The world is rapidly becoming a concrete jungle, with the explosion of urbanization. However, these concrete jungles are moving further away from food sources and conventional farming plots. This is where Urban Agriculture (UA) comes in as a safety net of sorts. Urban Agriculture is the practice of growing crops, farming, and cultivating within urban spaces, this includes everything from small vegetable gardens and communal gardens to homemade greenhouses. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines Urban Agriculture as “the growing of plants and the raising of animals within and around cities”. This is common practice in cities such as New York, Portland, and Cape Town and many people living in cities are participating in some form of Urban Agriculture without realizing it.
Despite the rise in popularity, a newly released study in the Journal Nature Cities critiqued the carbon footprint of Urban Agriculture, highlighting that it is not as carbon efficient as conventional farming practices. The carbon emissions associated with Urban Agriculture are related to the infrastructure and set up of these plots, and not the farming practices themselves. Suggestions were offered to make Urban Agriculture more carbon efficient, such as prolonging the lifespan of the plots, reusing used materials, and making use of social networks. There are a few key aspects to note with this study. The first is its focus on the Global North. The Global North’s approach to Urban Agriculture is more “superficial” than the Global South’s, essentially it is a practice to supplement the already available food sources, or it is done as a means to keep food organic, as store-bought produce is not always organic. The Global North has seen a push for farm-to-table produce, but this is seen as more of a trend than a long-term nature-based sustainability solution.
The Global South faces a starker reality when it comes to food security. 2.1 million people in South Africa are starving and South Africa is qualified as a food secure country. However, lack of food is not the only problem, healthy food is expensive and therefore to eat enough food, many people are turning to unhealthy food options. This has led to an increase in obesity. Urban Agriculture could help alleviate this issue, as it can be a relatively inexpensive way to provide healthy food to people. Many homeless shelters, such as Native Roots in Plettenberg Bay, make use of communal gardens to supplement food supplies. The people in the shelters often help in the communal gardens, and this fosters social cohesion within the shelters. There are also incredible urban farming initiatives like that of Streetscapes in Cape Town, who collaborate with communities, the City of Cape Town, and stakeholders to take steps big and small to end chronic homelessness in Cape Town. Schools are also developing vegetable gardens to ensure that students have access to healthy food and essential nutrients that may be missing from their diets and help alleviate the financial burden on their parents to buy healthy foods. It is not just a trend in the Global South, but an important aspect to the way of life.
Bidi Bidi refugee camp is an example of Urban Agriculture at work. Refugees are allocated a plot of land to build a hut and create a small vegetable garden. This was done to alleviate the pressure on the Ugandan government to provide food to the roughly 1.3 million refugees in the camp which is twice the size of Paris. These small gardens are not a short-term activity for refugees as it is essential to their survival, and therefore these plots do not have the shorter lifespan as seen with the plots in the Global North. Now refugees are collaborating with local farmers in Uganda to develop unused farmland and are even implementing practices such as vertical farming. Vertical farming is commonplace in urban settings as it allows for higher yields to be generated from smaller spaces. This would also reduce carbon emissions as smaller plots would be producing more food and therefore lowering the emissions per plate of produce.
While not a flawless system, Urban Agriculture is growing in popularity for all the right reasons. It can create an enclosed circular system. Circular systems are sustainability’s best friend. An enclosed circular system is a process that can feed or sustain itself. Recycling is one way to try to create a circular system, recycling water, recycling plant waste and recycling materials. Urban Agriculture lends itself perfectly to being a circular system, once established it can sustain itself. Used materials such as old wooden boxes are used to establish the plots, excess plant matter can be used as compost, rainwater, and excess runoff water can be used in the irrigation process and it can be reused if the system is set up properly, and seeds are collected and swapped with others to promote diversity in yields. By being self-sustaining Urban Agriculture builds a city’s resilience against climate change, as they are less reliant on conventional agriculture which is heavily affected by climate change. Urban Agriculture also improves air quality within cities as there are more green spaces. SEED and Urban Harvest are two Cape Town-based organizations that promote Urban Agriculture. Urban Harvest has been operational since 2006, which makes it a longer standing Urban Agriculture project than the ones investigated in the aforementioned study.
An interesting benefit of creating green spaces is not only its obvious environmental impact but also its positive impact on mental health and wellbeing. Having green spaces allows people to reconnect with nature, which can be very difficult in many developed and urbanized cities. Most apartment blocks do not have green spaces, but preliminary studies have shown that tenants in apartment blocks with communal gardens have better mental health than those who live in apartment blocks without communal gardens or other green spaces. The idea of touching grass being good for you is not a joke anymore.
This also plays into the social cohesion aspect of Urban Agriculture. Urban Agriculture helps create green jobs and more job opportunities. Local gardeners and farmers can be employed to consult on community gardens. If produce is sold at markets, then it creates an income for the people involved. SEED and Urban Harvest both employ farmers, gardeners, marketers, and teachers. They both run courses to help people set up their own plots and these courses help grow the community. It has been shown that community gardens improve social bonds as they increase interaction between different groups of people from different backgrounds. Interacting with people of different races, ethnicities, and religions, the close proximity can lead to an increase in tolerance, and right now tolerance is also essential.
Overall, the benefits of Urban Agriculture outweigh the negatives. The carbon emissions can be lowered in simple ways, and the study itself highlighted three options to address this issue. Carbon emissions cannot be viewed in isolation, higher emissions are bad, but they need to be viewed in context and relation to all the positives associated with the practices. When Urban Agriculture becomes a long-term practice carbon emissions will fall, and the benefits will become clearer. No single sustainability practice is perfect, but the goal is to keep going and keep trying to implement these practices so that they can have a positive effect in the long run.
Written By Megan Mannion
