Toronto University Offers Urban Ag Courses

Courtesy RUAF

In the Urban Agriculture course on policy-making at Ryerson University, students will review a case study about urban agriculture in Freetown, Sierra Leone.

The United Nations Development Program estimates there are 800 million residents worldwide who participate in urban agriculture. In developing countries, urban farming is an important survival technique that provides families with nutritious food and a source of income. In more developed urban environments, green movements, struggling economies and nutritional concerns have been the main catalysts for the urban farming movement. A common factor within all these motivations for urban dwellers to grow their own food is the security that harvests provide the farmer.

Ryerson University in Toronto is merging the link between food security and urban agriculture with its new Urban Agriculture concentration offered to participants in their Food Security program. The university is also offering an Urban Agriculture concentrated postgraduate-degree certificate in Food Security to those who complete the corresponding Urban Agriculture course series.

“I think it is important to see urban agriculture as part of a series of activities that need to be undertaken to alleviate food insecurity and create healthy local food systems,” says Reg Noble, the academic coordinator of the Food Security program.

The certificate program has been developed in partnership with G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, Ryerson’s School of Nutrition, and the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) in the Netherlands, a global leader in urban agriculture research and development. Ryerson’s Center for Studies in Food Security has defined food security through five characteristics: availability (sufficient amounts), accessibility (constant physical and economic access), adequacy (food sources that are nutritious, safe and produced in an environmentally sustainable way), acceptability (available food that is culturally accepted), and agency (policies and processes should promote food security).

To attain a concentration in Urban Agriculture from the Food Security program, students must participate in four elective online courses that encompass the technical aspects of urban agriculture and the governmental policies that influence them. The program stresses the importance of urban agriculture as a means to develop sustainable, food-secure and healthy urban environments.

“In our food security certificate program, which includes the urban agriculture course series, our objective is to explore how to create economically and ecologically sustainable food systems that provide safe and healthy food and, in particular, systems which are based on social justice and democratic decision-making,” says Noble.

With the majority of the world’s population migrating to urban landscapes, widespread food crises, climate change and vast conglomerations controlling major portions of the world’s food supply, the emphasis on urban agriculture brings many solutions to looming food-security concerns. The instructors have a diverse range of expertise in the realm of food security ranging from human nutrition, developing food systems resilience models, environmental studies, gender studies relating to agriculture and sustainability, biotechnology, international development, and government policy, initiatives and programs.

Because the courses are offered remotely, those outside Toronto and the university can enroll in the coursework. Students who achieve a cumulative GPA of 2.0 or above and complete six online food-security courses, choosing four elective courses pertaining to urban agriculture, receive Food Security certifications with an Urban Agriculture concentration from Ryerson. The university accepts post-graduate applicants (those who hold a bachelor’s degree in any field) who have maintained a minimum 2.0 GPA. Also, non-degree holders with at least five years of relevant work experience can receive admittance to the program upon the approval of an academic advisor at the university. 

“It is important to realize that policy and actions taken over many sectors in our societies affect our food systems, either directly or indirectly, and subsequently impacts people’s ability to be food secure and the health of our environment,” Noble says. “Our course is intended to raise awareness of these connections and provide practical skills and knowledge to ensure that society can work toward transforming our currently flawed food systems to ones that will ensure our food security now and for future generations.”

Photo by Rick Gush

I hope to harvest broccoli from 100 plants this year.

It’s finally September, and that means it’s time to change all the beds by ripping out whatever’s left of all the spring crops, preparing the soil and replanting with the winter crops. I’ve grown really tired of the old and ratty spring crops, so this is all big fun for me.

My target for winter planting is to find space for 100 broccoli plants. We eat a lot of broccoli during the cold months, so I’m making that the principal crop for the cold season. I have 47 broccoli plants planted so far and hope to have all 100 planted by the end of next week.

We eat broccoli steamed, in soups, baked into vegetable pies and sometimes raw in salads. I’m particularly fond of the electric-green color of fresh, steamed broccoli. It’s just so vivid that it seems obvious that eating it is good for me. Luckily, I really like the taste, too! I usually put mustard on the steamed broccoli. My wife chides me, because she is suspicious of mustard and is not sure eating it so frequently is good for me. Ha!

Last year we had the “Great Broccoli Disaster,’ when I bought a bunch of broccoli plants at a different nursery than my usual one. What I had assumed would be the standard big-head-producing broccoli turned out to be the chartreuse-colored broccoli Romano. Phooey! That chartreuse stuff is OK, but its taste is more like cauliflower and has the unfortunate habit of not producing much after the main head has been harvested. Regular broccoli, on the other hand, keeps producing new sprouts for many months after the first head has been harvested. 

