What is urban agriculture? Urban agriculture likely dates to the birth of the cities, and its revival might just be the key to sustainable cities of the future.—Tom Philpott Urban agriculture is a complex phenomenon with multiple dimensions: describing it is not easy. This chapter defines urban agriculture and presents its characteristics to help convey a better understanding of what it is all about.
Definition of urban agriculture Urban agriculture is the activity of growing plants and raising animals in and around urban areas. Typically, urban agriculture uses intensive production methods that recycle nutrients, improve soil, and encourage plant and animal growth without the use of hazardous chemicals. Its products are processed, distributed, and consumed within the same urban area, often within the same neighborhood, in which they are produced.1 (See Appendix A for commonly cited definitions of urban agriculture.)
A brief history of urban agriculture in the U.S.A. “Urban agriculture” may be a new term, but its practice has been around for centuries. Early city settlers grew food at home. As cities grew and their industries and occupations diversified they became less self-sufficient: the urban-rural divide widened. Although agriculture has primarily been a rural industry, its urban counterpart has always existed on a smaller scale and in various forms. The first organized urban agriculture occurred in the United States during the Panic of 1893, a serious economic depression that caused high unemployment and distress on farms. As a relief measure in Detroit, Mayor Hazen Stuart Pingree pioneered Urban Agriculture is the vacant lot cultivation. “Pringee’s potato patches” covered 430 acres fastest expanding element of cultivated by 945 families.2 At the turn of the twentieth century, agriculture and as yet is too school gardens and, as part of the City Beautiful Movement, little recognized.—Jac Smit, horticultural and window-box gardens became popular in Founder of Urban Agriculture response to sanitation issues and overcrowding of cities. During Network World War I the federal government urged people to grow food as a patriotic duty. Over five million “war gardens” or “liberty gardens” produced 528 million pounds of food.3 After the war, these gardens disappeared from the urban landscape until the Great Depression, when federal and state garden programs were created to help the unemployed. The relief and subsistence gardens of the 1930s helped feed 1
The definition derives from the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) and United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 2 Frederick W. Speirs, Samuel McCune Lindsay, and Franklin B. Kirkbride, Vacant-Lot Cultivation, reprinted from the Charities Review, 1898. 3 Connie Krochmal, The Role of War Gardens, at Suite 101.com, January 3, 2005. (http://www.suite101.com/ article.cfm/fruit_garden/112567/2)
Urban Agriculture
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