World's biggest rooftop greenhouse opens in Montreal

Yahoo – AFP, Sebastien St-Jean, August 26, 2020

Lufa Farms just opened what it says is the world's largest commercial rooftop
greenhouse, seen in this aerial photo in Montreal

Building on a new hanging garden trend, a greenhouse atop a Montreal warehouse growing eggplants and tomatoes to meet demand for locally sourced foods has set a record as the largest in the world.

It's not an obvious choice of location to cultivate organic vegetables -- in the heart of Canada's second-largest city -- but Lufa Farms on Wednesday inaugurates the facility that spans 160,000 square feet (15,000 square meters), or about the size of three football fields.

"The company's mission is to grow food where people live and in a sustainable way," spokesman Thibault Sorret told AFP, as he showed off its first harvest of giant eggplants.

It is the fourth rooftop greenhouse the company has erected in the city. The first, built in 2011 at a cost of more than Can$2 million (US$1.5 million), broke new ground.

Since then, competitors picked up and ran with the novel idea, including American Gotham Greens, which constructed eight greenhouses on roofs in New York, Chicago and Denver, and French Urban Nature, which is planning one in Paris in 2022.

A local Montreal supermarket has also offered since 2017 an assortment of vegetables grown on its roof, which was "greened" in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.

Tomatoes are viewed at Lufa Farms, a company that just opened what it says

is the world's largest commercial rooftop greenhouse in Montreal

'Reinventing the food system'

Lebanese-born Mohamed Hage and his wife Lauren Rathmell, an American from neighboring Vermont, founded Lufa Farms in 2009 with the ambition of "reinventing the food system."

At Lufa, about 100 varieties of vegetables and herbs are grown year-round in hydroponic containers lined with coconut coir and fed liquid nutrients, including lettuce, cucumbers, zucchini, bok choy, celery and sprouts.

Bumblebees pollinate the plants, while wasps and ladybugs keep aphids in check, without the need for pesticides.

Enough vegetables are harvested each week to feed 20,000 families, with baskets tailored for each at a base price of Can$30.

The company's "online market" also sells goods produced by local partner farms including "bread, pasta, rice, etcetera," Sorret said.

On the ground floor of the new greenhouse, a huge distribution center brings together nearly 2,000 grocery products for offer to "Lufavores," including restaurants.

Shopper Catherine Bonin tells AFP she loves the freshness of the produce but laments that some items are always out of stock. "I can never get peppers," she says.

Lufa Farms spokesman Thibault Sorret shows off vegetables grown at what it 

says is the world's largest commercial rooftop greenhouse in Montreal

Sales doubled during pandemic

"We are now able to feed almost two percent of Montreal with our greenhouses and our partner farms," said Sorret.

"The advantage of being on a roof is that you recover a lot of energy from the bottom of the building," allowing considerable savings in heating, an asset during the harsh Quebec winter, he explains.

"We also put to use spaces that were until now completely unused," he said.

Fully automated, the new greenhouse also has a water system that collects and reuses rainwater, resulting in savings of "up to 90 percent" compared to a traditional farm.

Lufa "more than doubled" its sales during the new coronavirus pandemic, a jump attributable "to contactless delivery from our online site," says Sorret.

Profitable since 2016, the private company now employs 500 people, around 200 more than before the pandemic, according to him.

It is currently working on the electrification of its fleet of delivery trucks and is in the process of exporting its model "to different cities around the world," starting with Canada and the United States, Sorret said.

"What's a little crazy," he recalls, is that none of the founders "had grown a tomato in their life" before opening the business.

Tech connection boosts NY vertical farmers

Yahoo – AFP, Juliette MICHEL, February 24, 2019

A Bowery Farming employee inspects some of their greens grown at the hydroponic
farming company in Kearny, New Jersey (AFP Photo/Don EMMERT)

Kearny (United States) (AFP) - Workers at Bowery Farming's warehouse near New York have swapped out a farmer's hoe for a computer tablet that takes real-time readings of light and water conditions.

Launched in 2015, Bowery is part of the fast-growing vertical farming movement, which employs technology in a controlled, man-made setting to grow fresh vegetables indoors all year long.

