Dimensions of Urban Agriculture

Joshua Zeunert Dimensions of urban agriculture 12 Dimensions of urban agriculture Joshua Zeunert Introduction Agricultural production’s close proximity to settlements proved crucial to food supply security until very recent times (see Chapter 4). For the past 12,000 years since the Neolithic (Agricultural) Revolution, agriculture and civilisation have grown symbiotically, with food surpluses enabling permanent settlements and the development of urban life (Chapters 1 and 2). Over the past century, and particularly since the misleadingly named ‘green revolution’ (Chapter 16 outlines the negative environmental ramifica- tions), a transformational shift in agricultural practices has increased food production through large-scale mechanisation, high-yield crop varieties and breeds, and artificial fertilisers and pesticides (Bowler, 1992; Steel, 2008; Zeunert, 2017: 170; Chapter 9). This phenomenal reconfiguration of food and landscape systems has largely been enabled by harnessing extraordinarily concentrated fossil fuel energy sources, particularly oil, natural gas, and their by-products (Chapters 10 and 16). Subsequent hyper population growth and rapid urbanisation have dramatically reconfigured thousands of years of relative consistency in the evolution and relationships between settlements, the food that sustains them, and the proximity of food production. The past two decades has witnessed a resurgence in urban agricultural interest and discourse. This time- frame forms the focus of this chapter’s discussion, which combines a number of useful definitions to position urban agriculture (UA) before examining it more closely. Smit’s widely cited definition describes UA 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. (Smit et al., 1996: 3) Using Butler and Maronek’s (2002) definition, Philips (2013: 48) includes “a multiplicity of other benefits and services [. .] recreation and leisure; economic vitality and business entrepreneurship; individual health and well-being; community health and well-being; landscape beautification; and environmental restora- tion and remediation”. Knowd et al. (2005: 2) rightly argues that UA can be “a response to modernisation that has cultural and philosophical dimensions”. This chapter inclusively defines ‘urban’ as encompassing 160 Dimensions of urban agriculture peri-urban regions, consistent with leading UA (as in Smit, above) and well-articulated by Urban Agricul- ture Europe (COST): Urban agriculture spans all actors, communities, activities, places and economies that focus on bio- logical production in a spatial context, which-according to local standards – is categorized as ‘urban’. Urban agriculture takes place in intra- and periurban areas [. .] urban agriculture is structurally embedded in the urban fabric; it is integrated into the social and cultural life, the economics, and the metabolism of the city. (Lohrberg et al., 2016: 21) This chapter therefore encompasses both peri, intra and inner urban regions as constituting ‘urban’ agriculture (noting that Chapters 14 and 15 focus specifically on peri-urban contexts). Notwithstanding McClintock et al.’s (2013: 55) observation of the difficulty of capturing UA’s multiplicity, this chapter frames its diversity through six key dimensions: spatial, economic, social, environmental, practical, and intellectual ( Figure 12.1). While UA’s characteristics do not neatly fit into six discrete categories without overlap, discussion of each of these dimensions follows herein. Dimension one: spatial This dimension examines urban agriculture’s spatial characteristics and the related forces shaping its physi- cal makeup and scale. Agriculture’s transition from local, to regional, and now global was and is boosted by fossil fuel-powered farm machinery and synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, with today’s ‘industrial agriculture’ further facilitated by petroleum, distillate, aviation fuel, and fuel oils (Chapters 16 and 25; Bowler, 1992; Norberg-Hodge et al., 2001; Weis, 2010; Stierand, 2012: 67–68; Berry, 2015). This is the “kinetic expres- sionism era” (German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, cited in Fücks, 2015: 190–191) – representing a colossal acceleration of the historic time/space continuum (Harvey, 1989). As agriculture becomes further distanced Figure 12.1 The primary dimensions of urban agriculture as defined by the author. 