Agriculture & Food

Josh O'Conner is a Senior Editor for the Urban Times an online magazine. He's a planner by trade and an advocate for community-oriented urbanism. When he's off the clock, Josh STILL likes urban planning. But he also fills his time with small-scale agriculture, ecology, and sociology. He does all that with his wife and daughters in...[read more]

Global climate change is a crisis, but it can also be an opportunity for new and innovative ideas, new opportunities to build sustainable economies, and new opportunities to build sustainable societies.[read more]

bicycle innovation

Bicitec is a social venture that aims to ease labor-intensive jobs and provide profits for people from rural areas, by turning old bikes and recycled machine parts into new machines and selling them for an accessible price.[read more]

veggie swap

Neal Gorenflo aims to bring the "sharing economy" into the mainstream. This model — also known as "collaborative consumption" — promotes efficient use of resources, environmental care and strong communities.[read more]

food-rescue program

An awful lot of food – about 40% from farm to table – gets wasted in the US. Much of that happens closer to the table/consumer end of the spectrum, and a sizable portion of that food that gets thrown away is perfectly edible.[read more]

sustainable future

Every day, we are presented with a range of "sustainable" products and activities—but with so much labeled as "sustainable", is it time to abandon the concept altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure sustainability?[read more]

guerrilla garden

In every bio-region one of the most urgent tasks is to rebuild the community of naturalists, so radically depleted in recent years, as young people have spent less time in nature.[read more]

urban farming

With the continuing onset of urbanization, urban poverty continues to grow and so does the importance of food security. The subsequent response to this has been the emergence of community gardening and locally produced foods.[read more]

frequency of "sustainable"

Sustainability is an emergent concept in our modern times. One would surmise that the increasing popularity of this word corresponds to our expanding understanding of how human actions can substantially impact our environments.[read more]

towns and rural landscapes

Successful rural landscapes – working farms and forests, and natural areas that last – are dependent on successful town centers that attract investment, residents and businesses that might otherwise take the form of suburban sprawl.[read more]

aquaponics

 

Such systems, if properly managed, can produce very high yields relative to conventional farming – especially precious when land is limited. They must have a role in local production within cities, too.[read more]

rodents of unusual size

Brought to the state from their native Argentina in the 1930s for their fur, nutria are literally “rodents of unusual size” that are also playing a role in destroying Louisiana's coastal wetlands.[read more]