Author Archive

Sundari Elizabeth Kraft is the author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Urban Homesteading.” She is the owner of Heirloom Gardens LLC, a multi-plot urban farm in northwest Denver. Heirloom Gardens distributes its food through a Neighborhood Supported Agriculture program, at the local farmers’ market, and to area restaurants. Sundari is also the founder and organizer of Sustainable Food Denver, an advocacy group. Sustainable Food Denver was instrumental in passing a new Food Producing Animals (chickens, ducks, and dwarf goats) ordinance for Denver. Sundari is the co-chair of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council and teaches classes in backyard chicken and goat care, small-space gardening, and canning. She lives in Denver with her husband Brian and their chickens, ducks, dwarf goats, bees, two cats and a chihuahua. 1) Tell me how you got interested in agriculture. When I was growing up we didn’t have a garden, but I developed a

Last year I spent a bit of time in Rio, and one of the distinct pleasures was sipping fresh coconut water from a green coconut that was sliced with a machete right in front of me on the beach.  After I was done, I chucked the empty shell into the recycling bin, and didn’t give it too much more thought beyond “wow, that’s a lot of coconut shells!” Lungs of the Earth has an interesting and well-researched article on what happens to the coconut shells after we toss them out, and what some eco-entrepreneurs are doing to turn trash into treasure, lowering municipal costs and helping the environment. Nothing says Rio de Janeiro like coconut juice. Cariocas are among the world’s biggest consumers of green coconut juice, which that is sold from street corners and plazas to famed beaches like Copacabana and Ipanema. It’s a lot healthier than the beer,

In these earnest times of budget cuts and austerity measures, belt tightening and layoffs, it’s nice to see a good dose of good old fashioned entrepreneurship.  Flying Kite Media has the story of  Tim Bennett, a former Temple University employee who was so successful with his home-based composting business that he was able to quit that full time job and expand his business to four employees. Collecting food scraps and certain types of paper, he successfully diverts this waste from traditional disposal streams and sends it to a facility in Delaware, where it turns in to rich, beautiful compost.  Those who sign up for the $15 service receive some finished compost in return, and can purchase more at a discount if they use up their allotment.  This type of entrepreneurship is both good for the environment and, apparently, profitable – a similar service, Compost Cab, has taken root in Washington

From Mashable.com comes an amazing infographic – The Rise of the Social Food Truck.  Food trucks have been a staple of the Philadelphia food scene for years and years, and I was lucky enough to enjoy some during my time at Penn (including the perennial PennDesign favorite, Magic Carpet.)  So, while the article says that many trace the :food truck boom” at 2008, those of us in Philadelphia (and even New York) know that we’ve been in on the secret for years. What’s not debatable is that the wide acceptance of the food truck scene is revolutionizing several parts of our food system – the distribution and consumption – and is one of the best examples of how food and tech can integrate to revolutionize the marketing of food, with many owners taking to Twitter to create a buzz for their product. Check out this amazing infographic below, which tells

I was recently interviewed by Bruce Boyers of Organic Connections magazine, in which I discussed the growing interest in urban gardening; the interface or urban planning and urban agriculture; and how technology can increasingly play a role.  From the article: There certainly seems to be an urge on the part of urban dwellers to reconnect with the source of their food—that is, to grow at least some of it themselves, right where they live. Such a residence might be a suburban home with plenty of room for a garden, or it might be a downtown apartment with a bit of balcony space where things can be grown. Either way, people are seeking to know all about it. “I think people are looking for something that they can have kind of immediate control of,” John Reinhardt, urban planner and editor of the popular Grown in the City blog site, told Organic

There’s an inherent tension in the local food system movement: what is the proper scale? Some, for example, promote the radical home economics approach, encouraging hyper-local, backyard farming for self-sufficiency. Others advocate for the Community Supported Agriculture model, which begins to use economies of scale to spread the risk and reward involved in local production and consumption while still maintaining personal connections to the farmer. More recently, however, there’s been a shift toward examining the possibility of local food production as a viable job training and economic growth tool in places with large swaths of vacant urban land and high unemployment such as Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Milwaukee has long been at the forefront of the local food movement, with McArthur Genius Grant winner Will Allen’s Growing Power leading the way. The organization “develops Community Food Centers, as a key component of Community Food Systems, through training, active demonstration, outreach,

I’ve been unusually quiet on the blog for the past two months – largely because of exciting personal developments. After three years at the American Planning Association in Washington DC, I accepted a job at IBM, as Program Manager for City Forward, a free, web-based platform that enables users – city officials, researchers, academics and interested citizens world-wide – to view and interact with city data while engaging in an ongoing public dialogue.  The job merges my passions for urbanism with technology, and I hope to be able to incorporate some interesting data about urban agriculture and food systems, as I think there is a big audience for this type of tool. So, Greg and I are moving to New York.  We spent this past weekend looking at neighborhoods and are hoping to move to Brooklyn Heights, a beautiful and historic tree-lined neighborhood across the East River from Manhattan.  The