State of Global Hunger: Global Hunger Index 2010

It has been suggested that global hunger, rather than being halved in pursuit of the Millennium Development goals is actually getting worse. However, according to the 2010 Global Hunger Index (GHI),  published by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI),  hunger and food security in many nations has not changed over the last decade.

The GHI is calculated for 122 developing and transition countries countries and it’s rates are based on three equally weighted indicators: the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight, and the child mortality rate. Twenty-nine countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, have levels of hunger that are "extremely alarming" or "alarming." Of the nine countries in which hunger levels rose eight were in Africa, including: Liberia, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). North Korea was the only country outside Africa to show an increase in hunger levels, which has been blamed on negative trends in economic growth and food production.

The report claimed that "the high prevalence of child under-nutrition is a major contributor to persistent hunger," the biggest contributor to the global figure, accounting for almost half of the score.

Addressing issues during pregnancy and the first two years of life could provide critical opportunities for preventing future health problems among children, as undernourishment during early childhood (those first two years) can cause irreversible, long-term damage.

“In order to improve individual GPI scores “countries must accelerate progress in reducing child malnutrition. Considerable research shows that the window of opportunity for improving nutrition spans from conception to age two. After age two, the negative effects of under-nutrition are largely irreversible" said Marie Ruel, director of IFPRI's poverty, health and nutrition division and co-author of the report. Furthermore, the need to attend to the health of all women, but specifically mothers was also highlighted as “crucial to reducing child malnutrition” by Bärbel Dieckmann, the chair of the German NGO Welthungerhilfe, who explained that “Mothers who were poorly nourished as girls tend to give birth to underweight babies, perpetuating the cycle of under-nutrition.”  The report estimated that the burden of child undernutrition could be cut by 25-36 percent by providing universal preventive health services and nutrition interventions for children under two and their mothers during pregnancy and lactation.

While major gains have been made over the last 20 years in reducing hunger and undernourishment (hunger levels fell by one quarter), the number of hungry people has recently begun to rise. The report defines world hunger levels as "serious" and notes that recent spikes in food prices has pushed the number of undernourished people in the world beyond one billion.

To download the Data, click here. 

Window Farming: Growing Food in your Flat

A new project has introduced city slickers with a new, innovative way to grow food in their homes, by using their  creating new ways  apartment windows.  The Windowfarm project creates kits that allow urban apartment dwellers to grow a diverse group of plants in a modular, hydroponic "farm" kit that hangs in front of window frames.  

Windowfarms use repurposed plastic bottles (supplied by the purchaser) along with a pump and irrigation system that circulates nutrient-laden water to your plants. The vertical systems open design allow apartment residents to grow up to 32 vegetable plants in a typical apartment window, ranging from tomatoes, snow peas, and lettuces, to many other vegatables, allowing urban dwellers to produce their own fresh produce and herbs year- round, as well as potentially cutting down on grocery bills.  The company also sees the projects as a potential way to address food deserts in areas experiencing food poverty and environmental injustices (particularly low income neighborhoods).  While this may be an idealistic view, the company has also created educational units to be used in classrooms, and runs a contest so that even schools lacking funding can incorporate them into science/ classroom curriculum. 

The company considers the projects to be “R&D-I-Y, or research and develop it yourself.” Windowfarms founder, Brooklynite Britta Riley, sees the kits as a “public mass collaboration on hydroponic food growing research & development,” and a way for non-experts to contribute to the green revolution.  Currently over 17,000 people world over have joined the window farming community and the kits are being used as far as China and


To learn more about Windowfarms kits, click here.
To listen to more about Windowfarms on NPR, click here.

Changing the Way We Eat - TEDx comes to Manhattan

On February 12, 2011, TEDxManhattan “Changing the Way We Eat” will take place in New York City.  The day long event will highlight various aspects of the sustainable food movement and current projects and work being done to shift the current food system from industrially-based agriculture to one in which healthy, nutritious food is accessible to all.

Speakers with various backgrounds in food and farming will share their insights and expertise and relevant information from this years TED conference will be reviewed.  The event hopes to promote the development of new synergies and new ideas to help bolster the sustainable food movement.

To learn more, click here.

To apply, click here.

NYC's Greenhouse for Growing Little Gardeners

Photo credit: Phoebe Zheng/The Epoch Times

Monday marked the launch of the NYC Greenhouse Project a 1,420 square-foot, state-of-the art rooftop greenhouse in Manhattan. 

