Growing friends by growing and sharing garden produce

Most urban agriculture literature focus on addressing access to healthy and affordable food and environmental issues via managing the urban farming chain which consists of production, processing, marketing, distribution and consumption. This paper focuses on a less acknowledged and documented aspect of individual urban farming: growing and sharing garden produce for recreation, well-being and friend making. This paper summarizes the experience of individual backyard farming and sharing as a way to interact with nature and people and explores ways to improve this experience, especially with the assistance of Information Communication Technology.

A treatise on the insects most prevalent on fruit trees, and garden produce, giving an account of the different states they pass through, the depredations they commit, and recipes for their destruction, including the recipes of various authors, with remarks on their utility; also, a few hints on the causes and treatment of mildrew and canker on fruit trees and cucumbers, &c. &c. &c.

Mode of access: Internet.

Hábitos alimenticios en alumnos y trabajadores de la Universidad Miguel Hernández

Objetivo: Describir los hábitos alimenticios de una comunidad universitaria. Material y métodos: Se llevó a cabo un estudio descriptivo transversal. El instrumento utilizado fue un cuestionario de frecuencias de consumo, administrado por entrevista personal a una muestra accidental de 147 personas. Constaba de cuatro secciones: 1) número de comidas y lugar donde se realizan, 2) patrones de consumo de los distintos grupos de alimentos, 3) modos de preparación de los alimentos, 4) datos de identificación y demográficos. Resultados: En comparación con el patrón de Vivanco y Palacios, nuestra muestra se caracteriza por: alto consumo de carnes (4 veces/semana), disminución del consumo de huevos (2v/sem.), incremento del consumo de hidratos de carbono complejos (5v/sem.), consumo ligeramente inferior de frutas (5v/sem.), ingesta insuficiente de verduras (4v/sem), legumbres (2v/sem) y pescados (2,5v/sem). Conclusiones y Recomendaciones: Atendiendo a los estudios referenciados, es conveniente disminuir el consumo de carnes, aumentando los aportes de pescados, verduras, hortalizas y legumbres, alimentos que, habiendo sido habituales en nuestra dieta mediterránea, parecen haber sido abandonados en beneficio de la conformación de una dieta que tiende a la homogeneización cultural.

Markets, Depots and Sales Tables: The Women's Institute's Rural Retailing

In 1917 the Coventry Evening Telegraph noted that the problems of ‘surplus garden produce’ had arisen and that ‘smallholders were being encouraged to group together in order to bring their supplies in quantity to market. Women’s Institutes have been formed, and these arrange for the opening of a market for a certain number of hours one day a week’. WIs, which had begun being formed under the auspices of the Agricultural Organisation Society from 1915 could be seen to be one of the earliest examples of Farmers Markets. These rural women were to improve the food supply in wartime when there was a food crisis; shortages, queues, price rises and in 1918 the introduction of rationing. The WIs encouraged food saving and preservation their markets enabled small holders, cottage gardeners and allotment holders to find a financial non- exploitive outlet for their produce. Markets and retail outlets developed in a number of towns or even cities in rural areas: Worcester, Leamington Spa and Lichfield and in post-war Britain depot trading centres were set up in some county towns Maidstone in Kent in 1919, Winchester in 1920. Between them they provided rural women with a retail space initially for their garden produce and then in time for the preserves, baking and craftwork. Jam, cakes, toys, knitted toys and garments even a wedding trousseau were ordered or sold through these retail outlets. The Markets were not restricted to WI members and often sold work produced by small­holders, the disabled and ex-servicemen. Membership required buying at least one share; as they were a co-operative venture there was a limit on the number of shares it was possible to purchase. Sales tables at some monthly WI meeting provided yet another retail outlet for rural women. This paper will explore the significance of these retail opportunities to rural women: as a chance to earn much needed cash, in placing a value on domestic labour and as an indication that when looking at rural women’s lives, in first half of the twentieth century, divisions between being consumers and producers of food and domestic products may be more fluid than it is something assumed.

Toxic Legacies, Slow Violence, and Environmental Injustice at Giant Mine, Northwest Territories

For fifty years (1949–99) the now-abandoned Giant Mine in Yellowknife emitted arsenic air and water pollution into the surrounding environment. Arsenic pollution from Giant Mine had particularly acute health impacts on the nearby Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN), who were reliant on local lakes, rivers, and streams for their drinking water, in addition to frequent use of local berries, garden produce, and medicine plants. Currently, the Canadian government is undertaking a remediation project at Giant Mine to clean up contaminated soils and tailings on the surface and contain 237,000 tonnes of arsenic dust that are stored underground at the Giant Mine. Using documentary sources and statements of Yellowknives Dene members before various public hearings on the arsenic issue, this paper examines the history of arsenic pollution at Giant Mine as a form of “slow violence,” a concept that reconfigures the arsenic issue not simply as a technical problem, but as a historical agent of colonial dispossession that alienated an Indigenous group from their traditional territory. The long-term storage of arsenic at the former mine site means the effects of this slow violence are not merely historical, but extend to the potentially far distant future.

