Urban Farming
Cover Image: Concept Image of Sunqiao Urban Agricultural District
(Source: Sasaki)
Urban Farming is the cultivation of plants and fish and raising of livestock within and around cities. It commands a significant level of commerce which makes it much more than just homesteading or subsistence farming. Urban farming is embedded into various parts of an urban ecosystem with which it is constantly interacting. It consumes scarce urban resources like water and energy; it engages urban residents as labours and consumers; it becomes part of urban networks of storage and distribution; it impacts urban ecology and most significantly it competes for land with several other components of the urban infrastructure. (1)
Why is Urban Farming important to cities today?
The increasing attention that urban farming has been gaining in cities stems from the extreme stress that they are experiencing to provide safe and adequate amount of food to all strata of the society. By this year, the developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America will be home to 75% of all urban dwellers (1). The challenge to provide equitable access to food, is not just limited to these developing countries. For example, 80 percent of the population in California are urban residents. The cities in the San Francisco Bay Area alone import 2.5 to 3 million tonnes of food daily over an average distance of 500 to 1000 miles. But this food fails to reach 1 of every 8 people in the region who live under the poverty line. These are mostly elderly citizens, children, and minorities (2).Singapore on the other hand, imports 90% of its requirements from 180 countries across the globe (3). Importing food at such scales consumes enormous amount of energy, generates significant greenhouse gas emissions and makes the cities vulnerable to a multitude of local and global disruptions.
Urban farming has the potential to improve food security in cities by cultivating the basic nutritional needs within the city itself and relieve the pressure to continuously import. Modern agro-tech based urban farms champion the ability to be immensely productive and cultivate food with utmost attention to safety in clean bio-secured environments without the use of any harmful chemicals. This also addresses the underlying demand amongst people for greater transparency about ‘where their food is coming from’, ‘how is it grown, treated, processed’ etc. It’s a concern that gains more traction with every recurring episode of swine-flu, avian-flu, oil spills and other similar events. Urban farming can go a long way in addressing these concerns.
Image 1: Modern agro-tech based vegetable farms.
(Source: shutterstock.com by Ionov Artem)
How can Urban Farming Impact the Ecosystem?
Bringing farming closer to urban centres can also relive the pressure of production on traditional industrial agriculture. These industrial-scale farms spread themselves across swathes of fertile land and focus solely on production and profit. There is scant consideration for their impact on nature and the ecosystem. They are the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses after the energy sector and the largest consumer of water (4) . Industrial agriculture is also monocultural in practice, where farmers focus on just one or two crops over an entire area. It consumes tonnes of fertilizers which are rich in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous together with pesticides. All of these make it easier to manage and highly profitable in the short-term but lead to severe depletion of nutrients and organic matter in the soil in due course. Furthermore, it depletes the ground water content. Soon, the once productive ground is rendered barren and unfit for agriculture altogether.
Image 2: A satellite image of the Amazon basin shows the extent of deforestation caused by expanding agricultural fields.
(Source: shutterstock.com by TommoT)
The state of Punjab in India was historically considered amongst the most fertile areas on Earth. But in the 1970s, India introduced the Green Revolution as a solution to its food shortage crisis. This government-led programme encouraged farmers to adopt many of these detrimental methods to boost crop yields. Their affects are still being felt today. The use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers has rendered the soil alkaline in large parts of the state and over-irrigation has caused 79 percent of the groundwater in Punjab to be considered over exploited and critical (5). Similar situations in different parts of the world force farmers to encroach into areas of un-disturbed natural ecosystems causing depletion of forest cover and adversely affecting species of wild animals, birds and insects. It was reported in 2012 that agriculture has directly caused about 80 percent of the tropical deforestation in the world (6). In India, reports have suggested that encroaching crop cover into natural habitats has led over 1,500 plant species, 79 mammal species, 44 bird species and many other species of reptiles, amphibians and insects to be listed in to the endangered list (7). Farmers would also often set fire to cultivated fields to clear stubble and weeds before sowing a new crop. While this expedites their work with minimal cost, it also exacerbates the loss of fertility and produces enormous amounts of air pollutants.
Urban farming on the contrary, managed correctly has the potential to positively impact the urban ecology. A study published in the journal Earth’s Future, estimated that fully realized urban farming could provide as much as 15 billion kilowatt hours of annual energy savings worldwide, sequester up to 170,000 tons of nitrogen and prevent about 57 billion cubic metres of stormwater runoff which itself is a major source of pollution to rivers and streams in urban areas. Their study assumes the probable proliferation of various models of vertical farms as well as farming on suitable roofs and vacant urban spaces, in addition to existing urban greenery (8) (which in effect, can also be transformed to some extent to be productive greenery)
But can Urban Farming produce enough food?
In 2017, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that 800 million people around the globe were already growing their own fruits or vegetables (9) and urban farming accounted for upto one-fifth of the world’s food demand. (10)
The following data on certain cities illustrates the extent to which urban farming can be productive (1)
In Hanoi (Vietnam), 80% of fresh vegetables, 50% of pork, poultry and fresh water fish, and 40% of eggs, originate from urban and peri-urban areas;
In Shanghai (China) the production numbers are 60% of the city's vegetables, 100% of the milk, 90% of the eggs, and 50% of the pork and poultry required;
Dakar (Senegal) produces 60% of the national vegetable consumption whilst urban poultry production amounts to 65% of the national demand; 60% of the milk consumed in Dakar is produced in/around the city;
In Accra (Ghana), 90% of the city’s fresh vegetable consumption is from production within the city.
