growing power

Urban Agriculture Minneapolis Needs Your Voice

If you live in Minneapolis, and are a local food junkie, you might have heard some rumblings about the Urban Agriculture Zoning Text Amendments that are coming before the City Council's Zoning and Planning Comittee on March 1. This process, prompted by Homegrown Minneapolis way back in 2008, has been a long time coming in terms of making urban agriculture a legal use of land in the City of Minneapolis. After a two-year process in which stakeholders, urban farmers, city officials, and neighborhood residents have agonized over striking the right balance between the entrepreneurial urban farmers’ needs and neighbors’ peace of mind, these amendments to the Minneapolis zoning code are in danger of being severely weakened to the point of undoing all of the careful work by city planners, citizen advisory committees and urban farmers.

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January's Simple Good and Tasty Book Club Pick: Farmer Jane by Temra Costa

Our first book club first pick of 2011, Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat, tells the stories of women working towards eating and farming sustainably. Author Temra Costa writes about the relationships, nurturing, and inventiveness that women bring into the “delicious revolution” that is happening in our food world. Join us on January 27 at Mississippi Market Natural Foods Co-op from 7:00 - 9:00 pm or in Bemidji (near Harmony Co-op) from 5:30 - 7:30 pm to dig into these stories.

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Sweet Water Organics, Aquaponics, and Milwaukee: the Perfect Combination

What right does Milwaukee have to be at the forefront of aquaponics, an intensive urban agriculture hybrid of hydroponics and fish cultivation? The city doesn't have an especially green reputation. It's certainly not a Boulder, San Francisco, or Twin Cities. It's not even a Madison, which is just ninety miles west on I-94.

Milwaukee isn't supposed to be a place where terms like “sustainability” or “green” are thrown around. It’s supposed to be a blue-collar city with nicknames like “the Cream City” (for its pale bricks made from indigenous clay) or “the Brew City” (for the long history of beer-making). Milwaukee should make big, loud motorcycles and big, loud power tools, right?

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Living with Livestock, Part One: Food In, Poop (or is it Compost?) Out

When I walked into my first of a series of four livestock workshops at the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus, I wasn’t sure what to expect of the curriculum, but I was pretty sure what to expect of the students: a bunch of new-age, backyard chicken growers, to be sure.

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My Local Food All Star Team

As a kid, I spent countless hours, days, weeks, months - heck, even years - thinking of nothing but baseball. With 2 brothers and 3 step-brothers in my family hanging around each summer, it was easy to get a game going any time, and each night was spent in front of the TV, watching our beloved Yankees (I'm from New York) attempt to destroy the competition. My brothers and I developed special cheers for Don Mattingly, Ricky Henderson, Dave Righetti, and the rest of the team. When I moved to Minnesota, I helped my family adjust to the idea by telling them that Dave Winfield was born in St. Paul.

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Will Allen and Growing Power

growingpowerIf you're a Midwesterner who follows urban farming (and you know you are), then you're likely to know all about Milwaukee, Wisconsin's 2008 MacArthur Fellow - and recent NRDC "Growing Green Award" winner - Will Allen.

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The Natural Resources Defense Council Loves Local Food

nrdc1 The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a 1.2 million member environmental action organization (which The New York Times has called "One of the nation's most powerful environmental groups"), has an exceptionally broad, ambitious mission statement:

The Natural Resources Defense Council's purpose is to safeguard the Earth: its people, its plants and animals and the natural systems on which all life depends.

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IATP Event Tonight: A New Urban Strategy for Health and Wealth

Quick post, with thanks to Tracy from the Birchwood. growingpower The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) is hosting an event about local food and farming in Minneapolis tonight. Here's the information from their website: Be part of an important conversation about urban agriculture, food policy, city planning and food access. Learn from national experts about how urban food systems can improve health, strengthen communities and grow local economies. Speakers:

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