Urban agriculture
Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in, or around (peri-urban), a village, town or city. Urban agriculture in addition can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agro-forestry and horticulture. These activities also occur in peri-urban areas as well.
Urban farming is generally practiced for income-earning or food-producing activities though in some communities the main impetus is recreation and relaxation . Urban agriculture contributes to food security and food safety in two ways: first, it increases the amount of food available to people living in cities, and, second, it allows fresh vegetables and fruits and meat products to be made available to urban consumers. A common and efficient form of urban agriculture is the biointensive method. Because urban agriculture promotes energy-saving local food production, urban and peri-urban agriculture are generally seen as sustainable practices.
The recognition of environmental degradation within cities through the relocation of resources to serve urban populations [4] has inspired the implementation of different schemes of urban agriculture across the developed and developing world. From historic models such as Machu Picchu to designs for new productive urban farms, the idea of locating agriculture in the city takes on many characteristics.
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[edit] History of urban agriculture
Community wastes were used in ancient Persia to feed urban farming. In Machu Picchu water was conserved and reused as part of the stepped architecture of the city and vegetable beds were designed to gather sun in order to prolong the growing season. Allotment gardens came up in Germany in the early 19th century as a response to poverty and food insecurity . Victory gardens sprouted during WWI, WWII and were fruit, vegetable, and herb gardens in US, Canada, and UK. This effort was undertaken by citizens to reduce pressure on food production that was to support the war effort. Community gardening in most communities are open to the public and provide space for citizens to cultivate plants for food or recreation.
[edit] Facts
- 50% of the world’s population lives in cities.
- 800 million people are involved in urban agriculture world-wide and contribute to feeding urban residents.
- Low income urban dwellers spend between 40% and 60% of their income on food each year.
- By 2015 about 26 cities in the world are expected to have a population of 10 million or more. To feed a city of this size - at least 6000 tonnes of food must be imported each day.
[edit] Perspectives on urban agriculture
[edit] Resource and economic
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has defined urban agriculture as:
“ An industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to the daily demand of consumers within a town, city, or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urban area, applying intensive production methods, using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes to yield a diversity of crops and livestock.” The definition of urban agriculture as an industry that responds to the nutritional demands of a city, from within that city, with the use and reuse of that city’s resources while acknowledging economic and resource use does not reconcile aspects of regional health, food security, and application of grassroots organizations.
(This definition is based on the work of Luc Mougeot of the International Development Research Centre and used in technical and training publications by UN-HABITAT’s Urban Management Programme , FAO’s Special Programme for Food Security, and international agricultural research centres, such as CIRAD.)
[edit] Environmental
The Council on Agriculture, Science and Technology, (CAST) is an international consortium of scientific and professional societies based in Ames Iowa that compiles and communicates credible science-based information to policy makers, media, private sector, and the public. CAST defines urban agriculture to include aspects of environmental health, remediation, and recreation,
“Urban agriculture is a complex system encompassing a spectrum of interests, from a traditional core of activities associated with the production, processing, marketing, distribution, and consumption, to a multiplicity of other benefits and services that are less widely acknowledged and documented. These include recreation and leisure; economic vitality and business entrepreneurship, individual health and well-being; community health and well being; landscape beautification; and environmental restoration and remediation.”
Modern planning and design initiatives are more responsive to this model of urban agriculture because it fits within the current scope of sustainable design. The definition allows for a multitude of interpretations across cultures and time. Frequently it is tied to policy decisions to build sustainable cities.
[edit] Food security
Access to nutritious food is another perspective in the effort to locate food and livestock production in cities. With the tremendous influx of world population to urban areas, the need for fresh and safe food is increased. Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) defines food security as,
“all persons in a community having access to culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate food through local, non-emergency sources at all times.”
[edit] The emerging importance of urban agriculture
[edit] Economic
- UPA (urban and peri-urban agriculture) expands the economic base of the city through production, processing, packaging, and marketing of consumable products. This results in an increase in entrepreneurial activities and the creation of job opportunities, as well as in food costs reduction and products of better quality.
