By Stephanie Rochford
Sustainability Studies student
Today, we are seeing more cities promote urban agriculture, but why? Isn’t a city, by its very nature, the result of not wanting to farm land? Do the benefits of urban agriculture become counterintuitive to the life of a city? Some might say that agriculture does not belong in the city. But I argue that urban agriculture is the answer to some major issues facing our cities today. Issues such as poverty, poor food choices, and hunger affect many residents of a city and urban agriculture provides a solution to all of these.
Though urban agriculture has always existed on some small level, the main culprit today in the promotion of urban agriculture is the weak and unstable economy. When the economy is poor, the amount of unemployed people rises which directly affects the amount of food someone can buy. A poor economy means that cities receive less money from the government to maintain their services. The more places that shut down directly effects the work available. No work, no money, no food. Answers to these problems lie in the use of land in the city along with its resources to grow food. If unemployed people work to grow food on unused land in the city, they create a commodity to sell and eat. By selling their product to other city dwellers there is an increase in food variety, quality, and a way to earn money. This might seem extreme, and most likely remind you of a third world country, but cities today are witnessing the transformation of burroughs, institutions, churches, and communities. The abandoned lots with soil and the warehouses that have been left to rot away, are being transformed into places of growth and economic stability. The implementation of urban agriculture in cities is not only providing sound work and food, but it is bringing people together. It might be argued that this particular benefit of urban agriculture, has the greatest impact without a sure fire way to measure or value it. As discussed in the book Urban Agriculture, bringing the community together during a time of low economic output and high crime, is a way to reduce crime in neighborhoods. Providing citizens with incentives to use the urban land for farming might include, buying their food in exchange for money or housing, providing jobs to people to grow food for state programs, and you just never know when something like this is going to change someone’s life by bringing them a purpose in life.
Learn More:
- http://www.lincolninst.edu/pubs/261_Farming-Inside-Cities
- Dziedzic, Nancy and Lynn M Zott, Eds., Urban Agriculture. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press, 2012.
- http://agriculturesociety.com/tag/monocropping/
- http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/01/farm-policy-if-climate-change-mattered
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