To read more in the Epoch Times, click here.

To read more on the NY Times City Room Blog, click here.

To watch the launch, click here. 

Fast-Growing Factory Farm Nation

Today, Food & Water Watch (FWW) unveiled a new version of their innovative Factory Farm Map, which charts the concentration of factory farms across the United States.  Their findings showed an unprecedented growth in factory farms since 1997, with livestock on factory farms Growing by 20 percent over a 5 year period. The map illustrates geographic shift in where and how food is raised and also allows users to search for the highest concentration of animals across regions, states and the county. Furthermore, it charts the different (often detrimental) impacts that these massive operations have on human health, communities, and the environment. The map and

The map was created through the analysis of USDA Census data from 1997, 2002 and 2007 (the most current census), for beef and dairy cattle, hogs, broiler meat chickens and egg-laying operations.  FWW found that the total number of livestock on the largest factory farms rose by more than 20 percent between 2002 and 2007—while the number of dairy cows and broiler chickens nearly doubled during the same time, making them the fastest-growing population of factory farmed animals.

Further key findings of the research included:

• In five years, total animals on factory farms grew by 5 million in the US.
• The average size of factory farms increased by 9% in five years, cramming more animals into each operation.
• The number of factory dairy farm cows increased from 2.5 million (1997) to 4.9 million (2007) and growth in western states (esp. ID, CA, NM & TX) shifted the industry away from traditional states (WI, NY & MI).
• One processor (Dean Foods) controls around 40% of the U.S. fluid milk supply.
• Beef cattle on industrial feedlots rose 17 percent between 2002 to 2007 – adding about 1,100 beef cattle to feedlots per day during that time period
• In 2007, the ave. factory-farmed dairy held nearly 1,500 cows and the ave. beef feedlot held 3,800 beef cattle.
• The average size of hog factory farms increased by 42% over a decade, with approximately 5,000 hogs added to factory farms every day over those past 10 years.
• The growth of industrial broiler chicken production added 5,800 chickens every hour over the past 10 years.
• The number of egg laying hens on factory farms increased by 1/4 over the past 10 years.
• The 5 States with the largest broiler chicken operations average more than 200,000 birds per farm.
• Currently, there are 4 factory-farmed chickens to every person in the US.

Although the overall number of livestock farms across the country has decreased, big farms are getting bigger, with specific regions and states bearing the brunt of intensive animal production.  Factory farming operations introduce a number of risks to the average citizen, from groundwater contamination and air pollution affecting those near by, to food from potentially unsafe facilities being distributed and shipped across the country. “The Factory Farm Map arms consumers with critical information about how our food is being produced and what we need to do to chart a course to a more sustainable food system,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch’s executive director. “While more light is being shed on the ways our food system is broken and consumers are increasingly interested in knowing where their food comes from, there is still a lot of information that’s hidden from public view.  It was with this purpose of providing an simple tool that anyone could operate to learn more about where their food is actually coming from that the Factory Farm Map was created.

 “This map shows the extent to which factory farms have taken over farming and our communities,” said Robby Kenner, director of the film Food, Inc. This innovative technology is starting to highlight mega-corporations that must be held accountable for the damage they are inflicting on our physical health, the environment, and the economic wellbeing of surrounding communities. Alongside the interactive map, Food & Water Watch released Factory Farm Nation, a report explaining the forces driving factory farms, and the environmental, public health, and economic consequences of this type of animal production.

The Factory Farm Map can be found here, for the companion report, Factory Farm Nation, click here.

An Issue of National Food Insecurity

According to a report released this month, food insecurity, an issue long seen as a bane of developing countries, is reaching an alarming level in the United States in the recent post-recession years. The report "Food Security in the United States 2009" found that 17.4 million households in America had difficulty providing enough food due to a lack of resources.

The report, published by the US Department of Agriculture, looked at household food access and security in the U.S. and revealed that 14.7 per cent of American households were food insecure at least some time during 2009, including 5.7 per cent with very low food security. While the latest figures for overall food insecurity and ‘severe’ food security remained close to their 2008 levels (14.6 per cent and 5.7 per cent respectively) they remain the highest recorded levels since the first national food security survey was conducted in 1995.

Highlighting the significant inequalities in food resource availability across U.S. households, the USDA report noted that the typical food-insecure household spent a whopping 33 per cent less on food than the typical food-secure household of the same size and composition. Furthermore, in households with “severe range of food insecurity” resource constraints were often the cause of eating pattern disruptions, with the food intake of members often dropping over the course of the year.