Champions of the practice see vertical farming as a key tool to meet the world's food needs at a time when the population is rising and the climate is changing.

The company's chief executive and co-founder, Irving Fain, said his company's Kearny, New Jersey site uses fewer resources than traditional farms and does not employ pesticides.

"I have been a big believer my entire life in technology as being able to solve not only hard problems, but also important problems," said Fain, who previously ran a company that provides data analysis for big companies on their loyalty programs.

Bowery employs more programmers than agricultural scientists. The company says its use of algorithms enables it to be 100 times more productive per area compared with a traditional farm and to use 95 percent less water.

Irving Fain, CEO and co-founder of Bowery Farming, talks about his hydroponic 

grown greens (AFP Photo/Don EMMERT)

Lower electricity costs

Vertical farming has long been practiced in Japan and some other places but it did not take off in the United States until recent technological leaps made it viable.

A key component has been LED bulbs, which have enabled indoor farmers to drastically cut electricity costs.

But Bowery is also making heavy use of robotics and artificial intelligence to keep prices under control.

The combination of these newer tools "is how we really rethink what agriculture will look like in the next century and beyond," Fain said.

The company has also benefited from more than $120 million in funding from tech titans including Google Ventures and Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi.

The Silicon Valley connection has also boosted San Francisco-based Plenty, another prominent vertical farming company, which has garnered more than $200 million from Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, Softbank and others.

US-based Crop One and Emirates Flight Catering have launched a $40 million joint venture to build a giant vertical farming facility in Dubai.

Greens are grown at Bowery Farming, a vertical farming site founded in 2015 

(AFP Photo/Don EMMERT)

Profitable?

The world's biggest vertical farm is in Newark, New Jersey and operated by AeroFarms.

The company, founded in 2004 and considered a pioneer in the sector, remains privately-held and does not disclose financial data. But the company says it is now profitable after a series of fumbles.

David Chang, founder of the noodle restaurant brand Momofuku, is an investor.

AeroFarms exclusively uses company-made technology that has now made its way to China, the Middle East and Europe, said its co-founder Marc Oshima.

In a warehouse that was once a steel mill with 40-foot (12-meter) ceilings, the company is growing kale and arugula leaves set in rows of 12 metal racks each. The roots are suspended in the air as they are intermittently irrigated while the leaves bask under LED lights.

AeroFarms experiments regularly with lighting and nutrients with an eye towards finding the optimal recipe for each plant and developing the best algorithm.

The company produces watercress that reminded a reporter of her grandmother's soup, kale as tender as spinach and arugula with a hint of spice.

Basil from Bowery Farming was tinged with the flavor of lemon.

AeroFarms's vertical grow towers in Newark, New Jersey (AFP Photo/Angela Weiss)

But it can take a while for vertical farms to find solutions that are viable.

"The big, big vertical farms are having a difficult time being profitable because they are so capital-intensive at the beginning," said Henry Gordon-Smith, founder of Agritecture, a consultancy.

Large farms typically need seven or eight years before they are profitable, with smaller farms requiring perhaps half as long.

But entrepreneurs in the business are confident in their prospects as more young people in cities express worry about climate change and pesticides.

"Vertical farming is not THE solution to food security," said Gordon-Smith. "It is one out of the possible solutions."

Critics of vertical farming say it has a large carbon footprint due to heavy use of lighting and ventilation.

But defenders say that this negative impact is more than offset from the benefits of lower water use, the location near population centers and the non-use of pesticides.

A bigger issue may be the limitations of the output itself, at least in terms of nutrition.

"You can't feed the world with salad alone," said Princeton University plant researcher Paul Gauthier, who says vertical farmers will need to develop more protein-rich offerings.

Gauthier -- who grew spicier peppers in his own lab by subtly increasing potassium levels -- said vertical farming could supply fresh food to so-called food "deserts" where it is absent and could in the long-term meet growing food demand as the climate changes.

Italy's high-rise forests take root around the world

Yahoo – AFP, Céline CORNU, October 8, 2017

Milanese architect Stefano Boeri's leafy project is now being exported around
the world (AFP Photo/MIGUEL MEDINA)

Milan (AFP) - As balconies bristle with tree branches and sunshine dapples the leaves of thousands of plants, two apartment buildings in the heart of Milan have almost disappeared under lush forest.

