and the company has built a prototype. Some experts EBN spoke with expressed their doubts about the wisdom of that approach, though. Vern Grubinger, Ph.D., an Extension professor and sustainable farming specialist with the University of Vermont, argues that living or working with a relatively small number of house plants is fine, “but when it comes to growing food crops in the home or office, the mismatch between what makes humans and plants comfortable can be problematic.” For optimal production, Grubinger says that crops generally require higher humidity, stronger light levels, and hotter temperatures than one finds in occupied buildings. In addition, managing the fertility and pest issues with crops often means applications of materials that people should limit their exposure to. “In short,” he says, “good fences make good neighbors, and in this case the fence is a wall.” Linsley acknowledges potential conflicts and suggests that xeric (dry-loving) herbs may be most appropriate inside buildings. (For more on plants in buildings, see EBN Vol. 17, No. 10.)

Chickens and livestock in the city

Believe it or not, chicken farming is gaining steam in lots of cities nationwide. Programs in New York City and Portland, Oregon, encourage homeowners to raise hens for egg production (roosters are usually illegal due to noise concerns). Just Food, the nonprofit organization in New York City that has operated The City Farms community gardening program since 1997, launched its City Chickens program in 2006 and publishes The City Chicken Guide. Raising hens complements community gardening programs because of the fertilizer chickens produce.

Laws relating to keeping chickens vary widely. In some cities, such as Boston and Toronto, chickens are banned outright. Other cities, such as Seattle and Baltimore, limit numbers and prohibit roosters. Often there are setback requirements from neighbors, and Minneapolis requires that applicants get approval from 80% of neighbors within 100 feet (30 m). Chicken laws for several hundred cities can be found at www.thecitychicken.com.

As with chickens, there is growing interest in raising bees in some cities. While Boston prohibits chickens, it is one of a number of cities that encourage beekeeping to aid in pollination (others include Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, and San Francisco). Though New York City currently bans beekeeping—classifying bees as “wild and ferocious animals” (along with lions and alligators)—there is an active effort in the city to overturn that designation. Awareness of the value of bees has increased as a result of Colony Collapse Disorder, which has devastated commercial beehives throughout the country.

Raising livestock and poultry for meat is less common in cities, though some large cities permit livestock. Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee, raises ducks and goats for slaughter, the latter serving many of the city’s ethnic communities. Growing Power also uses goat milk to make artisan cheeses.

Vertical farms

BrightFarm Systems in New York City is promoting the idea of producing food inside buildings, as shown in this rendering.

Some suggest that the ultimate in urban farming will be high-rise farm buildings that might produce everything from algae-based biodiesel to salad greens, eggs, beef, and milk. Magazines such as Time, Popular Science, and Scientific American have been rife with articles on this futuristic model of farming. Some articles have even suggested that our meats will be produced in industrial laboratories through cloning of cell tissue—animals won’t even be required.

Dickson Despommier, Ph.D., a professor of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University, has been a leading proponent of this concept through his Vertical Farm Project (www.verticalfarm.com). As an exercise in evaluating possibilities, this is a fascinating discussion, but as a practical reality, it is difficult to imagine that the infrastructure costs of multi-story, vertical farm structures could be even remotely economical. The model also promotes the kind of factory process that many food experts say we should move away from. We’ll leave this discussion, for the time being, to science fiction.

Final Thoughts

Integrating food production into the built environment—from community gardens on empty lots to rooftop hydroponic greenhouses and aquaponics—offers an opportunity to reduce the energy intensity of our food system. This urban and suburban agriculture seems like a new idea, but the basic idea isn’t new at all. A few short generations ago, prior to the industrialization and regionalization of agriculture, local food production was a way of life in America and elsewhere. And in the 1940s, during World War II, Americans were convinced to plant “Victory Gardens,” and they did so by the millions. In 1943, 20 million Victory Gardens produced 40% of America’s fresh vegetables, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Local food production also affords what could prove to be a critically important level of self-sufficiency in an uncertain world. Just as the issue of passive survivability (see EBN Vol. 17, No. 4) addressed why and how to create buildings that will maintain livable conditions in the event of extended loss of power or heating fuel or shortages of water, producing more of our food locally offers a level of security we don’t have today. Hopefully, this won’t become necessary, but the chance that it might should be a strong incentive to move in this direction.

