Urban Ag Resources and Networks

Listed below are links to other urban ag networks, groups, and information.

Click the picture to learn more!

Urban Ag Networks:

(Listed alphabetically)

DAN - Detroit Ag Network

The Detroit Agriculture Network's mission is to promote and foster urban agriculture and the sustainable use and appreciation of urban natural resources. We encourage the establishment of resource support networks, experiential education opportunities for youth and their families and collaborations that advance urban food security, good nutrition, healthy land, and communities.

Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture

The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture is a non-profit organization established to promote community-based, small-scale, entrepreneurial farming in urban Kansas City. We do this through providing education and technical assistance to people interested in urban farming, through research and policy development aimed at making urban farming an integral part of a lively and viable cityscape, and through working with communities to embrace and support urban farms. The Center also operates the Kansas City Community Farm, a working organic vegetable farm that serves as a demonstration project for urban agriculture in Kansas City.

Metro Ag - Alliance for Urban Agriculture

The aim of the MetroAg Alliance is to bring together a wide and culturally diverse range of stakeholders involved in urban agriculture (in and around cities) in North America to share knowledge and best practices, foster linkages externally, and give voice to its advocates and recognition and legitimacy to its activities.

MUAN - Milwaukee Urban Ag Network

The Milwaukee Urban Agriculture Network (MŪAN) is a collaborative effort of Milwaukee-area individuals and organizations focused on advancing awareness of, and activities and policies that will promote, the many ways that local production of food benefits a community.
The network is composed of anyone interested in urban agriculture in Milwaukee.
This website will serve to facilitate communication among the members of the network and between the network and the general public.

TUAN - The Urban Ag Network

Every now and then, an organization emerges that crystallizes a need that no one else is meeting. Over a decade ago [1992], the Urban Agricultural Network was founded to focus attention on food production, economic development and environmental enhancement in towns, cities and urban regions Ð areas previously neglected by both the urban and agricultural development agencies.

Urban Ag Network - Australia

The Urban Agriculture Network-Western Pacific was set up in the late 1990s as an offshoot of the Urban Agriculture Network Inc in Washington.

The US-based organisation was set up under the auspices of the UN Development Program in the mid-1990s, to be a non-government organisation (NGO) which could help draw important threads together to help advance global food security. The Washington-based Urban Agriculture Network Inc in co-operation with the UNDP, published Urban Agriculture food, jobs and sustainable cities in 1996.

Additional Urban Ag Resources:

(Listed alphabetically)

American Community Gardening Association

The Mission of the American Community Gardening Association is to build community by increasing and enhancing community gardening and greening across the United States and Canada

City Farmer News - New Stories From ‘Urban Agriculture Notes’

This website is a collection of stories about our work at City Farmer here in Vancouver, Canada, and about urban farmers from around the world. The site is maintained by City Farmer executive director, Michael Levenston.

City Farmer’s main web site Urban Agriculture Notes (www.cityfarmer.org) has hundreds of pages of information about city farming. Published since 1994, it was the first web site on the Internet to promote urban farming.

City Sprouts

CitySprouts mission is to develop, implement and maintain beautiful, resource-rich school gardens in collaboration with public school communities. Integrated into the curriculum, CitySprouts gardens inspire teachers, students, and families with a deep, hands-on connection to the food cycle, sustainable agriculture, and the natural environment.

Community Food Security Coalition

The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is a North American coalition of diverse people and organizations working from the local to international levels to build community food security. We have a diverse membership with almost 300 organizations from social and economic justice, anti-hunger, environmental, community development, sustainable agriculture, community gardening and other fields. We are dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food to all people at all times. We seek to develop self-reliance among all communities in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing, processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability.

The Coalition achieves its goals through a comprehensive blend of training, networking, and advocacy to further the efforts of grassroots groups to create effective solutions from the ground up. We provide a variety of training and technical assistance programs for community food projects; support the development of farm to school and farm to college initiatives; advocate for federal policies to support community food security initiatives; and provide networking and educational resources. (See below for links to more information about these programs.)

