Factory farms are breeding grounds for virulent disease, which can then spread to the wider community via many routes — not just in food, but also in water, the air, and the bodies of farmers, farm workers and their families. Once those microbes become widespread in the environment, it’s very difficult to get rid of them.

A 2008 report from the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, a joint project of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, underscores those risks. The 111-page report, two years in the making, outlines the public health, environmental, animal welfare and rural livelihood consequences of what they call “industrial farm animal production.” Its conclusions couldn’t be clearer. Factory farm production is intensifying worldwide, and rates of new infectious diseases are rising. Of particular concern is the rapid rise of antibiotic-resistant microbes, an inevitable consequence of the widespread use of antibiotics as feed additives in industrial livestock operations.

Scientists, medical personnel and public health officials have been sounding the alarm on these issues for some time.The World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) have recommended restrictions on agricultural uses of antibiotics; the American Public Health Association(APHA) proposed a moratorium on CAFOs back in 2003. All told, more than 350 professional organizations — including the APHA, American Medical Association, theInfectious Diseases Society of America, and the American Academy of Pediatrics— have called for greater regulation of antibiotic use in livestock. The Infectious Diseases Society of America has declared antibiotic-resistant infections an epidemic in the United States. The FAO recently warned that global industrial meat production poses a serious threat to human health.

The situation is akin to that surrounding global climate change four or five years ago: near-universal scientific consensus matched by government inaction and media inattention. Although the specter of pandemic flu — in which a virulent strain of the influenza virus recombines with a highly contagious strain to create a bug rivaling that responsible for the 1918 flu pandemic, thought to have killed as many as 50 million people — is the most dire scenario, antibiotic resistance is a clear and present danger, already killing thousands of people in the United States each year.

People, Animals and Microbes

From one perspective, picking up bugs from our domesticated animals is nothing new. Approximately two-thirds of the 1,400 known human pathogens are thought to have originated in animals: Scientists think tuberculosis and the common cold probably came to us from cattle; pertussis from pigs or sheep; leprosy from water buffalo; influenza from ducks.

Most of these ailments probably appeared relatively early in the 10,000-year-old history of animal domestication. Over time, some human populations developed immunity to these diseases; others were eventually controlled with vaccines.

Some continued to kill humans until the mid-20th century discovery of penicillin, a miracle drug that rendered formerly life-threatening infections relatively harmless. Other antibiotics followed, until by the 1960s leading researchers and public health officials were declaring that the war on infectious diseases had been won.

Beginning in the mid 1970s, however, the numbers of deaths from infectious diseases in the United States started to go back up. Some were from old nemeses, such as tuberculosis, newly resistant to standard antibiotic treatments; others were wholly novel.

“In recent decades,” writes Dr. Michael Greger, director of public health and animal agriculture for the Humane Society of the United Statesand author of Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, “previously unknown diseases have surfaced at a pace unheard of in the recorded annals of medicine: more than 30 newly identified human pathogens in 30 years, most of them newly discovered zoonotic viruses.” (Zoonotic viruses are those that can be passed from animals to humans.)

Why is this happening? There are many reasons, including the increased pace of international travel and human incursions into wild animals’ habitats. But one factor stands out: the rise of industrial farm animal production. “Factory farms represent the most significant change in the lives of animals in 10,000 years,” Greger writes. “This is not how animals were supposed to live.”

Chicken and pig production are particularly bad. In 1965, the total U.S. hog population numbered 53 million, spread over more than 1 million pig farms in the United States — most of them small family operations. Today, we have 65 million hogs on just 65,640 farms nationwide. Many of these “farms” — 2,538, to be exact — have upwards of 5,000 hogs on the premises at any given time. Broiler chicken production rose from 366 million in 1945 to 8,400 million in 2001, most of them in facilities housing tens of thousands of birds.

On a global scale, the situation is even worse. Fifty-five billion chickens are now reared each year worldwide. The global pig inventory is approaching 1 billion, an estimated half of which are raised in confinement. In China and Malaysia, it’s not unheard of for hog facilities to house 20,000 or even 50,000 animals.

http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/39340

Biotechnology companies are keeping university scientists from fully researching the effectiveness and environmental impact of the industry’s genetically modified crops, according to an unusual complaint issued by a group of those scientists.