– Alex Wilson

For more information:

City Farmer 
www.cityfarmer.info

Just Food 
www.justfood.org

Nelson and Pade, Inc. 
www.aquaponics.com

Sky Vegetables, LLC 
www.skyvegetables.com

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Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment (PART 2)

February 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm · Filed under Green Building and Design, Organic Gardening, Sustainable Agriculture, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Permaculture landscaping

Conventional practice in commercial development of all types is to install generic shrubs and shade trees in a sterile landscape of mounded mulch and turf. One can walk out of almost any office building, school, hotel, or restaurant coast-to-coast, and see the same landscape. Why not devote some of that landscaping cost and effort to trees and shrubs that bear fruit? This is one of the ideas of permaculture, a landscaping practice (the word derived from “permanent” and “agriculture”) pioneered by Bill Mollison of Australia.

While there are plenty of examples of homeowners replacing their lawns with edible landscapes (and a number of excellent books on this topic), EBN was—remarkably—unable to find any examples of commercial buildings whose owners implemented an edible landscaping strategy. Why can’t employees at a Florida office complex go outside for a mid-afternoon stroll and pick a ripe orange from a well-managed landscape of dwarf citrus trees? Why can’t schoolchildren and teachers in Yakima, Washington, pick cherries, raspberries, and apples during recess? Wouldn’t this be the “low-hanging fruit” of a transition to more localized food production?

Farming Our Rooftops

For an article in 1998 on low-slope roofing (see EBN Vol. 7, No. 10), we calculated that the nation’s 4.8 million commercial buildings had about 1,400 square miles (360,000 ha) of roof, most of which is nearly flat—this is an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. While lots of these roofs are shaded by neighboring buildings, are structurally inadequate to support rooftop activity, or are otherwise inappropriate for use, there are lots of buildings where rooftop gardens or greenhouses could very effectively be used for food production.

Green roofs and container farming

Most green roofs today are created to manage stormwater flows, to reduce the urban heat island effect, to save energy, or to create attractive green spaces. Green roofs can also provide “farmland.”

Portland, Oregon, has been a leader in advancing green roofs (eco-roofs, as they are called locally), so it’s no surprise that some examples of food-producing green roofs can be found there. One of them is the Burnside Rocket building, a new mixed-use green building in the Lower Burnside neighborhood of the city. On the roof, Marc Boucher-Colbert manages about 1,000 ft2 (100 m2) of garden space. Included in this growing space are two small sections of intensive green roof ( intensive green roofs have deeper soil than the more common, extensive green roofs—which are typically planted with sedums), six 3′ x 9′ (0.9 x 2.7 m) raised beds, and 39 circular plastic planters made from “kiddie” pools, each about four feet (1.2 m) in diameter. For two years, Boucher-Colbert has been growing a variety of produce for the Rocket Restaurant located on the first floor of the building. (Unfortunately, the restaurant closed in late 2008.)

Boucher-Colbert uses a variety of soil amendments for his organically managed gardens, including kelp meal, glacial rock dust, bone meal, blood, worm casings, and commercially available organic fertilizer. His soil depths vary from about 3″ (80 mm) for the round planter beds to 18″ (460 mm) in the raised beds. When necessary, he waters beds with a solution including a fish-emulsion and kelp organic fertilizer. His goal is year-round food production, offering chefs a variety of healthy, fresh, seasonally appropriate produce. Along with a variety of herbs, Boucher-Colbert has produced lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, summer squash, cucumbers, and various specialty vegetables, such as golden-podded peas.

Using green roofs for food production is not without challenges. Along with the structural loading issues (Boucher-Colbert cautions that one should not follow his example without a thorough inspection by a structural engineer), easy access to the roof is critical. In a multifamily residential or commercial building, occupants may not want urban farmers traipsing with wheelbarrows of fertilizer and muddy tools through a public lobby.

Rooftop greenhouses with soil

Eli Zabar’s greenhouse operation in the Upper East Side of Manhattan illustrates the potential for integrating commercial-scale food production onto rooftops. Significantly more food can be produced over a much longer growing season in rooftop greenhouse operations than with open-air green roofs and container gardens. Zabar’s idea for the greenhouses emerged around 1995 from two of his interests. He wanted to stretch the season during which he could sell fresh, local tomatoes, and he wanted to use the waste heat from a bakery he operates. “When I put the two ideas together, the light bulb went off,” Zabar told EBN. He currently manages four greenhouses, the largest 40′ x 100′ (12 x 30 m), with a full-time greenhouse staff of two.