Photo by Rick Gush

Black kale is a wonderfully versatile plant, which we can harvest from every day.

I think it’s important to get the broccoli up and growing while the days are still relatively long and the weather is warm. The bigger the plants are when the really cold weather hits, the more harvestable broccoli they will produce over the season. When I lived in Las Vegas, I always planted my broccoli in November, and it did just fine, but here, the earlier start pays big dividends.

Broccoli isn’t the only thing we’ll grow this winter. Fava beans will take up one of the big beds and beet greens and cultivated arugula will be given a fair amount of space. I’ll grow a few Brussels sprouts, a few cauliflowers and a handful of celery plants.

We don’t each much cabbage, but we do like black kale, which can be harvested a handful of leaves at a time. Black kale is also versatile, and we eat it steamed, in soups and in vegetable pies. This is an old-fashioned peasant’s plant, and I get big points from my mother-in-law for growing it. In season, she’ll ask for a few leaves almost every day. Keeping my mother-in-law happy is a big part of my recipe for domestic tranquility.

There’s something about this whole replanting process that reminds me of getting a haircut after months without one. The clean feel of the newly replanted garden gets me excited about laboring for hours in the hot sun again.

Read more of Rick’s Favorite Crops »

Photo by Audrey Pavia

Bob travels on the trail in Griffith Park, unfazed by traffic on the L.A. freeway.

His name was Bob, and he was a big horse. So big, in fact, that he made my 14.3 hand Milagro look like a mini whenever they rode together down the trail.

Bob was the ultimate urban horse. He lived on a 1/2-acre property here in Norco, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles, and carried his owner, Kathy, all over the city trails. Not only that, Bob — who grew up in the Midwest and was used as an Amish plow horse until less than 10 years ago — taught Kathy’s children and nephews how to ride, comforted nervous horses and riders on trail rides, and carried Kathy to the California State Horsemen’s Association trail trials championships last fall. He regularly made trail trial judges do double takes as he successfully negotiated trail obstacles designed for horses half his size.

When Milagro and I first decided to tackle trail trials, Kathy and Bob were our anchors. Essentially fearless, Bob lead the way through densely forested sections of unknown trail, through deep and wide water crossings and across scary wooden bridges. Milagro was green and unsure of himself, but after a handful of trail trials with Bob, he found his courage. It wasn’t long before Milagro asked Bob if he could take the lead some of the time, and of course Bob graciously said “yes.”

But Bob was much more than a trail horse. He also introduced vaulting to delighted kids and adults. This sport, best described as gymnastics on horseback, is one of Kathy’s passions, and Bob was more than happy to oblige. 

The last time I saw Bob a couple of months ago, he seemed full of life. Kathy mentioned that he was having some problems with soft stool, but sometimes certain cuts of hay can cause that, and the problem came and went. When I got Kathy’s email last month that Bob had succumbed to cancer, I was completely stunned. And devastated.

The thought of never walking down the trail with Bob at our side, towering over Milagro and stealing all the attention from passersby, was more than I could bear. I would never get splashed by that giant head at community watering troughs as Bob played with the water, oblivious to everyone around him. And I would never hear his deep nicker of farewell when Kathy would stop at my house and help me unload Milagro from her trailer after a day of being out on the trail.

My only consolation is knowing Bob is happy somewhere, doing whatever it is horse spirits do when they are free from the constraints of their sadly fallible bodies. But I sure will miss him.

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Birmingham, Ala., was one of the cities where the EPA performed air toxin monitoring around schools.

How clean is the air your children are breathing at school? The EPA is on a mission to find out.

Last year, as part of a new air toxins monitoring initiative, the agency began monitoring the outdoor air around more than 60 schools in 22 states, particularly those near industrial facilities. The testing was based on a list of 187 pollutants listed in the Clean Air Act.

“As a parent myself, I want to know that when I’m sending my children off to school the air they breathe will be safe,” says EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson. “For the first time, we have the information we need to make sure our children are breathing clean air in areas that have worried parents in the past. As we analyze these air-quality samples, EPA will continue to work quickly to protect all Americans—not just where they live and work but also where they learn and play.”

The first two of the analyses released by the EPA in June 2010 were for Pittsboro Elementary School in Pittsboro, Ind., and Minnesota International Middle Charter School in Minneapolis, Minn. According to an EPA press release, at both schools, “levels of the key pollutants monitored were below levels of both short- and long-term concern.”