- UPA represents an important opportunity for women to be part of the informal economy of a city. Farming and selling activities can be combined more easily with household tasks and child care.
- UPA provides employment, income, and access to food for urban populations, which together contributes to relieve chronic and emergency food insecurity. Chronic food insecurity refers to less affordable food and growing urban poverty, while emergency food insecurity relates to breakdowns in the chain of food distribution. UPA plays an important role in making food more affordable and in providing emergency supplies of food. Research into market values for produce grown in urban gardens has attributed to a community garden plot a median yield value of between approximately $200 and $500 (US, adjusted for inflation). In a community gardening program as well-established as Seattle's P-Patches, this can account for up to 1.25 million dollars of produce cultivated annually.
[edit] Social
Social benefits that have emerged from urban agricultural practices are; better health and nutrition, increased income, employment, food security within the household, and community social life. UPA can be seen as a means of improving the livelihood of people living in and around cities. Taking part in such practices is seen mostly as informal activity, but in many cities where inadequate, unreliable, and irregular access to food is an occurring problem, urban agriculture has been a positive response to tackling food concerns. Households and small communities take advantage of vacant land and contribute not only to their household food needs but also the needs of their resident city.
The CFSC states that,
“Community and residential gardening, as well as small-scale farming, save household food dollars. They promote nutrition and free cash for non-garden foods and other items”
This allows families to generate larger incomes selling to local grocers or to local outdoor markets, while supplying their household with proper nutrition of fresh and nutritional produce.
Some community urban farms can be quite efficient and help women find work, who in some cases are marginalized from finding employment in the formal economy. Studies have shown that participation from women have a higher production rate, therefore producing the adequate amount for household consumption while supplying more for market sale.
Due to the fact that most UA activities are conducted on vacant municipal land, there have been rising concerns about the allocation of land and property rights. The IDRC and the FAO have published the Guidelines for Municipal Policymaking on Urban Agriculture, and are working with municipal governments to create successful policy measures that can be incorporated in urban planning. Including UA in local plans and as proper land use will continue to help impoverished communities gain a better well-being while fighting urban poverty.
Localized food production in urban and peri-urban areas contributes to local economies by creating jobs and producing valuable products. Some researchers indicate that unemployed populations in large cities and suburban towns would decrease if put to work by local food movements. Schools have foreseen the asset of local food production and are beginning to incorporate agricultural sections in their curricula and present it as a career opportunity. Urban agricultural projects are beginning to open a new labor market in areas that have been negatively affected by industrial outsourcing of jobs.
[edit] Energy efficiency
The current industrial agriculture system is accountable for high energy costs for the transportation of foodstuffs. The average conventional produce item travels 1,500 miles , using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, one gallon of fossil fuel per hundred pounds. The energy used to transport food is decreased when urban agriculture can provide cities with locally-grown food.
[edit] Quality of food
Although the taste of locally grown food is subjective, many participants in the urban agriculture movement report that they prefer the taste of local agricultural products, or organic food, to that of industrial food production.[citation needed] Also, urban agriculture supports a more sustainable production of the food that tries to decrease the use of harmful pesticides that result in agricultural runoff. Urban and local farmers also eliminate the need for preservatives, as their products do not need to travel long distances. Soil contamination is a potential problem in urban environments, particularly lead. The soil should be tested; if lead is present, increasing the pH can alleviate the problem. Lead can also be removed through phytoremediation with Indian mustard or spinach.
[edit] Economy of scale
Using high-density urban farming, as for instance with vertical farms or stacked greenhouses, many environmental benefits can be achieved on a city-wide scale that would be impossible otherwise. These systems do not only provide food, but also produce potable water from waste water, and can recycle organic waste back to energy and nutrients. At the same time, they can reduce food-related transportation to a minimum while providing fresh food for large communities in almost any climate.
[edit] Benefits of Urban Agriculture
The benefits that UPA brings along to cities that implement this practice are numerous. The transformation of cities from only consumers of food to generators of agricultural products contributes to sustainability, improved health, and poverty alleviation.
- UPA assists to close the open loop system in urban areas characterized by the importation of food from rural zones and the exportation of waste to regions outside the city or town.
