Walmart Goes Local?

The intricate dealings of Wal-Mart and Local food sourcing

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/the-great-grocery-smackdown/7904/

Domestic Composting - Inside

http://naturemill.com/howItWorks.html

Effects of School Lunches

A teacher is eating the school provided lunch for a year - and blogging about the experience -

http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/

and makes the case for teaching kids (and college students) how to cook....

At what level should cooking be taught - at home, at school, at college - imagine an absurd required elective - "Cooking 101" - How sad is it that cooking is so foreign to so many people?

Once again, awareness / education / access all play a role (not to mention busy schedules or laziness.)

Taco Shed.

http://www.rebargroup.org/projects/tacoshed/

Mid Review Documentation Images 3

see google docs for .pdf pack

Mid Review Documentation Images 2

Mid Review Documentation Images 1

FOOD for Thought. (had to)

1 establishing + connecting identity

how to establish a cohesive identity for FOOD and EATING which is able to link production - processing - distribution - consumption - composting - repurposing?

2 promoting understanding

we talked about process / procedures / rules - and how they affect the market; how can understanding (or changing) the rules of the game play a role in the market.

3 focus: producer / consumer

the transaction between the producers / processors of food and the consumers of food is linked to so many factors (money - availability - tastes - location - expirience) which affect what people purchase, how they will use that purchase, and how they feel about the market expirience.

4 transport

is it more effective to rely on the market as a centralized location or hub - or as merely a base-node in a new food network? is the physical connection to the market more important than the availability of food?

Vertical Farm Initiative

http://www.verticalfarm.com/index.html

While not without its caveats, this site extols the virtues of vertical farming as one solution to food security. Syracuse, for example, does not have the requisite density to sustain a vertical farm - nor is it beneficial due to the areas of underutilized land both in/outside the city; however, there are many interesting projects and strategies presented under the "projects" section of the site.

See also the Interview with Steven Colbert - who interestingly enough asks poignant (if comedic) questions on the issue.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/173624/june-12-2008/dickson-despommier

SunHope Renewable Energy: Solar Balloons

Stop thinking horizontal: the fact is we're running out of space, so why not starting designing for the next usable space? SunHope provides the design for solar balloons--a.k.a. low impact, off the grid, miniature power plants. Research show that one 10ft balloon could provide around 1 kilowatt of energy--equivelant to 25 square meters of solar panels! Furthermore, with its comparatively low cost and low maintenance life, these sun harvesting balloons could be implemented on a residential scale.

Fog Harvesting Hydroponic Farm

An undergraduate thesis project that confronts the design problem of urban agriculture, exploring the implementation of vertical hydroponic garden walls as a suggested solution.

Pro-Gardening Systems : Hydroponics Archive

Pro Gardening System is the blog component of the PGS Online Grow Shop. This blog explores a variety of topics in regards to growing plants and food, as well as options for doing so. This link here is to the archive on hydroponics--a comprehensive and extensive collection of posts, information, construction data, case studies, and diagrams.

Hydroponics Archive

moMkt

So ; for all that missed the demonstration kitchen's debut - here's what it looks like.

Home Farming explores growing at least part of your daily calorific requirement inside your house. This biosphere home farm has been designed to occupy a minimum of floor space and instead to stack the various mini-ecosystems on top of each other. It contains fish, crustaceans, algae and edible plants, all interdependent and in balance with each other. Water filtration, recycling of nutrients and optimum use of sunlight are all central to its appeal.

Phillips Design - http://designprobes.ning.com/video/home-farming-unit