Since he built the first of his rooftop greenhouses, Zabar has always grown in soil. While he has visited lots of successful hydroponic greenhouse operations, he believes that produce grown in soil tastes better. “I’m not interested in hydroponics,” he said. With soil-based growing, he’s also able to make use of compost that he produces on the roof using discards from his market. He has an eight-foot (2.4 m) diameter drum with an auger that is turned regularly to mix the compost. His recipe for compost includes sawdust and bread from his bakery (which supplies about 1,000 restaurants in the city). Zabar would like to compost more of his organic waste but can’t. “We could do a ton more, but there’s a space limitation,” he said.

Ducts from his bakery ovens heat the rooftop greenhouses, providing all of the needed heat for his lettuces and herbs. For tomatoes, he has to supplement that heat to maintain an optimal temperature of 75°F (24°C).

Rooftop hydroponic greenhouses

While Eli Zabar is a strong proponent of soil-based growing, much of the recent interest in rooftop greenhouses has focused on hydroponics, which involves growing plants in nutrient-rich water. This method offers a number of distinct advantages in rooftop applications.

Benjamin Linsley of BrightFarm Systems in New York City (www.brightfarmsystems.com) consults on rooftop greenhouses and claims that hydroponic management is 10–20 times more productive than field agriculture, with far lower water use and higher reliability. After developing the “Science Barge,” a demonstration project with a floating farming component that operated along the Manhattan waterfront in the summers of 2007 and 2008, he shifted his attention to rooftop hydroponic greenhouses. BrightFarm Systems has several hydroponic rooftop greenhouse projects in the queue for construction during the first half of 2009, he told EBN, and another 15 projects that stand a good chance of moving forward before the end of 2010.

There are three basic hydroponic techniques. With raft hydroponics, plants are grown on a floating raft with roots extending into nutrient media. This approach adds considerable weight, depending on the depth of the hydroponic tanks, so it is most commonly used in ground-mounted greenhouses, not rooftop applications.

Nutrient film technique (NFT) hydroponics is used for leafy plants, such as lettuce, spinach, and basil; the nutrient solution is circulated through hollow plastic channels that support the plants, and the plant roots hug the surface of the channel to absorb the water and nutrients. This is a recirculation technique; nutrients are added to the solution in the reservoir. Of relevance to rooftop applications is the lighter weight of NFT compared with other hydroponic approaches or soil. The primary weight is the reservoir, which can be located on a portion of the roof that has adequate structural reinforcement—so the entire roof structure may not need to be strengthened.

Dutch bucket hydroponics involves buckets or bags filled with an inert media—such as perlite, vermiculite, or mineral wool—through which the nutrient solution is circulated; this system is used primarily for tomatoes, peppers, root vegetables, and other plants with more substantial stems. In this type of facility, there is greater weight spread throughout the greenhouse, both from the buckets and the plants themselves, which can be quite heavy when fully grown.

With Dutch Bucket hydroponics, nutrient solution is trickled through buckets or sacks filled with an inert growing medium.

Hydroponic farming necessitates precise management—including careful measurement of nutrient concentrations and adjustment of flow rates. Due to its chemical nature, hydroponics has traditionally been harder to manage organically than soil-based agriculture; hydroponic growers need to know precisely how much of various nutrients are being added to the growing solution, and that’s easier to do with synthetic fertilizers. Michael Christian, president of American Hydroponics in Arcata, California (www.amhydro.com), one of the leading suppliers of hydroponic equipment, told EBN that the hydroponic farming movement has so far been less focused on organic methods. That is beginning to change, though, particularly in Europe.

 http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2009/1/29/Growing-Food-Locally-Integrating-Agriculture-Into-the-Built-Environment/ 

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Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment (PART 1)

February 13, 2009 at 5:01 pm · Filed under Green Building and Design, Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Eli Zabar’s bakery and market on East 91st Street in Manhattan seems like a classic New York market. On my half-dozen visits over as many years, I’ve reveled in the gorgeously displayed vegetables and fruits, the vast array of cheeses, and the wide assortment of breads and pastries baked next door. But Zabar’s market, the Vinegar Factory (named in reference to a prior use of the property), is anything but typical. The sprawling facility connecting multiple buildings demonstrates an unconventional dimension of agriculture: farming that is intertwined with the urban landscape.

In 1995, Eli Zabar, renegade scion of the famous West Side Zabar family, whose markets have been serving New Yorkers for 75 years, began building greenhouses atop his two- and three-story brick buildings on the Upper East Side. These greenhouses, covering nearly a half-acre in area, are producing greens, tomatoes, berries, andeven figs that are sold—not cheaply!—in his market downstairs.

