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Many people even the government has promoted the resurgence of community gardens. Advocates sometimes tout urban farming as the solution for "food deserts" in poor neighbourhoods.
But do these programs actually make sense? Are there real social or environmental benefits to growing food within city limits? Or is urban farming just a well-meaning but ultimately insignificant hobby for urban elites?
One of the best explorations I've seen of this topic is this paper by Raychel Santo, Anne Palmer, and Brent Kim of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. The authors were curious about some of the bolder claims being tossed around about urban farming — that it can revitalize blighted neighbourhoods, say, or help combat food insecurity. So they did a deep dive into the published research.
What emerges is a nuanced picture. Urban farming likely won't ever provide cities with all that many calories. And the environmental advantages are … debatable. But urban farms can provide a bunch of other neat benefits, from bolstering local communities to (sometimes) encouraging healthier diets. They can also give city-dwellers a better appreciation of how our food system works, which is less nebulous than it sounds.
"We did find a lot of benefits to urban agriculture," Santo told me. "But you want to be careful not to overstate things. If urban agriculture gets sold as something that will create all these jobs or feed entire cities — and then it doesn't — it could quickly lose support."
I can't do justice to the
1) Urban farms won't feed entire cities — but that's not really the point
The more realistic hope is that community gardens and urban farms can provide some families with an additional source of healthy, low-cost produce. That's a worthwhile goal in itself, and there's
Yet even here, the Johns Hopkins authors write, the effect on nutrition is likely to be quite modest in the grand scheme of things:
So if we really want to understand the benefits of urban farms, we may have to look beyond the food itself. "Food security is not a primary goal for most participants and supporters of community gardens and urban farms," the authors conclude, "and should not be promoted as such."
2) The social benefits of urban farming can be large — but they're not always shared
The big catch, however, is that urban farms aren't always as inclusive as they aspire to be — and there are often huge class divides. "A
So urban farming
And on the flip side, some studies
There are other angles to consider, too: urban growers often use water and fertilizer and pesticides
The environmental benefits of urban farming get even more complicated when we consider indoor "vertical farms," which are often touted as a sustainable option that uses less soil and water. Although designs differ, some of these setups can use an enormous amount of energy, especially if they require artificial lighting. Still, it varies case by case; see
That all said, the Johns Hopkins authors note, various studies
"It's hard to make sweeping generalizations here," Santo told me. When designed right, urban farms can make some modest but valuable improvements to the sustainability of our food system. But when designed poorly, they can end up
3) One little-studied aspect of urban farms — they can teach us to appreciate food better.
“Gardeners have the power to make a significant contribution toward plants and animals”
That is, people who participate in a community garden
Nathanael Johnson at Grist
"Maybe," Marks adds, "urban agriculture is most valuable for how it forces us to be more conscientious about the people who feed us: the farmworkers, the truck drivers, the processors and the packagers, the prep cooks, all of whom work for next to nothing and have little time themselves to play in the dirt."
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