Advantages A sprouting glass jar with mung beans in it Socio-Economic and Cultural Provision of Livelihood UPAcan be seen as a means of improving the livelihood of people living in and around cities. 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 jobs, as well as reducing food costs and improving quality. UA provides employment, income, and access to food for urban populations . Research into market values for produce grown in urban gardens has been attributed to a community garden plot a median yield value of between approximately $200 and $500 (US, adjusted for inflation). 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. This allows families to generate larger incomes selling to local grocers or to local outdoor markets while supplying their household with the proper nutrition of fresh and nutritional products . 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. Strengthening of Community Relationships and Inclusion Urban Agriculture can have an overall positive impact on community health, and facilitate positive social interaction and networks which contributes to the social and individual emotional well-being.  For many neighborhoods, gardens provide a “symbolic focus,” which leads to increased neighborhood pride. Urban agriculture increases community participation through diagnostic workshops or different commissions in the area of vegetable gardens. Activities which involve hundreds of people. Due to the food security that comes with UA, feelings of independence and empowerment often arise. The ability to produce and grow food for oneself has also been reported to improve levels of  self-esteem or of self-efficacy . Urban agriculture provides unique opportunities to bridge diverse communities together. In addition, it provides opportunities for health care providers to interact with their patients. Thus, making each community garden a hub that is reflective of the community. Beautification and Aesthetic Value%DIFDELCMD < [%%% 1 The social involvement helped raise the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood, boosting the motivation or efficacy of the community as a whole. This increased efficacy was shown to increase neighborhood attachment. Therefore, the positive health outcomes of urban farming can be explained in part by interpersonal and social factors that boost health.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Environmental Reduction in Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Carbon Footprint The energy-efficient nature of urban agriculture can reduce each city's carbon footprint by reducing the amount of transport that occurs to deliver goods to the consumer. Such areas can act as carbon sinks offsetting some of the carbon accumulation that is innate to urban areas, where pavement and buildings outnumber plants. Plants absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and release breathable oxygen (O2) through photosynthesis. The process of Carbon Sequestration can be further improved by combining other agriculture techniques to increase removal from the atmosphere and prevent the release of CO2 during harvest time. However, this process relies heavily on the types of plants selected and the methodology of farming. Specifically, choosing plants that do not lose their leaves and remain green all year can increase the farm's ability to sequester carbon.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% The reduction in ozone and other particulate matter can benefit human health. Reducing these particulates and ozone gases could reduce mortality rates in urban areas along with increasing the health of those living in cities. A 2011 article found that a rooftop containing 2000 m² of uncut grass has the potential to remove up to 4000 kg of particulate matter and that one square meter of green roof is sufficient to offset the annual particulate matter emissions of a car. Energy Efficiency upEdible Oyster Mushrooms growing on used coffee grounds The current industrial agriculture system is accountable for high energy costs for the transportation of foodstuffs. According to a study by Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, the average conventional produce item travels , using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, of fossil fuel per . The energy used to transport food is decreased when urban agriculture can provide cities with locally grown food . Pirog found that traditional, non-local, food distribution system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more than the local and regional transport.Pirog, Rich S.; Van Pelt, Timothy; Enshayan, Kamyar; and Cook, Ellen, "Food, Fuel, and Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions" ( 2001). Leopold Center Pubs and Papers. 3. URL Similarly, in a study by Marc Xuereb and Region of Waterloo Public Health, it was estimated that switching to locally-grown food could save transport-related emissions equivalent to nearly 50, 000 metric tons of , or the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.Xuereb, Marc. (2005 ). " Food Miles: Environmental Implications of Food Imports to Waterloo Region. " Public Health Planner Region of Waterloo Public Health. November. URL upA windowfarm, incorporating discarded plastic bottles into pots for hydroponic agriculture in urban windows Reduction in Noise Pollution Large amounts of noise pollution not only lead to lower property values and high frustration, they can be damaging to human hearing and health. The study “Noise exposure and public health,” found that exposure to continual noise is a public health problem. Examples of the detriment of continual noise on humans to include: “hearing impairment, hypertension and ischemic heart disease, annoyance, sleep disturbance, and decreased school performance.” Since most roofs or vacant lots consist of hard flat surfaces that reflect sound waves instead of absorbing them, adding plants that can absorb these waves has the potential to lead to a vast reduction in noise pollution.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Nutritional Daily intake of a variety of fruits and vegetables is linked to a decreased risk of chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Urban agriculture is associated with increased consumption of fruits and vegetables which decreases risk for disease and can be a cost-effective way to provide citizens with quality, fresh produce in urban settings. Garden-based education can also yield nutritional benefits in children. Urban agriculture also provides quality nutrition for low-income households. Improved access to food through urban agriculture can also help alleviate psychosocial stresses in poor communities. Community members engaged in urban agriculture improve local knowledge about healthy ways to fulfill dietary needs . Urban agriculture can also better the mental health of community members. Buying and selling quality products to local producers and consumers allows community members to support one another, which may reduce stress. Thus, urban agriculture can help improve conditions in poor communities, where residents experience higher levels of stress due to a perceived lack of control over the quality of their lives.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Urban farming has been shown to increase health outcomes. Gardeners consume twice as much fruit and vegetables than non-gardeners. Levels of physical activity are also positively associated with urban farming. These results are seen indirectly and can be supported by the social involvement in an individual's community as a member of the community farm. Food Security and Justice Access to nutritious food, both economically and geographically, is another perspective in the effort to locate food and livestock production in cities. The tremendous influx of the world population to urban areas has increased the need for fresh and safe food. The 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.%DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Areas faced with food security issues have limited choices, often relying on highly processed fast food or convenience store foods that are high in calories and low in nutrients, which may lead to elevated rates of diet-related illnesses such as diabetes. These problems have brought about the concept of food justice which Alkon and Norgaard (2009; 289) explain that, "places access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food in the contexts of institutional racism, racial formation, and racialized geographies. Food justice serves as a theoretical and political bridge between scholarship and activism on sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, and environmental justice. " Some systematic reviews have already explored urban agriculture contribution to food security and other determinants of health outcomes%DIFDELCMD < [%%% 2 . The Agriculture Network could be used to address food insecurity. One study of Cleveland shows that the city could actually meet up to 100\% of its fresh produce needs%DIFDELCMD < [%%% 3 . This would prevent up to $115 million in annual economic leakage. Using the rooftop space of New York City would also be able to provide roughly twice the amount of space necessary to supply New York City with its green vegetable yields. Space could be even better optimized through the usage of hydroponic or indoor factory production of food. Growing gardens within cities would also cut down on the amount of food waste. UPA plays an important role in making food more affordable and in providing emergency supplies of food. Environmental justice Urban Agriculture is known to bring ample health and social benefits for residents. Participating in community gardens, urban farms, and other types of gardening projects in the city offer new opportunities for physical activity, create and strengthen social contacts and relationships, address stress and other mental health needs, improve environmental conditions of the city, and contribute to overall well-being. Those benefits are particularly evident for socially vulnerable groups, including lower-income residents, immigrants, residents with disabilities, children, or the elderly[4]. Adding, Urban Gardens addresses different drivers of injustices that exist in a city such as exclusive access to benefits of urban sustainability infrastructure, Uneven environmental health and pollution patterns, and Unfit institutional structures [5]. It helps as well to restore environment justices and equalities in cities and living spaces. Implementation A small urban farm in Amsterdam Rooftop urban farming at the Food Roof Farm in downtown St. Louis, MO Creating a community-based infrastructure for urban agriculture means establishing local systems to grow and process food and transfer it from farmer to consumer. To facilitate food production, cities have established community-based farming projects. Some projects have collectively tended community farms on common land, much like that of the eighteenth-century Boston Common. One such community farm is the Collingwood Children's Farm in Melbourne, Australia. Other community garden projects use the allotment garden model, in which gardeners care for individual plots in a larger gardening area, often sharing a tool shed and other amenities. Seattle's P-Patch Gardens use this model, as did the South Central Farm in Los Angeles and the Food Roof Farm in St. Louis. Independent urban gardeners also grow food in individual yards and on roofs. Garden sharing projects seek to pair producers with the land, typically, residential yard space. Roof gardens allow for urban dwellers to maintain green spaces in the city without having to set aside a tract of undeveloped land. Rooftop farms allow otherwise unused industrial roofspace to be used productively, creating work and profit. Projects around the world seek to enable cities to become 'continuous productive landscapes' by cultivating vacant urban land and temporary or permanent kitchen gardens.André Viljoen, Katrin Bohn and Joe Howe, 2005, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, Oxford: Architectural Press Urban agriculture project in the La Romita section of Colonia Roma, Mexico City Tomato plants growing in a pot farming alongside a small house in New Jersey in fifteen garbage cans filled with soil, grew over 700 tomatoes during the summer of 2013. Food processing on a community level has been accommodated by centralizing resources in community tool sheds and processing facilities for farmers to share. The Garden Resource Program Collaborative based in Detroit has cluster tool banks. Different areas of the city have tool banks where resources like tools, compost, mulch, tomato stakes, seeds, and education can be shared and distributed with the gardeners in that cluster. Detroit's Garden Resource Program Collaborative also strengthens their gardening community by providing access to their member's transplants; education on gardening, policy, and food issues; and by building connectivity between gardeners through workgroups, potlucks, tours, field trips, and cluster workdays. In Brazil, "Cities Without Hunger" has generated a public policy for the reconstruction of abandoned areas with food production and has improved the green areas of the community. Farmers' markets, such as the farmers' market in Los Angeles, provide a common land where farmers can sell their product to consumers. Large cities tend to open their farmer's markets on the weekends and one day in the middle of the week. For example, the farmers' market of Boulevard 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. Argentina The city of Rosario (population: 1.3 million) has incorporated agriculture fully into its land-use planning and urban development strategy. Its Land Use Plan 2007-2017 makes specific provision for the agricultural use of public land. Under its Metropolitan Strategic Plan 2008-2018, Rosario is building a “green circuit”, passing through and around the city, consisting of family and community gardens, large-scale, commercial vegetable gardens and orchards, multifunctional garden parks, and “productive barrios”, where agriculture is integrated into programs for the construction of public housing and the upgrading of slums. In 