Zabar is ahead of the curve, a pioneer in a trend that is likely to grow dramatically in the coming years. I’ve long been fascinated by the potential for integrating agriculture into the urban landscape—the sea of flat roofs and empty lots in our larger cities. This article looks at the motivation to turn to urban and suburban areas for food production, then examines how to do this, including some of the ways food wastes are being turned into nutrients to grow vegetables, eggs, meat, and fish in our towns and cities.

The Case for Building-Integrated Food

The spike in energy prices in 2008 forced a lot of people to rethink the 1,500-mile journey that, according to author Bill McKibben, an average bite of food travels in the U.S. from where it is grown to where it is eaten. Shipping a head of lettuce from California’s Salinas Valley to New York takes 36 times as many calories as that lettuce contains. According to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, we consume two-thirds as much energy to transport food as we use to grow it.

Beyond energy cost, there are additional vulnerabilities in our conventional food-production system. Prolonged drought in California, the start of a new La Niña climate pattern that may exacerbate drought, and inadequate long-term flows in the Colorado River all point to a future with possible water shortages in California’s primary vegetable-producing regions. These vulnerabilities are reviving interest in growing food locally.

The closer to home that vegetables are grown, the healthier they are likely to be. Vitamins in fresh produce break down over time, and some vitamins may never fully form in fruits like tomatoes that are often picked green and artificially ripened in transit. The same goes with taste; vine-ripened tomatoes are far tastier than their machine-harvested brethren from hundreds or thousands of miles away. There may also be health benefits to smaller-scale production. In huge agribusiness operations, Salmonella outbreaks and other contamination problems become national problems affecting thousands of people. According to McKibben, four companies slaughter 81% of the nation’s beef, and a single Ohio farm produces three billion eggs per year. At a smaller scale, any problems that do come up are much more contained, with smaller impacts on the food supply.

Finally, growing food closer to home can help to build awareness of—and appreciation for—food production. Many children growing up today have no relationship with farming; they have never seen a head of lettuce being grown, picked a tomato from the vine, or watched chickens scratching in the soil. Such awareness will help to build respect for the Earth and environment on which we all depend.

Farming and Gardening Vacant Land in Our Cities

City Farm grows lettuce and other produce on top of two feet of rich compost on vacant property in Chicago. An impermeable layer of clay isolates the food from potentially contaminated soil beneath.

Most American cities have a lot of vacant land. A 2000 study by the Brookings Institution, Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource, reported that 70 major American cities averaged 15% vacant land area. Geographically, cities in the South had the most vacant land (19.3% average) and the Northeast the least (9.6%). A movement has been growing slowly for several decades to use that land productively.

This land can be used both for nonprofit and for-profit agricultural operations and community gardens. Provided here are a few examples out of the hundreds that can be found around North America.

Commercial farming operations

Back in 1968 in Chicago, Ken Dunn recognized the potential that vacant land offered for localizing food production and achieving social goals, and he launched City Farm. The farm is one project of the Resource Center, a nonprofit organization Dunn founded that runs a host of programs devoted to building community and strengthening local economies (www.resourcecenterchicago.org). Dunn grew up on an Amish-Mennonite farm in Kansas and has worked to bring to Chicago the Amish philosophy of nourishing and protecting soil, plants, animals, and community. City Farm began “mostly as a social justice project,” Dunn told EBN. Over four decades the organization has farmed a varying area of unused land—currently about two acres (0.8 ha)—using a unique model of farming that protects food from being contaminated by the soils below.

“Almost everything in urban areas is contaminated to some level,” Dunn said. He convinces owners of sizeable urban sites (typically one acre or larger) to “loan” the land to City Farm for several years. A site is graded and compacted, then an impermeable four-inch (100 mm) layer of local clay (typically sourced from construction sites as a waste product) is laid down on top of the existing soil. City Farm then puts down safe, uncontaminated compost on top of the clay, creating growing beds that are 24 inches (600 mm) deep. The farm is established in this compost, 1,000 tons of it per acre (2,200 tonnes/ha).

Because of the thick bed of rich compost and the impermeable layer beneath, City Farm almost never has to irrigate.

