- Author: Penny Leff
A UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) team recently assessed the needs of urban farmers around the state, and found that they struggle with production, business, and marketing challenges, many of which are specific to the urban context of their farms. Additionally, many urban farmers are unaware of agricultural regulations, city zoning and permitting rules, food safety, soil quality issues, and pest quarantines.
To help new urban farmers get started effectively, and to help more experienced urban farmers improve their skills and profitability, the UCCE team is offering a series of four urban agriculture workshops in each of the Sacramento and San Diego regions. These communities have recently put policies in place to encourage urban farming, and many residents are getting involved. The workshops will be held at urban farm sites and will include farm tours and discussions with local urban farmers sharing challenges and success stories. The 2018 workshop series starts March 16 in the Sacramento area and March 23 in the San Diego area.
Workshop #1 will cover the legal basics of urban farming, including types of urban farm enterprises, zoning issues, soil testing, required permits and licenses, and an introduction to key local resources such as the Agricultural Commissioner and UCCE staff.
Workshop #2 will cover Marketing and Business Management for Urban Farms, including business planning, record keeping, market channel options, and an introduction to labor laws and risk management.
Workshop #3 will be about production considerations for urban farmers, focusing on water management, integrated pest management (IPM), and soil contamination/soil improvement.
Workshop #4 will cover pre and post-harvest food safety practices, using CDFA's Small Farm Food Safety Guidelines.
Farmers and potential farmers can take one or take all four of these workshops; each is $20 for a full day of expert speakers, participatory exercises, lunch and refreshments. Each workshop will be a one-day event.
Registration is open. Space is limited, so please sign up early.
Learn more about the workshops, as well as the 2017 workshop series' held in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area regions, and register here:
ucanr.edu/sites/UrbanAg/Urban_Ag_Workshops/
More UC urban farming resources: ucanr.edu/sites/UrbanAg/
Questions?
San Diego Series: Mary Redlin, Southern California Coordinator, mvredlin@ucanr.edu, 562-900-3041
Sacramento Series:Penny Leff, Northern California Coordinator, paleff@ucdavis.edu, 530-752-5208
- Author: N. Claire Napawan, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture
- Author: Ellen Burke, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture California Polytechnic Institute, San Luis Obispo
While the provision of clean water, removal of wastes, and infrastructure for other basic human necessities are considered in the planning of modern development in the United States, the provision of food is rarely a consideration. More often, transportation infrastructure, including roads, ports, and rails, is considered synonymous with food infrastructure, and little attention is paid to distances from the development to food retail, distribution hubs, ports, or food sources. In modern development it is assumed where there is a road, there will be food. This was not the case in pre-Industrial development; limited means of high-speed transportation, and the absence of technologies such as refrigeration, required carefully planned development to maximize efficiencies of transportation and proximities of food sources.As communities strive for increasingly sustainable means of development, an important consideration is planning for food resilience, of the ability to secure food within one's community in light of outside stressors such as natural disasters or limited fuel resources. Food resiliency requires balancing several considerations related to the locality of food, and contains a greater degree of complexity than the popularized 100 mile ‘local food' radius. While greater densities of development receiving efficient modes of food distribution offer one facet of food resilience, lower densities that offer opportunities for in-situ production provide yet another.
This research investigates relative food system resiliency by evaluating opportunities for adapting food systems within existing community patterns. The San Francisco Bay Area provides a relevant case study of both pre- and post-industrial development at a range of densities and networked with multiple transportation infrastructures. The evaluation of communities within this region reveals important considerations for environmental designers aiming to increase food system resilience in new and existing communities. This includes examining multiple scales of adaptation to production and distribution networks, and challenges the popularized 100 mile ‘local food' radius for achieving regional food resilience.
The study examines a convenience sample of four communities on a rough east-west transect within the San Francisco Bay Area and along Interstate 580: San Francisco, Oakland, Dublin and Mountain House. See Figure 1. The communities represent a range of densities, area coverage, and populations which correspond roughly to their location along the transect, with the larger and denser communities (San Francisco and Oakland) at the western end, and the smaller and less-dense communities at the eastern end of the transect. The transect is important in both geographic and historical terms, as the western end also corresponds to the oldest community with development occurring in an east-ward expansion.
At the scale of the neighborhood, the study identified travel distance to a full-service retail grocery store as the most significant criterion for assessing community food resilience. Using aerial photography and GIS data, a maximum one-way travel distance within each community to a full-service retail grocery store was established. For this study, a full-service retail grocery store was defined as a supermarket carrying fresh produce, such as Safeway, Andronico's or Lucky's. Convenience stores which sell primarily soft drinks, alcoholic beverages and snacks, were not included, as they do not typically provide access to fruits and vegetables (or other whole foods). The study calculated the average distance to a full-service retail grocery store within the community.
The study also defined the ‘productive potential' of each community, a measure of a typical back yard's ability to meet the fruit and vegetable diet for a family of four, based on average home lot size and coverage, USDA consumption figures and typical home-garden yields. A combination of aerial photographs, zoning maps and real-estate data for each community was analyzed to determine a typical lot configuration for each community, illustrating the average lot size, average home size and coverage. Although individuals may choose to use open space areas on their lots in a variety of ways, including ornamental landscaping, xeriscaping, recreational features such as basketball courts, lawn and hardscaping, in addition to food gardening, the productive potential of any lot is pre-determined by open space provided. Raised bed gardening, a typical home-garden approach to growing food, yields an average 1.24 pounds per square foot. In the U.S. an average of 1.5 pounds of fruits and vegetables is consumed per person per day. The productive potential of each community was derived from applying the raised bed average yield to 90% of the typical lot open space in each community, and then calculating what percentage of the full-year fruit and vegetable diet for a family of four would be met by that yield.
