What do you think of urban agriculture?

Question

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture

Answer 1

For years I farmed 20 acres that belonged to the local Catholic Church. It was open to anyone that wanted to put in a garden. If they would stake it out I would farm around it and   plow it in the fall for them. If they were late it was all right for them to dig up as much wheat as they wanted. I

don't think over two or three people ever used it in one year.

I would probably still do that on any place I had if I was still farming. It makes for good neighbors. There are few things as valuable as good neighbors or much trouble as bad ones. So I am not doing it for altruistic motives. It is just good sense.

There is a large potential  for growing food in an urban environment. Your yard can grow food as well as grass and flowers. Your neighbors might not like it much.

If you are soilless a five gallon buckets make good sort of raised beds and shallower containers make good hydroponic soil holders.  A tin can with a hole in the bottom will make a poor man's drip irrigation system that works as good as the one that cost $1,200 and an acre.

Just be sure you have good soil and use the fertilizer it needs. Nitrogen works best applied several times during the season depending on the crop. When working with small areas getting the right amount of nitrogen  in critical on some crops. If you must go organic don't  be surprised if you get too much nitrogen some places and not enough in others. Nitrogen is a very perishable substance when not in a dry form and the way organic farmers treat it you don't know what you have very well. It can leach out of a compost pile or turn to ammonia in  a few days and be gone with the bad smell.

This can be a highly productive method of production if you get the fertility, water, sun right and control the bugs. You have new methods of bug control available to you. You can drowned them in CO2 or nitrogen under a tent.

It will work with organic methods but you have to use a shot gun approach to fertility on nitrogen.

You can use plastic bags you take out on the porch ever day as one plant hot houses. If a cotton farmer in India can  do it for cotton we can sure do it to get a 30 day head start on the season for beans, peppers or such. It would work great with squash as well but only for a week or so before it out grows the bag.

One would need to plant crops such as tomatoes, okra and other tropicals that bear all season and don't spread out byeond your area. Or things that can be dried or stored some way such a chili peppers and spices.

Plant several plantings so everything doesn't come off at once.

I don't know how much food you can raise this way. If you have friends that raise pot they know better than I. They are the cutting edge on hydroponics in the USA.

GC

Answer 2

I think they are great. They can help save money as well as provide a healthy diet. Food crops usually use less water than a lawn and take fewer chemicals if done organically. I am in the process of removing a large section of lawn to put in a vegetable garden as well as several fruit trees in another area of my yard.

Answer 3

It's a great concept but works only in lightly polluted towns and cities.  I don't like eating my own pollution.

Answer 4

I think it is a good thing....I also like community gardens that have started becomming popular!

Answer 5

Agro urbanization is a beautiful concept ,  enormous pressure would be taken of conventional farming,

Nature would benefit with far less deforestation

considering how much of it we have converted from trees  into Concrete , tar and mono culture farming

So we cannot put enough Country back into our Environments

Our quality of life would soar

It has been proved that crime goes down

the air would be better,and so would the food

Food prices would come down

we would end up with a lot more humidity

Growing food or having gardens in populated areas is not a new idea

IN THE PAST

Montezuma looked out of his window one day and saw all his peasants in huts of adobe as a blemish on his panorama ,and he ordered the people to hide themselves beneath beautiful flowers (deodorant was not so big in those days),

And so the central Americans were motivated to build living roofs ,turning their village in to a garden with themselves hidden with in

Babylon was doing very similar things but using more sophisticated building methods

TODAY

Today in the cities it is not recommended to grow food.

Because you will end up with cabbages that are contaminated by the city smog.

But in Chicago they are doing it

http://byderule.multiply.com/journal/ite... half way down the page

To have ornamentals is a great way to liven up the place and combat the diminishings of Nature.So we can always grow flowers from the city roof tops

AGRO -URBANIZATION

Normally Urban planning does not leave enough space for farming

How ever we could do a lot  already in the streets with trees and around the houses

.Imagine all the lawns becoming food gardens or at least supporting some livestock like goats or geese instead of being used for throwing a Frisbee.

Here we can produce more than enough to feed every body.

Or we would have to plan urban development different from the start,

we can go up

If we ,for example, went onto the roofs

the whole place would have to be part of a general design

Single occupancy house of 3 floors is the ideal hight ,or 3 story apartments ,if all are the same hight and have flat roofs ,a complex farming situation or even nature can be build on top, connecting the roofs with bridges.

William McDonough is an architect who designed a brilliant city underneath the landscape,of just this ,all the rooms get the sun at least once a day ,the city produces its own power recycles its own wastes and utilizes it

The landscape on top produces all the food ,(vegetables and meat )

This is a brilliant example of Agro urbanization.

see this youtube the city is at the end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoRjz8iTV...

from http://byderule.multiply.com/links/item/...

It means different construction with concrete roofs at a very gentle slope (for drainage)

damp coursing the concrete with black plastic,

(Although the Aztecs used moss)

Installing irrigation systems.and leaving easy ways up to the roof ,with ramps,for equipment and animals

The walls and reinforced corner pillars must be of sufficient strength to support the extra weight ,as should the cross beams under the roof .

having to support the weight of  at least 1/2 of a meter of wet soil

No more than 3 stories is recommended

Have the slope in a Northern direction to make full use of the sun(depending which hemisphere you are in,,and so that you could also incorporate solar panels.

Permaculture has a lot to say about living roofs

as they are very common in desert environments in Australia.

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ANCIENT AND MODERN PERMACULTURE

http://byderule.multiply.com/links/item/...

Sustainability ,chinampas etc.

http://byderule.multiply.com/journal/ite...