City Farm has ensured that the compost is safe—free of herbicides often used on lawns, for example—by controlling exactly what gets composted. City Farm collects food waste, including meat and dairy, from 18 restaurants in the city. Until recently, the organization composted this organic matter itself, using a massive 15-yard (12 m3) hopper and grinder. This composting operation was spread over an acre of land City Farm owned with rows of compost 15 feet (5 m) deep. In 2008, due to red tape from the City of Chicago, City Farm had to close down its own composting operation, and it now trucks the food waste it collects 80 miles (130 km) to a commercial composting facility in Indiana. The organization hopes soon to be able to produce its own compost again—and regain full control over the quality.

To support its operation—and pay a living wage to its three full-time employees—City Farm sells heirloom tomatoes, salad greens, and other produce to 20 restaurants for top dollar ($3.50/pound for tomatoes and $20/pound for greens). At the same time, farm stands sell produce at more affordable prices to local residents.

While City Farm is currently farming only two acres (0.8 ha), significant expansion is likely in the next year with several contract gardens for specific restaurants and a hospital. The hospital, which had to delay construction of a new building due to tight credit markets, is negotiating with City Farm to custom-farm the one-acre (0.4 ha) site and provide all of the produce to the hospital (which will be able to serve more nutritious food to its patients). Even with this likely expansion, though, Dunn is frustrated that their penetration remains so low in a city with 20,000 acres (8,000 ha) of vacant land. “We could farm 100 more acres every year if people took us seriously,” he said.

SPIN Farming

Dan Bravin and Martin Barrett own City Garden Farms in Portland, Oregon. It is one of dozens of businesses throughout North America that are implementing the “SPIN Farming” model of farming enterprise (SPIN for Small Plot INtensive). In 2008, they farmed a dozen small plots, ranging in size from 500 ft2 (46 m2) to 3,000 ft2 (280 m2) around the city, with total planted area of about a quarter-acre (0.10 ha). The land is in backyards of Portland residents who offer it freely.

City Garden Farms sells its produce through a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program. (In a CSA, members pay a seasonal fee in exchange for a weekly delivery of produce.) The farm recouped its startup costs in 2008—about $11,000 spent primarily on a rototiller, seeder, co-linear hoe, and wheel hoe. “It’s not a year-round, full-time employment income,” Bravin told EBN, but with some growth in the farm area and in CSA members from the current 50, the farm should soon provide a living.

The SPIN Farming business model was developed by Wally Satzewich and Gail Vandersteen from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In the 1980s, they were farming 20 acres (8 ha) of irrigated farmland 40 miles (60 km) north of Saskatoon, but they lived in the city and kept a couple of small plots there for salad crops. They found that they could grow three crops a year on the intensively managed plots in the city and deliver fresher food to their markets. After six years, they sold their larger property and moved their farming totally into the city.

In the years since, they’ve perfected an intensive, standardized, small-plot farming technique based on standard rows governed by the width of their rototiller. Most such operations are managed organically with extensive use of compost. The approach can be used in both urban and suburban areas, the primary limitation being the availability of sites with full access to sunlight.

Satzewich continues to operate a sub-acre farm that is spread over 25 residential backyard plots in Saskatoon, but he and Vendersteen also produce educational guidebooks about SPIN Farming. They have teamed up with Roxanne Christensen, the co-founder and president of the Institute for Innovations in Local Farming in Philadelphia, to promote SPIN Farming in the U.S. Christensen told EBN that 2,200 people have purchased the SPIN Farming guides and, based on the members of an active SPIN farmers email support group, she estimates that there are about 300 SPIN farmers, mostly in the U.S. and Canada, though also in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and the Netherlands.

Dan Bravin, here using a seeder, farms a dozen backyard lots in Portland, Oregon, using an approach referred to as SPIN Farming.

At City Garden Farms, Bravin has standardized beds that are 2′ x 25′ (0.6 x 7.6 m), and he estimates that each can earn about $100—or $300 per year if three crops are grown on it. His approach is to harvest an entire bed, then prep and reseed that bed. He describes the SPIN Farming approach as very similar to what has been done in Havana, Cuba, since the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the island nation losing access to cheap fossil fuels.

Community gardens

Along with various models of commercial-scale farming in urban areas, community gardens have also been growing in popularity. There are thousands of grassroots community garden initiatives throughout North America. Some involve just a few individuals sharing growing space on land owned by a city. Others are more extensive, with multiple garden plots on land owned by a nonprofit community gardening organization; some are on private land.

Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, Massachusetts, is a network of community gardens and farm enterprises in this economically depressed western Massachusetts city of 44,000, 40% of whom are Puerto Rican and with unemployment rates as high as 31% in parts of the city. Nuestras Raices (Spanish for “our roots”) was founded in 1992 as an outgrowth of the La Finquita community gardens in the city (www.nuestras-raices.org). La Finquita today includes 31 family garden plots, including one for the Broderick House, a homeless shelter, while the umbrella organization, Nuestras Raices, has blossomed into a diversified economic- and community-development organization that includes eight different community garden networks, two youth gardens, a women’s leadership group, an environmental justice initiative focused on toxic pollution in the city, a green jobs program, and the four-acre (1.6 ha) Tierra de Oportunidades Farm along the Connecticut River, which was purchased with support from the Trust for Public Land.

Since 1980 the Southside Community Land Trust in Providence, Rhode Island, has worked with low-income inner-city residents to convert vacant land into 11 community gardens that are being farmed today by 220 families.

In Detroit, another area suffering from extremely high unemployment rates, the nonprofit group Urban Farming has emerged as an important resource in the struggle to address poverty and hunger. The organization, launched in 2005, manages or oversees more than 50 community gardens in Detroit, and it has expanded nationwide with hundreds of gardens in New York, Newark, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and other cities—more than 400 sites total (www.urbanfarming.org). Urban Farming partners locally with corporations as well as youth groups, senior centers, churches, schools, and other community-based organizations with the mission to “eradicate hunger while increasing diversity, motivating youth and seniors, and optimizing the production of unused land for food and alternative energy.” Harvested food is mostly distributed through local food banks, though neighbors are welcome to pick food for free, according to founder Taja Seville.

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2009/1/29/Growing-Food-Locally-Integrating-Agriculture-Into-the-Built-Environment/

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U.S. Green Building Council Helps Builders and Companies Go Green

January 24, 2009 at 5:00 pm · Filed under going green, Green Building and Design ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

More companies are beginning to see the benefits of having energy-efficient buildings and physical plants. Cleaner, more efficient office buildings and work spaces not only help the environment but can save a company money, improving that company’s — as well as all of society’s — bottom line.

One organization helps companies to realize the benefits of greener building.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) is a nonprofit coalition for “advancing buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable, and healthy places to live and work,” according to the organization’s website. The USGBC operates the “Green Building Rating System” for new buildings and the “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System” to grade the sustainable operation of existing buildings.

More than 5,500 companies and organizations are members of the council, which had certified more than 200 million sq. ft. of commercial space as LEED certified.

Companies that are certified by USGBC are then able to tout their environmental stewardship, and also will save money in the long run for having built cleaner operating, more energy-efficient buildings.

For example, recently USGBC certified the new technology and operations campus of KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY), outside of Cleveland, with a green certification. The company will realize an energy savings over the years, and the environment will benefit immediately: According to KeyCorp, the new buildings emit 2.7 million pounds less greenhouse gases, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury. This is equal to removing 130 cars from the road or planting 378 acres of trees. The new campus was built on a former “brownfield” site.

KeyCorp is a bank with more than 900 branches in 12 mostly midwestern states, and has nearly 20,000 employees. The company says it plans to use green practices in its branches as well. KeyCorp’s sales were more than $5.5 billion in 2004.

Governments are getting in on the act too — recently the mayor of Scottsdale, Arizona, announced that all public buildings in that city were to be certified “LEED Gold,” the USGBC’s second-most stringent certification for existing buildings. Certification levels are Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/1500

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Green Cleaning Required in LEED for Existing Buildings

January 24, 2009 at 3:26 pm · Filed under going green, Green Building and Design ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) first released LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (LEED-EB) in November 2007. The reference guide for the system is due out in June 2008, and, as of July 1, all projects seeking certification must register under the new version.

Among the many changes are the addition of a green cleaning prerequisite and two points in a green cleaning credit requiring verification of custodial effectiveness. According to David Holly of the Ashkin Group, a green cleaning consulting firm, the prerequisite is a sign that the importance of cleaning is gaining recognition.

The new points, which are awarded for achieving a certain level of cleanliness, also represent a shift away from thinking about green cleaning as a set of products towards thinking about it as a set of best practices that include making a cleaning plan, using less-toxic chemicals, and using energy-efficient equipment.