Another worrying fact uncovered by the report was the large racial divide in food security outcomes, with rates of food insecurity among African-American and Hispanic households remaining substantially higher than the national average. Insecurity was also notably higher among households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line and a single parent headed households. 

The USDA report was based on data from an annual food security survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and covered about 46,000 households.  Adult respondents were asked a series of questions covering experiences and behaviors typically noted to indicate food insecurity - such as being unable, at times, to afford balanced meals, cutting the size of meals or being hungry because of too little money for food.  Household food security status was then designated based on the number of food-insecure conditions reported.

To read the full briefing click here.

For more on world food security in 2009, click here.

Questioning the Future of Farming

On November 11th, 2010 a new paper published in the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability identified the top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture.

Although there were significant increases in the abilities of both developed and undeveloped nations to produce food over the last half-century, the most important challenge facing societies today remains how to feed their populations.  By the middle of our current century the world population is expected to reach some 9 billion, making the question of how and what we feed ourselves paramount. In order to meet expected demand for food without significant increases in prices it has been estimated that the world needs to produce 70-100% more food.  (Although these numbers are debatable when you consider what levels of caloric and nutritional intake we expect this population to exist on – surely not those of the average North American)

The multi-disciplinary team of 55 agricultural and food experts from many of the world's major agricultural organizations, scientific societies, and academic institutions was appointed to identify the most important questions for global agriculture and food.

The results were organized into four overarching sections, reflecting the stages of the agricultural production system: (i) natural resource inputs; (ii) agronomic practice; (iii) agricultural development; and (iv) markets and consumption.  Some of the most pressing questions include:

*         How much can agricultural education, extension, farmer mobilization and empowerment be achieved by the new opportunities afforded by mobile phone and web-based technologies?

*         Who will be farming in 2050, and what will be their land relationships?

*         What will be the risk of mass migration arising from adverse climate change, and how will this impact on agricultural systems?

The research was funded by the UK Government's Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project with the idea that, if asked, answered and  addressed, these questions could have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide. The questions posed were seen as could offering a way to mitigate what some see as an impending calamity brought on by industrial agro-farming and unsustainable practices.  In the last 50 years the intensification of agriculture has been central to the degradation of ecosystem services, has been a leading cause of the loss of global biodiversity due to conversion of natural habitats into farmland., and has increased the production of greenhouse gases. The paper serves as a directive, offering policy and funding organizations an agenda for change. The questions are wide-ranging, are designed with the idea that they are answerable through future research and capable of realistic research design.

One of the lead authors, Professor Jules Pretty, remarked that:

"The challenges facing world agriculture are unprecedented, and are likely to magnify with pressures on resources and increasing consumption. What is unique here is that experts from many countries, institutions and disciplines have agreed on the top 100 questions that need answering if agriculture is to succeed this century. These questions now form the potential for driving research systems, private sector investments, NGO priorities, and UN projects and programs."

To read the full paper for free, click here.

Working on a FARM:shop

Today was the public opening (and one week anniversary the friends and family christening) of the worlds first FARM:Shop  in London.  FARM:shop,  a groundbreaking urban agriculture centre based at 20 Dalston Lane, is a project attempting to see how much food can be grown in a converted abandoned shop in a year.  It is the brainchild of Something & Son, an eco-social design practice in London founded by Andrew Merritt, Paul Smyth and Sam Henderson. 

FARM:shop is one of several projects funded in part by Hackney Council’s Art in Empty Spaces initiative, a project to help regenerate parts of Dalston by transform empty properties into something useful and meaningful for Hackney’s residents and visitors.

Councilor Guy Nicholson, Cabinet Member for Regeneration and the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, has called Farm:Shop: “a great joint initiative which will give residents in the borough and beyond a great opportunity to see first-hand how urban farming works.”

Since July, when the project managers (Sam, Paul and Andy) first received the keys, there have been over 40 volunteers (the author included) working away. The run down building has been transformed, with a new mushroom farm in the basement, a poly-tunnel built in the back lot and new hydroponic units for growing food in it’s many rooms.  With the help of Aquaponics UK, the storefront has been revamped with aquaponic units  - tanks for growing tilapia fish and freshwater prawns whose waste serves as a food source for plants growing in the same closed loop system. A chicken coop was constructed on the rooftop, with hens already happily laying away, oblivious to the street noise.  The backyard also includes a run and pens which will soon be home to a pair of piglets which will be reared in the garden.