Flexibility is key to resilience. While San Francisco might not be able to produce all its fruit and vegetable needs via urban agriculture, access to multiple neighborhood grocery stores and to efficient modes of food distribution offer alternative means of adopting alternative food systems. Oakland, shares many of the same advantages as San Francisco, but with greater lots sizes (and generally a better microclimate), opportunities for urban agriculture are far greater. Dublin, while not sharing the same access to efficient modes of food distribution as San Francisco and Oakland, offers the greatest opportunities for residential urban agriculture with a productive potential of 190%. With minimal opportunities for home production, great distances between home and local grocery retail, and removed location from efficient distribution centers, the community of Mountain House appears to be the least capable of adaptations to the existing food system.
The results of this research exemplify the need for environmental designers to balance considerations of density and geographic location in new development. While density provides opportunities for limiting personal automobile commute times, it can also interfere with opportunities to promote UA as an alternative food source. Recognizing the geographic location of new development, the impacts to food distribution networks, and the proximity of local food retail outlets should also be an important consideration for environmental designers. In essence, the infrastructure of a community's food system (including global, regional, and local sources and distribution networks) should be an equal consideration to new development in the San Francisco Bay Area, and beyond, if community's are to be designed as resilient food systems.
- Author: Stephanie Parreira, UC Statewide IPM Program
https://soundcloud.com/ucipm/help-honey-bees-cope-with-pests
To read the full transcript of the audio, click here.
Successful IPM in honey bee colonies involves understanding honey bee pest biology, regularly monitoring for pests, and using a combination of different methods to control their damage. Visit these resources for more information:
Sources for the Value of Honey Bees:
- Author: Reyna Yagi
Reyna Yagi (ryagi@ucanr.edu), Northern California Urban Agriculture Program Coordinator, University of California Cooperative Extension - Alameda and Contra Costa Counties
How can we as urban farmers do our part to conserve water? Turns out there are a lot of ways that not only will help to save our beautiful state's water, but also help you build a healthier farm or garden with less work on your hands!
Tip Sheet: Building Fertile Soil – Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems UC Santa Cruz
Tip Sheet: Your Food Garden During Drought – UC Master Gardener Program Contra Costa County
Tip Sheet: Drip Irrigation – Installation and Maintenance – UC Master Gardener Program of Sonoma County
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Rainwater Harvesting allows you to capture rainwater from roofs, collect it in a cistern for diversion to your landscape for supplemental irrigation. You should also observe your site's water runoff patterns and see how you can manage and maximize your runoff to deal with large rain events, stormwater runoff and infiltration around your site. Consider a rain garden!
Tip Sheet: Rainwater Harvesting – UC Master Gardeners of Nevada County
- Dry Farming depends on the water stored in the soil from winter rains that plants can use in the spring as the weather warms. Plants rely on good soil moisture and deep roots to seek out this extra water without needing much supplemental irrigation. Grapes, potatoes, tomatoes, winter squash, fruit trees and grains can be dry-farmed.
Tip Sheet: How to Dry Farm Tomatoes in Contra Costa – UC Master Gardener Program – Contra Costa County
And Remember:
- Deep watering wets entire root zones which promotes deeper root growth.
- Always water early in the morning to prevent daytime water loss through evaporation.
- Keep an eye on the weather! A refreshing rain or cool, cloudy day will extend the time between watering.
- Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. Visually inspect your drip system regularly for breaks, leaks and missing pieces. If you don't, your plants will certainly let you know with plant diseases.
California's agricultural industry is the largest in the nation and abroad, carrying with that a great responsibility to protect and conserve our resources. Urban farmers are highly cognizant of this. They are some of the most innovative and conservation-minded folks out there who understand the fragility of our water supply and their role in being model stewards of our lands and waters.
- Author: Mary V. Redlin
GrowGood is a Los Angeles-based non-profit urban farm with a mission to create urban agricultural programs that empower people and transform communities. Created in 2011 by Brad Pregerson and Andrew Hunt, GrowGood has worked with The Salvation Army's Bell Shelter to convert the vacant site adjacent to the shelter into an urban farm. The Bell Shelter is the largest homeless shelter west of Mississippi that provides a comprehensive transitional care program for up to 350 homeless men and women, many of them veterans.
GrowGood accomplishes its mission through three main strategies: (1) supplying a variety of nutritious, fresh produce to the Shelter's kitchen; (2) providing job training and meaningful resume-building employment opportunities for homeless and other vulnerable populations with the greatest barriers to employment; and (3) managing a therapeutic green space for spiritual and emotional healing.
Despite having been neglected for many years, GrowGood's soil biology has improved remarkably with time, patience, and beneficial cover crop seed mixes. GrowGood maintains organic practices without using chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. The farm enriches its soil with compost and worm tea made on-site.
Most of what GrowGood produces goes to the shelter, including vegetables, herbs, and fruit, but you can also find their bounty in local Los Angeles restaurants.
Whether it's providing employment, providing nourishment, or hosting a community workshop – GrowGood has it all, and proves you don't need much space to “grow good.”
Learn More
Website:GrowGood
Social Media Links
Email: jayne@grow-good.org
Phone: (323) 645-0215
