I contacted two students from SALA who did projects on urban agriculture and one of them replied to me saying that our best bet would be to focus on more of the Landscape Architecture side of SALA. Graduate students there concentrate in urban agriculture design work much more readily. Daniel Roehr is a faculty member in Landscape Agriculture and a his work and research contain a lot of elements on urban agriculture (more than other faculty there. I contacted him but am still waiting for a reply but this is what it says on his website:
His new research focuses on green roof agriculture, integrated rainwater harvesting and systems for stormwater management. Currently, Daniel and his team are involved in the conception of a pilot project for professional urban farming in North Vancouver.
I also contacted the City Farmer guy but got no response
I did more general research and there are a lot of small community garden type projects across North America like:
American community garden association, Brookyln Botanical Garden, City of Seattle P-Patch Program, Green Guerrillas (based in NY),GreenThumb, Toronto Community Garden Network
There is also the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) <www.idrc.ca/cfp> and they do agriculture projects related to poverty in 3rd world countries like this one:
The CIFSRF is a 5-year program that funds a wide variety of applied research projects that aims to solve immediate and concrete food security challenges on the ground in the developing world. The goal of the CIFSRF is to promote more productive and sustainable agricultural systems that make food more secure and nutritious. The CIFSRF funds partnerships between research organizations in Canada and in the developing world. http://www.idrc.ca/cfp/ev-148254-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html
There is also the Resource centre for urban agriculture (RUAF) <www.ruaf.rog> but I couldn't find anything that would help us right now
In short, there are a lot of resources out there but I was unable to find gaps in research for us to do something around but maybe these resources will help us in the future.
Report by last year's ENVR 400 class has a bit on composting
I called the compost hotline at city farmer and spoke to Michael and Lindsey
They don't know much about food waste from grocery stores and things but recommended calling the food bank to find out
there are food runner programs that have a pick up service for waste food but he did't know much about it
also, a lot of companies pick up food (like big chain stores)
There is another student group in LFS researching the efficiency of midscale composters and evaluating them. There are a few around town but not report on them
A potential RS question could be: How much food waste does a far throw out in a week?
The conversation went off on a tangent about local food security RS topics:
Life cycle of food from manufacture chain, to ALR, to getting food to the supermarket
livestock in backyards- can't kill backyard chickens yourself and have to take them to a processing farm to get the meat
How is the city going to decrease the amount of food and meat exported from outside Vancouver?
A lot of this might be answered in the Foodshed paper above