- Wastewater and organic solid waste can be transformed into resources for growing agriculture products: the former can be used for irrigation, the latter as fertilizer.
- Vacant urban areas can be used for agriculture production.
- Other natural resources can be conserved. The use of wastewater for irrigation increases the availability of freshwater for drinking and household consumption.
- UPA can help to preserve bioregional ecologies from being transformed into cropland.
- Urban agriculture saves energy (e.g. energy consumed in transporting food from rural to urban areas).
- Local production of food also allows savings in transportation costs, storage, and in product loss, what results in food cost reduction.
- UPA improves the quality of the urban environment through greening and thus, a reduction in pollution.
Health improvement:
- Urban agriculture also makes of the city a healthier place to live by improving the quality of the environment.
- UPA is a very efficient tool to fight against hunger and malnutrition since it facilitates the access to food by an impoverished sector of the urban population.
Poverty alleviation: It is known that a large part of the people involved in urban agriculture is the urban poor. In developing countries, the majority of urban agricultural production is for self-consumption, with surpluses being sold in the market. According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), urban poor consumers spend between 60 and 80 percent of their income on food, making them very vulnerable to higher food prices.
- UPA provides food and creates savings in household expenditure on consumables, thus increasing the amount of income allocated to other uses.
- UPA surpluses can be sold in local markets, generating more income for the urban poor.
Community centers and gardens educate the community to see agriculture as an integral part of urban life. The Florida House Institute for Sustainable Development in Sarasota, Florida, serves as a public community and education center in which innovators with sustainable, energy-saving ideas can implement and test them. Community centers like Florida House provide urban areas with a central location to learn about urban agriculture and to begin to integrate agriculture with the urban lifestyle.
Other examples of community centers are Greensgrow Farm in Philadelphia and Northey Street City Farm in Brisbane, Australia. Greensgrow uses an abandoned site as an urban farm to teach the community how food is grown and how to grow their own food. Northey Street City Farm hosts weekly community activities to educate and involve local residents in agricultural practices.
Urban farms also are a proven effective educational tool to teach kids about healthy eating and meaningful physical activity. An example of educational urban agriculture is Full Circle Farm, an 11-acre (45,000 m2) farm located on a middle school campus in the heart of Silicon Valley. Like other educational agriculture centers, Full Circle Farm's acreage is used as a "living campus" where students get real-world, hands-on agriculture experiences that cultivate both healthy habits and environmental leadership.
[edit] Difficulties of urban agriculture
- Space is at a premium in cities and is accordingly expensive and difficult to secure
- The use of waste water for irrigation without careful treatment and monitoring can result in the spread of diseases among the population.
- Cultivation on contaminated land also represents a health hazard for the consumers.
- The practice of cultivating along roadsides facilitates the distribution of products to local markets, but it is also a risky practice since it exposes food to car pollution.
- Agriculture and urbanization are considered to be incompatible activities, competing for the access and use of limited land. In reality, in urban areas there is important available space for agriculture use such as public and private vacant lots, and areas not suited for built-up uses (steep slopes and flood plains).
- Legal restrictions and economic impediments to accessing land and resources (such as reasonably priced water) are among the most common problems confronted by urban agriculture.
- Lack of security of tenure also acts as a preventive for farming due to the uncertainty in the use length of the land. [44]
- Urban agriculture has been criticized by those who believe that industrial farm production can produce food at larger volumes more efficiently.
- A major argument is whether urban farming alone - farming very intensively on small land areas - could replace land extensive production in rural areas which produce the bulk of our food products. Yet hunger persists in both urban and rural areas (see more on food security), despite a subsidized industrial agriculture. The degree to which urban agriculture can address these food needs systemically is undetermined, though there are indications in some communities that it is an important source of food.
- Other opponents argue that localized food production and the introduction of common resources and common lands into the urban areas would produce a tragedy of the commons. Though, as referenced earlier, many urban farms and community gardens are managed privately or through other civil society organizations.
Municipal greening policy goals can pose conflicts. For example, policies promoting urban tree canopy are not sympathetic to food-production gardening.
