The Urban Farming Movement Jason Mark, Co-manager, Alemany Farm; Editor-in-Chief, Earth Island Journal Novella Carpenter, Founder, Ghost Town Farm; Author, Farm City Christopher Burley, Founder, Hayes Valley Farm David Gavrich, Founder, City Grazing Sarah Rich, Writer; Editor; Co-founder, The Foodprint Project; Co-author, Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century - Moderator Enterprising city dwellers are bursting from their pre-packaged lives and taking back their choices for consumption. Urban farms foster community and healthy eating beneath towering city blocks, where fast and easy often supersede fresh and home-grown. Like SF’s own Alemany Farm and Hayes Valley Farm, these urban crop spaces allow neighbors to trade their Swingline staplers for pitchforks and break new ground. Fresh, organic veggies are grown and sold, and the locavore food economy is epitomized. What’s the appeal of throwing away the chain grocery store for the neighborhood till? Come hear from local leaders of the movement like Novella Carpenter, founder of Oakland’s Ghost Town Farm, and trailblazing San Franciscans Jason Mark, of Alemany Farm, Christopher Burley, founder of Hayes Valley Farm, and David Gavrich, "goat whisperer" and founder of City Grazing. They’ll discuss the urban farming movement's place in the world of organic, local-grown culture, and how they’re bringing the farm to the city - goats included! This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club on May 12, 2010

I've broken the beauty of chickens down into their component parts but as you can see it's a cycle. Chickens take unwanted things from my home and yard and turn them into valuable products - eggs, fertilizer, and meat. Or in my case, eggs, fertilizer, and cute fun pets that I will never eat. Can you garden without chickens? Yeah. But as I've found over the past year, it kinda sucks. I started gardening with totally dead soil. We compost. We have a worm bin. And our family of four produces entirely too little compost to feed our soil.

Iron phosphate is non-toxic to both humans and dogs, as well as other pets and wildlife. Studies also show that it is equally non-toxic to slugs and snails, because it does not release its load of poisonous elemental iron very easily. If this is the case, why do other studies show that it is a very effective product that rivals the metaldehyde baits? How can these baits made of nothing but iron phosphate and wheat gluten be as effective as they are shown to be when other studies show that snails can live indefinitely on a diet of iron phosphate? Enter a man-made chemical called EDTA, a chelating agent that causes the iron phosphate to release its elemental iron easily in the digestive systems of not only slugs and snails but of pretty much anything that eats it. EDTA or the similar EDDS are the only reason these baits are effective, yet interestingly the label only reads Active Ingredient: Iron Phosphate - 1%, Inert Ingredients - 99%. No mention is made of the presence of another chemical that can turn harmless iron phosphate into a deadly poison. Apparently EDTA was slipped through the cracks in our regulatory system as an "inert" ingredient, and inert ingredients do not have to be listed on the label. Since iron phosphate is harmless, and EDTA is the ingredient that makes it effective, not to mention dangerous, something is really wrong here.

We recently treated two patients at DoveLewis who consumed so-called pet safe slug bait for iron toxicity. Iron levels were found to be within the toxic range for one patient. Both patients survived their ordeal. Pet owners should be aware that iron phosphate is toxic to animals if they eat it. The Animal Poison Control Center lists these symptoms as signs of iron phosphate toxicity: • Lethargy and vomiting for the first 30 minutes and up to two hours after ingestion • Vomit may contain blood due to iron irritation to the gastro-intestinal tract • Severe dehydration and collapse due to prolonged vomiting.