The brainchild of Milanese architect Stefano Boeri, the Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) uses more than 20,000 trees and plants to adorn the high-rise buildings from top to bottom – a project now being exported all over the world, from China to the Netherlands.

The two original leafy towers dominate the skyline in the northern Italian city, giving residents -- including celebrities like footballer Ivan Perisic -- an enviable view over the new district of Porta Nuova and beyond.

Cherry, apple and olive trees spill over balconies alongside beeches and larches, selected and positioned according to their resistance to wind and preference for sunlight or humidity.

Boeri said the idea came from his obsession with trees and determination to make them "an essential component of architecture," particularly as a weapon to combat climate change.

"I was in Dubai in 2007 and I watched this city growing in the middle of the desert, with more than 200 glass towers multiplying the effect of heat," he recalls.

He wanted instead to create something that "as well as welcoming life, can contribute to reducing pollution, because trees absorb microparticles and CO2".

"Cities now produce about 75 percent of the CO2 present in the atmosphere. Bringing more trees into the city means fighting the enemy on the spot," he said.

Milanese architect Stefano Boeri's leafy project is now being exported around the

world (AFP Photo/MIGUEL MEDINA)

'Best Tall Building Worldwide'

Opened in 2014, the Vertical Forest won the prestigious Frankfurt International Highrise Award, and the Chicago Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat named it Best Tall Building Worldwide.

"It's a unique thing to live here, we're in direct contact with the plants while being in the city centre and in a super modern skyscraper," says Simona Pizzi, who can see the mountains from her 14th floor apartment.

"The plants have developed a lot over the past three years, and we see them changing with the seasons," adds the proud owner of an apple tree, where the white flowers contrast magnificently with the green foliage.

Boeri worked closely with botanists to create a nursery of a thousand trees that have been trained to grow under specific conditions.

The team faced numerous challenges, from how the balconies should be structured to take the weight of the plants, to how to secure the tree roots and what needed to go into the soil.

They even carried out resistance tests at a hurricane centre in Miami.

"For every human being living in the building, there are about two trees, 10 shrubs and 40 plants," Boeri said.

The future of housing?

The vegetation soon transformed into a veritable wildlife park: 9,000 ladybirds brought over from Germany to eat parasites -- to leave the plants pesticide free -- multiplied over the space of a few weeks.

Cherry, apple and olive trees spill over balconies alongside beeches and larches, 

selected and positioned according to their resistance to wind and preference for

sunlight or humidity (AFP Photo/MIGUEL MEDINA)

"The extraordinary thing that we did not expect was the incredible amount of birds that nested here. We have small hawks on the roofs, and swifts that had previously disappeared from Milan," Boeri said.

The architect and his team are now working on a dozen or so Vertical Forest projects around the world, including Lausanne in Switzerland, Utrecht in the Netherlands, Sao Paolo in Brazil and Tirana in Albania.

The aim in Eindhoven in the Netherlands is to swap the sort of luxury pads seen in the Milan project -- which go for some 11,000 euros ($12,900) per square metre -- for social housing, a project Boeri says he's particularly keen on.

And because the cost of the trees is low, it's not an unreasonable ambition, he says.

He is also thinking big in China, where not only are two towers under construction in Nanjing and a hotel in the works in Shanghai, but there are plans for a "Forest City" of some 200 buildings in Liuzhou.

"China is now realising it faces the dramatic problem of air pollution, but also of uncontrolled urbanisation, with cities growing out of suburbs, creating megacities," he said.

"Every year fifteen million peasants abandon the countryside to come to the city, we have to come up with some answers, with new green cities," says Boeri, who took part in the COP21 conference on climate change in Paris in 2015.

The architect has not patented the Vertical Forest and has even written a book revealing the secrets and techniques behind it, which he hopes will encourage a new, greener way of developing cities.

Italy's high-rise forests take root around the world, from China to the Netherlands https://t.co/MvGZbuGRcY pic.twitter.com/fcGettntfU

— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 8, 2017

Dutch garden featuring dye plants wins prize at Chelsea Flower Show

DutchNews, May 30, 2016 

The Dutch garden features dye plants. Photo: Royal Horticultural Society 

Two Dutch garden designers have won a silver gilt medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in London for a garden based on plants used to make dyes. 

