City Grown
How urban farming is feeding and bonding communities
Rapid urbanization is resulting in increasingly limited space in our cities with less room and more demand for fresh quality produce. Today, food entrepreneurs around the world are exploring new ways of cultivating life in our urban homesteads, engaging the community to turn abandoned spaces and waste into food sources.
In the heart of Singapore, Comcrop is a commercially oriented rooftop urban farm that deploys vertical farming and a system of aquaponics completely natural and chemical free. “We wanted to see if it was possible to take over a marginalized urban space and create a system of sustainable farming that could bond together a community. A lot of our volunteers take away not just the concept of urban farming, but also the values imprinted in that concept, such as you can’t rush something when you grow organically and how farms are important in sustaining the life of a city,” said co-founder Keith Loh.
Oranjezicht City Farm is a project in Cape Town, South Africa. In a year and half, the project transformed a piece of no man’s land into a place where members of the community bring kitchen waste as compost, buy fresh produce, pick their own vegetables for dinner, and get to know each other. “All sorts of people from little kids to folks in their nineties come and say ‘can I help you?’” said co-founder Mario Graziani.
Also Explore: Growing Underground (A farm reconstructed 100 feet under a metro station in London)
Source: Monocle Film (July 25, 2014)