Tomb Chapel of Nebamun, interior, The pool in Nebamun's estate garden: date-palms, sycomores and mandrakes hedge the pool which teems with fish and fowl; the goddess of the sycomore, surrounded by her produce, is shown in the top right-hand corner

Thebes (deserted settlement), Egypt; H: 2 ft. 1 13/64 in.; W: 2 ft. 4 47/64 in. (painting); painted plaster

Designing for engagement towards healthier lifestyles through food image sharing : the case of I8DAT

This paper introduces the underlying design concepts of I8DAT, a food image sharing application that has been developed as part of a three-year research project – Eat, Cook, Grow: Ubiquitous Technology for Sustainable Food Culture in the City (http://www.urbaninformatics .net/projects/food) – exploring urban food practices to engage people in healthier, more environmentally and socially sustainable eating, cooking, and growing food in their everyday lives. The key aim of the project is to produce actionable knowledge, which is then applied to create and test several accessible, user-centred interactive design solutions that motivate user-engagement through playful and social means rather than authoritative information distribution. Through the design and implementation processes we envisage to integrate these design interventions to create a sustainable food network that is both technical and socio-cultural in nature (technosocial). Our primary research locale is Brisbane, Australia, with additional work carried out in three reference cities with divergent geographic, socio-cultural, and technological backgrounds: Seoul, South Korea, for its global leadership in ubiquitous technology, broadband access, and high population density; Lincoln, UK, for the regional and peri-urban dimension it provides, and Portland, Oregon, US, for its international standing as a hub of the sustainable food movement.

Impact of a school-based food garden on attitudes and identification skills regarding vegetables and fruit : a 12-month intervention trial

Objective To determine changes in ability to identify specific vegetables and fruits, and attitudes towards vegetables and fruit, associated with the introduction of a school-based food garden. Design A 12-month intervention trial using a historical control (control n 132, intervention n 120), class-based, self-administered questionnaires requiring one-word answers and 3-point Likert scale responses. Setting A state primary school (grades 4 to 7) in a low socio-economic area of Brisbane, Australia. Intervention The introduction of a school-based food garden, including the funding of a teacher coordinator for 11 h/week to facilitate integration of garden activities into the curriculum. Main outcome measures Ability to identify a series of vegetables and fruits, attitudes towards vegetables and fruit. Analysis Frequency distributions for each item were generated and χ2 analyses were used to determine statistical significance. Exploratory factor analysis was employed to detect major trends in data. Results The intervention led to enhanced ability to identify individual vegetables and fruits, greater attention to origins of produce (garden-grown and fresh), changes to perceived consumption of vegetables and fruits, and enhanced confidence in preparing fruit and vegetable snacks, but decreased interest in trying new fruits. Conclusions The introduction of this school-based food garden was associated with skill and attitudinal changes conducive to enhancing vegetable and fruit consumption. The ways in which such changes might impact on dietary behaviours and intake require further analysis.

De la cooperativa agroalimentaria a la "learning netchain". Hacia un planteamiento teorico interorganizativo e interpersonal

Se propone un planteamiento teórico/conceptual para determinar si las relaciones interorganizativas e interpersonales de la netchain de las cooperativas agroalimentarias evolucionan hacia una learning netchain. Las propuestas del trabajo muestran que el mayor grado de asociacionismo y la mayor cooperación/colaboración vertical a lo largo de la cadena están positivamente relacionados con la posición horizontal de la empresa focal más cercana del consumidor final. Esto requiere una planificación y una resolución de problemas de manera conjunta, lo que está positivamente relacionado con el mayor flujo y diversidad de la información/conocimiento obtenido y diseminado a lo largo de la netchain. Al mismo tiempo se necesita desarrollar un contexto social en el que fluya la información/conocimiento y las nuevas ideas de manera informal y esto se logra con redes personales y, principalmente, profesionales y con redes internas y, principalmente, externas. Todo esto permitirá una mayor satisfacción de los socios de la cooperativa agroalimentaria y de sus distribuidores y una mayor intensidad en I+D, convirtiéndose la netchain de la cooperativa agroalimentaria, así, en una learning netchain.

Cartels and rent sharing at the farmer–trader interface: evidence from Ghana’s tomato sector

Itinerant traders provide an important route for West Africa’s farmers’ to get their perishable produce rapidly to the distant urban markets. But these farmers often accuse the traders of offering “unfairly” low prices while preventing direct access to these markets. Using Ghana’s tomato sector as a case study, we provide the first detailed exploration of the interface between Ghana’s farmers and traders, combining a theoretical model with novel empirical data on daily sales prices and tomato quality. We find that although the prices traders pay farmers are lower than prices in the urban markets, taking into account transport costs, these prices are higher than farmers receive from the local rural market. Our article suggests that policymakers would do better to focus on opening up access to the urban markets rather than on strengthening farmers’ bargaining power with the traders, which restricts market volumes further and harms farmers unable to sell to traders.