The AkzoNobel Honeysuckle Blue(s) garden, sponsored by the Dutch paint and coatings manufacturer, was designed by Claudy Jongstra and Stefan Jaspers and features ordinary plants, including nettles and sorrel, in a show setting.

‘It was a complete surprise [to win],’ Jongstra told the Volkskrant. ‘It is the first time we have participated and newcomers have to prove themselves. We did lose points because the steps in our garden were slightly too high by British standards.’ 

The garden is to be recreated in Leeuwarden in 2018, when the Frisian city becomes Europe’s cultural capital, the Volkskrant said.

Related Article:

Jakarta Gets Kota Tua Repainted for Free, Plus Four Public Buses

Sustainable farming reaping benefits for women in Cameroon

Improved soil management practices and better farming habits are putting smiles on the faces of women in Bafut, a community located about 400 kilometers (240 miles) from Cameroon's capital Yaounde.

Deutsche Welle, 17 Aug 2015

Women farmers in Cameroon

These innovations all fall within the field of "permaculture," a system of sustainable agriculture and design principles aimed at creating a more ecological relationship with the environment.

The innovation was brought to the women by Joshua Kankonko, who grew up in the area. Women say they are experiencing better harvests and putting more money in their pockets as a result. The project has been running for two years.

Kankonko is the developer behind an eco-village built using only local materials. Farmers in the village have implemented permaculture practices aimed to benefit residents through better management of soil and environmental resources. Simple practices such as composting and erosion control are helping to increase yields.

"This is the way our parents used to farm. All the kitchen waste was thrown behind the house where the vegetables were harvested. Everything that we produce, we get from the environment then we give it back to the environment," Kankonko said.

Small plots, big yeilds

Pressures on scarce fertile lands in Cameroon's northwest have historically fueled tribal conflicts. Permaculture sets out to replenish the soil and maximize yields on relatively small plots thereby limiting the need for conflict.

According to Project Coordinator Sonita Mdah Neh, one of the best ways to do this is through natural and mechanical erosion control. Natural erosion control uses plans to hold the soil and moisture together.

This hut was made using only
local materials.

"Natural erosion control is done with vertiva grass. We can also use pineapple, so we use what we call a plant family meaning that you put two plants together and they form a web. When they form a web, they hold the soil and water together," said Mbah Neh.

Mechanical soil control means that local, natural materials like bamboo and other woods are used to create barriers.

The project also stresses the use of organic fertilizers and the use of different plants and practices to maintain or even boost the amount of nutrients in the soil.

"A lot happens in the soil which we don't see. There are a lot of interactions between soil organisms," she said.

A revolution

The system is already working. Farmer Justina Lum hails the system. She says within two years her yields have doubled. She says even at home she switched to using traditional cooking methods.

"Smoke is channeled through a chimney and therefore our eyes are not exposed to smoke. Besides, it uses less wood and is not costly to build," said Lum.

Kankonko remembers his mother who used compost manure to fertilize her crops. As a student in the University of Yaounde, he was already making a living from township gardening. After leaving university, he decided to bring his experience home to his Bafut community.

Kankonko notes that the entire experiment has been a success story, not only improving family incomes, but also restoring the natural environment that continues to suffer from irresponsible use.

But the sustainability of the system will depend largely on youth involvement. Kankonko complains that many youths do not think there is a future in agriculture but instead leave to pursue white-collar jobs in the cities.

Related Article:

"The Biggest Filter" - July 18-19, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“..  Health

Normal good health is turning to simple physics for some of the simplest things. New kinds of foods are being grown with new physics, not chemistry. These will be physic-foods [Kryon name] that are not genetically altered or chemically altered, but benevolently enhanced by physics! This causes a new kind of super growth that can feed the planet in a way it's never been fed before. It will create food that is resistant to absolutely everything - insects, bacteria and disease - all through physics. Who thought of that? What you're expecting in the future regarding health is based upon the past. The big filter of past knowledge keeps you from thinking out of the box. You don't know what you don't know.  ….”

