Sustainable Bristol

Food

A food culture which values local, sustainably produced and artisan foods, celebrates the diversity of regional foods and benefits the local community, environment and economy.

Dig Bristol submits city food plans

by Simon Billing

20 August 2010

The Bristol Food Network’s Dig Bristol project has been submitted  to the  lottery local food fund. The proposal really creates a manageable initial project out of the overall Sustainable Food strategy for Bristol.

Dig Bristol will enable small scale community food groups around Bristol to work together to increase the amount of land and numbers of people involved in growing food across the city.

Over three years, Dig Bristol will:

• Double the scale of the community food sector in Bristol from 40 groups to 80, bringing in an additional 1.5 hectares of land into new food production, and match community groups to unused land.

• Enable existing groups to provide gardening mentors who will deliver 120 training sessions to build the capacity of new groups and skill up an additional 240 confident mentor gardeners.

• Establish new food gardening hubs around the city to encourage and mentor new groups.

• Raise awareness through high-profile events such as an annual Food Trail, which will be established as a key regional event, celebrating local food from ‘Spade to Plate’, featuring 40 community food garden venues and 2000 visitors.

• Enable the informal community of local food projects to develop into a strong and vibrant Bristol Food Network, which will be well known, and valued for its role in making Bristol a greener and more food-resilient city; and work as an intermediary between the statutory and community level partners.

This project is based on over 2 years of extensive consultation led by Bristol Food Network volunteers, which has stimulated new interest and support from Bristol City Council and NHS Bristol. The project builds a significant partnership across the city, responds to the specific needs of the community food growing sector and enables community projects to play their own crucial role in engaging people from the most deprived areas of the city in food growing.

Dig Bristol will fund a coordinator; new communications, including establishing an annual Food Trail, a website and digital resources; networking opportunities; training sessions and mentor gardeners to support community growing hubs.

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Taking city food to new heights

by Amy Slack

13 May 2010

Increasing awareness of ‘food miles’ and consciousness about the environmental impact of modern food systems over the last few years has rapidly propelled interest in, and demand for, local food. But what does this mean for cities?

How can more food be produced locally in increasingly urban societies where land is a scarce commodity and at a premium?

Whilst traditional forms of urban agriculture have their place; there is increasing focus on how food production can be incorporated into the cityscape using vertical surfaces.

High tech solutions like the proposed Vertically Integrated Greenhouses challenge the vision of the future of our urban environment with hydroponic food growing systems being incorporated into the new construction methods of high rise buildings.

Here, not only can fresh food be produced but the vegetation can also act as a natural heating and cooling system for the building. Whilst such ideas may seem a little ‘space age’, the technology to see them become reality already exists. The Verticrop products produced by Valcent Products Inc. already utilise hydroponic methods on a conveyor belt system that could be adapted for use in integrated building designs.

The idea of vertical farming is now influencing architectural design with proposals challenging the traditional concepts of ‘city farms’. Ideas such as those proposed by Andrew Kranis see whole buildings designated for urban food production with incorporated hi tech systems and renewable energy generation. Is this how cities will feed themselves in the years to come and is this the way we picture the farm of the future?

Whilst such ideas spark debate over animal welfare, sustainable farming methods, and logistics of building design to cater for such systems, moving food production away from current land based monoculture practices and closer to the areas of demand will arguably help reduce the environmental impact of agriculture. This image of the future may also allow land to replenish and cater for nature conservation and recreation.

There is no doubt that in order to mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change and peak oil, more food will have to be produced on a local scale. With ever increasing and expanding urban environments this will inevitably mean producing more food within the city.

This will challenge how we use and design our urban environments and presents real opportunities for inspirational innovation – as the saying goes – ‘the only limitation is our imagination’ – how do you imagine a city designed around food?

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Window farms for the West

by Amy Slack

26 April 2010

Bristol windows could become burgeoning farms if a pioneering window farm art project in New York City takes off here too.

It all started with a creative idea by two artists in New York and a group of fifteen ordinary people growing food in their own apartments, replacing their blinds with natural beauty and a source of fresh nutrients for their families.

Window farms are hydroponic, vertical gardens which started through a residency at Eyebeam art and technology by Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray, who used crowd sourcing research to develop the systems and options for future citizen window farmers worldwide.

And the artists’ hope is that this will lead to a viral spreading of both window farms and participation in their ongoing evolution online is coming true.  Through the communication efforts of Britta and Rebecca, window farms have since spread across the world, with examples on the website showcasing new designs or set ups from Beijing, Israel and Finland.

Each new person involved in the project makes it easier for the next window farmer to grow some of his or her own food, as each person comes up with new ideas for improvements.

Britta and Rebecca set up a community social network at our.windowfarms.orgwhere anyone can register and contribute their experience and knowledge of setting up their own window farm. Participants have also contributed case studies of further urban agriculture innovation; from aquaponics (hydroponics and fish) through to plant growing modules for pavements.

In Bristol, experiments with window farm hydroponics are also underway. Amy Slack has just completed a Masters research project investigating sources of nutrient supply for a simple window farm set ups.

Elsewhere in the South West, Paignton zoo in Devon have been sourcing salads for their primates from Verticrop; a high density vertical growing system, housed in a polytunnel. This system is suitable for growing a wide variety of vegetables, herbs and fruits. The system is now open for public viewing. The crops are grown in a vertical plane, in specially designed trays that rotate on a closed loop conveyor. As the trays rotate, they pass through a feeding station that provides both water and nutrients.

Valcent,who developed the Verticrop solution, have put together this video which shows just how it works:

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Dig Bristol: Engaging the city on a food journey

by Simon Billing

17 April 2010

Bristol has an ambition and strategy to create a world leading food gardening city. The Bristol Food Network provides a structure for all the city groups who contributed to the strategy to work together to engage more people in producing food sustainably on land in and around the Bristol city region.

Urban food growing is a first step in achieving a more resilient city food system, and a good way to raise awareness among city people about sustainable food from spade to plate.

The Dig Bristol strategy also aims to align community food groups with other food interests across the city by buying into the common strategy.  The community food groups will act as hubs for re-skilling in food gardening and developing engaging communications to get more people and more land under food production.  Through this initiative, more people will be engaged in growing fruit, vegetables, nuts and herbs in private gardens, school, hospital and church grounds; public land; regenerated waste ground; parks, allotments and small holdings.

Forum for the Future, one of the groups who have contributed to the development of the Sustainable  Food Strategy, is preparing the project on behalf of the Bristol Food Network.  For more details, please contact simonbilling@forumforthefuture.org

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