2014, the green circuit consisted of more than 30 ha of land used to grow vegetables, fruit, and medicinal and aromatic plants. The city has five garden parks – large, landscaped green areas covering a total of 72 ha of land, which is used for agriculture and for cultural, sports and educational activities.Food and Agriculture Organization (2014) Growing greener cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Australia In Queensland many people have started a trend of urban farming and utilizing aquaponics and self-watering containers. Canada British Columbia A Canadian urban farmer in British Columbia has published details on a crop value rating (CVR) system that urban farmers can use to determine which crops to grow, based on each crop's contribution to supporting the farm economically. This entails forgoing some crops in favor of others, but he points out that urban farmers can develop business networking with rural farmers to bring some of those other crops to the urban point of sale. For example, the urban farmer may not be able to economically justify growing sweet corn (based on long days to maturity and low yield density per linear foot of row), but a networking arrangement is mutually beneficial, as it lets a rural sweet corn grower gain an additional point of sale at retail price while also letting the urban farmer fill the gap in his product line offering. Several community projects in Victoria, British Columbia were born to promote urban agricultural practices such as the Sharing Backyards program. This program exists to help people living in urban areas get connected with others who have extra space in their yards for the purpose of urban farming. Organizations also exist to educate people living in the urban parts of Vancouver on farming and growing food in an urban setting by running public demonstration gardens. Covering the roof of the west building of the Vancouver Convention Centre is the largest green roof in Canada and one of the 10 largest green roofs in the world. With around six acres of living space, it is home to more than 400,000 indigenous plants and grasses that provide insulation. It is also home to four Western honey bee beehives which pollinate the plants on the roof and provide honey. The living includes other sustainable practices such as recycling and reusing water. The city of Kamloops, British Columbia actively promotes urban agricultural practices within their community. They stress the importance of food security and its effect on the economy as well as the ecology. They created the Food and Urban Agriculture Plan (FUAP), initiated in 2014, which lays out goals and strategies to implement a sustainable food system. The Areas which they cover include: Food Production and Land Availability, Food Processing and Preparing, Food Distribution/Retail/Access, Cooking/Eating and Celebrating Food, Food Waste and Resource Management, as well as Education/Governance and Capacity Building. The FUAP greatly emphasizes on Urban Agriculture. Ontario Ontario is the second biggest province and is one of the most urbanized in Canada. The provincial government of Ontario has a website dedicated to providing information to those who are interested in establishing an urban farm or for those who just want to learn more about urban agriculture in Ontario. The City of Ottawa is home to the largest urban farm in the nation, the Central Experimental Farm (CEF). Centrally located and surrounded by the city, the 4 square kilometres (1.5 sq mi) farm is an agricultural facility, working farm, and research center of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The City of Ottawa is also home to numerous urban farms within the 203.5-square-kilometre (78.6 sq mi) greenbelt. Along with many other cities in Ontario, the City of Toronto allows eligible residents in 4 wards across the city to keep a maximum of 4 hens (no roosters) for the purpose of enjoyment or personal consumption of only the eggs. There are other requirements included with rearing these hens under this program such as zoning and guidelines for building the enclosure, waste and disposal. The wards eligible for this program from the UrbanHensTo site include Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park), Ward 21 (St. Paul's), Ward 5 (Etobicoke-Lakeshore), and Ward 32 (Beaches-East York). Workshops are also available to those interested in rearing urban hens. However, failure to abide by these rules and regulations can result in fines. Quebec Lufa Farms greenhouses are constructed on the rooftops of Greater Montreal. In Montreal, about 100 community gardens provide plots where citizens can grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The largest community garden has about 255 allotment plots, while the smallest site has about 25 plots. Out of 2 million people living in the urbanized parts of Montreal, about 10,000 residents share the garden plots. The program has been in place since 1975 and is managed by the boroughs. Some of the boroughs have a gardening instructor who visits the gardens regularly to give gardeners tips. Soil, a water supply, a space for tools, sand, fencing, and paint are provided by the city, managed by the Department of Sports, Recreation and Social Development. Canada has a number of companies working on urban farm technology, including in Montreal. The most significant is Lufa Farms, a private company that opened what is reported to be the world's largest rooftop greenhouse at 163,000 sq ft in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent. This is Lufa's fourth rooftop greenhouse in Montreal and is built on the roof of the former Sears Canada warehouse. Lufa's first rooftop greenhouse was built in early 2011, a 2880 sq metre (31,000 sq ft) hydroponic rooftop greenhouse atop a warehouse designated as their headquarters. They built two more large rooftop greenhouses in greater Montreal in 2013 (4,000 sq metre / 43,000 sq ft) and 2017 (5,850 sq metre / 63,000 sq ft), spending almost $ 10 million for the three structures. Also in 2017, an IGA supermarket in Saint-Laurent in Montreal unveiled a green roof of about 25,000 square feet of green space and products certified by Ecocert Canada. They state that they can provide over 30 different kinds of rooftop grown organic produce, along with honey produced and harvested from eight bee hives located on the roof. Denver Denver, Colorado is home to many different forms of Urban Agriculture projects: indoor and outdoor, for-profit and nonprofit, community gardens and farms, and private and public land.McIvor, D.W., Hale, J. Urban agriculture and the prospects for deep democracy. Agric Hum Values 32, 727–741 (2015). URL Denver has been a case study for urban agriculture as a force of green gentrification; historically, Denver urban farmers gained access to land after the Great Recession, but began to contribute to displacement of their neighbors and themselves as green gentrification spread throughout an economically-expanding city with new municipal sustainability goals.Joshua Sbicca, "Urban Agriculture, Revalorization, and GreenGentrification in Denver, Colorado" In The Politics of Land. Published online: 25 Feb2019; 149-170.Permanent link to this URL One reason for such a rise in the food movement is the city's unique lack of both open-space funding and a working land trust, which caused city farms to drop from 307 in 1925 to nine by 2016. In 2009, then-mayor John Hickenlooper declared May 14th to be Grow Local Colorado day. Then, in 2010, Hickenlooper formed the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council. In 2011, Mayor Michael Hancock continued along this trend of green development, creating the “People’s Plan” to stimulate the economy by improving land-access for farmers and local food availability.Alkon, A. H., Kato, Y.,%DIFDELCMD < & %%% Sbicca, J. (2020). In A recipe for gentrification food, power, and resistance in the city (pp. 93–95). essay, New York University Press. Included in the city's 2020 Sustainability Goals is the plan to produce 20\% of Denver's food in Colorado. Illinois Urban farming initiatives across the State of Illinois, including Chicago, have been spearheaded by advocacy groups. In addition, HB3418 allows municipalities and counties across the state, including Chicago, to establish urban agriculture zones (UAZs), supported by financial incentives such as reduced water rates, utility fees, and property tax abatements. Furthermore, the USDA has implemented the Outreach and Technical Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program (the 2501 Program) which was transferred from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The primary purpose of the 2501 Program is to enhance the coordination of outreach, technical assistance, and education efforts, to reach socially disadvantaged and veteran farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners and to improve their participation in the full range of USDA programs. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Taysuteke Community Urban Garden in Freetown- Sierra Leone Taysuteke community garden in Freetown. The association has been practicing urban farming on the land for generations. The association was officially established in 2000 and later registered as a women’s cooperative. Like many other urban and peri-urban agriculture in Freetown , its activity expanded as a response to the food shortages caused by blockade during the civil war in Freetown. Currently, it is formed of 60 women living in the vicinity of the garden. Taysuteke garden provided livelihoods to the group and generated income that is used for households’ provisions and kids’ education. Taysutekeh urban garden spreads over an area of 1 hectare. It is divided into 15 plots. The plots are cultivated collectively by the women, and the yields are shared equitably. Each woman contributes a monthly fee equivalent to 1$ that goes to the collective bank account of the association. The amount is used seasonally by the association to conduct land preparation work and install irrigation systems that mainly require paid labor. Most crops are planted during the dry season including cassava leaves, potato leaves, sorrel, corchorus leaves, amaranthus, okra, tomatoes, cabbage, etc. Taysuteke land was originally a mangrove swamp. It was reclaimed for farming for almost three generations. However, ownership of the land is a burden and a challenge that the association faces. Fear of eviction is a constant concern for the association. Farm on Odgen by Chicago Botanic Garden. |alt= 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 improves water management and increases the availability of fresh water 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. Urban agriculture also makes the city a healthier place to live by improving the quality of the environment. UPA is a very effective 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. Urban agriculture for sustainable cities: using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources. Jac Smit, Joe Nasr. Environment and Urbanization, Vol 4, Issue 2, pp. 141 - 152. First Published October 1, 1992. URL Trade-offs Space is at a premium in cities and is accordingly expensive and difficult to secure. The utilization of untreated wastewater for urban agricultural irrigation can facilitate the spread of waterborne diseases among the human population. Although studies have demonstrated improved air quality in urban areas related to the proliferation of urban gardens, it has also been shown that increasing urban pollution (related specifically to a sharp rise in the number of automobiles on the road), has led to an increase in insect pests, which consume plants produced by urban agriculture. It is believed that changes to the physical structure of the plants themselves, which have been correlated to increased levels of air pollution, increase plants' palatability to insect pests. Reduced yields within urban gardens decreases the amount of food available for human consumption. Studies indicate that the nutritional quality of wheat suffers when urban wheat plants are exposed to high nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide concentrations. This problem is particularly acute in the developing world, where outdoor concentrations of sulfur dioxide are high and large percentages of the population rely upon urban agriculture as a primary source of food. These studies have implications for the nutritional quality of other staple crops that are grown in urban settings. Agricultural activities on land that is contaminated (with such metals as lead) pose potential risks to human health. These risks are associated both with working directly on contaminated land and with consuming food that was grown in contaminated soil. The lead would affect the roots of plants grown in these soils much more than above ground produce. Most of the danger of lead in urban gardens would come from ingesting the soil itself. Municipal greening policy goals can pose conflicts. For example, policies promoting urban tree canopy are not sympathetic to vegetable gardening because of the deep shade cast by trees. However, some municipalities like Portland, Oregon, and Davenport, Iowa are encouraging the implementation of fruit-bearing trees (as street trees or as park orchards) to meet both greening and food production goals . Green gentrification or environmental gentrification occurs when environmental policies or planning in urban spaces leads to the displacement and exclusion of certain residents. Specifically, the growth imperative of capitalist urbanization pushes governments to enact sustainable development initiatives in underprivileged areas.Gould, K. A., Lewis, T. L. (2017). Green gentrification: Urban sustainability and the struggle for environmental justice. New York, NY: Routledge. In addition to "green" labels being marketable for developers and businesses, beautification can enhance gentrification, and urban agriculture can potentially contribute to this. However, farming and gardening in urban spaces isn’t always a signal of gentrification. The relationship is complex, as urban green spaces can also provide food to the underserved, and act as community-run spaces of resistance .