The project offers city dwellers the chance to see a variety of sustainable farming techniques, including mini fish farms, rooftop chicken coops, indoor allotments as well as a basement mushroom farm.  It is part inspiration and part educational unit,  offering visitors guided tours of the facility which houses a number of forms of indoor farming: hydroponics, aeroponics and aquaponics opportunity to try their hand at urban farming. FARM: Shop aims to inspire and educate Londoners, particularly Dalston residents, about how food is grown and to encourage healthy eating. It will also provide an affordable workspace and meeting room hire for start up businesses and help bring creative businesses into the borough which focus on sustainability and the food industry.

Paul Smyth, co-founder of Something & Son, said: “We’re really excited by this project and hope that we can bring a bit of the countryside into the heart of Dalston….FARM:Shop will provide a place for local businesses, community groups and families to come together and learn more about sustainable farming.”

Over the next year the project will grow as much food possible on every inch of the building. The produce will be used in the shop café and sold to local restaurants.  The café will open in mid-December in partnership with a local charity (opening in November).  The meals served will rely mainly on the in -house produce and rely on Church Farm - an eco-agriculture enterprise 30 miles way – for meat and non-perishable vegatables. The project helps to demonstrate the viability of sustainable urban food systems. It will also provide regular volunteer opportunities in growing food as well as a series of fortnightly workshops and events about sustainable food and farming.

Visitors can stop by to explore any weekend from Fri - Sun and volunteers will be running 30 minute tours of FARM:shop at 1pm.

Farmshop is located at:

20 Dalston Lane, Hackney,  London. 

(Just short walk from Dalston Junction Overground Station and Dalston Kingsland. ( MAP)

Contact:

Email: 
someone@somethingandson.com



Call or text to learn more or volunteer:


Paul : +44(0)7736 002006


Andy: +44(0)7855 027876


Sam:  +44(0)7951 123385


www.flickr.com

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BiodiverCity: Improving on PlaNYC

The year 2010 has been named the International Year of Biodiversity by the UN.  However, New York City, one of the world’s largest cities, and one with the name and where-with-all to set a global standard, still lacks a plan for maintaining and ensuring it’s biodiversity.   At a time when we are experiencing growing concerns for the diversity of our diets and its effect on our health, when crop diseases offer threats to our food security and can potentially wipe out entire harvests in our industrial mono-crop fields, and where increasingly heavy urbanization world over threatens to crowd out the natural and therefore threatens our long-term sustainability as a civilization, it seems foolish not to plan for the biodiversity of all large urban areas. While NYC began addressing biodiversity concerns in 2001 with the Freshkills Park Project - with a master plan that supported a richly diverse habitats for wildlife, birds and plant communities and used ecological innovation and creative design to attract new native plant communities – no comprehensive master plan has been made for the city concerning overarching or integrated ways of addressing biodiversity in the future. We are at a time when people are listening and looking for a change and it is important that we push them in the right direction.  

In 2007 Mayor Bloomberg released PlaNYC, a comprehensive, long-term, sustainability agenda aimed at building a stronger and greener New York City by 2030. The plan highlighted 6 major areas of concern - Land, Water, Transport, Energy, Air and Climate Change - around which the Mayor’s office planned to developed targeted actions to increase the sustainability of NYC across the board, and introduced GreeNYC, a project to reduce the cities carbon emissions.  However, nowhere in the current version of PlaNYC was there mention of addressing, maintaining or fostering NYC’s biodiversity.  Biodiversity is important for both plant and animal life to support a healthy ecosystem.  Maintaining a systems diversity can be especially difficult in large urban areas and it is therefore of great importance that any plan outlining how to increase an areas sustainability discuss maintaining and encouraging it’s biodiversity.

Greater New York currently supports more forests, marshes and meadows than any other city in the United States, however these features are quickly diminishing in the face of development and habitat degradation. New Yorkers need to begin thinking more about the nature around them, to recognize the role it plays in making the city and the lives of its residents so great. They need to highlight the important of it’s presence in the as revised PlaNYC, and the responsibility of the revised agenda to protect this resource.  The revision of the agenda, PlaNYC 2.0, is scheduled for release in April 2011.  Community conversations have already been held across the boroughs this October and PlaNYC is currently taking comments from the public.  One innovative resident, Mariellé Anzelona (a botanist and the founder of Drosera (http://www.drosera-x.com/) has also created a website where she is encouraging New Yorkers to take the opportunity to express the reasons the city’s biodiversity is important to them by contributing thoughts, photographs, and videos to her blog, which will eventually be sent to the Mayor’s office.  Click here to contribute your own ideas.

