{"id":1053,"date":"2019-12-10T01:49:53","date_gmt":"2019-12-10T01:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2025-11-14T14:53:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T22:53:02","slug":"whats-next-in-urban-agriculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/2019\/12\/10\/whats-next-in-urban-agriculture\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s next in urban agriculture?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What\u2019s next in urban agriculture<\/span> is going to take place in the cityscape we\u2019ve all heard described before: two-thirds of the world\u2019s 10 billion people will be living in urban areas\u2014mostly across 40 or more mega-cities around the globe\u2014by the year 2050. You\u2019re probably bracing yourselves, waiting for either a list of depressing facts or some \u2018hail Mary, technology can save us all\u2019 kind of talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not today. Today we think of green\npastures amid concrete jungles.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Urban agriculture is the production,\nprocessing, and marketing of produce based on living systems from the land or\nwater located throughout urban and peri-urban areas. Anyone cropping food,\nflowers, fiber, feed, or herbs from their corner of their city is engaging in a\nsmall-lot, local agriculture with an utterly minimized transport chain from\ngrower to eater. These green, vegetative, productive spaces within city\nlandscapes can provide valuable ecosystem services: floral habitat for\npollinators, stormwater management, and even mediating the temperature extremes\nof urban heat islands. People often find urban gardens foster cross-cultural\nand multi-generational spaces for social interaction. These disparate green\nspaces, however small each might be, aggregate to large areas across\nmetropolitan regions. A conservative 20 acres of urban gardens in Portland, Oregon,\nfifty-one acres in Chicago, Illinois, and a whopping 120 acres in Madison, Wisconsin!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More good news: these growing\nplots don\u2019t stop at the hobby level. Across the United States, counties with\nsignificant urban encroachment also produce the lion\u2019s share of fruits, nuts,\nberries, and vegetables, as well as accounting for most of the farm-gate value\nof these goods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now we come to a bit of bad\nnews, unfortunately. Because while these urban-adjacent farmlands produce the\nmost food in the most high-value agricultural markets, their days are numbered.\nWhile not as romantic as the Amazonian forests, some of the most fertile land\nacross this country is being consumed and paved over by sprawling cityscapes. This\nplight is common due to a mismatch between those who own deeds to land and\nthose who seek the land\u2019s productive agricultural use. Countless urban spaces\nhave seen their productive days ended when the land became valuable enough for\nsomeone to decide to sell it off for development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is relevant to us today\nbecause growing food within the cities themselves is one of the easiest ways to\nincrease our resilience against disruptions to our modern, industrialized food\nsupply chain. Just as victory gardens stabilized many citizens through global\nwars, we too can use our land and our labor to renovate vacant land in\nshrinking cities like Baltimore, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Detroit, and the\nothers which are sure to follow the implosion of the last economic boom.<\/p>\n\n\n

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New American farmers\u2014entrepreneurs\nall\u2014are literally<\/em> working overtime to\naccess the new niche markets which are springing up across modern urban\ncenters. They\u2019ve surveyed the future and invested in becoming extremely specialized\nproducers of fine agricultural goods. To me, that sounds like taking quite\nchance: betting it all on a small market with few, discerning clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we might gain some of their confidence\nif we examine some of their assumptions. Barring extreme, world-altering\nscenarios like an extinction-event asteroid impact, human population in 2050 is\npretty well guaranteed at this point. It\u2019s only thirty years away and average\nbirthrate is not quickly changing. This also means we can be pretty secure in\nthe assumption of continued urbanization. The current population density alone\nis enough to birth enough humans to further compound the growth of urban\ncenters. This makes the relevance of things like tele-commuting more a question\nof degree<\/em> of urban density and sprawl\ngrowth. Lastly, many farmers are seeing their emotional investment in the\nquality of food finally reflected in public policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A proposed \u201cnew food equation\u201d\npredicts the end of \u2018cheap food\u2019 as global calorie production has been secured.\nThe focus is now changing to include quality, or the nutritional content of\nfoodstuffs. Nations recognize that food production remains a matter of national\nsecurity in a number of ways. First as a matter of imports and exports.\nSelf-sufficiency means not relying upon another nation to feed your populace.\nExcessive production enables exports which not only enrich a nation but can\noperate as the same leverage which is being avoided in the previous example.\nLastly, public officials and private people are beginning to attribute more\nhealth complications and costs to dietary factors like obesity or malnutrition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New urban farmers are exploring\nmany novel approaches to urban agricultural production. Controlled Environment\nAgriculture (CEA) is taking protected cultural growing techniques and\nimplementing them using modern technology. Managers can adjust a whole palette of\nenvironment controls: light, temperature, precipitation, atmospheric\ncomposition, hormonal regulation, and genetic alteration.<\/p>\n\n\n