To achieve the performance-based points, a building must meet standards set by APPA, which provides guidelines for educational facilities. The Ashkin Group is working with APPA and USGBC to adapt the guidelines to other types of facilities; the resulting guidance will appear in the LEED-EB reference guide.

http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/37513

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Real Estate Investors benefit from Green Building Momentum

January 12, 2009 at 3:00 pm · Filed under going green, Green Building and Design


by JEFF SIEGEL

Every year around this time, I get the itch to move far away from the cold, gray streets of Baltimore. It’s not that I dislike Charm City, but when the mercury falls below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the lure of warmer climates becomes overwhelming. So to ease the pain of last week’s cold snap, I decided to browse the real estate listings in California. What I found blew me away.

I ran a search for a few select zip codes in and around the Los Angeles area. About 90 percent of the listings were foreclosures! Here in Baltimore, where folks still believe their $80,000 rowhomes built in the 1920s are worth $250,000, it’s easy to forget what’s going on in the real world. Though look back at the charts of what were at one time some very profitable REITs, and it’ll quickly come rushing back to you.

The fact is, 2008 was an absolute blood bath for real estate investors. Though the green building sector did manage to gain ground last year.

According to McGraw Hill Construction, green building has actually grown in spite of the market meltdown. In its 2009 Green Building Outlook, the company noted that the value of green construction increased from $10 billion in 2005 to almost $50 billion in 2008. The study also suggested that by 2013, green construction could be valued at nearly $150 billion.
Of course, even with that bit of positive news, there are still those who argue that green buildings carry a heftier price tag. And in most cases, they’re right.

In 2003, California’s Sustainable Building Task Force reported on the costs associated with its green buildings. That report found the cost premium averaged less than 1 percent for basic LEED certification, 2.1 percent for Silver certification, 1.8 percent for Gold, and 6.5 percent for Platinum. And in a separate 2008 report, which included contributors from Boston College, The Brookings Institution, and PNC Financial Services group, researchers found that green buildings cost less than 4 percent more than conventional buildings, with the highest premium concentrations being no more than 1 percent.

Still, when you realize the cost advantages over the life of the building, it’s really a no-brainer. The green California EPA Headquarters Building is a perfect example.

With systems calibration, monitoring, and maintenance for energy performance, the building delivers annual savings of nearly $200,000. After-hours heating and lighting controls as well as the building’s exterior lighting systems add another $110,000 of yearly savings.

Just these few efficiency upgrades resulted in savings of more than a quarter of a million dollars per year for that building. And those don’t even include the annual savings from grounds management, water-efficient landscaping, elimination of garbage can liners, collection of recyclables, occupant recycling, reduced landfill disposal costs, and entryway cleaning to prevent particle and dirt buildup. Overall, $500,000 was invested in efficiency upgrades, operations, and employee practices, which generated a total of $610,000 in annual savings. That initial investment was recovered in less than a year. And according to the building’s USGBC project profile, using an 8 percent capitalization rate, the annual cost savings have increased the asset value of the building by nearly $12 million.

While there isn’t enough room in these pages to quote every green building study ever conducted, there is certainly little doubt that the economic benefits of green building are very real. And as we move forward, digging ourselves out of one of the worst economic meltdowns in recorded history, investors would be wise to follow this trend – as it really does represent what will one day be the status quo of building and construction.

This is not some random, green niche. This is the future.

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/real-estate-investors-benefit-from-green.php

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No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’

January 12, 2009 at 3:07 am · Filed under going green, Green Building and Design

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

“You don’t think about temperature — the house just adjusts,” said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents’ home of roughly the same size, he said.

Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.

Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed, because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency.

“The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand,” said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. “This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It’s about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating.”

There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses around the world, the vast majority built in the past few years in German-speaking countries or Scandinavia.

The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a local physicist, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.

The industry is thriving in Germany, however — for example, schools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.

Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks.

“Awareness is skyrocketing; it’s hard for us to keep up with requests,” Mr. Hasper said.

Nabih Tahan, a California architect who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United States for his family in Berkeley. He heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers working to encourage wider acceptance of the standards. “This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people,” Mr. Tahan said. “Why not reuse this heat you get for free?”

Ironically, however, when California inspectors were examining the Berkeley home to determine whether it met “green” building codes (it did), he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device that is still uncommon in the United States. “When you think about passive-house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way,” he said.

Buildings that are certified hermetically sealed may sound suffocating. (To meet the standard, a building must pass a “blow test” showing that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, passive houses have plenty of windows — though far more face south than north — and all can be opened.