You can read about the current plan and it’s progress here 

You can investigate more about New York City’s biodiversity at the New York Public Libraries Urban Neighbors an online exhibition looking at the historical abundance of wildlife in NYC.

FEEDER: From Highway Feeder Ramp to Feeding Chicago

Amidst growing concerns for diminishing levels of arable land in Chicago, Studio Gang, an innovative team of architects have come up with a model they hope will change residents access to nutritious local foods.  While trendy locavore lifestyles take root and concerns about increasing access to locally grown produce increase, there remains the fact that most large cities still rely heavily on their hinterlands for nutritional support – meaning that feeding dense cities often requires transporting food from farms many miles away.  Studio Gangs project, debuted in 2005 at the Visionary Architecture Chicago Exhibit, would transform the downtown Ohio highway feeder ramp into a farm to feed local populations.  Called FEEDER, the project is designed to cover the currently underutilized and empty highway space with large urban gardens and greenhouses.  The spaces would be open for public use allowing residents to grow their own produce, or enjoy the open green space.

The architects at studio gang highlight the fact that the project “offers a useful and productive gateway architecture that reinvigorates Chicago as an urban habitat” and “magnifies and exposes the important aspect of food production as a necessity for urban living." 

In Chicago, and many other large cities, a lack of arable land within the city’s urban boundary, combined with the growth of the urban and surrounding suburban areas, means that food must be transported over further over longer distances in order to reach residents.  Using traditional farming methods it takes an average of 12.5 acres of land to meet the nutritional needs of one person for a year.  In contrast, producing in greenhouses and hothouses can sustain and feed 36 times the amount of people on the same amount of land.  If fully optimized, Feeder’s pyramid like greenhouses could potentially produce enough food to increase local food security and supply local markets and restaurants in the area.  Because of its central location the distance from food to fork would be minimized, along with the carbon footprint of the foods; buyers would travel a much shorter distance, perhaps by foot, to harvest their fruits and vegetables.

The farm would further serve, not only to filter pollution from the highway air, but also as an educational tool for the general public and students, fostering a renewed understanding of the food system and a stronger connection to the production of food.

This project was originally published/ exhibited at Visionary Chicago Architecture, 2005. Read more about the project here.

To listen to Studio Gangs founder, Jeanne Gang, talk about her work, click here.

Master's Dissertation: Growing Cohesive Communities

This research looked in to the potential for urban farms to aid in strengthening communities.  As many urban gardens and farms currently contribute only minimally to local food security, this research hoped to highlight another way in which institutes of urban agriculture contribute to the sustainability of local areas.  Currently, many urban green spaces in large cities face increasing pressure from various development interests.  This research hopes to illustrate one of many reasons that these spaces should be not only preserved by, but also receive increasing support from local governments.  While this research was carried out in London, many of the characteristics of the study, population, and city make it applicable to other large cities, especially New York.

In recent years the UK government policy has become increasingly concerned with discovering innovative ways to build local community cohesion, with a focus on promoting civic interaction that builds trust, understanding and a sense of place.  This paper brings together the concepts of ‘micro-publics’ (Amin, 2002) and ‘open public arenas’ (Healey, 1996) to suggest types of institutions that can serve this purpose and proposes that urban farms are one such institution.  To date, while other social benefits are acknowledged, the majority of research on urban agriculture (UA) has focused on food production and environmental concerns.  Furthermore, there remains a dearth of research looking specifically at urban farms, to which this paper hopes to contribute. This research uses the case study of Hackney City Farm in Hackney, one of the most diverse boroughs in London, to show how urban farming has the potential to bring diverse groups together and allow cohesion to be formed. Furthermore it shows that, despite concern that building stronger communities can cause exclusion, the cohesion built on urban farms has the potential to be inclusive of the broader community. It closes with recommendations for the increased support of urban farms by local authorities, but allows that further research is needed to increase the robustness of data in this field.

Urban Farms: Fertile Ground for the Growth of  Community Cohesion?