Impact A sprouting glass jar with mung beans in it Economic Urban and Peri-urban agriculture (UPA) 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 jobs, as well as reducing food costs and improving quality. Urban agriculture for sustainable cities: using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources. Jac Smit, Joe Nasr. Environment and Urbanization, Vol 4, Issue 2, pp. 141 - 152. First Published October 1, 1992. URL UPA provides employment, income, and access to food for urban populations , which helps 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 been attributed to a community garden plot a median yield value of between approximately $200 and $500 (US, adjusted for inflation). Sommers, L., and B. Butterfield, as cited in: Blair, D., C. Giesecke, and S. Sherman. (1991). "A Dietary, Social and Economic Evaluation of the Philadelphia Urban Gardening Project," Journal of Nutrition Education . Social The needs of urban landscaping can be combined with those of suburban livestock farmers. (Kstovo, Russia). Urban agriculture can have a large impact on the social and emotional well-being of individuals. UA can have an overall positive impact on community health, which directly impacts individuals social and emotional well-being. Urban gardens are often places that facilitate positive social interaction , which also contributes to overall social and emotional well-being. Many gardens facilitate the improvement of social networks within the communities that they are located. For many neighborhoods, gardens provide a “symbolic focus,” which leads to increased neighborhood pride. Urban agriculture increases community participation through diagnostic workshops or different commissions in the area of vegetable gardens. Activities which involve hundreds of people. When individuals come together around UA, physical activity levels are often increased. This can also raise serotonin levels akin to working out at a gym. There is the added element of walking/biking to the gardens, further increasing physical activity and the benefits of being outdoors. 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 an informal activity, but in many cities where inadequate, unreliable, and irregular access to food is a recurring problem, urban agriculture has been a positive response to tackling food concerns. Due to the food security that comes with UA, feelings of independence and empowerment often arise. The ability to produce and grow food for oneself has also been reported to improve levels of self-esteem or of self-efficacy %DIFDELCMD < [%%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% . 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.Hales et al. ( 2016 ). " Urban Agriculture: Urban agriculture, positive impact " My Green Hobby The CFSC states that: %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% %DIFDELCMD < [%%% %DIFDELCMD < [%%% 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. As an example, you can raise your own chickens on an urban farm and have fresh eggs for only $0.44 per dozen.What's the Real Cost of Raising Backyard Chickens? (2015, March 29). Retrieved April 2, 2015, from URL This allows families to generate larger incomes selling to local grocers or to local outdoor markets while supplying their household with the proper nutrition of fresh and nutritional products. A vegetable garden in the square in front of the train station in Ezhou, China 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.FAO. (1999). "Issues in Urban Agriculture," FAO Spotlight Magazine, January. 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. As most UA activities are conducted on vacant municipal land, there have been raising 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.IDRC/ UN-HABITAT".Guidelines for Municipal Policymaking on Urban Agriculture" Urban Agriculture: Land Management and Physical Planning (2003) PDF 1.3 Over a third of U.S. households, roughly 42 million, participate in food gardening. There has also been an increase of 63\% participation in farming by millennials from 2008-2013. US households participating in community gardening has also tripled from 1 to 3 million in that time frame. Urban agriculture provides unique opportunities to bridge diverse communities together. In addition, it provides opportunities for health care providers to interact with their patients. Thus, making each community garden a hub that is reflective of the community.Alaimo, K., Beavers, A.W., Crawford, C. et al. Curr Envir Health Rpt (2016) 3: 302. URL Energy efficiency upEdible Oyster Mushrooms growing on used coffee grounds The current industrial agriculture system is accountable for high energy costs for the transportation of foodstuffs. According to a study by Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, the average conventional produce item travels , using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, of fossil fuel per . The energy used to transport food is decreased when urban agriculture can provide cities with locally grown food. Pirog found that traditional, non-local, food distribution system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more than the local and regional transport.Pirog, Rich S.; Van Pelt, Timothy; Enshayan, Kamyar; and Cook, Ellen, "Food, Fuel, and Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions" (2001). Leopold Center Pubs and Papers. 3. URL Similarly, in a study by Marc Xuereb and Region of Waterloo Public Health, it was estimated that switching to locally-grown food could save transport-related emissions equivalent to nearly 50,000 metric tons of , or the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.Xuereb, Marc. (2005). "Food Miles: Environmental Implications of Food Imports to Waterloo Region." Public Health Planner Region of Waterloo Public Health. November. URL upA windowfarm, incorporating discarded plastic bottles into pots for hydroponic agriculture in urban windows Carbon footprint As mentioned above, the energy-efficient nature of urban agriculture can reduce each city's carbon footprint by reducing the amount of transport that occurs to deliver goods to the consumer.Delta Institute, "Urban Agriculture." Web. 25 March 2013. Such areas can act as carbon sinks offsetting some of the carbon accumulation that is innate to urban areas, where pavement and buildings outnumber plants. Plants absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide () and release breathable oxygen (O2) through photosynthesis. The process of Carbon Sequestration can be further improved by combining other agriculture techniques to increase removal from the atmosphere and prevent the release of during harvest time. However, this process relies heavily on the types of plants selected and the methodology of farming. Specifically, choosing plants that do not lose their leaves and remain green all year can increase the farm's ability to sequester carbon. Reduction in ozone and particulate matter The reduction in ozone and other particulate matter can benefit human health. Reducing these particulates and ozone gases could reduce mortality rates in urban areas along with increase the health of those living in cities. A 2011 article found that a rooftop containing 2000 m² of uncut grass has the potential to remove up to 4000 kg of particulate matter and that one square meter of green roof is sufficient to offset the annual particulate matter emissions of a car.Environmental Affairs Department, City of Los Angeles. 2006. "Green Roofs - Cooling Los Angeles: A Resource Guide". URL Soil decontamination Vacant urban lots are often victims to illegal dumping of hazardous chemicals and other wastes. They are also liable to accumulate standing water and “grey water”, which can be dangerous to public health, especially left stagnant for long periods. The implementation of urban agriculture in these vacant lots can be a cost-effective method for removing these chemicals. In the process known as Phytoremediation, plants and the associated microorganisms are selected for their chemical ability to degrade, absorb, convert to an inert form, and remove toxins from the soil.Black, H. "Absorbing Possibilities: Phytoremediation." Environ Health Perspectives 103.12 (1995): 1106-108. Several chemicals can be targeted for removal, including heavy metals (e.g. Mercury and lead), inorganic compounds (e.g. Arsenic and Uranium), and organic compounds (e.g. petroleum and chlorinated compounds like PBC's).Comis, Don. (2000). "Phytoremediation: Using Plants To Clean Up Soils." Agricultural Research: n. pag. Phytoremediation: Using Plants To Clean Up Soils. USDA-ARS, 13 August 2004. Web. 25 March 2013. Phytoremeditation is both an environmentally-friendly, cost-effective and energy-efficient measure to reduce pollution. Phytoremediation only costs about $5–$40 per ton of soil being decontaminated.Cluis, C. (2004). "Junk-greedy Greens: phytoremediation as a new option for soil decontamination," BioTech J. 2: 61-67 Implementation of this process also reduces the amount of soil that must be disposed of in a hazardous waste landfill. Urban agriculture as a method to mediate chemical pollution can be effective in preventing the spread of these chemicals into the surrounding environment. Other methods of remediation often disturb the soil and force the chemicals contained within it into the air or water. Plants can be used as a method to remove chemicals and also to hold the soil and prevent erosion of contaminated soil decreasing the spread of pollutants and the hazard presented by these lots. One way of identifying soil contamination is through using already well-established plants as bioindicators of soil health. Using well-studied plants is important because there has already been substantial bodies of work to test them in various conditions, so responses can be verified with certainty. Such plants are also valuable because they are genetically identical as crops as opposed to natural variants of the same species. Typically urban soil has had the topsoil stripped away and has led to soil with low aeration, porosity, and drainage. Typical measures of soil health are microbial biomass and activity, enzymes, soil organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen, available nutrients, porosity, aggregate stability, and compaction. A new measurement is active carbon (AC), which is the most usable portion of the total organic carbon (TOC) in the soil. This contributes greatly to the functionality of the soil food web. Using common crops, which are generally well-studied, as bioindicators can be used to effectively test the quality of an urban farming plot before beginning planting.Alaimo K, Beavers AW, Crawford C, et al. (2016) Amplifying Health Through Community Gardens: A Framework for Advancing Multicomponent, Behaviorally Based Neighborhood Interventions. Current Environmental Health Reports 3:302–312. doi: 10.1007/s40572-016-0105-0 Noise pollution Large amounts of noise pollution not only lead to lower property values and high frustration, they can be damaging to human hearing and health. The study “Noise exposure and public health,” found that exposure to continual noise is a public health problem. Examples of the detriment of continual noise on humans to include: “hearing impairment, hypertension and ischemic heart disease, annoyance, sleep disturbance, and decreased school performance.” Since most roofs or vacant lots consist of hard flat surfaces that reflect sound waves instead of absorbing them, adding plants that can absorb these waves has the potential to lead to a vast reduction in noise pollution. Nutrition and quality of food Daily intake of a variety of fruits and vegetables is linked to a decreased risk of chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Urban agriculture is associated with increased consumption of fruits and vegetables Alaimo, K., Packnett, E., Miles, R., Kruger, D. (2008). "Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Urban Community Gardeners". Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. (1499-4046),40 (2), p. 94. which decreases risk for disease and can be a cost-effective way to provide citizens with quality, fresh produce in urban settings. Produce from urban gardens can be perceived to be more flavorful and desirable than store bought produce which may also lead to a wider acceptance and higher intake. A Flint, Michigan study found that those participating in community gardens consumed fruits and vegetables 1.4 times more per day and were 3.5 times more likely to consume fruits or vegetables at least 5 times daily (p. 1). Garden-based education can also yield nutritional benefits in children. An Idaho study reported a positive association between school gardens and increased intake of fruit, vegetables, vitamin A, vitamin C and fiber among sixth graders. Harvesting fruits and vegetables initiates the enzymatic process of nutrient degradation which is especially detrimental to water soluble vitamins such as ascorbic acid and thiamin. The process of blanching produce in order to freeze or can reduce nutrient content slightly, but not nearly as much as the amount of time spent in storage. Harvesting produce from one's own community garden cuts back on storage times significantly. Urban agriculture also provides quality nutrition for low-income households. Studies show that every $1 invested in a community garden yields $6 worth of vegetables if labor is not considered a factor in investment. Many urban gardens reduce the strain on food banks and other emergency food providers by donating shares of their harvest and providing fresh produce in areas that otherwise might be food deserts. The supplemental nutrition program Women, Infants and Children (WIC) as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have partnered with several urban gardens nationwide to improve the accessibility to produce in exchange for a few hours of volunteer gardening work. Urban farming has been shown to increase health outcomes. Gardeners consume twice as much fruit and vegetables than non-gardeners. Levels of physical activity are also positively associated with urban farming. These results are seen indirectly and can be supported by the social involvement in an individual's community as a member of the community farm. This social involvement helped raise the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood, boosting the motivation or efficacy of the community as a whole. This increased efficacy was shown to increase neighborhood attachment. Therefore, the positive health outcomes of urban farming can be explained in part by interpersonal and social factors that boost health. Focusing on improving the aesthetics and community relationships and not only on the plant yield, is the best way to maximize the positive effect of urban farms on a neighborhood.Litt, J.s., et al. “Exploring Ecological, Emotional, and Social Levers of Self-Rated Health for Urban Gardeners and Non-Gardeners: A Path Analysis.” Social Science & Medicine, vol. 144, 2015, pp. 1–8., doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.09.004. Economy of scale Using high-density urban farming with vertical farms or stacked greenhouses, many environmental benefits can be achieved on a citywide 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. Health inequalities and food justice A 2009 report by the USDA, determined that "Evidence is both abundant and robust enough for us to conclude that Americans living in low-income and minority areas tend to have poor access to healthy food", and that the "structural inequalities" in these neighborhoods "contribute to inequalities in diet and diet-related outcomes". These diet-related outcomes, including obesity and diabetes, have become epidemic in low-income urban environments in the United States.Designed for Disease: The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes. California Center for Public Health Advocacy, PolicyLink, and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. April 2008. Although the definition and methods for determining "food deserts" have varied, studies indicate that, at least in the United States, there are racial disparities in the food environment. Thus using the definition of environment as the place where people live, work, play and pray, food disparities become an issue of environmental justice. This is especially true in American inner-cities where a history of racist practices have contributed to the development of food deserts in the low-income, minority areas of the urban core. The issue of inequality is so integral to the issues of food access and health that the Growing Food & Justice for All Initiative was founded with the mission of “dismantling racism” as an integral part of creating food security. Not only can urban agriculture provide healthy, fresh food options, but also can contribute to a sense of community, aesthetic