Saturday, July 4, 2009

SPIN Farming — urban backyards for commercial organic farming

SPIN Farming is a business and growing model that converts multiple residential backyards into a commercial organic farm. Benefits include local food production (100-mile diet type stuff), organic growing, energy consumption reduction, community economic development, and neighbourhood quality of life improvements.

REAP Calgary has an article on SPIN Farming.

2 comments:

  1. I took a look at the bylaws to see how SPIN farming would fit in. I'm not sure if this would classify as "Extensive Agriculture" or not.

    Do you think there would be problems if real SPIN Farming would take place?

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  2. It would depend on the approach.

    It is currently legal to pay someone to come and work in your yards to do gardening, lawn care, etc. Assuming there wasn’t an introduction of large machinery or very noisy processes, or a whole pile of labourers, SPIN Farming should not be any different in impact on a neighbourhood.

    You might need to apply for a business permit, though. It may be appropriate to lobby for a special by-law to govern this type of operation to make it explicitly legal within the city. (The SPIN Farmer, like any other business in the city, would still need a business license.)

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