Related: An Overview and history of Rooftop Gardening
Container Gardening
Will Allen is a pioneer in the urban farming movement and the founder of
Growing Power. His programs transform the lives of low-income families by providing
high-quality jobs and healthy affordable foods for all residents in the community.
Allen has a simple but life-changing goal: to grow food, to grow minds, and
to grow community. By synthesizing a variety of low cost farming technologies,
Growing Power produces vast amounts of food year-round on two acres of land
in the inner-city of Milwaukee. Allen considers quality food to be a civil rights
issue and has been determined to challenge the disparities in food access and
quality in our country and across the world. Growing Power has farm sites nationwide
and leads workshops to teach its methods to people around the world.
Organic Garden Blog is
a creative Journey: sharing thoughts, ideals, and valuable information for health
and wellbeing.
"In the early 1990's a strong urban agriculture was born in which thousands
of people produce food using organic methods that help supply basic foodstuffs
to urban families," said Dr. Funes. "The effectiveness of organic techniques
in urban gardening has been clearly demonstrated, and it is here that we are
possibly closest to the ideal of sustainable agriculture, due in part to the
prohibition of the use of chemicals because of the proximity to dense human
populations."
This is a story of resistance against all odds, of Cuba's remarkable recovery
from a food crisis brought on by the collapse of trade relations with the former
socialist bloc and the tightening of the U.S. embargo. Unable to import either
food or the farm chemicals and machines needed to grow it via conventional agriculture,
Cuba turned inward toward self-reliance. Sustainable agriculture, organic farming,
urban gardens, smaller farms,
animal
traction and biological pest control are part of the successful paradigm shift
underway in the Cuban countryside. In this book Cuban authors offer details-for
the first time in English-of these remarkable achievements, which may serve
as guideposts toward healthier, more environmentally friendly and self-reliant
farming in countries both North and South.
Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance: Transforming Food Production in Cuba
includes the contribution of thirty-two of Cuba's leading agriculture researchers,
plus three American experts on Cuba agriculture, including Dr. Peter Rosset,
the co-director of Food First. It also includes a prologue by Professor Miguel
Altieri of the University of California at Berkeley, and an epilog by Professor
Richard Levins of Harvard University.
"To understand Cuban agricultural development we must first look at the richness
of detail in this volume. Then we have to step back and squint to capture the
truly novel pathway of development that Cuba is pioneering. And then once again
we have to focus in on the details, and glimpse the processes through which
Cuba is creating something truly new and hopeful for all of humanity." -Professor
Richard Levins, Harvard University School of Public Health
Solar Cookers International
Solar Cookers International assists communities to use the power of the sun
to cook food and pasteurize water for the benefit of people and environments.
Many poverty-stricken families worldwide spend 25% or more of their income on
cooking fuel. Sunlight — solar cooker "fuel" — is free and abundant. Money saved
can be used for food, education, health care, etc.
Solar cooking is the simplest, safest, most convenient way to cook food without
consuming fuels or heating up the kitchen. Many people choose to solar cook
for these reasons. But for hundreds of millions of people around the world who
cook over fires fueled by wood or dung, and who walk for miles to collect wood
or spend much of their meager incomes on fuel, solar cooking is more than a
choice — it is a blessing. For millions of people who lack access to safe drinking
water and become sick or die each year from preventable waterborne illnesses,
solar water pasteurization is a life-saving skill. There are numerous reasons
to cook the natural way — with the sun.
Thirty thousand families in eastern Africa have added solar cookers to their kitchens,
freeing women from fuel gathering and fire attending. Projects are
typically 6-8 years from start to local sustainability through local businesses.
Widespread public awareness, quality consumer education and local adaptation
and production of attractive, affordable and accessible cooker supplies are
essential project components.
There are hundreds of millions of people around the world that could benefit
greatly from solar cooking and solar water pasteurization skills. Perhaps a
few million people already do.
Solar Cookers International
team of global volunteers — along with a small, dedicated staff — is working
diligently to hasten the spread of vital solar cooking technologies
Soil And Health Library
Health begins in the soil; Healing begins with hygiene; Liberty begins with
freedom. This is a free public library offering a tightly focused collection
of books on holistic agriculture, holistic health, self-sufficient living, and
personal development. Most of the titles in this library are out of print. Some
can be quite hard to find; many of these books are old enough to be public domain
materials. Yet all are still of great relevance. Grasped as an inter-related
whole these books constitute a self-guided course of study or curriculum that
connects agricultural methods to the consequent health of animals and humans,
shows how to prevent and heal disease and increase longevity. There are also
smaller collections about homestead-based lifestyles and about why globalized
society is resistant to changing its food and health systems.
Composting With Red Wiggler Worms
Recycling the organic waste of a household into compost allows us to return
badly needed organic matter to the soil. In this way, we participate in nature's
cycle, and cut down on garbage going into burgeoning landfills. Worm composting
is a method for recycling food waste into a rich, dark, earth-smelling soil
conditioner. The great advantage of worm composting is that this can be done
indoors and outdoors, thus allowing year round composting.
Sewage Sludge...A Dangerous Fertilizer
What's in Sludge?
According to researchers at Cornell University and a report of the American
Society of Civil Engineers, the following substances are typically found in
sludge:
- Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
- Chlorinated pesticides—DDT, dieldrin, aldrin, endrin, chlordane, heptachlor,
lindane, mirex, kepone, 2,4,5-T, 2,4-D.
