Fueled by cherry tomatoes and lemonade, three-dozen bikers (this blogger included) hit the pavement last Saturday afternoon for a seven-mile tour of seven great community gardens in East Baltimore. We started the ride at the 22-year old Duncan Street Miracle Garden, a one-acre fruit and vegetable haven. Along the ride I was searching for secretes [...]

I wanted to post an impact study that I performed this year of the Urban Agriculture Institutes that I used to run in Richmond, Calif.  This paper represents the first step in a program evaluation of Urban Tilth’s Urban Agriculture Institutes.  While this study had an intervention/control cross sectional design, with no baseline data it [...]

As I intend to dedicate the better part of my career to research, I am often confronted with the fear that even the highest quality data can end up out in the ether of peer-reviewed publications that never make their intended splash, seen by a limited few and impacting even fewer. Last Friday I attended [...]

Wow:  The state of Maryland has issued its highest ever occupational safety and health fine, to a poultry plant run by Allen Family Foods: $1.03 million.  I wanted to blog about it both because I think it is important that those working on food systems and public health issues keep in mind not only the [...]

On Saturday, June 5th, DC Prep Academy Charter School and Rails to Trails Conservancy teamed up to add another urban/school garden into the growing rolls of urban agriculture taking place around the country. The 1000 square foot garden set in Northeast D.C.’s Edgewood community will combine an edible forest of fruit trees, perennial vegetables, herbs, [...]

On Tuesday, Animal Welfare Approved and the Pew Environment Group presented a public panel discussion about raising pasture-based animals, and reclaiming these sustainable farming systems as the source of our meat and dairy.  The star-studded panel included Nicolette Hahn Niman, attorney and author of Righteous Porkchop, Carole Morison, former Purdue chicken farmer turned whistleblower and [...]

Over a hundred Baltimore residents gathered on Saturday night for the 4th edition of an innovative fundraising event called STEW. STEW is a joint project of Baltimore Development Cooperative and Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, where attendees pay $10/person for the opportunity to share a multi-course locavore meal and listen to the financial needs of three [...]

On Friday, April 12th, Food Access Solutions: Urban Agriculture, Local Food, & Community Development, a panel discussion between leaders in the food movement on a regional level and leaders on the local level took place in southeast Washington D.C. in Anacostia. My interest in Urban Agriculture comes from my desire to integrate schools and [...]

On Friday, March 26th  the DC Council listened to testimony from various concerned citizens and experts from the community on the DC Healthy Schools Act.  This bill represents a wonderful first step in improving the health of DC’s children and the role that schools play in the sustainability of our communities.   While the bill’s main [...]

As a disclaimer, I used to be a high school teacher in Richmond, Calif in the exact urban schools of which Caitlin Flanagan writes about.
This post is in response to the recently published article in the Atlantic magazine by Caitlin Flanagan titled, “Cultivating Failure.”
Ms. Flanagan makes the argument that the school garden movement building in [...]