This week, we are bringing you the latest urban agriculture related news mixed with lots of good-to-know information and unique projects that are happening across the United States. As efforts to reclaim our food system persist, innovators across the country have been working hard to bring farming back to the urban environment. From low-tech DIY solutions to traditional farming methods, there is a lot to learn and plenty to share. Feel free to share your thoughts and links to your favorite urban agriculture resources, and don't forget to tell us about the urban farming projects in your town! Mike Lieberman.
The vertical farming system allows leafy green vegetables to be grown all year round in urban environments in much smaller spaces, using much smaller amounts of energy and water while generating higher yields.
According to the VertiCrop site, using the system requires just 8 per cent of normal water consumption used to irrigate crops, can work in any climate, can grow more than 50 varieties of leafy green vegetables, and offers yields about 20 times higher than normal production of field crops. Valcent's vertical farming system was named in 2009 by Time magazine as one of the
top 50 innovations of the year.
Read more [...]
Until recently, many scientists spoke of climate change mainly as a “threat,” sometime in the future. But it is increasingly clear that we already live in the era of human-induced climate change, with a growing frequency of weather and climate extremes like heat waves, droughts, floods and fires. Today we will try to explain what’s going on with the fact that we experience very little or no rain at all; in certain places in the world such as Russia, the USA, Europe some part of Africa and in Asia.
Future precipitation trends, based on climate model projections for the coming fifth assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, indicate that droughts of this length and severity will be commonplace through the end of the century unless human-induced carbon emissions are significantly reduced. Read more [...] 
