Urban Agriculture
Hive Income Promotes Hive Health
May 14, 2018 | Trish Popovitch
The Best Bees Company, founded in 2010, was delivering, installing and maintaining beehives across New England before branching out into several major cities including Washington D.C., Denver, Chicago and Los Angeles. Photo courtesy of The Best Bees Company.
When PhD graduate Noah Wilson-Rich looked around for a way to raise capital for bee health research, he stumbled upon the idea of starting a beehive installation company. Before long, The Best Bees Company, founded in 2010, was delivering, installing and maintaining beehives across New England before branching out into several major cities including Washington D.C., Denver, Chicago and Los Angeles. With a focus on creating a healthier bee population and preventative messages to combat multiple stress disorder, Wilson-Rich and his nationwide team of trained beekeepers are collecting regional bee data, disrupting traditional patterns of honeybee home choice and encouraging the restoration of America’s dwindling pollinator habitat.
“Everything we do is in Boston, it’s like our experimental area; then we scale that across the different sites,” says Wilson-Rich, founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Boston-based The Best Bees Company. Custom built hives, installation and monthly maintenance as well as the bees necessary to make the whole thing work runs Read More
A Nonprofit Farms Rooftops of Nation’s Capital with Triple Bottom Line in Mind
May 3, 2018 | Trish PopovitchLocated in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, Rooftop Roots is a social enterprise taking the restrictive needs of a city littered with zoning laws and height restrictions as a challenge worth going vertical for. Designing, installing and maintaining custom gardens on rooftops, and creating community gardens across the city, Rooftop Roots is helping to build the conversation on how the nation’s capital utilizes its green spaces.
“We’re a nonprofit landscaping company but instead of mowing lawns we build gardens and maintain gardens for residential, commercial and community partners,” says Thomas Schneider, Executive Director of nonprofit Rooftop Roots.
After discovering their dream of office buildings with built up gardens on top was practically impossible to achieve with D.C.’s height restrictions, Rooftop Roots had to rethink its business plan. “We won’t only put gardens on roofs but we’ll put gardens in every nook and cranny and urban landscape we possibly can,” says Schneider. Read More
From Supermarket Rooftops to a Storied Ball Park, an Urban Farming Co. Increases Access to Local Food
September 12, 2017 | Charli EngelhornSince its inception in 2008, Green City Growers (GCG), a Certified B Corporation that installs and maintains vegetable gardens and farms within the greater Boston area, has assisted in the production of more than 175,000 pounds of organic produce, donated more than 12,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables, and engaged more than 7,500 people through their efforts.
“The mission is to grow food in unused spaces and provide people access to fresh produce,” says Jessie Banhazl, CEO and co-founder of GCG. “Having that mission as the core of our trajectory has led us into so many different spaces, which has been really fun and interesting and made us realize that there are so many possibilities for this kind of work.” Read More
The Growing Club and Seedstock to Offer 3-Day Urban Farming Intensive Workshop this Fall in SoCal
August 24, 2017 | seedstockThe Growing Club / Sarvodaya Farms and Seedstock are offering an intimate 3-day Regenerative Urban Farming Intensive workshop in Southern California for professionals on October 20, 21, 22 (Fri-Sun). Only 10 spots are available for the workshop, which is aimed at urban farming professionals who are working towards starting a commercial urban farm as a private for-profit or non-profit business.
The goal of the workshop will be to provide a base of relevant knowledge, basic skills, and local resources to start and operate a regenerative soil-based small-scale or urban farm. Workshop will include both hands-on and lecture portions on the Sarvodaya Farms property where attendees will be able to see, experience, and participate in a working regenerative urban farm. Read More
Nine of America’s Largest Urban Farms
July 17, 2017 | Trish PopovitchThe American urban farm comes in many guises but come it does. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 800 million people worldwide practice urban agriculture. That accounts for between 15 to 20 percent of the world’s food supply. As urban ag continues to build momentum across all 50 states, the influence and scope of the urban farm is growing. Most of us think of less than a couple of acres when we think urban farm, yet urban farms are getting bigger. And some are getting really big. Read More
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