Micro-farming in the city?

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Permalink Reply by Chantal on March 26, 2008 at 2:47pm

Great find! Thank you for sharing it.

My brother's an urban farmer in Indianapolis... I wonder if he's seen this.

Wonder what kind of zoning issues these urban farmers are bumping up against....

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Permalink Reply by Afriendof B on March 28, 2008 at 7:18pm

Chantal,

Found this site that is a bit more urban than I can fathom. Thought you might like it. http://apartmentfarm.wordpress.com/

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Permalink Reply by Louis Loizou on December 19, 2008 at 12:08pm

Hi Guys.
I am new to this group, but not to Ning. In my profile I mention World Family also on Ning, and in this context Better World Cameroon. Take a look: www.betterworld-cameroon.com
I was fortunate enough to meet Project director Joshua Konkankoh at a Global Youth Festival for Food Sovereignty in SW Nigeria 4th-7th December and it was part of a week long life-changing experience. I have read some of Afriendof B's writing and responses regarding personal transformation, and as a traveller of 62 years on this planet I see a total connection between those issues and this one. What Joshua and his charity in Cameroon have done, among other things, is to bring young people and the earth together in the city of Yaoundé to train them in bio-diversity conservation and natural resource management.
I have made a decision to investigate what is being done in the City of Brighton & Hove on the South coast of England in the direction of introducing kids and young adults from deprived areas of Brighton to the concept of growing their own food, getting connected to the Earth, and understanding why so many young people who would never have chosen to farm in Africa are beginning to do so. I have already made the first overture to our local authority towards setting up an initiative like Joshua's Ndanifor garden project (see link above) in Brighton & Hove as part of the World Family initiative.
There is a saying in many African states: If your father is a doctor, you become a doctor, if he is an engineer, you become an engineer, but if he is a farmer you will never become a farmer. Well a visionary group in Nigeria has been attempting to reverse this trend for some 35 years under the tutelage of an ex post-graduate neuroscientist and MD of UCLA Dr. Makanjuola Olaseinde Arigbede.
It all comes together in this way, and with a "neat" as you Americans say, anagram. In Nigeria 2 weeks ago my heart chakra was opened, my emotional centre, if you like. It was opened by witnessing the courage, determination, commitment, personal growth, self-advocacy and belief of some magnificent undergraduate and graduate smallholder farmers and their elders, small and medium scale farmers, who are attempting to find sustainable models, similar to permaculture, but certainly working towards biodiversity and food sovereignty and against our Northern and Western obsession of converting oil into food.
The anagram I refer to is EARTH and HEART. They are one and the same, and this December that connection was indelibly made within my heart, upon the Earth that gave rise to us all Mother Africa, 50,000 years ago.
Please go to www.worldfamily.ning.com to read more, to our "threshold" site www.myworldfamily.org to hear Dr. Arigbede speaking with confidence about the future of sustainable farming and the necessity for Food Sovereignty against the blood-sucking corporate machine and the sarcophagus existence that has consumed us all, but no more.
And on the greening of our cities, look at the Transition Towns initiative, your own Michael Reynolds and his Earthships (solar-passive, self-sustaining buildings totally off-grid) just google and you'll find them, and don't forget Better World Cameroon - they are a charity registered both in Cameroon and here in the UK and they need a little financial support, in case anyone knows Bill Gates :-)

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