November 2016 – Gramigna
August 2016 – Unibo Magazine 
August 2016 – ANSA.it – Greenplanner – Bologna2000
August 2016 – BolognaToday
SustUrbanFoods in the media
Tag Archives: sanyé-mengual
Visit to Serra Pellerossa
Today we visited the periruban farm of IPOM Pellerossa in the outskirts of Bologna. This farm employs technological innovation to minimize the environmental impact of their tomato production. In particular, the name of the farm “Pellerossa” refers to a local variety of tomato that the farm recovered. This is one the case studies for technological innovation in SustUrbanFoods.
Visit to Arvaia cooperative
This week we visited the cooperative Arvaia in the periurban area of Bologna city as part of the first contacts to the case studies of the project. We appreciate the welcoming meeting to the managers of Arvaia. We visited part of the field and the post-harvest area where they weight the daily harvest and organize the baskets for the members of the cooperative.
We also had the opportunity to see how local and ecological production benefit urban biodiversity by spotting some of the visitors to the fields.
Case study: Arvaia (CSA, cooperative) – Bologna, Italy
Location: Bologna, Italy
Typology: Community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm
Urban area: Peri-urban
Innovation type: Social innovation
Main functions: Cooperative – Social cohesion – Ecological production – Community empowerment – Volunteering
HISTORY & CONTEXT
Arvaia is a social cooperative founded in 2013 to manage a piece of peri-urban agricultural land as a community in order to obtain local (km.0) and ecological food through cooperative work among citizens. The land is a concession of the community of Bologna and now is an area restricted for urban development. Nowadays Arvaia is made of 324 members and cultivates 75 different variaties in 47ha in the outskirts of Bologna.
The approach is collaborative and dedicated to sharing the common good land to farm. Members has a single annual fee that covers the annual budget and will give right to reception of the products weekly. Members are invited to participate in the agricultural activities because of some half-day year. Cooperation to the farm is based on their skills or professional ability (accountant, community manager, etc.). Pursuing the “zero waste” goal, the surplus of production will be transformed and redistributed. Memebers can pick up their weekly harvest directly at arvaia or in some points of the city centre.
AGRICULTURAL CHARACTERISTICS
Crops: 75 varieties of diverse products (tomato, melon, watermelon, zucchini, lettuce, eggplant, wheat, etc.) [+ info]
Techniques: Soil production – Rotation for promoting organic matter content – Protected cultivation for certain crops (tunnel)
Irrigation: Use of tap water – Drip irrigation
Use of renewable resources: –
Sustainable practices: Ecological production – Seasonal production – Production km.0 – Minimization of food waste – Biologic seeds (own production)
Other products: Beekeeping – Added-value products (e.g. tomato sauce)
LINKS
Explotaition opportunities for SustUrbanFoods results
This week we are on Paris working within an H2020 consortium to prepare a proposal for the next call on innovation in urban agriculture. This project is an exploitatiton opportunity for the results and continuity of on-going research in SustUrbanFoods project.
Special session on productive landscapes at IFLA AR-URBIO CONFERENCE 2016
Researchers on urban agriculture from the Research Centre on Urban Environment for Agriculture and Biodiversity (RESCUE-AB) and the Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung (ZALF) e. V. (ZALF) are chairing a special session on URBAN AGRICULTURE at the “IFLA AR-URBIO CONFERENCE 2016: From cities to landscape – Design for health and biodiversity” that will take place the next 25-27.October.2016 at Panama City (Panama).
The call for conference papers is open until 1st July and you can find more information regarding submission format and instructions at the conference website: http://www.iflaurbiopanama2016.com/
Launch of website (Milestone 1)
The SustUrbanFoods website is LIVE!
The blog-style website aims to share the progress of the project with the general public. The website will include news, brochures and media (photo, video), as well as information on the SustUrbanFoods events (e.g., seminars, workshops, exhibitions).
This launching completes Milestone 1 of the project: Publication of the project website, which will establish a communication pathway to the general public.
The project identity is defined by the new logo, designed by the artist Victor Otero, which is combined with the logos of the funding programmes.