“No truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions,” the scientists wrote in a statement submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. is seeking public comments for scientific meetings it will hold next week on biotech crops.

The statement will probably give support to critics of biotech crops, like environmental groups, who have long complained that the crops have not been studied thoroughly enough and could have unintended health and environmental consequences. The researchers, 26 corn-insect specialists, withheld their names because they feared being cut off from research by the companies. But several of them agreed in interviews to have their names used.

The problem, the scientists say, is that farmers and other buyers of genetically engineered seeds have to sign an agreement meant to ensure that growers honor company patent rights and environmental regulations. But the agreements also prohibit growing the crops for research purposes.

So while university scientists can freely buy pesticides or conventional seeds for their research, they cannot do that with genetically engineered seeds. Instead, they must seek permission from the seed companies. And sometimes that permission is denied or the company insists on reviewing any findings before they can be published, they say.

Such agreements have long been a problem, the scientists said, but they are going public now because frustration has been building.

“If a company can control the research that appears in the public domain, they can reduce the potential negatives that can come out of any research,” said Ken Ostlie, an entomologist at the University of Minnesota, who was one of the scientists who had signed the statement.

What is striking is that the scientists issuing the protest, who are mainly from land-grant universities with big agricultural programs, say they are not opposed to the technology. Rather, they say, the industry’s chokehold on research means that they cannot supply some information to farmers about how best to grow the crops. And, they say, the data being provided to government regulators is being “unduly limited.”

The companies “have the potential to launder the data, the information that is submitted to E.P.A.,” said Elson J. Shields, a professor of entomology at Cornell.

William S. Niebur, the vice president in charge of crop research for DuPont, which owns the big seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred, defended his company’s policies. He said that because genetically engineered crops were regulated by the government, companies must carefully police how they are grown.

“We have to protect our relationship with governmental agencies by having very strict control measures on that technology,” he said.

But he added that he would welcome a chance to talk to the scientists about their concerns.

Monsanto and Syngenta, two other biotech seed companies, said Thursday that they supported university research. But as did Pioneer, they said their contracts with seed buyers were meant to protect their intellectual property and meet their regulatory obligations.

But an E.P.A. spokesman, Dale Kemery, said Thursday that the government required only management of the crops’ insect resistance and that any other contractual restrictions were put in place by the companies.

The growers’ agreement from Syngenta not only prohibits research in general but specifically says a seed buyer cannot compare Syngenta’s product with any rival crop.

Dr. Ostlie, at the University of Minnesota, said he had permission from three companies in 2007 to compare how well their insect-resistant corn varieties fared against the rootworms found in his state. But in 2008, Syngenta, one of the three companies, withdrew its permission and the study had to stop.

“The company just decided it was not in its best interest to let it continue,” Dr. Ostlie said.

Mark A. Boetel, associate professor of entomology at North Dakota State University, said that before genetically engineered sugar beet seeds were sold to farmers for the first time last year, he wanted to test how the crop would react to an insecticide treatment. But the university could not come to an agreement with the companies responsible, Monsanto and Syngenta, over publishing and intellectual property rights.

Chris DiFonzo, an entomologist at Michigan State University, said that when she conducted surveys of insects, she avoided fields with transgenic crops because her presence would put the farmer in violation of the grower’s agreement.

An E.P.A. scientific advisory panel plans to hold two meetings next week. One will consider a request from Pioneer Hi-Bred for a new method that would reduce how much of a farmer’s field must be set aside as a refuge aimed at preventing insects from becoming resistant to its insect-resistant corn.

The other meeting will look more broadly at insect-resistant biotech crops.

Christian Krupke, an assistant professor at Purdue, said that because outside scientists could not study Pioneer’s strategy, “I don’t think the potential drawbacks have been critically evaluated by as many people as they should have been.”

Dr. Krupke is chairman of the committee that drafted the statement, but he would not say whether he had signed it.

Dr. Niebur of Pioneer said the company had collaborated in preparing its data with universities in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, the states most affected by the particular pest.

