I find articles on urban agriculture interesting. Unfortunately I don’t know how practical it is, but I think it is at least worth exploring. Here are a few of my thoughts on agriculture in cities.
- Reconnect urbanites to food production. Many people seem to believe that their food magically appears at the grocery store. If food production is a visible part of daily life for the growing proportion of city dwellers, maybe we can see more informed opinions at work rather than romanticizing or demonizing farmers.
- Cut down on energy needed for food production? I am not convinced that the net energy needed to produce food would be reduced if we all switched to buying local food. What we’d save in transport, we’d lose in increased growing costs, such as the heating necessary for greenhouses.
- Provide employment I think that urban agriculture has the potential to provide at least casual employment for a wide variety of people. It seems to me that it would be at least as appealing as the much maligned fast-food jobs.
The article that sparked this off for me was reading about a possible reinvention of Detroit as an urban farm but I know that there are a number of projects around the world exploring this idea.
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