Georgia Center For Urban Agriculture

The Center for Urban Agricultural and Environmental Sciences will provide intellectual leadership through research, teaching and extension to sustain urban ecosystems, enhance economic development, and improve the quality of life in urban settings.

Growing Power

Growing Power is a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Growing Power implements this mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner.

Local Harvest

The best organic food is what's grown closest to you. Use our website to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies. Want to support this great web site? Shop in our catalog for things you can't find locally!

MetroFarm

The Online Magazine of Metropolitan Agriculture

Tune in every week to Michael Olson's Food Chain Radio , participate in our online Forum, or purchase the book " MetroFarm" , or read Michael's definition of Metropolitan Agriculture to learn more.

MUG - Milwaukee Urban Gardens

Milwaukee Urban Gardens acquires and preserves land and partners with neighborhood residents to develop and maintain community gardens to enhance the quality of life.

NAL - National Agriculture Library

The National Agricultural Library: Advancing access to global information for agriculture.

Real Food Challenge
- Uniting Students for Just and Sustainable Food-

The Real Food Challenge serves as both a campaign and a network. The campaign is to increase the procurement of real food on college and university campuses. By leveraging their purchasing power we can catalyze the transformation of the larger food system. The network offers a chance for students and their allies (those working on the campaign along with those who've yet to sign on) to make connections, learn from one another, and grow the movement.

RUAF Foundation - Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security

The RUAF Foundation is an international network of six regional resource centres and one global resource centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security. In 1996 the international Support Group on Urban Agriculture (SGUA) took the initiative to set up a Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF), in response to the expressed need of organisations and local governments in the South for effective mechanisms for the documentation and exchange of research data and practical experiences on urban agriculture. In the following years RUAF gradually evolved into an international network of regional resource centres providing training, technical support and policy advice to local and national governments, producer organizations, NGO’s and other local stakeholders. In March 2005 the RUAF partners established the RUAF Foundation as their joint administrative body and liaison office. RUAF focuses its activities mainly in 20 cities, where RUAF closely cooperates with the local government, producer organisations, NGO’s, universities and private enterprises.

MISSION

The mission of the RUAF Foundation is “to contribute to urban poverty reduction, employment generation and food security and to stimulate participatory city governance and improved urban environmental management, by creating enabling conditions for empowerment of male and female urban and peri-urban farmers, capacity development of local authorities and other stakeholders and by facilitating the integration of urban agriculture in gender-sensitive policies and action programmes of local governments, civic society organisations and private enterprises with active involvement of the urban farmers, livestock keepers and other relevant stakeholders”

The Trust for Public Land

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) is a national, nonprofit, land conservation organization that conserves land for people to enjoy as parks, community gardens, historic sites, rural lands, and other natural places, ensuring livable communities for generations to come.

Urban Agriculture: An Abbreviated List of References and Resource Guide 2000

Urban agriculture's overall nature makes the concept difficult to define. Taken literally, urban agriculture means "to establish and perform an agricultural practice in or near an urban or city-like setting." This is an oversimplified and somewhat open-ended attempt at defining what is a much broader and more complex system of dynamic variables. Despite the lack of a proper definition, urban agriculture has experienced a recent surge in worldwide popularity.

Urban Farming

Urban Farming's mission is to create an abundance of food for people in need by planting gardens on unused land and space while increasing diversity, educating youth, adults and seniors and providing an environmentally sustainable system to uplift communities.

Veggie Trader

-Your place to buy, sell or trade local homegrown produce-

Wish you could turn your excess plums into lemons, or maybe even a little cash? Use this site to find neighbors to swap with or sell your excess produce to. Or if you specialize in growing tomatoes, find neighbors who specialize in other produce and form networks to share in the variety. Even if you don't have a garden, Veggie Trader is your place for finding local food near you.