improvement, crime reduction, minority empowerment and autonomy, and even preserve culture through the use of farming methods and heirloom seeds preserved from areas of origin. Environmental justice Urban agriculture may advance environmental justice and food justice for communities living in food deserts. First, urban agriculture may reduce racial and class disparities in access to healthy food. When urban agriculture leads to locally grown fresh produce sold at affordable prices in food deserts, access to healthy food is not just available for those who live in wealthy areas, thereby leading to greater equity in rich and poor neighborhoods. Improved access to food through urban agriculture can also help alleviate psychosocial stresses in poor communities. Community members engaged in urban agriculture improve local knowledge about healthy ways to fulfill dietary needs. Urban agriculture can also better the mental health of community members. Buying and selling quality products to local producers and consumers allows community members to support one another, which may reduce stress. Thus, urban agriculture can help improve conditions in poor communities, where residents experience higher levels of stress due to a perceived lack of control over the quality of their lives.Sapolsky, Robert, "Sick of Poverty," Scientific American, Dec. 2005, pp: 93-99. Urban agriculture may improve the livability and built environment in communities that lack supermarkets and other infrastructure due to the presence of high unemployment caused by deindustrialization. Urban farmers who follow sustainable agricultural methods can not only help to build local food system infrastructure, but can also contribute to improving local air, and water and soil quality. When agricultural products are produced locally within the community, they do not need to be transported, which reduces emission rates and other pollutants that contribute to high rates of asthma in lower socioeconomic areas. Sustainable urban agriculture can also promote worker protection and consumer rights. For example, communities in New York City, Illinois, and Richmond, Virginia have demonstrated improvements to their local environments through urban agricultural practices.Alternatives for Community & Environment. Environmental Justice and the Green Economy. A Vision Statement and Case Studies for Just and Sustainable Solutions. Rep. Roxbury, MA: Alternatives for Community & Environment, 2010. Print. However, urban agriculture can also present urban growers with health risks if the soil used for urban farming is contaminated. Lead contamination is particularly common, with hazardous levels of lead found in soil in many United States cities.Murphy, Kate. "Lead Is a Concern for Urban Gardens." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 May 2009. Web. 9 April 2014. High lead levels in soil originate from sources including flaking lead paint which was widely used before being banned in the 1970s, vehicle exhaust, and atmospheric deposition. Without proper education on the risks of urban farming and safe practices, urban consumers of urban agricultural produce may face additional health-related issues.McClintock, Nathan. (2008). From Industrial Garden to Food Desert: Unearthing the Root Structure of urban agriculture in Oakland, California. UC Berkeley: Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. Implementation A small urban farm in Amsterdam Rooftop urban farming at the Food Roof Farm in downtown St. Louis, MO Creating a community-based infrastructure for urban agriculture means establishing local systems to grow and process food and transfer it from farmer to consumer. To facilitate food production, cities have established community-based farming projects. Some projects have collectively tended community farms on common land, much like that of the eighteenth-century Boston Common. One such community farm is the Collingwood Children's Farm in Melbourne, Australia. Other community garden projects use the allotment garden model, in which gardeners care for individual plots in a larger gardening area, often sharing a tool shed and other amenities. Seattle's P-Patch Gardens use this model, as did the South Central Farm in Los Angeles and the Food Roof Farm in St. Louis. Independent urban gardeners also grow food in individual yards and on roofs. Garden sharing projects seek to pair producers with the land, typically, residential yard space. Roof gardens allow for urban dwellers to maintain green spaces in the city without having to set aside a tract of undeveloped land. Rooftop farms allow otherwise unused industrial roofspace to be used productively, creating work and profit. Projects around the world seek to enable cities to become 'continuous productive landscapes' by cultivating vacant urban land and temporary or permanent kitchen gardens.André Viljoen, Katrin Bohn and Joe Howe, 2005, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, Oxford: Architectural Press Urban agriculture project in the La Romita section of Colonia Roma, Mexico City Tomato plants growing in a pot farming alongside a small house in New Jersey in fifteen garbage cans filled with soil, grew over 700 tomatoes during the summer of 2013. Food processing on a community level has been accommodated by centralizing resources in community tool sheds and processing facilities for farmers to share. The Garden Resource Program Collaborative based in Detroit has cluster tool banks. Different areas of the city have tool banks where resources like tools, compost, mulch, tomato stakes, seeds, and education can be shared and distributed with the gardeners in that cluster. Detroit's Garden Resource Program Collaborative also strengthens their gardening community by providing access to their member's transplants; education on gardening, policy, and food issues; and by building connectivity between gardeners through workgroups, potlucks, tours, field trips, and cluster workdays. In Brazil, "Cities Without Hunger" has generated a public policy for the reconstruction of abandoned areas with food production and has improved the green areas of the community. Farmers' markets, such as the farmers' market in Los Angeles, provide a common land where farmers can sell their product to consumers. Large cities tend to open their farmer's markets on the weekends and one day in the middle of the week. For example, the farmers' market of Boulevard 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. Argentina The city of Rosario (population: 1.3 million) has incorporated agriculture fully into its land-use planning and urban development strategy. Its Land Use Plan 2007-2017 makes specific provision for the agricultural use of public land. Under its Metropolitan Strategic Plan 2008-2018, Rosario is building a “green circuit”, passing through and around the city, consisting of family and community gardens, large-scale, commercial vegetable gardens and orchards, multifunctional garden parks, and “productive barrios”, where agriculture is integrated into programs for the construction of public housing and the upgrading of slums. In 2014, the green circuit consisted of more than 30 ha of land used to grow vegetables, fruit, and medicinal and aromatic plants. The city has five garden parks – large, landscaped green areas covering a total of 72 ha of land, which is used for agriculture and for cultural, sports and educational activities.Food and Agriculture Organization (2014) Growing greener cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Australia In Queensland many people have started a trend of urban farming and utilizing aquaponics and self-watering containers. Canada British Columbia A Canadian urban farmer in British Columbia has published details on a crop value rating (CVR) system that urban farmers can use to determine which crops to grow, based on each crop's contribution to supporting the farm economically. This entails forgoing some crops in favor of others, but he points out that urban farmers can develop business networking with rural farmers to bring some of those other crops to the urban point of sale. For example, the urban farmer may not be able to economically justify growing sweet corn (based on long days to maturity and low yield density per linear foot of row), but a networking arrangement is mutually beneficial, as it lets a rural sweet corn grower gain an additional point of sale at retail price while also letting the urban farmer fill the gap in his product line offering. Several community projects in Victoria, British Columbia were born to promote urban agricultural practices such as the Sharing Backyards program. This program exists to help people living in urban areas get connected with others who have extra space in their yards for the purpose of urban farming. Organizations also exist to educate people living in the urban parts of Vancouver on farming and growing food in an urban setting by running public demonstration gardens. Covering the roof of the west building of the Vancouver Convention Centre is the largest green roof in Canada and one of the 10 largest green roofs in the world. With around six acres of living space, it is home to more than 400,000 indigenous plants and grasses that provide insulation. It is also home to four Western honey bee beehives which pollinate the plants on the roof and provide honey. The living includes other sustainable practices such as recycling and reusing water. The city of Kamloops, British Columbia actively promotes urban agricultural practices within their community. They stress the importance of food security and its effect on the economy as well as the ecology. They created the Food and Urban Agriculture Plan (FUAP), initiated in 2014, which lays out goals and strategies to implement a sustainable food system. The Areas which they cover include: Food Production and Land Availability, Food Processing and Preparing, Food Distribution/Retail/Access, Cooking/Eating and Celebrating Food, Food Waste and Resource Management, as well as Education/Governance and Capacity Building. The FUAP greatly emphasizes on Urban Agriculture. Ontario Ontario is the second biggest province and is one of the most urbanized in Canada. The provincial government of Ontario has a website dedicated to providing information to those who are interested in establishing an urban farm or for those who just want to learn more about urban agriculture in Ontario. The City of Ottawa is home to the largest urban farm in the nation, the Central Experimental Farm (CEF). Centrally located and surrounded by the city, the 4 square kilometres (1.5 sq mi) farm is an agricultural facility, working farm, and research center of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The City of Ottawa is also home to numerous urban farms within the 203.5-square-kilometre (78.6 sq mi) greenbelt. Along with many other cities in Ontario, the City of Toronto allows eligible residents in 4 wards across the city to keep a maximum of 4 hens (no roosters) for the purpose of enjoyment or personal consumption of only the eggs. There are other requirements included with rearing these hens under this program such as zoning and guidelines for building the enclosure, waste and disposal. The wards eligible for this program from the UrbanHensTo site include Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park), Ward 21 (St. Paul's), Ward 5 (Etobicoke-Lakeshore), and Ward 32 (Beaches-East York). Workshops are also available to those interested in rearing urban hens. However, failure to abide by these rules and regulations can result in fines. Quebec Lufa Farms greenhouses are constructed on the rooftops of Greater Montreal. In Montreal, about 100 community gardens provide plots where citizens can grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The largest community garden has about 255 allotment plots, while the smallest site has about 25 plots. Out of 2 million people living in the urbanized parts of Montreal, about 10,000 residents share the garden plots. The program has been in place since 1975 and is managed by the boroughs. Some of the boroughs have a gardening instructor who visits the gardens regularly to give gardeners tips. Soil, a water supply, a space for tools, sand, fencing, and paint are provided by the city, managed by the Department of Sports, Recreation and Social Development. Canada has a number of companies working on urban farm technology, including in Montreal. The most significant is Lufa Farms, a private company that opened what is reported to be the world's largest rooftop greenhouse at 163,000 sq ft in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent. This is Lufa's fourth rooftop greenhouse in Montreal and is built on the roof of the former Sears Canada warehouse. Lufa's first rooftop greenhouse was built in early 2011, a 2880 sq metre (31,000 sq ft) hydroponic rooftop greenhouse atop a warehouse designated as their headquarters. They built two more large rooftop greenhouses in greater Montreal in 2013 (4,000 sq metre / 43,000 sq ft) and 2017 (5,850 sq metre / 63,000 sq ft), spending almost $ 10 million for the three structures. Also in 2017, an IGA supermarket in Saint-Laurent in Montreal unveiled a green roof of about 25,000 square feet of green space and products certified by Ecocert Canada. They state that they can provide over 30 different kinds of rooftop grown organic produce, along with honey produced and harvested from eight bee hives located on the roof. %DIFDELCMD < & %%% Illinois Urban farming initiatives across the State of Illinois, including Chicago, have been spearheaded by advocacy groups. In addition, HB3418 allows municipalities and counties across the state, including Chicago, to establish urban agriculture zones (UAZs), supported by financial incentives such as reduced water rates, utility fees, and property tax abatements. Furthermore, the USDA has implemented the Outreach and Technical Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged and Veteran Farmers and Ranchers Program (the 2501 Program) which was transferred from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The primary purpose of the 2501 Program is to enhance the coordination of outreach, technical assistance, and education efforts, to reach socially disadvantaged and veteran farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners and to improve their participation in the full range of USDA programs. %DIFDELCMD < %DIFDELCMD < %%% Farm on Odgen by Chicago Botanic Garden. |alt= 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 improves water management and increases the availability of fresh water 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. Urban agriculture also makes the city a healthier place to live by improving the quality of the environment. UPA is a very effective 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. Trade-offs Space is at a premium in cities and is accordingly expensive and difficult to secure. The utilization of untreated wastewater for urban agricultural irrigation can facilitate the spread of waterborne diseases among the human population. Although studies have demonstrated improved air quality in urban areas related to the proliferation of urban gardens, it has also been shown that increasing urban pollution (related specifically to a sharp rise in the number of automobiles on the road), has led to an increase in insect pests, which consume plants produced by urban agriculture. It is believed that changes to the physical structure of the plants themselves, which have been correlated to increased levels of air pollution, increase plants' palatability to insect pests. Reduced yields within urban gardens decreases the amount of food available for human consumption. Studies indicate that the nutritional quality of wheat suffers when urban wheat plants are exposed to high nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide concentrations. This problem is particularly acute in the developing world, where outdoor concentrations of sulfur dioxide are high and large percentages of the population rely upon urban agriculture as a primary source of food. These studies have implications for the nutritional quality of other staple crops that are grown in urban settings. Agricultural activities on land that is contaminated (with such metals as lead) pose potential risks to human health. These risks are associated both with working directly on contaminated land and with consuming food that was grown in contaminated soil. Municipal greening policy goals can pose conflicts. For example, policies promoting urban tree canopy are not sympathetic to vegetable gardening because of the deep shade cast by trees. However, some municipalities like Portland, Oregon, and Davenport, Iowa are encouraging the implementation of fruit-bearing trees (as street trees or as park orchards) to meet both greening and food production goals .