161 Joshua Zeunert from expanding urban settlements the world over, operations diminish in number and labour force while increasing in landholding size. Urban agriculture is often deemed trivial in the face of this dominant, global industrialised food system (see for example Badami and Ramankutty, 2015) – associated with diminutive raised planting beds, isolated and temporary interventions, failure-prone vertical gardens and ailing food plants in hardscape dominated inner-city environments. Notwithstanding its recognised social dimensions (discussed in Dimension Three: Social), when measured against the Goliath of global agriculture, such small-scale UA measures seem mere “band-aids” (Meyer, in Zeunert, 2017: 212), essentially inconsequential to global food security (Raman- kutty et al., 2008, World Bank, n.d.b; Chapter 25). This view is comprehensible when considering the size of individual agricultural landholdings in large countries such as the USA, Canada, China, Brazil, and Australia, which can exceed that of some countries – the state of South Australia’s 34,000 square kilometre Anna Creek cattle station, for example, is greater than Belgium’s entire 30,528 square kilometre landmass. Yet urban agriculture is far from marginal, whether as measured by standard financial metrics (see Dimension Two: Economic), in the immeasurably important role it plays for communities worldwide (Dimen- sion Three: Social), or in its high volume contribution to health and nutrition. Historically, UA was substan- tially employed in public green spaces, vacant and private land during twentieth century conflicts, wars and food crises. In many cases it provided significant yields: a substantial 40% of vegetable consumption in America (Brown and Jameton, 2000) and around half of Britain’s fruit and vegetables (Garnett, 1996) during the Second World War – both considerable given their respective populations of 140 and 48 mil- lion people in 1945. More recently, global cropland analysis indicates that urban areas contain 11% of all irrigated and 4.7% of rainfed croplands; when extending the capture to within 20 kilometres of urban areas, this jumps to 60% of irrigated and 35% of rain-fed croplands (Thebo et al., 2014). In the USA, Burton et al. (2013: 87) state that UA contributes 40% of total food produced on just 10% of agricultural land. Land losses and gains Peri-urban farmers provide the bulk of UA production, both spatially and financially (Thebo et al., 2014; Chapter 15). Peri-urban agriculture is, however, diminishing (Chapter 14). Australian census data, for example, reveals 47.2% of perishable vegetables grown in peri-urban areas in 2010–11 (Sinclair, 2015: 2) but this is waning and likely to further reduce (Chapter 15). Ongoing urban sprawl and resultant land-value increase is largely responsible for this loss, mirrored in myriad cities worldwide. Studies identify UA expan- sion opportunities to help offset such reductions: Ackerman (2012: 3) pinpoints around 5,000 acres of potentially suitable vacant faming land (2,023 hectares, six times Central Park) in New York City (NYC), with Meier (2013: S-1) suggesting that agricultural land in NYC’s Metropolitan Statistical Area could sup- port between 58–89% of the 18,897,109 population’s fruit and vegetable needs “if that land was dedicated entirely to production for local markets”. Substantial city green belts devoted to fruit and vegetables offer notable production potential (Garnett, 1996), such as those encircling many English cities (Zeunert, 2017: 52). Large public green spaces offer further spatial and financial opportunities (Zeunert, 2016). Production suitability Certain vegetables, herbs, fruits, nuts, and more spatially efficient, compact staple crops can meaningfully contribute to total urban food demands. Long-time UA proponents, the RUAF Foundation, cites significant percentages of selected produce (leafy vegetables/all vegetables/eggs/poultry/milk/pork/fruit) grown in urban and peri-urban agriculture in sixteen (mainly developing) cities (de Zeeuw and Dubbeling, 2009: 11). More recent data for the study’s two most developed cities (Singapore and Hong Kong), indicates significantly lower volumes in the two decades elapsed (NZTE, 2014; Tse, 2015), possibly due to uptake of global over local agriculture, and urban population growth. 162 Dimensions of urban agriculture Food footprints It is worth noting that current urban food footprints (see Rees, 1992; Wackernagel, 1994; Weller, 2009: 440– 441; Roggema and Keeffe, 2014: 12) well exceed even the most low-density, vacant, and/or shrinking cities’ (such as Detroit) capacity for food self-sufficiency within their area (see Grewal and Grewal, 2012; McClin- tock et al., 2013; Porter et al., 2014; Badami and Ramankutty, 2015). This unfeasibility is often cited by UA’s critics (see for example Badami and Ramankutty, 2015).

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