Journal
AGRONOMY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
Volume 43, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
SPRINGER FRANCE
DOI: 10.1007/s13593-022-00859-4
Keywords
Urban agriculture; Urban farm; Community garden; Allotment garden; Individual garden; Sustainability; Resource use; Food-energy-water nexus; Resource efficiency; Yield
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There is a lack of data on resources used and food produced at urban farms, which hampers efforts to quantify the environmental impacts of urban agriculture and develop sustainable food production policies. To address this gap, a citizen science approach was used to collect data from 72 urban agriculture sites in five countries. The study found that urban farms require various resources and have diverse contributions to local biodiversity, with yields that can surpass those of conventional farms. The study highlights the need for further research on crop selection and growing practices to understand the environmental impacts of urban farming.
There is a lack of data on resources used and food produced at urban farms. This hampers attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of urban agriculture or craft policies for sustainable food production in cities. To address this gap, we used a citizen science approach to collect data from 72 urban agriculture sites, representing three types of spaces (urban farms, collective gardens, individual gardens), in five countries (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and United States). We answered three key questions about urban agriculture with this unprecedented dataset: (1) What are its land, water, nutrient, and energy demands? (2) How productive is it relative to conventional agriculture and across types of farms? and (3) What are its contributions to local biodiversity? We found that participant farms used dozens of inputs, most of which were organic (e.g., manure for fertilizers). Farms required on average 71.6 L of irrigation water, 5.5 L of compost, and 0.53 m(2) of land per kilogram of harvested food. Irrigation was lower in individual gardens and higher in sites using drip irrigation. While extremely variable, yields at well-managed urban farms can exceed those of conventional counterparts. Although farm type did not predict yield, our cluster analysis demonstrated that individually managed leisure gardens had lower yields than other farms and gardens. Farms in our sample contributed significantly to local biodiversity, with an average of 20 different crops per farm not including ornamental plants. Aside from clarifying important trends in resource use at urban farms using a robust and open dataset, this study also raises numerous questions about how crop selection and growing practices influence the environmental impacts of growing food in cities. We conclude with a research agenda to tackle these and other pressing questions on resource use at urban farms.
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