Motivations for knowledge sharing in virtual social networks: a comparative study between Brazil and France

Sociedades pós-modernas caracterizam-se pela transição de economias baseadas em ativos tangíveis para economias de conhecimento, onde indivíduos vivenciam uma imprescindível conectividade, mas ao mesmo tempo, experimentam um enfraquecimento das estruturas sociais, que tem generado uma crescente necessidade de se criar bases cognitivas e afetivas para a vida (Rheingold, 1992; Wasko & Farah, 2005; Arvidsson, 2008). Nesse cenário se desenvolve o fenômeno das redes sociais virtuais, agregando milhões de pessoas que compartilham mensagens de texto, imagens e vídeos todos os dias (Nielsen, 2012) fazendo com que organizações privadas foquem cada vez mais seus investimentos para acompanhar as novas tendências (McWilliam, 2000; Reichheld & Schefter, 2000; Yoo, Suh & Lee, 2002; Arvidsson, 2008). Consequentemente, uma das mais importantes questões que vem ganhando importância no meio academico e entre profissionais da área é justamente: por que as pessoas compartilham conhecimento online? (Monge, Fulk, Kalman, Flanigan, Parnassa & Rumsey, 1998; Lin, 2001) Por meio de uma metodologia de estudo de caso conduzida no Brasil e na França, este estudo objetiva produzir uma relevante revisão teórica acerca do tema, trazendo novas idéias de diferentes contextos, e propondo um modelo para avaliar as principais motivações que conduzem indivíduos a compartilhar conhecimento em redes sociais virtuais. Essas razões foram estruturadas em cinco dimensões: capital estrutural, cognitivo e relacional, motivações pessoais e razões monetárias (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Wasko & Faraj, 2005; Chiu et al, 2006). As evidências sugerem que o processo de participar e compartilhar conhecimento em redes sociais virtuais é resultado de uma complexa combinação de motivações de orientação pessoal e coletiva, que parecem variar pouco de acordo com os diferentes objetivos e contextos dessas comunidades, onde as razões financeiras parecem ser secundárias.

Sharing Human-Generated Observations by Integrating HMI and the Semantic Sensor Web

Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C’s Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers’ observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound

Garden Cities: A flawed model for Ecological Urbanism?

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Garden City model has been a predominant theory emerging from Ecological Urbanism. In his book Howard observed the disastrous effects of rapid urbanization and as a response, proposed the Garden City. Although Howard’s proposal was first published in the late 1800’s, the clear imbalance that Howard aimed to address is still prevalent in the UK today. Each year, the UK wastes nearly 15 million tons of food, despite this an estimated 500,000 people in the UK go without sufficient access to food. While the urban population is rapidly increasing and cities are becoming hubs of economic activity, producing wealth and improving education and access to markets, it is within these cities that the imbalance is most evident, with a significant proportion of the world’s population with unmet needs living in urban areas. Despite Howard’s model being a response to 17th century London, many still consider the Garden City model to be an effective solution for the 21st century. In his book, Howard details the metrics required for the design of a Garden City. This paper will discuss how, by using this methodology and comparing it with more recent studies by Cornell University and Matthew Wheeland (Pure Energies); it is possible to test the validity of Howard’s proposal to establish whether the Garden City model is a viable solution to the increasing pressures of urbanization.
This paper outlines how the analysis of Howard’s proposal has shown the model to be flawed, incapable of producing enough food to sustain the proposed 32,000 population, with a capacity to produce only 23% of the food required to meet the current average UK consumption rate. Beyond the limited productive capacity of Howard’s model, the design itself does little to increase local resilience or the ecological base. This paper will also discuss how a greater understanding of the
Land-share requirements enables the design of a new urban model, building on the foundations initially laid out by Howard and combining a number of other theories to produce a more resilient and efficient model of ecological urbanism.

RCOS: Real time context sharing across a fleet of smart mobile devices

Today, biodiversity is endangered by the currently applied intensive farming methods imposed on food producers by intermediate actors (e.g.: retailers). The lack of a direct communication technology between the food producer and the consumer creates dependency on the intermediate actors for both producers and the consumers. A tool allowing producers to directly and efficiently market produce that meets customer demands could greatly reduce the dependency enforced by intermediate actors. To this end, in this thesis, we propose, develop, implement and validate a Real Time Context Sharing (RCOS) system. RCOS takes advantage of the widely used publish/subscribe paradigm to exchange messages between producers and consumers, directly, according to their interest and context. Current systems follow a topic-based model or a content-based model. With RCOS, we propose a context-awareness approach into the matching process of publish/subscribe paradigm. Finally, as a proof of concept, we extend the Apache ActiveMQ Artemis software and create a client prototype. We evaluate our proof of concept for larger scale deployment.