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Provision of Livelihood UPAcan be seen as a means of improving the livelihood of people living in and around cities. Urban Agriculture
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Urban agriculture for sustainable cities: using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources. Jac Smit, Joe Nasr. Environment and Urbanization, Vol 4, Issue 2, pp. 141 - 152. First Published October 1, 1992. URL UPA
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, which helps 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.
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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. This allows families to generate larger incomes selling to local grocers or to local outdoor markets while supplying their household with the proper nutrition of fresh and nutritional products
Sommers, L., and B. Butterfield, as cited in: Blair, D., C. Giesecke, and S. Sherman. (1991). "A Dietary, Social and Economic Evaluation of the Philadelphia Urban Gardening Project," Journal of Nutrition Education
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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.
Social The needs of urban landscaping can be combined with those of suburban livestock farmers. (Kstovo, Russia).
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Strengthening of Community Relationships and Inclusion Urban Agriculture
Urban agriculture can have a large impact on the social and emotional well-being of individuals. UA
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which directly impacts individuals social and emotional well-being. Urban gardens are often places that
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Many gardens facilitate the improvement of social networks within the communities that they are located.
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Due to the food security that comes with UA, feelings of independence and empowerment often arise. The ability to produce and grow food for oneself has also been reported to improve levels of
When individuals come together around UA, physical activity levels are often increased. This can also raise serotonin levels akin to working out at a gym. There is the added element of walking/biking to the gardens, further increasing physical activity and the benefits of being outdoors.
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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 an informal activity, but in many cities where inadequate, unreliable, and irregular access to food is a recurring problem, urban agriculture has been a positive response to tackling food concerns. Due to the food security that comes with UA, feelings of independence and empowerment often arise. The ability to produce and grow food for oneself has also been reported to improve levels of
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. Urban agriculture provides unique opportunities to bridge diverse communities together. In addition, it provides opportunities for health care providers to interact with their patients. Thus, making each community garden a hub that is reflective of the community.
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Beautification and Aesthetic Value
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The social involvement helped raise the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood, boosting the motivation or efficacy of the community as a whole. This increased efficacy was shown to increase neighborhood attachment. Therefore, the positive health outcomes of urban farming can be explained in part by interpersonal and social factors that boost health.
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Reduction in Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Carbon Footprint The energy-efficient nature of urban agriculture can reduce each city's carbon footprint by reducing the amount of transport that occurs to deliver goods to the consumer. Such areas can act as carbon sinks offsetting some of the carbon accumulation that is innate to urban areas, where pavement and buildings outnumber plants. Plants absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and release breathable oxygen (O2) through photosynthesis. The process of Carbon Sequestration can be further improved by combining other agriculture techniques to increase removal from the atmosphere and prevent the release of CO2 during harvest time. However, this process relies heavily on the types of plants selected and the methodology of farming. Specifically, choosing plants that do not lose their leaves and remain green all year can increase the farm's ability to sequester carbon.
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The reduction in ozone and other particulate matter can benefit human health. Reducing these particulates and ozone gases could reduce mortality rates in urban areas along with increasing the health of those living in cities. A 2011 article found that a rooftop containing 2000 m² of uncut grass has the potential to remove up to 4000 kg of particulate matter and that one square meter of green roof is sufficient to offset the annual particulate matter emissions of a car.
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Energy Efficiency upEdible Oyster Mushrooms growing on used coffee grounds The current industrial agriculture system is accountable for high energy costs for the transportation of foodstuffs. According to a study by Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, the average conventional produce item travels , using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, of fossil fuel per . The energy used to transport food is decreased when urban agriculture can provide cities with locally grown food . Pirog found that traditional, non-local, food distribution system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more than the local and regional transport.Pirog, Rich S.; Van Pelt, Timothy; Enshayan, Kamyar; and Cook, Ellen, "Food, Fuel, and Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions"
. 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.Hales et al.
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2001). Leopold Center Pubs and Papers. 3. URL Similarly, in a study by Marc Xuereb and Region of Waterloo Public Health, it was estimated that switching to locally-grown food could save transport-related emissions equivalent to nearly 50, 000 metric tons of , or the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.Xuereb, Marc. (2005
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Food Miles: Environmental Implications of Food Imports to Waterloo Region.
Urban Agriculture: Urban agriculture, positive impact
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Public Health Planner Region of Waterloo Public Health. November. URL
My Green Hobby The CFSC states that:
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upA windowfarm, incorporating discarded plastic bottles into pots for hydroponic agriculture in urban windows
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Reduction in Noise Pollution Large amounts of noise pollution not only lead to lower property values and high frustration, they can be damaging to human hearing and health. The study “Noise exposure and public health,” found that exposure to continual noise is a public health problem. Examples of the detriment of continual noise on humans to include: “hearing impairment, hypertension and ischemic heart disease, annoyance, sleep disturbance, and decreased school performance.” Since most roofs or vacant lots consist of hard flat surfaces that reflect sound waves instead of absorbing them, adding plants that can absorb these waves has the potential to lead to a vast reduction in noise pollution.
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Nutritional Daily intake of a variety of fruits and vegetables is linked to a decreased risk of chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Urban agriculture is associated with increased consumption of fruits and vegetables which decreases risk for disease and can be a cost-effective way to provide citizens with quality, fresh produce in urban settings.
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Garden-based education can also yield nutritional benefits in children. Urban agriculture also provides quality nutrition for low-income households. Improved access to food through urban agriculture can also help alleviate psychosocial stresses in poor communities. Community members engaged in urban agriculture improve local knowledge about healthy ways to fulfill dietary needs . Urban agriculture can also better the mental health of community members. Buying and selling quality products to local producers and consumers allows community members to support one another, which may reduce stress. Thus, urban agriculture can help improve conditions in poor communities, where residents experience higher levels of stress due to a perceived lack of control over the quality of their lives.
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Urban farming has been shown to increase health outcomes. Gardeners consume twice as much fruit and vegetables than non-gardeners. Levels of physical activity are also positively associated with urban farming. These results are seen indirectly and can be supported by the social involvement in an individual's community as a member of the community farm.
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Food Security and Justice Access to nutritious food, both economically and geographically, is another perspective in the effort to locate food and livestock production in cities. The tremendous influx of the world population to urban areas has increased the need for fresh and safe food. The 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.