- Chlorinated compounds--dioxin (TCDD) dichlorobenzene, trichlorobenzene,
tetrachlorobenzene, chloroaniline, dichloroaniline, dichloronaphthalene,
tetrachloronaphthalene, trichlorophenol, pentachlorophenol, chlorobiphenyl.
- Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons—chrysene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(k)fluoranthene,
benzo(a) pyrene, perylene, dibenzo(a,j)anthracene, indo(1,2,3,c,d) pryene.
- Heavy metals—antimony, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury,
nickel, selenium, thorium, uranium, vanadium and zinc.
- Bacteria, viruses, protozoa, parasitic worms, fungi.
- Miscellaneous—flame retardants (asbestos), petroleum products, industrial
solvents, iron, gold, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium
Good Nutrition must include Sufficient Minerals
Laboratory test prove that the fruits, the vegetables, the grains, the eggs
and even the milk and the meats of today are not what they were a few generations
ago. (Which doubtless explains why our forefathers thrived on a selection
of foods that would starve us!) No man of today can eat enough fruits and
vegetables to supply his system with the mineral salts he requires for perfect
health, because his stomach isn’t big enough to hold them! And we are running
to big stomachs.
No longer does a balanced and fully nourishing diet consist merely of
so many calories of certain vitamins or a fixed proportion of starches,
proteins, and carbohydrates. We now know that it must contain, in addition,
something like a score of mineral salts.
It is bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99 percent
of the American people are deficient in these minerals, and that a marked
deficiency in any one of the more important minerals actually results in
disease. Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack of one or another
element, however microscopic the body requirement may be, and we sicken,
suffer, shorten our lives.
This discovery is one of the latest and most important contributions
of science to the problem of human health.
“Bear in mind,” says Dr. Northen, “that minerals are vital to human metabolism
and health—and that no plant or animal can appropriate to itself any mineral
which is not present in the soil upon which it feeds.
“We know that vitamins are complex chemical substances which are indispensable
to nutrition, and that each of them is of importance fro the normal function
of some special structure in the body. Disorder and disease result from
any vitamin deficiency.
“It is not commonly realized, however, that vitamins control the body’s
appropriation of minerals, and in the absence of minerals they have no function
to perform. Lacking vitamins, the system can make some use of minerals,
but lacking minerals, vitamins are useless.
“The truth is that our foods vary enormously in value, and some of them
aren’t worth eating, as food.
“Some of our lands, even in a virgin state, never were well balanced
in mineral content, and unhappily for us, we have been systematically robbing
the poor soils and the good soils alike of the very substances most necessary
to health, growth, long life, and resistance to disease.”
We know that rats, guinea pigs, and other animals can be fed into a diseased
condition and out again by controlling only the minerals in their food.
Experiment
A 10-year test with rats proved that by withholding calcium they can
be bred down to a third the size of those fed with an adequate amount of
that mineral. Their intelligence, too, can be controlled by mineral feeding
as readily as can their size, their bony structure, and their general health.
Place a number of these little animals inside a maze after starving some
of them in a certain mineral element. The starved ones will be unable to
find their way out, whereas the others will have little or no difficulty
in getting out. Their dispositions can be altered by mineral feeding. They
can be made quarrelsome and belligerent; they can even be turned into cannibals
and be made to devour each other.
A cage of normal rats will live in amity. Restrict their calcium, and
they will become irritable and draw apart from one another. Then they will
begin to fight. Restore their calcium balance and they will grow friendlier;
in time they will begin to sleep in a pile as before.
Many backward children are “stupid” merely because they are deficient
in magnesia. We punish them for our failure to feed them properly.
Certainly our physical well-being is more directly dependent upon the
mineral we take into our systems than upon calories or vitamins or upon
the precise proportions of starch, protein, or carbohydrates we consume.
It is now agreed that at least 16 mineral elements are indispensable
for normal nutrition, and several more are always found in small amounts
of the body, although their precise physiological role has not been determined.
Of the 11 indispensable salts, calcium, phosphorus, and iron are perhaps
the most important.
Here’s one specific example: The soil around a certain Midwest city is
poor in calcium. Three hundred children of this community were examined
and nearly 90 percent had bad teeth, 69 percent showed affections of the
nose and throat, swollen glands, enlarged or diseased tonsil. More than
one-third had defective vision, round shoulders, bow legs, and anemia.
So it goes, down through the list each mineral element playing a definite
role in nutrition. A characteristic set of symptoms, just as specific as
any vitamin-deficiency disease, follows a deficiency in any one of them.
It is alarming, therefore, to face the fact that we are starving for these
precious, health-giving substances.
The minerals in fruits and vegetables are colloidal; i.e., they are in
a state of such extremely fine suspension that they can be assimilated by
the human system.
Sick soils mean sick plants, sick animals, and sick people. Physical,
mental, and moral fitness depends largely upon an ample supply and a proper
proportion of the minerals in our foods. Nerve function, nerve stability,
nerve cell-building likewise depends thereon.
[Dr. Northen say,] “Soils seriously deficient in minerals cannot produce
plant life competent to maintain our needs, and with the continuous cropping
and shipping away of those concentrates, the condition becomes worse.
“A famous nutrition authority recently said, ‘One sure way to end the
American people’s susceptibility to infection is to supply through food
a balance ration of iron, copper, and other metals. An organism supplied
with a diet adequate to, or preferable in excess of, all mineral requirements
may so utilize these elements as to produce immunity from infection quite
beyond anything we are able to produce artificially by our present method
of immunization. You can’t make up the deficiency by using patent medicine.