Seoul elevates gardening to high art

Yahoo – AFP, Park Chan-Kyong, 27 May 2015

From stylish, manicured creations to small vegetable plots, gardens are 

taking to the rooftops of the South Korean capital Seoul (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

Seoul (AFP) - From stylish, manicured creations to small vegetable plots, gardens are taking to the rooftops of the South Korean capital Seoul -- bringing dashes of spontaneity and colour to the skyline of one of the world's most densely populated cities.

With help from the municipal government, otherwise largely drab buildings are being crowned with flower beds, allotments and trees, where the scent of fresh blossoms in the springtime can briefly mask the fumes from the traffic below.

The project has produced one of the largest rooftop gardens in Asia, Garden 5, which is spread across the top of four 10-storey buildings and linked by skywalks, with a total surface area equal to three football fields.

Rooftop garden of the 'Garden 5' 

shopping mall, pictured in Seoul, 

South Korea (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

Inter-M Corp., a broadcasting and audio equipment maker housed in a grey, nondescript, seven-storey office building in northern Seoul, decided to convert their roof several years ago.

Completed in late 2013 at a cost of 110 million won ($100,000) -- half provided by City Hall -- the 450 square meter (4,840 square feet) garden boasts azalea, lilies, maple trees, herbs and two small pavilions.

Company spokesman Bae Seung-San said staff used it to unwind, while potential customers were taken to the roof as part of a sales pitch.

"When we have foreign buyers, we throw barbecue parties here, with music playing on our equipment," Bae said.

The municipal financial support comes with a rider -- any garden must be properly maintained and opened for public use within five years of its completion.

The green fund

Since the project began in 2002, the city government has spent more than 60 billion won ($57 million) helping to bankroll rooftop gardens, allotments or small ecological parks on more than 650 buildings around the city.

"We need more green, but don't really have the budget to buy the land for urban parks," said Bang Seong-Weon, a municipal official in charge of the Green Roof Construction programme.

"If you green the rooftops, land prices cease to be an issue," Bang said.

Home to 20 percent of South Korea's 50 million people, Seoul is a modern, thriving city with a population density nearly twice that of New York and eight times greater than Rome.

Largely destroyed in the 1950-53 Korean War, Seoul was rebuilt at a time of rapid industrialisation and laissez-faire urban planning that resulted in an uninspiring landscape of cookie-cutter apartment blocks and utilitarian office buildings.

In the last 10 to 15 years, efforts have been made to revitalise the city architecturally and environmentally with varying degrees of success.

Bang is keen to highlight the economic as well as environmental benefits of the roof gardens which both absorb heat and act as insulators for buildings, reducing energy needed to provide heating and cooling in Seoul's freezing winters and hot, humid summers.

Seoul's government has spent more than 60 billion won ($57 million) helping to 

bankroll rooftop gardens, allotments or small ecological parks on more than 650

buildings around the city (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

"And they improve the landscape, giving people a sense of the changing seasons," he added.

A roof for all seasons

While other high-density Asian cities have also seen a turn to rooftop gardens, the scale of Seoul's programme sets it apart.

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Choi Da-Yeon, a 20-year-old student as she strolled among the garden's flower beds and trees with her boyfriend at Garden 5.

"We don't have enough green spaces in Seoul. Somewhere like this give you a real breathing space," Choi said.

A leading proponent of the rooftop movement is Han Moo-Young a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Seoul National University.

At a cost of 200 million won provided by City Hall, corporate donations and his own money, Han laid a rooftop flower and vegetable garden that covers an 840 square meter rooftop on one of the main campus buildings.

University staff, local residents and an organisation for disabled people tend the vegetables growing on one half of the roof, and the flower beds on the other half which also host six beehives.

"We hold music concerts here and make kimchi together with students and residents. It's a community," Han said.

"You see the bees and butterflies and you get that sense of being in nature," he said.

'Garden 5' in Seoul is one of the largest rooftop gardens in Asia, spread across

 the top of four 10-storey buildings and linked by skywalks, with a total surface 

area equal to three football fields (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

Seoul Skygarden

While the rooftop project was designed as a cooperative effort involving government, corporates and individuals, the Seoul authorities are about to start work on a far larger undertaking to convert a half-mile stretch of abandoned 1970s highway into an elevated park.

