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Urban (or peri-urban) agriculture is the practice of agriculture (include crops, livestock, fisheries, forestry activities) within or surrounding the bounderies of cities.

The land used may be private residential land (use of private pieces of land, balconies, walls or building roofs), public roadside land or river banks.

Urban farming is practiced for income-earning or food-producing activities. It 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 to be made available to urban consumers.

Because it promotes energy-saving local food production, urban and peri-urban agriculture are sustainability practices.

A new definition of urban agriculture

Urban agriculture is an industry located within (intra-urban) or on the fringe (peri-urban) of a town, a city or a metropolis, which grows and raises, processes and distributes a diversity of food and non-food products, (re-) using largely human and natural resources*, products and services found in and around that urban area, and in turn supplying human and material resources, products and services largely to that urban area. (* Natural resources refer to soil, water, genetics, air and solar energy.)

(This definition has been created by the 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.)

Why urban agriculture has grown in importance

Local economies

Localized food production in urban and peri-urban areas creates stronger local economies by creating jobs. Some researchers indicate that unemployed populations in large cities and suburban towns would decrease if put to work by local food movements. Schools, such as the Waldorf School, have foreseen the asset of local food production and are beginning to incorporate an agricultural section in their curriculum 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.

Energy efficiency

The current industrial agriculture system is accountable for high energy costs for the transportation of foodstuffs. According to San Diego's Community Forest Advisory Board, a group that is promoting urban agriculture in the city, 95% of the food produced within the United States is exported, while 95% of the food eaten in the United States is imported. The energy used to transport food would be greatly decreased if urban agriculture could provide the US cities with locally-grown food.

Quality of food

Although the taste of locally grown food is subjective, many participants in the urban agriculture movement report they prefer the taste of local agricultural products, or organic food, to that of industrial food production. 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.

Implementations of urban agriculture

Community-based infrastructure

Creating a community-based infrastructure for urban agriculture means facilitating how crops are grown, how the food is processed, and how is it transferred from the farmer (producer) to the consumer.

To facilitate the growing of crops and food production, cities have established community-based farming projects. A common land, much like that of eighteenth-century Boston Common, would effectively centralize food production in urban areas where space is limited. An example of a community farm is the Collingwood Children’s Farm in Melbourne, Australia. Other proposals include creating community tool sheds and processing facilities for farmers to share, once again centralizing the resources.

Farmers' markets, such as the original Farmers' Market in Los Angeles, provide a common land where farmers can sell their product to consumers. Large cities tend to open their farmers markets on the weekends and one day in the middle of the week. For example, the farmers' market of Rue Richard Lenoir in Paris, France, is open on Sundays and Thursdays. However, to create a consumer dependency on urban agriculture and to introduce local food production as a sustainable career for farmers, markets would have to be open regularly. For example, the Los Angeles Farmers' Market is open seven days a week and has linked several local grocers together to provide different food products. The market’s central location in downtown Los Angeles provides the perfect interaction for a diverse group of sellers to access their consumers.

Individuals outside of the farmer/buyer market have incorporated food production into their urban fabric through roof gardens. Roof gardens allow for urban dwellers to maintain green spaces in the city without having to set aside a track of undeveloped land.

Finding a labor force

Cities that are serious about introducing urban agriculture face the problem that there is no ready labor force to produce food. Programs such as Welfare-to-Work offer a source of labor for the urban agriculture movement. This would cause the positive externality of lowering the unemployed and welfare-dependent population in large cities and suburban areas.

Another proposal is to train prison inmates how to produce food. The San Francisco County Jail, in conjunction with Tree Corps and Garden Project, provide inmates with an agricultural education and individual plots to grow their own food. Jails use horticulture to teach inmates how to work cooperatively with other inmates and also how to be responsible for their own nutrition and health. Agriculture and gardening provide a fresh air environment for inmates in which they can learn skills that will help them assimilate into society. The San Francisco County Jail’s recidivism rate dropped from 55% to 24% within two years of implementing the Garden Project. Therefore prisons could begin to implement the Garden Project and transform the institutions into rehabilitation and agriculture education facilities. Ex-convicts could then to fill the labor gap for urban agriculture projects.

Sustaining a labor force

Schools have begun to implement agricultural curriculums into traditional school environments. The Waldorf School campuses use school-wide community gardening to teach nutrition to the students. Such organization exposes students in urban environments to rural agricultural practices that they would not have been exposed to otherwise. Students are taught to appreciate agriculture as an integral part of their urban education; this education in turn provides an avenue for a future career in urban agriculture. Introducing nutrition through agriculture in urban and peri-urban school thus increases the likelihood that an urban agricultural labor force will be sustained in future generations.

Community centers and gardens education 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.

Government interaction

Another way in which urban agricultural practices could be advanced is through government interaction. One researcher proposes tax breaks be given to sellers and buyers of locally-grown food. Other researchers suggest discounts be given at farmers’ markets or tariffs be placed on imported foods that can be grown locally.

Criticisms and externalities

Urban agriculture has been criticized by those who believe that industrial farm production is more efficient and sustainable.

A major argument against urban agriculture is that, if implemented on a large scale, the consequences for rural farmers are yet unknown. Proponents of industrial farm production also argue that farm subsidies, a large portion of the Federal budget, provide the government with the needed resource of over-supplied 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.

A potential negative externality of the urban agriculture movement is pollution. Markets and farms would have to be strategically placed so that pollution from the industrial sector of a large city would not affect the crops. Urban food production in First world nations is at less of a risk than that in developing nations because first world nations have an existing infrastructure for environmental regulation.

References

Pacione, Micheal. "Local Exchange Trading Systems - A Rural Response to the Globalization of Capitalism?" Journal of Rural Studies. Vol. 13, No. 4

See also

External links

Agriculture

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Urban agriculture".

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