Dr. Shields of Cornell said financing for agricultural research had gradually shifted from the public sector to the private sector. That makes many scientists at universities dependent on financing or technical cooperation from the big seed companies.

“People are afraid of being blacklisted,” he said. “If your sole job is to work on corn insects and you need the latest corn varieties and the companies decide not to give it to you, you can’t do your job.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/business/20crop.html?_r=2&ref=science

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

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

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/ 

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/

Enerkem, a Montreal maker of biofuels and green chemicals, says it’s nearly ready to start cranking out second-generation biofuels on a commercial scale. The company’s approach is to turn waste materials (it’s starting with old utility poles) into a synthetic gas “syngas,” which it will then use as a chemical feedstock for making both ethanol and methanol, using a gas-to-liquid conversion. But—and here’s where it gets very promising—the company claims it will eventually be able to use municipal waste (all the stuff that’s left over after recycling and composting) into syngas. Enerkem has plans to ramp up from its initial annual production of 1.3 million gallons in order to take a bite out of demand. Canada is targeting a standard of at least 5 percent ethanol content in the gasoline and diesel sold to drivers in the country by 2010, and the Energy and Independence Security Act of 2007 mandated that 36 billion gallons of ethanol be produced by 2022. But 22 billion of those must come from non-corn sources. And as gas gurus gathered in San Francisco last week for the 2009 National Biodiesel Conference, the city by the bay announced its intention to erect a plant that will convert brown grease from restaurants into, among other things, biodiesel.

Unlike the relatively clean yellow grease that’s already widely used for biofuel, brown grease, which often goes by the acronym FOG (fats, oils, grease), is the heavy slurry that collects in sewer traps. Or, as often happens, it overflows the traps and clogs sewers. It represents a major sewage problem for municipalities—in fact San Francisco spends approximately $3.5 million each year clearing FOG out of the pipes. So turning this nasty business into fuel is, on paper, a great idea.

That said, it will be interesting to see how efficiently San Francisco will be able to turn it into black gold. One issue is that FOG is 97% water and the rest is really nasty sludge that needs to be intensely refined. That takes a huge amount of energy. At a pilot program at the San Francisco Public Utility Commission, researchers have been collecting FOG from area eateries and converting it to fuel, but it has been using latent heat and recyclable water at the plant in the production

In Philadelphia, biofuel startup BlackGold Biofuels says it has devised a proprietary process for extracting water and impurities from FOG and converting it into biofuel, but the volumes of FOG the company is collecting are too low to generate much fuel (see: this link). Meanwhile, another company called Grease Reduction Systems is offering restaurants a means of breaking down that drain-grease before it even turns into FOG. It uses microbes to eat away at the grease and the byproduct ain’t nothing but water (see: this link)..

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/new-fuels-for-fuel-making-it-from-waste.php

Which begs the question: Is it better to eliminate a waste product if it can be done in a benign way, or should we collect waste and try to extract further value from it, even if that extraction process requires lots of energy? What do you think?