The city has engaged Dutch architects MVRDV to design the Seoul Skygarden, due to be completed in late 2017, partly inspired by the success of New York City's elevated High Line.

In total, the pedestrian park spanning Seoul's main station will be home to 254 species of flora, as well as an nursery arboretum to provide cuttings and saplings that can be transplanted to other rooftop gardens around the city.

Exposed to strong sunlight, the elevated gardens need more care and frequent watering, while taking a bit more effort to get to, acknowledged Seo Jin-Sook who grows vegetables atop the university.

"However, looking at the beautiful scenery on top of the rooftop while gardening is a healing experience for me," she said.

Urban growth: Vertical farming offers solutions for China's cities

Want China Times, Staff Reporter 2015-05-19

The design of a vertical farm shown during an expo at the Hainan
International Creative Harbor in Haikou, Hainan province in 2011.
(File photo/CFP)

Lin Jinyi plants 800 head of lettuce in his 15 square meters of living space in Hangzhou and can harvest as much as 500 kilos of the vegetable at a time. Without using any growth hormone or chemicals, all the 39-year-old Lin does is hang the plants on poles. It is the purest form of soil-free cultivation.

A former employee of Google China, Lin is now a "modern farmer" who guides Chinese farmers in building vertical farming systems.

Vertical farming is a concept proposed by scientists as a way to resolve a potential lack of resources in the future as the global population surges. The idea behind the concept is to take full advantage of resources and space to maximize the output of a particular crop.

People from around the world who research and practice vertical farming attended the Association for Vertical Farming (AVF) Summit 2015 in Beijing on May 9-10. Most of the participants could not speak Mandarin but were excited to discover that China could be one of the world's best places to develop vertical farming.

The summit was held in China in recognition of the country's fundamentals, AVF chair Christine Zimmermann Loessl told Guangzhou's Southern Weekly.

It is estimated that by 2030 there will be 800 million people living in China's cities who need a safe and stable supply of nutrients. By that time, vertical farming practices in cities may play a role in contributing to the supply, according to Loessl.

It was a major drought in five southwestern provinces in 2010 that prompted Lin to seek a water-saving, economic and environmentally friendly farming model. During the drought, he saw farmers watering tomato plants on dry land with water they preferred to use on their crops rather than themselves, Lin said.

The concept of vertical farming was proposed by ecologist Dickson Despommier, who saw the possibility of growing food in buildings with plenty of sunlight.

According to Despommier, 80% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. By that time, the population will increase to 9.2 billion people, most of whom will live in developing countries, making food supplies a problem.

Under Despommier's plans, a 30-story skyscraper with vertical farming practices could offer food for 50,000 Manhattan residents. And the food from 160 such buildings could feed all New York City's residents.

Southern Weekly said that while commercial applications of the vertical farming model are not yet mature in China, many property developers have taken notice of the potential of such projects.

If urban communities have their own vertical farms, their residents can harvest their own crops after work, saving time and energy shopping at supermarkets or malls. The planting, transportation, consumption and waste processing can all be handled at one location, the weekly said.

The cost of building a vertical farm is extremely high, however, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 yuan (US$800-$1,600) per square meter. A high-quality farm of its kind could run into the billions of dollars to build, a far cry from the traditional farming costs Chinese are used to.

Slow Food sows message in Africa

Yahoo – AFP, Amy Fallon, 4 Nov 2014

Duncan Senoga, a volunteer with Slow food International in Uganda, helps pupils

 of Buiga Sunrise Primary School in Mukono District, Uganda on October 2, 

2014 (AFP Photo/Isaac Kasamani)

Banda Kyandaaza (Uganda) (AFP) - Powerful herby coffee, sun-dried fish and succulent beef from Ankole cattle are just some of the Ugandan delicacies in a mushrooming movement across Africa to safeguard traditional foods.

Slow Food, a global grassroots organisation that promotes "good, clean and fair food", is spreading its reach across Africa after making its first inroads on the continent a decade ago.