Learning to Farm in 'the' City

Exciting news from NYC, Just Food and Partners have launched Farm School NYC: The New York School of Urban Agriculture.  Read the press release below: 

Just Food and an alliance of local horticultural and food justice organizations are pleased to announce the official launch of Farm School NYC: The New York City School of Urban Agriculture.  The school will offer a unique, community-based certificate program with enrollment beginning in January 2011.  The mission of the school is to provide comprehensive professional training in urban agriculture, while spurring positive local action on issues of food access and social, economic and racial justice.

Community gardens and urban farms throughout the city will serve as outdoor classrooms, and their neighborhoods and gardeners as inspiration for a vibrant, fair local food system that nourishes bodies and minds.  Training programs will be accessible to adults of all educational backgrounds and income levels.  In particular, Farm School NYC targets New York City residents unable to access traditional agricultural education and for whom skills in urban food production can contribute to reduced hunger and diet-related diseases that disproportionately affect low-income city residents.

“For the first time, New Yorkers and city dwellers from all over will have access to agricultural training that directly relates to the unique setting of urban agriculture,” says Karen Washington, a nationally-recognized urban farming pioneer from the Bronx, and a member of the school’s Executive Board. “We grow it so we know it, and we’ve shown that city farming can make a huge difference in the health and nutrition of low-income urban communities.”

Farm School NYC will offer instruction in sustainable agriculture, entrepreneurship and food systems management.  “Our goal for the school is to build and share knowledge within our communities and improve local access to healthy food throughout the city,” said Jacquie Berger, Executive Director of Just Food. “By bringing urban farming skills to a much broader population, Farm School NYC will magnify the impact of urban agriculture on community health in New York City and beyond.”

The school plans to focus on local applicants from NYC and students will be chosen based on life experience, demonstrated desire, life experience, and their intended actions following the program.  To keep the programs accessible to those who need it most, the school will operate on a sliding pay scale, where student fees will be assessed based on ability to pay and need.  Additionally, all students will be required to participate in a work study program, designed to increase the sustainability of the School.  Students will contribute time to administration, registration, class support, fund raising, and other school functions. The work-study program is meant to place all students on equal footing, while additionally providing experience learning and serving in the community and building skills, habits, and attitudes associated with work. 

Learn More at Farm School NYC’s website:

www.justfood.org/farmschoolnyc

For additional information contact:

Molly Culver & Eric Thomann, Interim Co-Directors

212-645-9880 ×224

farmschoolnyc@justfood.org

Photo-Synthesis

Considering that we are faced with a situation where we need to grow new ideas and a new culture, I thought the juxtaposition of these two portraits was relatively poignant.  The first as a thought for where we are headed if we don't change our behaviors.  The second as a reminder that our culture and values are formed and communicated by us.  The way we talk, the language we use to describe the world and our relationship to the environment shapes our actions.  The idea of aGROWculture is that we need to create a new way of thinking, to grow a new culture that allows us to live more sustainably.  All this starts with building new discourses, with talking about new things and ideas and talking about old ideas differently.

Photo credit to Cheng - Chang Wu (top) and Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir (bottom), whose work is a part of an the group Artists Wanted's NYC based show Self: Expressed (at Open House Gallery).  Click here to see a brief video of the making of Wu's portrait.

Calling Dr. Green Thumb

The creation of public spaces is, in essence, the creation of public and societal values, in that the places we bring into being teach us how to act and live, and show what we, as a society, should respect, admire and care about.  "Farmacy" an imaginative student project by Samantha Lee (from Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos's Verticle studio), embodies the rebirth and growth of our current societal focus on nature as nurture.

Lee has designed an urban farm on Regent's Canal in King's Cross London which would combine the currently existing canal walkway and brick walls with a new waterwheel based factory.  The site is meant to be both a farm and pharmacy and would grow, process and sell medicinal herbs for curing the basic ailments of Britons and big city dwellers alike - depression, stress and the common cold to be fought by Mother Nature's own antidotes.  A visual blending of 'natural' and built environment, the herbs would grow in nets along the existing brick wall of the canal, harkening back to Babylon's famed hanging gardens.  Following the sustainable mantra of keeping it local, the prototype (and one would image any future real life models) would focus on growing only indiginous flora.  Visitors would be able to enjoy both visual and olfactory healing on walks through the blended farm-factory and purchase remedies from on-site pharmacists to take home.

Lee's project invites us to view urban greenspaces as places for healing ourselves and recovering from our stressful city lives.  Blending the ideals of useable civic infrastructure and the necessity of green city space the designs embody new ideas about the physical form that urban space can take.    

Want more? Try these sites:

The Design Blog

Pruned

Inhabitat