by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) Dr. Jameth Sheridan is probably the best superfood product formulator alive today. That’s no small achievement, either: His products go beyond the world of basic nutrition and embrace the realm of food energetics. There’s a quality about his products that resonates with high-vibration people, and every person I’ve ever watched test his products energetically (through muscle testing, etc.) has been astonished at the positive results. Jameth is best known for his Vitamineral Green product (www.HealthForce.com), but today I wanted to introduce you to a product he has formulated specifically for the Elements for Life company, a superfoods network marketing company that provides raw foods, goji berries, superfoods and other similar products. For the record, I have no financial ties to this company. It is one of just four network marketing companies I currently advocate. I have financial ties to two of them, and no ties to the other two. This is one of the two companies I have no financial ties with, but advocate anyway. The product is called ReVitaPhi, and it’s a super nutrient-dense collection of land vegetables, aquatic vegetables, enzymes, food-based minerals and ancient herbs like Tulsi, Ho Shu Wu, Ashwaganda and even Moringa (which a lot of people are learning about all of a sudden!). First, though, a word of warning: This product is not a toy. It’s not a delicious green drink that kids are likely to enjoy (like Delicious Greens). Instead, this is perhaps the most nutrient-dense superfood I’ve ever experienced, and the taste is complex and somewhat medicinal. It works very well blended into chocolate superfood smoothies, by the way, and hard-core raw foodies just drink it straight, mixed with water. (Wow!) So what’s in it, exactly? You can read about it in more detail and see the ingredients listed in an image on this page: http://www.noblelifeelements.com/pr… An Alkalizing Beauty Blend It’s called an “Alkalizing Beauty Blend,” and there’s no doubt that the combination of ingredients are highly alkalizing. I especially like the seaweeds (Kelp, Dulse, Laver, Bladderwrack), since they contain trace minerals from the ocean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laver_…)). The very high density of superfood ingredients in this formula means you only have to use one spoonful in your smoothie to experience significant benefits (unlike some other superfood products that need multiple scoops to provide similar nutrition). There’s also this to consider: Most superfood products don’t even include the kind of medicinal herbs and superfoods found in this formula. For example, you won’t find Tulsi in many products, nor Ho Shu Wu (Fo-Ti), an herb used extensively in the world of Traditional Chinese Medicine. The result is that this single product delivers a combination of high-vibration plant-based nutrients you just won’t find anywhere else. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind formulation from one of the best in the industry: Dr. Jameth Sheridan.

For more information or to purchase ReVitaPhi, visit: Elements For Life

http://www.naturalnews.com/025538.html

Even before an expected “Obama bounce” from a new President who has vowed to boost clean energy, U.S. wind power capacity surged 50 percent last year to 25 gigwatts (GW) — enough to power more than five million homes.

Political and business leaders worldwide have urged “green growth” spending on clean energy to fight both recession and climate change. German wind power capacity reached nearly 24 GW, placing it second ahead of Spain and fourth-placed China, which doubled its installed wind power for the forth year running, said the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council.

“Governments must send a strong and unequivocal signal that the age of fossil fuels is over,” said Steve Sawyer, secretary general of GWEC.

Global wind power production reached 121 GW at the end of 2008, growing by about 29 percent. New U.S. wind projects accounted for about 42 percent of the country’s total new power-producing capacity added last year, GWEC said, underlining its challenge to more traditional forms of power generation, including coal and natural gas.

The wind sector is now suffering from a financial crisis which has dried up project finance and a sharp fall in oil prices which has weakened its competitiveness compared to gas, but it is aided by subsidies such as a guaranteed price premium in Germany and Spain.

Spanish wind power business group AEE said on Monday that it expected similar growth in 2009 as last year.

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee last week approved some $31 billion in tax breaks and other incentives to boost alternative energy supplies and efficiency as part of the Obama administration’s much bigger U.S. economic stimulus plan.

Obama wants to double U.S. alternative energy output over three years.

The United States is also expected to overtake Germany this year as the world’s biggest producer of solar power, aided by its far sunnir climate, Jefferies analyst Michael McNamara told Reuters on Monday.

European Union leaders agreed at the end of last year that the bloc should get a fifth of all its energy from renewable sources by 2020 compared with about 10 percent now.

http://www.enn.com/energy/article/39229

Now a new type of fuel cell based on carbon nanotubes promises to be much cheaper, as well as more compact and more efficient.

A team led by Liming Dai of the University of Dayton, Ohio, has discovered that a bundle of nanotubes doped with nitrogen can act as the catalyst, helping oxygen to react inside the fuel cell.

That is a vital stage of the fuel cell cycle. Rather than burning fuel to create heat to power a turbine, fuel cells turn chemical energy directly into a flow of electricity.

Hydrogen gas, for example, is pumped past one electrode (the anode), where it is split into its constituent electrons and protons. The electrons then flow out of the anode, providing electrical power, while the protons diffuse through the cell. Electrons and protons both end up at a second electrode (the cathode), where they combine with oxygen to form water.

Pure power?

Unaided, that reaction would happen only very slowly, so the cathode has to be formed of a chemical catalyst to speed up the reaction. Traditionally, the only substance that has worked well enough is platinum.