Today the movement counts 30 African projects as food communities preserve, and rediscover native breeds, plant varieties and products, from Moroccan Zerradoun salt, to Ethiopia's Tigray white honey, Zulu sheep in South Africa and Sierra Leone's Kenema kola nuts.

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in

Italy, Slow Food started with one Ugandan

local chapter in 2008, since growing into 13

across the east African country (AFP Photo/

Isaac Kasamani)

For Ugandan schoolboy Isaac Muwanguzi, that meant finding a vegetable known as eggobe springing up in his school garden when he returned from the holidays.

"In the village it's very rare," said the 13-year old, whose country is at the heart of Africa's slow revolution.

Eggobe, which has a plantain-like taste and softens when steamed, is also said to be handy for treating diabetes, hypertension -- and even reportedly for increasing the size of one's manhood.

It's one of a handful of vegetables a group of students at the primary school here at Banda Kyandaaza, a village about 20 kilometres (12 miles) outside Kampala, are hoping to put back on Ugandan plates.

Eggobe has been nominated for Slow Food's Ark of Taste, an online "living catalogue of delicious and distinctive foods facing extinction."

Founded in 1989 and headquartered in Italy, Slow Food started with one Ugandan local chapter in 2008, since growing into 13 across the east African country.

In Uganda, they've helped students create 75 gardens in more than 50 schools to taste and test products.

In the school garden in Banda Kyandaaza, students are now growing cassava, cabbage, pumpkin, African eggplant and black nightshade, as well as eggobe.

Boosting rare produce

Recent Ugandan additions to the list include small white mushrooms called Namulonda, as well as the Nakitembe banana, which is traditionally presented by the groom to a bride's family, but is at risk of disappearing due to the "continuous and indiscriminate hybridisation of bananas."

"We use the gardens to restore the crops that are at risk of disappearing," said Edie Mukiibi, 28, a Ugandan agronomist who was in February appointed co-vice-president of Slow Food International, alongside the influential US chef and author Alice Waters.

The country's capital Kampala may now be home to a handful of international fast food chain outlets, but Mukiibi said he was "proud" that Uganda had been "slow" to adopt fast food compared to other countries he'd visited.

Late last month he accompanied about two dozen Ugandan students, farmers, cooks and restaurant owners to Slow Food's Salone del Gusto, the world's largest food and wine fair, and Terra Madre, a concurrent global gathering of food communities in Turin in Italy.

About 450 delegates from 45 African countries took part -- and Ugandan bananas, vanilla and coffee were on display.

"We musn't only speak about poverty in Africa, we have to speak about culture, about the natural richness that you have in different recipes," said Serena Milano, General Secretary of the Slow Food Foundation of Biodiversity, who coordinates African activities.

"It's fascinating the diversity of products and recipes that Africa has."

With about 85 percent of the population involved in the sector, Mukiibi called agriculture Uganda's backbone.

Slow Food was working to address the "many injustices" facing the country's small-scale farmers.

"You find some supermarkets importing potatoes from France and South Africa," he said. "Slow Food creates a market for the local uncommon products to compete."

In the traditional Ankole kingdom in southwestern Uganda, the indigenous long-horned Ankole cow symbolises wealth.

"From its milk come so many traditional dishes and other products," said Mukiibi.

Vice President Slow food international,

Edie Mukiibi shows Agobe seeds at Buiga

Sunrise Primary School in Mukono District,

Uganda on October 2, 2014 (AFP Photo/

Isaac Kasamani)

These include the eshabwe ghee sauce, also listed in Slow Food's Ark of Taste.

But Mukiibi said many years ago an influx of imported animal breeds began being mixed with local ones, encouraged by "the NGO world."

Now, some locals are starting to discard the Ankole cow, saying it takes too long to grow and gives very little milk.

Slow Food are working with one of Uganda's biggest slaughterhouses in Kampala, so producers can sell the animals they raise directly to them.

They're also providing training on improving meat quality.

Meanwhile, in the school garden, students who used to view farming as a punishment are now realising the value in spending two hours a week out of class, learning everything from how to water crops to managing an agriculture enterprise.

"You farm, you get food," said Muwanguzi, bending over in a cabbage patch. "You farm, you get money."