Inside, a passive home does have a slightly different gestalt from conventional houses, just as an electric car drives differently from its gas-using cousin. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of air and temperature. The air from outside all goes through HEPA filters before entering the rooms. The cement floor of the basement isn’t cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.

Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are swung open, you see their layers of glass and gas, as well as the elaborate seals around the edges. A small, grated duct near the ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there is no furnace, but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler, containing the heat exchanger.

Passive houses need no human tinkering, but most architects put in a switch with three settings, which can be turned down for vacations, or up to circulate air for a party (though you can also just open the windows). “We’ve found it’s very important to people that they feel they can influence the system,” Mr. Hasper said.

The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others. “I grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I knew I wanted to make something different,” said Georg W. Zielke, who built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now designs no other kinds of buildings.

In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.

Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding windows are hard to seal.

Dr. Feist’s original passive house — a boxy white building with four apartments — looks like the science project that it was intended to be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. The Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues to conduct research, teaches architects, and tests homes to make sure they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain and the United States.

Still, there are challenges to broader adoption even in Europe.

Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep cool air in and warm air out.

And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to insulate and heat.

Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another design.

“Anyone who feels they need that much space to live,” he said, “well, that’s a different discussion.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/world/europe/27house.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&ref=world

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LEED Certification and Green Design

December 19, 2008 at 10:43 pm · Filed under going green, Green Building and Design

LEED Certification and Green Design
by Erin Brennan

LEED Certification is a Green Building Rating System developed by the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design.

LEED buildings are third-party independently certified and are “the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings,” (1). LEED offers certification for new building designed to meet green standards. LEED also certifies older buildings which have been redesigned or remodeled to meet certain criteria making them more energy efficient. LEED offers certification standards for commercial interiors, schools, healthcare facilities, and retail outlets, as well as homes, apartment buildings, and condominiums. Through the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED offers neighborhood development, design, and planning focused on sustainability and smart growth (1).

LEED certification indicates a property’s sustainability by awarding points for almost any different element of ‘green design’. Sustainable features such as energy-efficient lighting and low-flow plumbing fixtures, rainwater collection and reuse systems, and even bicycle racks are all given points. The points are then totaled to award different levels of LEED certification ranging from Silver and Gold to Platinum, the highest (2).

LEED programs are used by “architects, real estate professionals, facility managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers, lenders and government officials,” (1). Municipal and State Governments are beginning to use LEED to plan and construct public buildings from libraries to police stations. Government agencies at the federal level are using LEED as well. LEED projects are in progress in 41 countries around the world (1).

LEED certification provides third-party verification that a building or project meets both green building and performance criteria. The benefits to LEED certification are both environmental and financial in nature(1).

According to the U.S. Green Building Council,
LEED-certified buildings:
•Lower operating costs and increased asset value.
•Reduce waste sent to landfills.
•Conserve energy and water.
•Healthier and safer for occupants.
•Reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
•Qualify for tax rebates, zoning allowances and other incentives in hundreds of cities.
•Demonstrate an owner’s commitment to environmental stewardship and social responsibility.

According to a study done by the CoStar Group, a Commercial Real Estate Information Group, LEED certified buildings outperform similar non-green buildings in not only energy efficiency, but sale price, rental rates, and even occupancy. Sometimes the margins are pretty large. According to the CoStar study, LEED building have rent premiums on average $11.33 higher per square food than non-green buildings and have over 4% higher occupancy rates. Additionally, buildings certified by EnergyStar (another energy efficiency rating system) sell for an average of $61 more per square foot than non-green buildings. However, LEED certified buildings astonishingly sell for an average of $171 more per square foot than non-green buildings (2). According to Andrew Florance, president and CEO of CoStar, “Green buildings are clearly achieving higher rents and higher occupancy, they have lower operating costs, and they’re achieving higher sale prices,” (2).

LEED has emerged as the building industry’s top sustainability rating system above the possibly better know EnergyStar, and has become virtually synonymous with the term ‘green building’. For this reason, “There’s a bit of urgency now that the value of buildings could be affected if they are not LEED-certified,” says Mark Bennett, a senior attorney with the Miller Canfield law firm which specializes in green building and climate change issues (2). According to the National Green Building Finance and Investment Forum, a conference involving financial sector and property investment leaders, “If you’re building today without LEED, you’re building in obsolescence,” (2).

1. U.S. Green Building Council, http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19
2. CoStar Group, http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=D968F1E0DCF73712B03A099E0E99C679

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