‘Next Urban Chef’ Program Stresses Importance of Local Food to Detroit Youth, Teams Students with Chefs

“The food system is literally killing people in communities like Detroit,” says Alison Heeres, 27, coordinator of a program designed to educate and engage youth in the local food movement in the City of Detroit.

Heeres, who works with the University of Michigan Health System teaching nutrition and wellness in schools, has witnessed firsthand the impact of lack of access to and knowledge about fresh, local food in urban communities. So when she was asked to coordinate a program to engage Detroit youth in a high profile project designed to get them thinking about food and nutrition in a new way, she took the opportunity.

The program, Next Urban Chef, is modeled after the wildly popular Next Iron Chef television series, and focuses on youth education and leadership development around local food. Read More

Beacon Food Forest Brings Together Diverse Community to Regenerate Public Lands

Blueberries growing in the Beacon Food Forest. Photo Credit. Beacon Food Forest.

Young fruit and nut trees, P-patch beds, and woodchip paths are just the latest milestones of a three-year volunteer effort to create a food forest in the city of Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. This food forest represents “exactly the opposite of the tragedy of the commons,” said Glenn Herlihy, manager of field work, marketing, and communication for the Beacon Food Forest. Through its work, Beacon Food Forest is “regenerating public land” and bringing together a diverse community through the common ground of plants.

The Beacon Food Forest started as a final project that Herlihy and his classmates created in 2009 for a permaculture design class. The class “decided to take it [our project] to the community [in Beacon Hill]” to see if there was support for its creation and there was, said Herlihy. At the same time, plans were underway to revitalize Jefferson Park, also in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Seeing the community support for the food forest, the park’s master design designated an area as an arboretum. Read More

Cal Org. Sees Interdependence of Rural and Urban Stakeholders as Key to Sustainable Food System

Roots of Change (ROC) is a California-based nonprofit developing a collaborative network of stakeholders – the public sector, nonprofits, funding sources, entrepreneurs, farmers, ranchers and concerned individuals – dedicated to seeing California with a sustainable, healthy, safe and profitable food system by the year 2030.

Tall order. But in the years since the organization’s launch in 2000, ROC has seen concrete changes come to the California food system – how we grow, transport and consume the food that nourishes a state and a nation. Read More

Urban Farm Collective Converts Vacant City Lots into Edible Gardens, Exchanges Food for Hours Worked

Photo Credit: Urban Farm Collective.

It all started with a simple idea: bring neighbors together to transform vacant city lots into neighborhood food gardens. Why? To improve the quality of food available to the community. From that little seed, the Urban Farm Collective (UFC) has grown into multiple working gardens throughout the Portland, Oregon area.

“In the seed stages, it was very much just a handful of friends,” says Urban Farm Collective Director Janette Kaden. “We had yards and we thought we’d  share them and turn them into gardens.”

But it took some creative thinking to cultivate that seed idea into the strong community network it has grown to be.

“In 2009, we started with one garden,” Kaden says. “About a dozen people came to the table to talk about this idea of transforming vacant lots into gardens. But, out of that, only one or two people would show up at the garden to work.” Read More

Small Scale Farm Op Only Miles from Las Vegas Strip Shows Promise of Desert Agriculture

Growing organic food in the desert is no easy task. But Marilyn Yamamoto, who cultivates several acres of land a short drive from the famed Los Vegas Strip, has transformed her acreage into a test garden to help gardeners in the area determine the most efficient plants to grow on their properties so as to provide quality healthy food for their families.

Yamamoto says the small-scale growing operation known as Cowboy Trail Farm, which she operates as nonprofit under the name ‘Organic Edibles LV, inc’, is a labor of love.

Yamamoto, a Master Gardener, says she first began to experiment with desert cultivation techniques a few years ago, when her organization received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She used the funds to acquire two hoop houses. Read More

Urban Farm on City’s Edge Provides Opportunity for New Generation of Farmers to Prosper

Katie Miller and Ben Torpey of Scratch Farms, which is part of the Urban Edge Farm run by Southside Community Land Trust.

Few look at a weed-choked city lot fowled by disemboweled cars and see a future of health enhancing vegetables by the bushel full. But this is what the founders of the Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT) saw 30 years ago in a down and out neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island. That ¾ acre lot, now called City Farm, represented the start of something now a whole lot of lots bigger. In following its mission to provide access to land, education and other resources to enable people in Greater Providence to grow food in environmentally sustainable ways, SCLT has grown the number of community gardens it oversees to 16. Read More