Urban Agriculture And Food Systems Breakthroughs In Research And Practice

In recent years, the global economy has struggled to meet the nutritional needs of a growing populace. In an effort to circumvent a deepening food crisis, it is pertinent to develop new sustainability strategies and practices to provide a stable supply of food resources. Urban Agriculture and Food Systems: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice is an authoritative resource on the latest technological developments in urban agriculture and its ability to supplement current food systems. The content within this publication represents the work of topics such as sustainable production in urban spaces, farming practices, and urban distribution methods. This publication is an ideal reference source for students, professionals, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners interested in recent developments in the areas of agriculture in urban spaces.

Full-scale food production in cities: is it an impossibility? Or is it a panacea for all that ails urban communities? Today, it's a reality, but many people still don't know how much of an impact this emerging food system is having on cities and their residents. This book showcases the work of the farmers, activists, urban planners, and city officials in the United States and Canada who are advancing food production. They have realized that, when it's done right, farming in cities can enhance the local ecology, foster cohesive communities, and improve the quality of life for urban residents. Cities of Farmers enables readers to understand and contribute to their local food system, whether they are raising vegetables in a community garden, setting up a farmers' market, or formulating regulations for farming and composting within city limits.

Faced with a global threat to food security, it is perfectly possible that society will respond, not by a dystopian disintegration, but rather by reasserting co-operative traditions. This book, by a leading expert in urban agriculture, offers a genuine solution to today’s global food crisis. By contributing more to feeding themselves, cities can allow breathing space for the rural sector to convert to more organic sustainable approaches. Biel’s approach connects with current debates about agroecology and food sovereignty, asks key questions, and proposes lines of future research. He suggests that today’s food insecurity – manifested in a regime of wildly fluctuating prices – reflects not just temporary stresses in the existing mode of production, but more profoundly the troubled process of generating a new one. He argues that the solution cannot be implemented at a merely technical or political level: the force of change can only be driven by the kind of social movements which are now daring to challenge the existing unsustainable order.Drawing on both his academic research and teaching, and 15 years’ experience as a practicing urban farmer, Biel brings a unique interdisciplinary approach to this key global issue, creating a dialogue between the physical and social sciences

Sustainable Food System Assessment provides both practical and theoretical insights about the growing interest in and response to measuring food system sustainability. Bringing together research from the Global North and South, this book shares lessons learned, explores intended and actual project outcomes, and highlights points of conceptual and methodological convergence. Interest in assessing food system sustainability is growing, as evidenced by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact and the importance food systems initiatives have taken in serving as a lever for attaining the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This book opens by looking at the conceptual considerations of food systems indicators, including the place-based dimensions of food systems indicators and how measurements are implicated in sense-making and visioning processes. Chapters in the second part cover operationalizing metrics, including the development of food systems indicator frameworks, degrees of indicator complexities, and practical constraints to assessment. The final part focuses on the outcomes of assessment projects, including impacts on food policy and communities involved, highlighting the importance of building connections between sustainable food systems initiatives. The global coverage and multi-scalar perspectives, including both conceptual and practical aspects, make this a key resource for academics and practitioners across planning, geography, urban studies, food studies, and research methods. It will also be of interest to government officials and those working within NGOs. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.routledge.com/Sustainable-Food-System-Assessment-Lessons-from-Global-Practice/Blay-Palmer-Conare-Meter-Battista-Johnston/p/book/9781032083933, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

In response to the challenges of a growing population and food security, there is an urgent need to construct a new agri-food sustainability paradigm. This book brings together an integrated range of key social science insights exploring the contributions and interventions necessary to build this framework. Building on over ten years of ESRC funded theoretical and empirical research centered at BRASS, it focuses upon the key social, economic and political drivers for creating a more sustainable food system. Themes include: regulation and governance sustainable supply chains public procurement sustainable spatial strategies associated with rural restructuring and re-calibrated urbanised food systems minimising bio-security risk and animal welfare burdens. The book critically explores the linkages between social science research and the evolving food security problems facing the world at a critical juncture in the debates associated with not only food quality, but also its provenance, vulnerability and the inherent unsustainability of current systems of production and consumption. Each chapter examines how the links between research, practice and policy can begin to contribute to more sustainable, resilient and justly distributive food systems which would be better equipped to ‘feed the world’ by 2050.

What defines a sustainable food system? How can it be more inclusive? How do local and global scales interact and how does power flow within food systems? How to encourage an interdisciplinary approach to realizing sustainable food systems? And how to activate change? These questions are considered by EU and North American academics and practitioners in this book. Using a wide range of case studies, it provides a critical overview, showing how and where theory and practice can converge to produce more sustainable food systems.

Today, 20 percent of the global food supply relies on urban agriculture: social-ecological systems shaped by both human and non-human interactions. This book shows how urban agroecologists measure flora and fauna that underpin the ecological dynamics of these systems, and how people manage and benefit from these systems. It explains how the sociopolitical landscape in which these systems are embedded can in turn shape the social, ecological, political, and economic dynamics within them. Synthesizing interdisciplinary approaches in urban agroecology in the natural and social sciences, the book explores methodologies and new directions in research that can be adopted by scholars and practitioners alike. With contributions from researchers utilizing both social and natural science approaches, Urban Agroecology describes the current social-environmental understandings of the science, the movement and the practices in urban agroecology. By investigating the role of agroecology in cities, the book calls for the creation of spaces for food to be sustainably grown in urban spaces: an Urban Agriculture (UA) movement. Essential reading for graduate students, practitioners, policy makers and researchers, this book charts the course for accelerating this movement.

This Open Access book is for scientists and experts who work on urban food policies. It provides a conceptual framework for understanding the urban food system sustainability and how it can be tackled by local governments. Written by a collective of researchers, this book describes the existing conceptual frameworks for an analysis of urban food policies, at the crossroads of the concepts of food system and sustainable city. It provides a basis for identifying research questions related to urban local government initiatives in the North and South. It is the result of work carried out within Agropolis International within the framework of the Sustainable Urban Food Systems program and an action research carried out in support of Montpellier Méditerranée Métropole for the construction of its agroecological and food policy.