Organic farming, also known as ecological farming or biological farming, is an agricultural system that uses fertilizers of organic origin such as compost manure, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation and companion planting. It originated early in the 20th century in reaction to rapidly changing farming practices. Certified organic agriculture accounts for 70 million hectares globally, with over half of that total in Australia. Biological pest control, mixed cropping, and the fostering of insect predators are encouraged. Organic standards are designed to allow the use of naturally-occurring substances while prohibiting or strictly limiting synthetic substances. For instance, naturally-occurring pesticides such as pyrethrin are permitted, while synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are generally prohibited. Synthetic substances that are allowed include, for example, copper sulfate, elemental sulfur, and veterinary drugs. Genetically modified organisms, nanomaterials, human sewage sludge, plant growth regulators, hormones, and antibiotic use in livestock husbandry are prohibited. Organic farming advocates claim advantages in sustainability, openness, self-sufficiency, autonomy and independence, health, food security, and food safety.
Community-supported agriculture or cropsharing is a system that connects producers and consumers within the food system closer by allowing the consumer to subscribe to the harvest of a certain farm or group of farms. It is an alternative socioeconomic model of agriculture and food distribution that allows the producer and consumer to share the risks of farming. The model is a subcategory of civic agriculture that has an overarching goal of strengthening a sense of community through local markets.
Urban agriculture refers to various practices of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in urban areas. The term also applies to the area activities of animal husbandry, aquaculture, beekeeping, and horticulture in an urban context. Urban agriculture is distinguished from peri-urban agriculture, which takes place in rural areas at the edge of suburbs.
A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under 0.40 hectares to some hectares, or sometimes in greenhouses, distinguishes it from other types of farming. A market garden is sometimes called a truck farm in the USA.
A hobby farm is a smallholding or small farm that is maintained without expectation of being a primary source of income. Some are held simply to bring homeowners closer to nature, to provide recreational land for horses, or as working farms for secondary income.
Conservation development, also known as conservation design, is a controlled-growth land use development that adopts the principle for allowing limited sustainable development while protecting the area's natural environmental features in perpetuity, including preserving open space landscape and vista, protecting farmland or natural habitats for wildlife, and maintaining the character of rural communities. A conservation development is usually defined as a project that dedicates a minimum of 50 percent of the total development parcel as open space. The management and ownership of the land are often formed by the partnership between private land owners, land-use conservation organizations and local government. It is a growing trend in many parts of the country, particularly in the Western United States. In the Eastern United States, conservation design has been promoted by some state and local governments as a technique to help preserve water quality.
Urban horticulture is the science and study of the growing plants in an urban environment. It focuses on the functional use of horticulture so as to maintain and improve the surrounding urban area. Urban horticulture has seen an increase in attention with the global trend of urbanization and works to study the harvest, aesthetic, architectural, recreational and psychological purposes and effects of plants in urban environments.
Farmland preservation is a joint effort by non-governmental organizations and local governments to set aside and protect examples of a region's farmland for the use, education, and enjoyment of future generations. They are operated mostly at state and local levels by government agencies or private entities such as land trusts and are designed to limit conversion of agricultural land to other uses that otherwise might have been more financially attractive to the land owner. Through different government programs and policy enactments farmers are able to preserve their land for growing crops and raising livestock. Every state provides tax relief through differential (preferential) assessment. Easements are a popular approach and allow the farms to remain operational. Less common approaches include establishing agricultural districts, using zoning to protect agricultural land, purchasing development rights, and transferable development rights. It is often a part of regional planning and national historic preservation. Farmland preservation efforts have been taking place across the United States, such as in Virginia, Minnesota, Maryland, Florida, and Connecticut.