In Havana (Cuba) over 26,000 popular gardens cover 2438.7 hectares in Havana and produce 25,000 tons of food each year; a total of 299 square kilometres of urban agriculture produces 113,525 tons/year
Notwithstanding all these staggering numbers, the biggest challenge to its implementation and expansion remains the availability of sufficient space within the dense urban areas. A recent survey reported that 51 countries lack enough area in their cities to even grow sufficient vegetables to meet a recommended nutritional requirement (2). Singapore itself has seen the reduction in agricultural land use from 21% in the 1960s to less than 1% in 2016 (11)as it underwent transformation into a first world city. In this period, it went from a position when it produced 60 per cent of its vegetables, 80 per cent of its poultry and 100 per cent of eggs and pork to the present-day status where it imports almost 90% of all its demand. (12)It is further estimated that if things continue as it is today, there will be a global shortage of nearly 600 million hectares of agricultural land corresponding to a 56 percent shortage in food supply by the year 2050. (13)
While several cities are re-looking at their infrastructure and planning policies with a renewed mindset to unlock spaces for urban farming; this very lack of space is making designers, planners and urban farmers alike to be more creative in finding ways to grow food in cities. The adjoining Chart illustrates this with some examples of projects across Asia. It gives an insight into the gamut of spatial scales at which these farms are taking shape. Although there is no formal classification of urban farms, most of them can be broadly categorized as either modern agro-tech farms which are super specialized and high-yield driven; or community-based farms which are easier to manage and cultivate but are lower in their yields. It can be useful for designers to appraise the way both types of farming are integrated into various urban forms, either as an ancillary or as a primary function. The latter is producing bespoke building archetypes designed for farming green-leafy vegetables, fruits, mushrooms and fish.
The following figures put the productive capacity of modern agro-tech based farms into perspective:
Apollo Aquaculture Group’s Vertical Fish Farm can produce 150 to 200 kilograms per tonne of water of grouper vis-a-vis only 25 to 75 kilograms from a traditional sea-cage farm. (14)
Sustenir's 54 sqm farm produces 1 tonne of kale or 3.2 tonnes of lettuce per month which is 14 to 127 times more than the yield from a traditional farm. (15)
Image 3: A climate controlled modern agro-tech farm in Singapore.
(Source: Greenology/VertiVegies)
Image 4: A modern day image of vertical farms growing vegetables.
(Source: Skygreens Singapore)
Image 5: A roof-top urban farm in Singapore
(Source: Edible Garden City)
What more does Urban Farming need?
Urban farming is multi-faceted in nature. It has a symbiotic effect on several sectors and disciplines within any urban framework – like urban planning, health, waste management, water resources, energy sector, community development, ecology management, as well as on several financial and business institutions which may be supporting urban farming. (1) Therefore, policies and action plans which address each of these linked sectors should be encouraged to collectively create the environment within which urban farming can thrive and deliver. Based on its own experiences from several urban farming projects, the FAO prescribes five key considerations for cities to sustainably embed urban farming within their own policy programmes for food security. These are (16):
Securing land and water resources.
Securing product quality and safety and environment protection.
Securing sustainable appropriation by actors and partners.
Securing market outlet.
Securing political and institutional anchorage and monitoring that urban farming should be
There are examples of cities are which are already instituting policy changes to facilitate urban farming:
Cities like Vancouver (Canada), Colombo (Sri Lanka), Kampala (Uganda), Rosario (Argentina), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Chicago (USA) are beginning to include spaces for community gardening in new public housing and slum upgrading projects. (1)
The Municipality of Beijing is promoting the development of peri-urban agro-tourism through large agro-recreational parks and family-based agro-tourism. It also enables farmers to offer various services to urban tourists to diversify their income source (1)
Paris has devised its own model, called the "Pariculteur,". It is a series of town hall-mandated projects designed to cover as much of the city as possible with greenery via a rise in urban farming. (17)
Singapore has created the Singapore Food Agency. It is purposed to solely focus on all aspects of food safety and security.
Urban farming is bound to grow quickly into a major economic sector in cities. The technologies and farming methods will continue to improve. It is also set to attract a whole generation of young, literate and passionate people who want to grow their own food. The number of people earning a livelihood from farming in developed countries is already showing an upward trajectory signaling a demographic and cultural shift in these societies (see image 6). In Germany, green-fingered and environmentally-conscious millennials are leading a renewed demand for allotment gardens. As of September 2019, there were almost a million allotment garden tenants across the country (18)
Image 6: Graph showing the number of people employed in agriculture in developed countries. The demographic shift is visible in the past 10-15 years.
(Source: (19)
Conducive policy actions on part of the government and regulatory agencies shall go a long way in allowing these entrepreneurs to evolve. Their success will in-turn instill greater confidence in financial institutions to lend their support which has been lacking thus far. The 2019 United States Department of Agriculture's toolkit also reported that farmers continue to struggle to find and finance suitable land for urban farming (20).
Urban Farming promises the potential to create resilient cities which are productive, socially inclusive, food-secure, and environmentally sustainable. But there also remain a host of unresolved issues (like policy frameworks, investment opportunities, market readiness etc.) that urban farmers will have to continue to contend with. The production and selling of a food items could be also be rife with safety and liability issues. Producing food for people is a big responsibility and no business or individual should enter it without a careful thought and planning. (21)
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