Carbon nanotubes had previously been shown to catalyse the fuel-cell reaction, but they were much less effective than platinum nanoparticles.

It had been thought that their slight catalytic properties were caused by traces of iron left over from the manufacturing process, but Dai’s group have discovered that the iron actually hinders catalysis.

They grew nanotubes doped with a trace of nitrogen using a process called chemical vapour deposition, in which nanotubes grow up from a base of iron nanoparticles. Then they removed the iron.

The original aim was to use these purified nanotubes in biosensors, but Dai also tried them out as catalysts – and found to his surprise that they worked very well.

“They are even better than platinum, long regarded as the best catalyst,” says Dai. The team’s device produces four times as much electric current as it would using platinum. And, while platinum nanoparticles can lose their effectiveness when they cluster together or become tainted by carbon monoxide, the nanotubes are immune to these degradations.

Cost cutter

Dai thinks that it is presence of nitrogen in the nanotubes that makes them work so well. Calculations show that each nitrogen atom attracts electrons from neighbouring carbon atoms, which are then topped up by more electrons flowing from the anode. This means that when an oxygen molecule hits the cathode, there is a ready supply of electrons to react with.

While carbon nanotubes are an expensive material today, they are getting cheaper – and Dai says that the same effect could be produced with other forms of nitrogen-doped carbon. “Now we have discovered how this chemistry works, it may not be necessary to use nanotubes,” he told New Scientist.

“This is an interesting development. It would remove a major cost barrier for fuel cells,” says Di-Jia Liu of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, US, who found the earlier evidence for weakly catalytic nanotubes.

It’s too early to be sure that cars or phones of the future will be powered by nanotube, however. “The material has to be first tested in a real operating environment,” says Liu.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16547-carbon-catalyst-could-herald-cutprice-fuel-cells.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change

Intel and PepsiCo topped the list of buyers for Green-e Energy Certified renewable power, the Center for Resource Solutions announced late last month. A non-profit agency, the Center provides third-party certifications for the renewable power market.

The rankings were released a few days prior to California Senator Barbara Boxer predicting that Congress would draft legislation to put a national emissions cap-and-trade system in place prior to the December UN international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen, which aim to produce a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

“Green” Power Purchases

Green-e certified more than 2.8 million megawatt-hours worth of renewable power in 2008, 69% of the voluntary renewable energy certification market. The market for renewable energy certificates produced as a result of “green” power purchases and sales rose more than 55% in 2007, according to the Dept. of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab.

Intel stood out among peers with a record-setting single 1.3 megawatt power purchase last January. Intel and PepsiCo also ranked first and second respectively on the EPA Green Power Partnership National Top 50 and Fortune 500 lists.

Overall, Intel’s certified “green” power purchases are enough to supply nearly 50% of its US operations’ needs.

“Buying renewable energy for nearly 50% of our U.S. operations was an important element of our continuing, multifaceted efforts to support clean energy and the environment, which includes conservation, pilot solar installations and renewable electric supplies” Marty Sedler, Intel’s director of global utilities and infrastructure stated. “It is critical that all purchases are certified and validated by a respected, independent certification program like Green-e to ensure the highest quality and integrity of our actions.”

New legislation, thus far primarily at the state level, has been driving investment in and demand for renewable power. With the Obama administration now in power and a Democratic majority in Congress, the climate change action debate promises to be intense on Capitol Hill.

Besides saying that a national emissions cap-and-trade system legislation would be introduced this year, California Senator Boxer also laid out a set of six guiding climate change principles that she said would guide any future legislation.

Opponents of taking a more ambitious, proactive policy stance claim that the US cannot afford to constrain commerce and industry and hinder competitiveness at a time when the country is trying to weather a financial system crisis and deepening recession. They also claim that adding to an already record-setting government deficit and debt by investing in climate change adaptation and mitigation and unproven renewable energy technologies will be money ill spent.

Proponents counter that the US cannot afford not to tackle climate change and energy security head-on and now, arguing that doing so can stimulate the economy, create jobs and enhance competitiveness in the long-term while also protecting the environment and leveling the playing field when it comes to development and use of energy resources.

http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/corporations-buy-more-green-power-as-deb.php