Michael Ableman is an American-Canadian author, organic farmer, educator, and advocate for sustainable agriculture. Michael has been farming organically since the early 1970s and is considered one of the pioneers of the organic farming and urban agriculture movements. He is a frequent lecturer to audiences all over the world and the winner of numerous awards for his work. Ableman is the author of four trade published books: From the Good Earth: A celebration of growing food around the world; On Good Land: The autobiography of an urban farm; Fields Of Plenty; A farmer's journey in search of real food and the people who grow it, and most recently Street Farm; Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier. Michael Ableman is the founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens in Goleta, California where he farmed for 20 years; co-founder and director of Sole Food Street Farms and the charity Cultivate Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia; and founder and director of the Center for Arts, Ecology and Agriculture based at his family home and farm on Salt Spring Island.
Emma Prusch Farm Park is a 43.5 acre park in East San Jose, California. Donated by Emma Prusch to the City of San Jose in 1962 to use to demonstrate the valley's agricultural past, it includes a 4-H barn, community gardens, a rare-fruit orchard, demonstration gardens, picnic areas, and expanses of lawn. The park is host to an annual Harvest Festival and is operated cooperatively by the San Jose Parks and Recreation Department and the non-profit Emma Prusch Farm Park Foundation.
Agricultural zoning is a land management tool that refers to local zoning designations made by local jurisdictions that are intended to protect farmland and farming activities from incompatible land uses. Agricultural zoning can specify many factors, such as the uses allowed, minimum lot size, the number of nonfarm dwellings allowed, or the size of a buffer separating farm and nonfarm properties. Some jurisdictions further subdivide agricultural zones to distinguish industrial farming from uses like rural residence farms and retirement farms on large lots.
The Agricultural Reserve is a designated land use zone in Montgomery County, Maryland. The 93,000 acres (380 km2) zone was created in 1980 by the Montgomery County Council to preserve farm land and rural space in the northwestern part of the county. The farmland protection program has been characterized as "the most famous, most studied and most emulated" program of its kind in the United States.
Preservation development is a model of real-estate development that addresses farmland preservation. It shares many attributes with conservation development, with the addition of strategies for maintaining and operating productive agriculture and silviculture, often in perpetuity. A preservation development is a planned community that allows limited, carefully designed development on a working farm, while placing the majority of productive land under a system of easements and community governance to ensure a continuity of farming and environmental stewardship.
Community gardens in the United States benefit both gardeners and society at large. Community gardens provide fresh produce to gardeners and their friends and neighbors. They provide a place of connection to nature and to other people. In a wider sense, community gardens provide green space, a habitat for insects and animals, sites for gardening education, and beautification of the local area. Community gardens provide access to land to those who otherwise could not have a garden, such as apartment-dwellers, the elderly, and the homeless. Many gardens resemble European allotment gardens, with plots or boxes where individuals and families can grow vegetables and flowers, including a number which began as victory gardens during World War II. Other gardens are worked as community farms with no individual plots at all, similar to urban farms.
Occupy the Farm is an ongoing social movement that started with the 2012 occupation of the Gill Tract in Albany, California, in protest of planned commercial development of public land and in support of preserving the land for the creation of an open center for urban agroecology and food sovereignty.
The Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming, also known as Glynwood, is a nonprofit organization in Cold Spring, New York. Its mission is to help save farming in the Northeast, particularly the Hudson Valley, by strengthening farm communities and regional food systems. Located in the Hudson Valley, the Glynwood Center strives to get small- and mid-sized farmers to thrive, "on the land and in the marketplace".
Scenic Hudson is a non-profit environmental organization in New York that was founded in 1963 to oppose a hydro-electric power project in New York.
Urban agriculture in West Oakland involves the implementation of Urban agriculture in West Oakland, California.
The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) is an urban, community-oriented, predominantly black, grassroots food justice group. The organization was initiated by a communal desire to start an organic garden collective, and has grown from its founding in 2006 with over 50 Detroit residents as members. In an effort to combat food insecurity and increase food sovereignty, DBCFSN established a community accessible food farm in 2008, known as D-Town Farm, which grows over 30 types of fruits and vegetables on seven acres of land.
Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around urban areas. It is the growing of fresh produce within the city for individual, communal, or commercial purposes in cities in both developed and developing countries.