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This is made possible largely due to advances in microelectronic technology. Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have drastically slashed the cost AND increased the efficiency of artificial lighting. Cost-effective LEDs have revolutionized indoor production like plastic sheeting did for field production. And with the decreased cost of indoor production comes increased innovation as more minds are able to devise feasible plans to grow something worthwhile in artificial conditions. Some of these ideas look to the world\u2019s growing demand for protein and consider growing plant-protein for lab-burgers whiles others simply aim to minimize their livestock and grow insect-protein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can someone possibly stay abreast of all these developments? I feel like I\u2019ve listed too many, and yet for each example in this text there are a dozen which could not be included. Well, the first way is to get directly involved! Find and become a part of something in urban agriculture. If you\u2019re in relevant circumstances you\u2019ll need to expend less energy trying to stay informed as this will simply become a common topic of your conversations. You could also set up some phrases to trigger a news-aggregator to your inbox. Look for topics relevant to new urban farming. I reiterate my point about protein production: it\u2019s going to be big at some point and the innovation is going to be discovered by a small operation facing unconventional challenges. While it\u2019s clich\u00e9 and tastes like papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 to say: apps! Seriously, be on the lookout for apps which facilitate the work of small farmers. If there\u2019s ever going to be a mass mobilization of people into<\/em> agriculture, then we need to simplify and systematize as much as we can. Trust me, most of them will feel fine if they\u2019re no longer forced to wear so many hats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re still interested, you might benefit from investigation into various topics which have been extensively researched and greatly overlap with many facets of urban agriculture. Cuba\u2019s organop\u00f3nicos<\/em> system demonstrates the practical success of urban food production when actively pursued by many people and policies. The Netherlands  have led global greenhouse production for years, and they continue to innovate and push the boundaries of protected and synthetic production environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Space! The final frontier. It\u2019s exciting, isn\u2019t it? I\u2019m excited even just to say the word. I really did shout it out just then. I\u2019m dreaming of going to space one day, how about you? Anyway, astronauts are experimenting with plant growth and crop production in space. It\u2019s all quite enthralling, but too much for this post. If you\u2019d like to know more, keep an eye out for my next post in a couple months! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further research options:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An article from National Geographic about how The Netherlands ‘feed the world<\/a>.’ Especially interesting is the third picture showing vertical production of chickens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An all-encompassing chapter regarding urban soils, from my most favored author on the subject: Pouyat et al., 2010.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A podcast episode<\/a> about urban growers in early New England who are called “The Diggers.” I suggest starting at either 40 seconds in or at 3:20, then listening through to at least 12:15.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What\u2019s next in urban agriculture is going to take place in the cityscape we\u2019ve all heard described before: two-thirds of the world\u2019s 10 billion people will be living in urban areas\u2014mostly across 40 or more mega-cities around the globe\u2014by the year 2050. You\u2019re probably bracing yourselves, waiting for either a list of depressing facts or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8231,"featured_media":1058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174597],"tags":[1178824],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-urban","tag-urban-agriculture","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2786\/files\/2019\/12\/KIMG0806.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8231"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3176,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/3176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}