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Areas faced with food security issues have limited choices, often relying on highly processed fast food or convenience store foods that are high in calories and low in nutrients, which may lead to elevated rates of diet-related illnesses such as diabetes. These problems have brought about the concept of food justice which Alkon and Norgaard (2009; 289) explain that, "places access to healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate food in the contexts of institutional racism, racial formation, and racialized geographies. Food justice serves as a theoretical and political bridge between scholarship and activism on sustainable agriculture, food insecurity, and environmental justice. "
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Some systematic reviews have already explored urban agriculture contribution to food security and other determinants of health outcomes
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. The Agriculture Network could be used to address food insecurity. One study of Cleveland shows that the city could actually meet up to 100\% of its fresh produce needs
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. This would prevent up to $115 million in annual economic leakage. Using the rooftop space of New York City would also be able to provide roughly twice the amount of space necessary to supply New York City with its green vegetable yields. Space could be even better optimized through the usage of hydroponic or indoor factory production of food. Growing gardens within cities would also cut down on the amount of food waste. UPA plays an important role in making food more affordable and in providing emergency supplies of food. Environmental justice Urban Agriculture is known to bring ample health and social benefits for residents. Participating in community gardens, urban farms, and other types of gardening projects in the city offer new opportunities for physical activity, create and strengthen social contacts and relationships, address stress and other mental health needs, improve environmental conditions of the city, and contribute to overall well-being. Those benefits are particularly evident for socially vulnerable groups, including lower-income residents, immigrants, residents with disabilities, children, or the elderly[4]. Adding, Urban Gardens addresses different drivers of injustices that exist in a city such as exclusive access to benefits of urban sustainability infrastructure, Uneven environmental health and pollution patterns, and Unfit institutional structures [5]. It helps as well to restore environment justices and equalities in cities and living spaces. Implementation A small urban farm in Amsterdam Rooftop urban farming at the Food Roof Farm in downtown St. Louis, MO Creating a community-based infrastructure for urban agriculture means establishing local systems to grow and process food and transfer it from farmer to consumer. To facilitate food production, cities have established community-based farming projects. Some projects have collectively tended community farms on common land, much like that of the eighteenth-century Boston Common. One such community farm is the Collingwood Children's Farm in Melbourne, Australia. Other community garden projects use the allotment garden model, in which gardeners care for individual plots in a larger gardening area, often sharing a tool shed and other amenities. Seattle's P-Patch Gardens use this model, as did the South Central Farm in Los Angeles and the Food Roof Farm in St. Louis. Independent urban gardeners also grow food in individual yards and on roofs. Garden sharing projects seek to pair producers with the land, typically, residential yard space. Roof gardens allow for urban dwellers to maintain green spaces in the city without having to set aside a tract of undeveloped land. Rooftop farms allow otherwise unused industrial roofspace to be used productively, creating work and profit. Projects around the world seek to enable cities to become 'continuous productive landscapes' by cultivating vacant urban land and temporary or permanent kitchen gardens.André Viljoen, Katrin Bohn and Joe Howe, 2005, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, Oxford: Architectural Press Urban agriculture project in the La Romita section of Colonia Roma, Mexico City Tomato plants growing in a pot farming alongside a small house in New Jersey in fifteen garbage cans filled with soil, grew over 700 tomatoes during the summer of 2013. Food processing on a community level has been accommodated by centralizing resources in community tool sheds and processing facilities for farmers to share. The Garden Resource Program Collaborative based in Detroit has cluster tool banks. Different areas of the city have tool banks where resources like tools, compost, mulch, tomato stakes, seeds, and education can be shared and distributed with the gardeners in that cluster. Detroit's Garden Resource Program Collaborative also strengthens their gardening community by providing access to their member's transplants; education on gardening, policy, and food issues; and by building connectivity between gardeners through workgroups, potlucks, tours, field trips, and cluster workdays. In Brazil, "Cities Without Hunger" has generated a public policy for the reconstruction of abandoned areas with food production and has improved the green areas of the community. Farmers' markets, such as the farmers' market in Los Angeles, provide a common land where farmers can sell their product to consumers. Large cities tend to open their farmer's markets on the weekends and one day in the middle of the week. For example, the farmers' market of Boulevard 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. Argentina The city of Rosario (population: 1.3 million) has incorporated agriculture fully into its land-use planning and urban development strategy. Its Land Use Plan 2007-2017 makes specific provision for the agricultural use of public land. Under its Metropolitan Strategic Plan 2008-2018, Rosario is building a “green circuit”, passing through and around the city, consisting of family and community gardens, large-scale, commercial vegetable gardens and orchards, multifunctional garden parks, and “productive barrios”, where agriculture is integrated into programs for the construction of public housing and the upgrading of slums. In 2014, the green circuit consisted of more than 30 ha of land used to grow vegetables, fruit, and medicinal and aromatic plants. The city has five garden parks – large, landscaped green areas covering a total of 72 ha of land, which is used for agriculture and for cultural, sports and educational activities.Food and Agriculture Organization (2014) Growing greener cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Australia In Queensland many people have started a trend of urban farming and utilizing aquaponics and self-watering containers. Canada British Columbia A Canadian urban farmer in British Columbia has published details on a crop value rating (CVR) system that urban farmers can use to determine which crops to grow, based on each crop's contribution to supporting the farm economically. This entails forgoing some crops in favor of others, but he points out that urban farmers can develop business networking with rural farmers to bring some of those other crops to the urban point of sale. For example, the urban farmer may not be able to economically justify growing sweet corn (based on long days to maturity and low yield density per linear foot of row), but a networking arrangement is mutually beneficial, as it lets a rural sweet corn grower gain an additional point of sale at retail price while also letting the urban farmer fill the gap in his product line offering. Several community projects in Victoria, British Columbia were born to promote urban agricultural practices such as the Sharing Backyards program. This program exists to help people living in urban areas get connected with others who have extra space in their yards for the purpose of urban farming. Organizations also exist to educate people living in the urban parts of Vancouver on farming and growing food in an urban setting by running public demonstration gardens. Covering the roof of the west building of the Vancouver Convention Centre is the largest green roof in Canada and one of the 10 largest green roofs in the world. With around six acres of living space, it is home to more than 400,000 indigenous plants and grasses that provide insulation. It is also home to four Western honey bee beehives which pollinate the plants on the roof and provide honey. The living includes other sustainable practices such as recycling and reusing water. The city of Kamloops, British Columbia actively promotes urban agricultural practices within their community. They stress the importance of food security and its effect on the economy as well as the ecology. They created the Food and Urban Agriculture Plan (FUAP), initiated in 2014, which lays out goals and strategies to implement a sustainable food system. The Areas which they cover include: Food Production and Land Availability, Food Processing and Preparing, Food Distribution/Retail/Access, Cooking/Eating and Celebrating Food, Food Waste and Resource Management, as well as Education/Governance and Capacity Building. The FUAP greatly emphasizes on Urban Agriculture. Ontario Ontario is the second biggest province and is one of the most urbanized in Canada. The provincial government of Ontario has a website dedicated to providing information to those who are interested in establishing an urban farm or for those who just want to learn more about urban agriculture in Ontario. The City of Ottawa is home to the largest urban farm in the nation, the Central Experimental Farm (CEF). Centrally located and surrounded by the city, the 4 square kilometres (1.5 sq mi) farm is an agricultural facility, working farm, and research center of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The City of Ottawa is also home to numerous urban farms within the 203.5-square-kilometre (78.6 sq mi) greenbelt. Along with many other cities in Ontario, the City of Toronto allows eligible residents in 4 wards across the city to keep a maximum of 4 hens (no roosters) for the purpose of enjoyment or personal consumption of only the eggs. There are other requirements included with rearing these hens under this program such as zoning and guidelines for building the enclosure, waste and disposal. The wards eligible for this program from the UrbanHensTo site include Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park), Ward 21 (St. Paul's), Ward 5 (Etobicoke-Lakeshore), and Ward 32 (Beaches-East York). Workshops are also available to those interested in rearing urban hens. However, failure to abide by these rules and regulations can result in fines. Quebec Lufa Farms greenhouses are constructed on the rooftops of Greater Montreal. In Montreal, about 100 community gardens provide plots where citizens can grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The largest community garden has about 255 allotment plots, while the smallest site has about 25 plots. Out of 2 million people living in the urbanized parts of Montreal, about 10,000 residents share the garden plots. The program has been in place since 1975 and is managed by the boroughs. Some of the boroughs have a gardening instructor who visits the gardens regularly to give gardeners tips. Soil, a water supply, a space for tools, sand, fencing, and paint are provided by the city, managed by the Department of Sports, Recreation and Social Development. Canada has a number of companies working on urban farm technology, including in Montreal. The most significant is Lufa Farms, a private company that opened what is reported to be the world's largest rooftop greenhouse at 163,000 sq ft in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent. This is Lufa's fourth rooftop greenhouse in Montreal and is built on the roof of the former Sears Canada warehouse. Lufa's first rooftop greenhouse was built in early 2011, a 2880 sq metre (31,000 sq ft) hydroponic rooftop greenhouse atop a warehouse designated as their headquarters. They built two more large rooftop greenhouses in greater Montreal in 2013 (4,000 sq metre / 43,000 sq ft) and 2017 (5,850 sq metre / 63,000 sq ft), spending almost $
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. As an example, you can raise your own chickens on an urban farm and have fresh eggs for only $0.44 per dozen.What's the Real Cost of Raising Backyard Chickens? (2015, March 29). Retrieved April 2, 2015, from URL This allows families to generate larger incomes selling to local grocers or to local outdoor markets while supplying their household with the proper nutrition of fresh and nutritional products. A vegetable garden in the square in front of the train station in Ezhou, China 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.FAO. (1999). "Issues in Urban Agriculture," FAO Spotlight Magazine, January. 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. As most UA activities are conducted on vacant municipal land, there have been raising 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.IDRC/ UN-HABITAT".Guidelines for Municipal Policymaking on Urban Agriculture" Urban Agriculture: Land Management and Physical Planning (2003) PDF 1.3 Over a third of U.S. households, roughly 42 million, participate in food gardening. There has also been an increase of 63\% participation in farming by millennials from 2008-2013. US households participating in community gardening has also tripled from 1 to 3 million in that time frame. Urban agriculture provides unique opportunities to bridge diverse communities together. In addition, it provides opportunities for health care providers to interact with their patients. Thus, making each community garden a hub that is reflective of the community.Alaimo, K., Beavers, A.W., Crawford, C. et al. Curr Envir Health Rpt (2016) 3: 302. URL Energy efficiency upEdible Oyster Mushrooms growing on used coffee grounds The current industrial agriculture system is accountable for high energy costs for the transportation of foodstuffs. According to a study by Rich Pirog, associate director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, the average conventional produce item travels , using, if shipped by tractor-trailer, of fossil fuel per . The energy used to transport food is decreased when urban agriculture can provide cities with locally grown food. Pirog found that traditional, non-local, food distribution system used 4 to 17 times more fuel and emitted 5 to 17 times more than the local and regional transport.Pirog, Rich S.; Van Pelt, Timothy; Enshayan, Kamyar; and Cook, Ellen, "Food, Fuel, and Freeways: An Iowa perspective on how far food travels, fuel usage, and greenhouse gas emissions" (2001). Leopold Center Pubs and Papers. 