The EPA will continue monitoring and issuing notices of air-toxin levels around the selected schools through the fall.

Although the EPA’s phones have been ringing off the hook over this subject (many attempts to reach the EPA for comment for this story were not returned), things at Roland-Story High School, in Story City, Iowa, couldn’t be calmer. Even if the air near the school showed trace amounts of diisocyanates prior to monitoring, it turns out that, like the schools in Pittsboro and Minneapolis, the air around the school in Story City is pretty darn clean.

A small town of about 3,000 people, Story City is about 50 miles from Aimes and 12 miles from Des Moines, but it does have one industrial location, the American Packaging Corporation. Diisocyanates is one of the byproducts the company uses for its glue.

When the EPA announced it would begin testing for the toxin around the high school, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources performed its own test, says Mike Billings, superintendent of the Roland-Story Community School District. What it found, he says, was that American Packaging’s own filters caught most of the toxin, and what might have been left was too heavy to travel as far as the school.

“My understanding is that it was an insignificant amount,” Billings says.

He said the district notified parents—many of whom work for American Packaging and were already aware of the testing—through notes sent home with students, a press release in the local paper and an announcement in the district newsletter. He says he received only about two calls about it.

“Certainly the EPA has a job to do, and they do a great job with it,” Billings said. “I think the only thing I was concerned about was the federal government spending that kind of money when the state was already on top of things.”

The EPA tested for toluene diisocyanate, methylenediphenyl and hexamethylene diisocyanate around Roland-Story High School because of industry in the area that produces them. So far, none of the three pollutants have been detected around the school.

Michaelle Chapman, a spokesperson for Birmingham City Schools, in Birmingham, Ala., says that though there were significant levels of benzene and lead detected in the air around that school, the outcry from parents has been minimal.

“I think that maybe the reason for this is these schools are located in neighborhoods where the children live, so it’s more of a community problem than a school problem,” Chapman says. “We’re a city with lots of industry, including a lot of steel manufacturing, pipe companies and so on.”

It’s unclear what, if anything, is being done to reduce toxins in the air around the Birmingham City Schools.

To learn more about the EPA’s Air Toxin Monitoring and to see a list of the schools, visit the EPA website.

Photo by Rick Gush

My basket-ball sized pumpkins hang in the lemon tree at the bottom of my garden.

The aerial pumpkins continue to be the stars of this season’s vegetable garden. The fruits in the picture above are hanging in the lemon tree at the bottom of the garden, and they look like bright orange lanterns hanging in the tree.  People keep asking me if they are going to fall one of these days, but I think the stems are made of pretty tough fibers and doubt that the hanging weight will cause breakage. The pumpkins aren’t that big really—about basketball size or smaller—but we’ve got a number of them, so we’ll be able to have a nice store of pumpkins and other squash for winter eating.

The amusing aspect of our squash crop this year is that it happened where we didn’t expect it. I planted a dozen different squash plants in carefully prepared beds and was optimistic about their chances for bountiful production. Alas, only one of those plants has produced notable fruit. But I did have a half dozen leftover seedlings I didn’t want to kill, so I found a few corners here and there where I could tuck in the seedlings. Of course, all of those second-class locations ended up being the killer locations, and all six of the leftover seedlings have produced notable squash. Ha!

Photo by Rick Gush

This is the best-looking part of my garden—not so pretty, is it?

The photo to the right is of one of my best beds.  I show it because I dislike garden writers and most garden magazines that only show the wonderful stuff.  This bed from which I’ve carefully screened out the rocks and to which I have lovingly added bags and bags of fresh manure from the dairy up the hill looks fairly lousy this week. Of course, it is the end of summer and most of the garden looks similar. The plants having already borne their fruits, but the point is that all gardens don’t look like the images on the cover of Wonderful Gardens magazine. Ours is a real garden, and therefore often looks crummy.

I think that garden failure is the huge unmentionable topic in the garden world, but it is a very real part of our lives as real gardeners. Cute looking plants that we’ve purchased from the nursery don’t always grow well, and in fact, failure is more common than success with gardens. We kill enormous amounts of plants in our gardens. Everybody does. The flower beds at Disneyland look marvelous because the instant the little plants start looking shaggy, they are ripped out and replaced with fresh specimens. But we don’t think about that, and instead we usually say something like “Boy, those gardeners are really experts!”    

Sure, gardens do pass through phases when everything is great and there are always some areas that are growing perfectly. But real gardening involves a lot of failures, disappointments and underperformance. Just like life. But that doesn’t mean that it (living or gardening) is any less fun. 

Read more of Digging Italy »