3. URL Similarly, in a study by Marc Xuereb and Region of Waterloo Public Health, it was estimated that switching to locally-grown food could save transport-related emissions equivalent to nearly 50,000 metric tons of , or the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.Xuereb, Marc. (2005). "Food Miles: Environmental Implications of Food Imports to Waterloo Region." Public Health Planner Region of Waterloo Public Health. November. URL upA windowfarm, incorporating discarded plastic bottles into pots for hydroponic agriculture in urban windows Carbon footprint As mentioned above, the energy-efficient nature of urban agriculture can reduce each city's carbon footprint by reducing the amount of transport that occurs to deliver goods to the consumer.Delta Institute, "Urban Agriculture." Web. 25 March 2013. Such areas can act as carbon sinks offsetting some of the carbon accumulation that is innate to urban areas, where pavement and buildings outnumber plants. Plants absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide () and release breathable oxygen (O2) through photosynthesis. The process of Carbon Sequestration can be further improved by combining other agriculture techniques to increase removal from the atmosphere and prevent the release of during harvest time. However, this process relies heavily on the types of plants selected and the methodology of farming. Specifically, choosing plants that do not lose their leaves and remain green all year can increase the farm's ability to sequester carbon. Reduction in ozone and particulate matter The reduction in ozone and other particulate matter can benefit human health. Reducing these particulates and ozone gases could reduce mortality rates in urban areas along with increase the health of those living in cities. A 2011 article found that a rooftop containing 2000 m² of uncut grass has the potential to remove up to 4000 kg of particulate matter and that one square meter of green roof is sufficient to offset the annual particulate matter emissions of a car.Environmental Affairs Department, City of Los Angeles. 2006. "Green Roofs - Cooling Los Angeles: A Resource Guide". URL Soil decontamination Vacant urban lots are often victims to illegal dumping of hazardous chemicals and other wastes. They are also liable to accumulate standing water and “grey water”, which can be dangerous to public health, especially left stagnant for long periods. The implementation of urban agriculture in these vacant lots can be a cost-effective method for removing these chemicals. In the process known as Phytoremediation, plants and the associated microorganisms are selected for their chemical ability to degrade, absorb, convert to an inert form, and remove toxins from the soil.Black, H. "Absorbing Possibilities: Phytoremediation." Environ Health Perspectives 103.12 (1995): 1106-108. Several chemicals can be targeted for removal, including heavy metals (e.g. Mercury and lead), inorganic compounds (e.g. Arsenic and Uranium), and organic compounds (e.g. petroleum and chlorinated compounds like PBC's).Comis, Don. (2000). "Phytoremediation: Using Plants To Clean Up Soils." Agricultural Research: n. pag. Phytoremediation: Using Plants To Clean Up Soils. USDA-ARS, 13 August 2004. Web. 25 March 2013. Phytoremeditation is both an environmentally-friendly, cost-effective and energy-efficient measure to reduce pollution. Phytoremediation only costs about $5–$40 per ton of soil being decontaminated.Cluis, C. (2004). "Junk-greedy Greens: phytoremediation as a new option for soil decontamination," BioTech J. 2: 61-67 Implementation of this process also reduces the amount of soil that must be disposed of in a hazardous waste landfill. Urban agriculture as a method to mediate chemical pollution can be effective in preventing the spread of these chemicals into the surrounding environment. Other methods of remediation often disturb the soil and force the chemicals contained within it into the air or water. Plants can be used as a method to remove chemicals and also to hold the soil and prevent erosion of contaminated soil decreasing the spread of pollutants and the hazard presented by these lots. One way of identifying soil contamination is through using already well-established plants as bioindicators of soil health. Using well-studied plants is important because there has already been substantial bodies of work to test them in various conditions, so responses can be verified with certainty. Such plants are also valuable because they are genetically identical as crops as opposed to natural variants of the same species. Typically urban soil has had the topsoil stripped away and has led to soil with low aeration, porosity, and drainage. Typical measures of soil health are microbial biomass and activity, enzymes, soil organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen, available nutrients, porosity, aggregate stability, and compaction. A new measurement is active carbon (AC), which is the most usable portion of the total organic carbon (TOC) in the soil. This contributes greatly to the functionality of the soil food web. Using common crops, which are generally well-studied, as bioindicators can be used to effectively test the quality of an urban farming plot before beginning planting.Alaimo K, Beavers AW, Crawford C, et al. (2016) Amplifying Health Through Community Gardens: A Framework for Advancing Multicomponent, Behaviorally Based Neighborhood Interventions. Current Environmental Health Reports 3:302–312. doi: 10.1007/s40572-016-0105-0 Noise pollution Large amounts of noise pollution not only lead to lower property values and high frustration, they can be damaging to human hearing and health. The study “Noise exposure and public health,” found that exposure to continual noise is a public health problem. Examples of the detriment of continual noise on humans to include: “hearing impairment, hypertension and ischemic heart disease, annoyance, sleep disturbance, and decreased school performance.” Since most roofs or vacant lots consist of hard flat surfaces that reflect sound waves instead of absorbing them, adding plants that can absorb these waves has the potential to lead to a vast reduction in noise pollution. Nutrition and quality of food Daily intake of a variety of fruits and vegetables is linked to a decreased risk of chronic diseases including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Urban agriculture is associated with increased consumption of fruits and vegetables Alaimo, K., Packnett, E., Miles, R., Kruger, D. (2008). "Fruit and Vegetable Intake among Urban Community Gardeners". Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. (1499-4046),40 (2), p. 94. which decreases risk for disease and can be a cost-effective way to provide citizens with quality, fresh produce in urban settings. Produce from urban gardens can be perceived to be more flavorful and desirable than store bought produce which may also lead to a wider acceptance and higher intake. A Flint, Michigan study found that those participating in community gardens consumed fruits and vegetables 1.4 times more per day and were 3.5 times more likely to consume fruits or vegetables at least 5 times daily (p. 1). Garden-based education can also yield nutritional benefits in children. An Idaho study reported a positive association between school gardens and increased intake of fruit, vegetables, vitamin A, vitamin C and fiber among sixth graders. Harvesting fruits and vegetables initiates the enzymatic process of nutrient degradation which is especially detrimental to water soluble vitamins such as ascorbic acid and thiamin. The process of blanching produce in order to freeze or can reduce nutrient content slightly, but not nearly as much as the amount of time spent in storage. Harvesting produce from one's own community garden cuts back on storage times significantly. Urban agriculture also provides quality nutrition for low-income households. Studies show that every $1 invested in a community garden yields $6 worth of vegetables if labor is not considered a factor in investment. Many urban gardens reduce the strain on food banks and other emergency food providers by donating shares of their harvest and providing fresh produce in areas that otherwise might be food deserts. The supplemental nutrition program Women, Infants and Children (WIC) as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) have partnered with several urban gardens nationwide to improve the accessibility to produce in exchange for a few hours of volunteer gardening work. Urban farming has been shown to increase health outcomes. Gardeners consume twice as much fruit and vegetables than non-gardeners. Levels of physical activity are also positively associated with urban farming. These results are seen indirectly and can be supported by the social involvement in an individual's community as a member of the community farm. This social involvement helped raise the aesthetic appeal of the neighborhood, boosting the motivation or efficacy of the community as a whole. This increased efficacy was shown to increase neighborhood attachment. Therefore, the positive health outcomes of urban farming can be explained in part by interpersonal and social factors that boost health. Focusing on improving the aesthetics and community relationships and not only on the plant yield, is the best way to maximize the positive effect of urban farms on a neighborhood.Litt, J.s., et al. “Exploring Ecological, Emotional, and Social Levers of Self-Rated Health for Urban Gardeners and Non-Gardeners: A Path Analysis.” Social Science & Medicine, vol. 144, 2015, pp. 1–8., doi:10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.09.004. Economy of scale Using high-density urban farming with vertical farms or stacked greenhouses, many environmental benefits can be achieved on a citywide 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. Health inequalities and food justice A 2009 report by the USDA, determined that "Evidence is both abundant and robust enough for us to conclude that Americans living in low-income and minority areas tend to have poor access to healthy food", and that the "structural inequalities" in these neighborhoods "contribute to inequalities in diet and diet-related outcomes". These diet-related outcomes, including obesity and diabetes, have become epidemic in low-income urban environments in the United States.Designed for Disease: The Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes. California Center for Public Health Advocacy, PolicyLink, and the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. April 2008. Although the definition and methods for determining "food deserts" have varied, studies indicate that, at least in the United States, there are racial disparities in the food environment. Thus using the definition of environment as the place where people live, work, play and pray, food disparities become an issue of environmental justice. This is especially true in American inner-cities where a history of racist practices have contributed to the development of food deserts in the low-income, minority areas of the urban core. The issue of inequality is so integral to the issues of food access and health that the Growing Food & Justice for All Initiative was founded with the mission of “dismantling racism” as an integral part of creating food security. Not only can urban agriculture provide healthy, fresh food options, but also can contribute to a sense of community, aesthetic improvement, crime reduction, minority empowerment and autonomy, and even preserve culture through the use of farming methods and heirloom seeds preserved from areas of origin. Environmental justice Urban agriculture may advance environmental justice and food justice for communities living in food deserts. First, urban agriculture may reduce racial and class disparities in access to healthy food. When urban agriculture leads to locally grown fresh produce sold at affordable prices in food deserts, access to healthy food is not just available for those who live in wealthy areas, thereby leading to greater equity in rich and poor neighborhoods. Improved access to food through urban agriculture can also help alleviate psychosocial stresses in poor communities. Community members engaged in urban agriculture improve local knowledge about healthy ways to fulfill dietary needs. Urban agriculture can also better the mental health of community members. Buying and selling quality products to local producers and consumers allows community members to support one another, which may reduce stress. Thus, urban agriculture can help improve conditions in poor communities, where residents experience higher levels of stress due to a perceived lack of control over the quality of their lives.Sapolsky, Robert, "Sick of Poverty," Scientific American, Dec. 2005, pp: 93-99. Urban agriculture may improve the livability and built environment in communities that lack supermarkets and other infrastructure due to the presence of high unemployment caused by deindustrialization. Urban farmers who follow sustainable agricultural methods can not only help to build local food system infrastructure, but can also contribute to improving local air, and water and soil quality. When agricultural products are produced locally within the community, they do not need to be transported, which reduces emission rates and other pollutants that contribute to high rates of asthma in lower socioeconomic areas. Sustainable urban agriculture can also promote worker protection and consumer rights. For example, communities in New York City, Illinois, and Richmond, Virginia have demonstrated improvements to their local environments through urban agricultural practices.Alternatives for Community & Environment. Environmental Justice and the Green Economy. A Vision Statement and Case Studies for Just and Sustainable Solutions. Rep. Roxbury, MA: Alternatives for Community & Environment, 2010. Print. However, urban agriculture can also present urban growers with health risks if the soil used for urban farming is contaminated. Lead contamination is particularly common, with hazardous levels of lead found in soil in many United States cities.Murphy, Kate. "Lead Is a Concern for Urban Gardens." The New York Times. The New York Times, 13 May 2009. Web. 9 April 2014. High lead levels in soil originate from sources including flaking lead paint which was widely used before being banned in the 1970s, vehicle exhaust, and atmospheric deposition. Without proper education on the risks of urban farming and safe practices, urban consumers of urban agricultural produce may face additional health-related issues.McClintock, Nathan. (2008). From Industrial Garden to Food Desert: Unearthing the Root Structure of urban agriculture in Oakland, California. UC Berkeley: Institute for the Study of Societal Issues. Implementation A small urban farm in Amsterdam Rooftop urban farming at the Food Roof Farm in downtown St. Louis, MO Creating a community-based infrastructure for urban agriculture means establishing local systems to grow and process food and transfer it from farmer to consumer. To facilitate food production, cities have established community-based farming projects. Some projects have collectively tended community farms on common land, much like that of the eighteenth-century Boston Common. One such community farm is the Collingwood Children's Farm in Melbourne, Australia. Other community garden projects use the allotment garden model, in which gardeners care for individual plots in a larger gardening area, often sharing a tool shed and other amenities. Seattle's P-Patch Gardens use this model, as did the South Central Farm in Los Angeles and the Food Roof Farm in St. Louis. Independent urban gardeners also grow food in individual yards and on roofs. Garden sharing projects seek to pair producers with the land, typically, residential yard space. Roof gardens allow for urban dwellers to maintain green spaces in the city without having to set aside a tract of undeveloped land. Rooftop farms allow otherwise unused industrial roofspace to be used productively, creating work and profit. Projects around the world seek to enable cities to become 'continuous productive landscapes' by cultivating vacant urban land and temporary or permanent kitchen gardens.André Viljoen, Katrin Bohn and Joe Howe, 2005, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, Oxford: Architectural Press Urban agriculture project in the La Romita section of Colonia Roma, Mexico City Tomato plants growing in a pot farming alongside a small house in New Jersey in fifteen garbage cans filled with soil, grew over 700 tomatoes during the summer of 2013. Food processing on a community level has been accommodated by centralizing resources in community tool sheds and processing facilities for farmers to share. The Garden Resource Program Collaborative based in Detroit has cluster tool banks. Different areas of the city have tool banks where resources like tools, compost, mulch, tomato stakes, seeds, and education can be shared and distributed with the gardeners in that cluster. Detroit's Garden Resource Program Collaborative also strengthens their gardening community by providing access to their member's transplants; education on gardening, policy, and food issues; and by building connectivity between gardeners through workgroups, potlucks, tours, field trips, and cluster workdays. In Brazil, "Cities Without Hunger" has generated a public policy for the reconstruction of abandoned areas with food production and has improved the green areas of the community. Farmers' markets, such as the farmers' market in Los Angeles, provide a common land where farmers can sell their product to consumers. Large cities tend to open their farmer's markets on the weekends and one day in the middle of the week. For example, the farmers' market of Boulevard 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. Argentina The city of Rosario (population: 1.3 million) has incorporated agriculture fully into its land-use planning and urban development strategy. Its Land Use Plan 2007-2017 makes specific provision for the agricultural use of public land. Under its Metropolitan Strategic Plan 2008-2018, Rosario is building a “green circuit”, passing through and around the city, consisting of family and community gardens, large-scale, commercial vegetable gardens and orchards, multifunctional garden parks, and “productive barrios”, where agriculture is integrated into programs for the construction of public housing and the upgrading of slums. In 2014, the green circuit consisted of more than 30 ha of land used to grow vegetables, fruit, and medicinal and aromatic plants. The city has five garden parks – large, landscaped green areas covering a total of 72 ha of land, which is used for agriculture and for cultural, sports and educational activities.Food and Agriculture Organization (2014) Growing greener cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Australia In Queensland many people have started a trend of urban farming and utilizing aquaponics and self-watering containers. Canada British Columbia A Canadian urban farmer in British Columbia has published details on a crop value rating (CVR) system that urban farmers can use to determine which crops to grow, based on each crop's contribution to supporting the farm economically. This entails forgoing some crops in favor of others, but he points out that urban farmers can develop business networking with rural farmers to bring some of those other crops to the urban point of sale. For example, the urban farmer may not be able to economically justify growing sweet corn (based on long days to maturity and low yield density per linear foot of row), but a networking arrangement is mutually beneficial, as it lets a rural sweet corn grower gain an additional point of sale at retail price while also letting the urban farmer fill the gap in his product line offering. Several community projects in Victoria, British Columbia were born to promote urban agricultural practices such as the Sharing Backyards program. This program exists to help people living in urban areas get connected with others who have extra space in their yards for the purpose of urban farming. Organizations also exist to educate people living in the urban parts of Vancouver on farming and growing food in an urban setting by running public demonstration gardens. Covering the roof of the west building of the Vancouver Convention Centre is the largest green roof in Canada and one of the 10 largest green roofs in the world. With around six acres of living space, it is home to more than 400,000 indigenous plants and grasses that provide insulation. It is also home to four Western honey bee beehives which pollinate the plants on the roof and provide honey. The living includes other sustainable practices such as recycling and reusing water. The city of Kamloops, British Columbia actively promotes urban agricultural practices within their community. They stress the importance of food security and its effect on the economy as well as the ecology. They created the Food and Urban Agriculture Plan (FUAP), initiated in 2014, which lays out goals and strategies to implement a sustainable food system. The Areas which they cover include: Food Production and Land Availability, Food Processing and Preparing, Food Distribution/Retail/Access, Cooking/Eating and Celebrating Food, Food Waste and Resource Management, as well as Education/Governance and Capacity Building. The FUAP greatly emphasizes on Urban Agriculture. Ontario Ontario is the second biggest province and is one of the most urbanized in Canada. The provincial government of Ontario has a website dedicated to providing information to those who are interested in establishing an urban farm or for those who just want to learn more about urban agriculture in Ontario. The City of Ottawa is home to the largest urban farm in the nation, the Central Experimental Farm (CEF). Centrally located and surrounded by the city, the 4 square kilometres (1.5 sq mi) farm is an agricultural facility, working farm, and research center of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The City of Ottawa is also home to numerous urban farms within the 203.5-square-kilometre (78.6 sq mi) greenbelt. Along with many other cities in Ontario, the City of Toronto allows eligible residents in 4 wards across the city to keep a maximum of 4 hens (no roosters) for the purpose of enjoyment or personal consumption of only the eggs. There are other requirements included with rearing these hens under this program such as zoning and guidelines for building the enclosure, waste and disposal. The wards eligible for this program from the UrbanHensTo site include Ward 13 (Parkdale-High Park), Ward 21 (St. Paul's), Ward 5 (Etobicoke-Lakeshore), and Ward 32 (Beaches-East York). Workshops are also available to those interested in rearing urban hens. However, failure to abide by these rules and regulations can result in fines. Quebec Lufa Farms greenhouses are constructed on the rooftops of Greater Montreal. In Montreal, about 100 community gardens provide plots where citizens can grow fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers. The largest community garden has about 255 allotment plots, while the smallest site has about 25 plots. Out of 2 million people living in the urbanized parts of Montreal, about 10,000 residents share the garden plots. The program has been in place since 1975 and is managed by the boroughs. Some of the boroughs have a gardening instructor who visits the gardens regularly to give gardeners tips. Soil, a water supply, a space for tools, sand, fencing, and paint are provided by the city, managed by the Department of Sports, Recreation and Social Development. Canada has a number of companies working on urban farm technology, including in Montreal. The most significant is Lufa Farms, a private company that opened what is reported to be the world's largest rooftop greenhouse at 163,000 sq ft in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent. This is Lufa's fourth rooftop greenhouse in Montreal and is built on the roof of the former Sears Canada warehouse. Lufa's first rooftop greenhouse was built in early 2011, a 2880 sq metre (31,000 sq ft) hydroponic rooftop greenhouse atop a warehouse designated as their headquarters. They built two more large rooftop greenhouses in greater Montreal in 2013 (4,000 sq metre / 43,000 sq ft) and 2017 (5,850 sq metre / 63,000 sq ft), spending almost $
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Denver Denver, Colorado is home to many different forms of Urban Agriculture projects: indoor and outdoor, for-profit and nonprofit, community gardens and farms, and private and public land.McIvor, D.W., Hale, J. Urban agriculture and the prospects for deep democracy. Agric Hum Values 32, 727–741 (2015). URL
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Denver has been a case study for urban agriculture as a force of green gentrification; historically, Denver urban farmers gained access to land after the Great Recession, but began to contribute to displacement of their neighbors and themselves as green gentrification spread throughout an economically-expanding city with new municipal sustainability goals.Joshua Sbicca, "Urban Agriculture, Revalorization, and GreenGentrification in Denver, Colorado" In The Politics of Land. Published online: 25 Feb2019; 149-170.Permanent link to this URL One reason for such a rise in the food movement is the city's unique lack of both open-space funding and a working land trust, which caused city farms to drop from 307 in 1925 to nine by 2016. In 2009, then-mayor John Hickenlooper declared May 14th to be Grow Local Colorado day. Then, in 2010, Hickenlooper formed the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council. In 2011, Mayor Michael Hancock continued along this trend of green development, creating the “People’s Plan” to stimulate the economy by improving land-access for farmers and local food availability.Alkon, A. H., Kato, Y.,
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Sbicca, J. (2020). In A recipe for gentrification food, power, and resistance in the city (pp. 93–95). essay, New York University Press. Included in the city's 2020 Sustainability Goals is the plan to produce 20\% of Denver's food in Colorado.
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Taysuteke Community Urban Garden in Freetown- Sierra Leone Taysuteke community garden in Freetown. The association has been practicing urban farming on the land for generations. The association was officially established in 2000 and later registered as a women’s cooperative. Like many other urban and peri-urban agriculture in Freetown , its activity expanded as a response to the food shortages caused by blockade during the civil war in Freetown. Currently, it is formed of 60 women living in the vicinity of the garden. Taysuteke garden provided livelihoods to the group and generated income that is used for households’ provisions and kids’ education. Taysutekeh urban garden spreads over an area of 1 hectare. It is divided into 15 plots. The plots are cultivated collectively by the women, and the yields are shared equitably. Each woman contributes a monthly fee equivalent to 1$ that goes to the collective bank account of the association. The amount is used seasonally by the association to conduct land preparation work and install irrigation systems that mainly require paid labor. Most crops are planted during the dry season including cassava leaves, potato leaves, sorrel, corchorus leaves, amaranthus, okra, tomatoes, cabbage, etc.
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Taysuteke land was originally a mangrove swamp. It was reclaimed for farming for almost three generations. However, ownership of the land is a burden and a challenge that the association faces. Fear of eviction is a constant concern for the association.
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Urban agriculture for sustainable cities: using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources. Jac Smit, Joe Nasr. Environment and Urbanization, Vol 4, Issue 2, pp. 141 - 152. First Published October 1, 1992. URL
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The lead would affect the roots of plants grown in these soils much more than above ground produce. Most of the danger of lead in urban gardens would come from ingesting the soil itself.
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. Green gentrification or environmental gentrification occurs when environmental policies or planning in urban spaces leads to the displacement and exclusion of certain residents. Specifically, the growth imperative of capitalist urbanization pushes governments to enact sustainable development initiatives in underprivileged areas.Gould, K. A.,
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Lewis, T. L. (2017). Green gentrification: Urban sustainability and the struggle for environmental justice. New York, NY: Routledge. In addition to "green" labels being marketable for developers and businesses, beautification can enhance gentrification, and urban agriculture can potentially contribute to this. However, farming and gardening in urban spaces isn’t always a signal of gentrification. The relationship is complex, as urban green spaces can also provide food to the underserved, and act as community-run spaces of resistance