Growing food in the city: A fad, or a real future?

Some new crops being started, protected by shade cloth barriers to the west. The 1.5 acre parcel that City Farm sits on is owned by the City of Chicago and provided, rent-free, to this non-profit initiative. The property is valued at $8 million. (2008) Photo by Linda N.

How many “urban agriculturists” are there?

The Why Files
The Science Behind the News
Sept. 2, 2010

Excerpt:

There are many explanations for the dearth of data on urban agriculture:

Definitions: much of the new-found interest in urban agriculture concerns “local food,” but that is often grown in the countryside — even if the farmers live in the city.

Size: Urban farms are small and their output is diverse and hard to measure.

Age: Many urban farms are young, and any record of success would be short.

Motivation: Urban farms often aim beyond food to social and psychological benefits, which are not captured by the yield and profit measures used to evaluate farms.

The “simple” task of approximating the number of “urban agriculturists” is difficult indeed. The United Nations Development Program produced a widely cited estimate that 800 million people practice urban agriculture, and 200 million grow for profit. Urban agriculture, the group said, produced the equivalent of 150 million full-time jobs.

But a 2010 publication1 called these high numbers unreliable, since they emerged from a 1996 “thumbnail sketch” based on the authors experience. The 2010 survey saw wide variation in city-farming participation: from 11 percent of households in Indonesia to almost 70 percent in Vietnam and Nicaragua. More than 30 percent of city households in 11 of the 15 nations surveyed had a significant farm inside or outside the city.

In four nations, at least one urban household in three kept livestock.

Although the study also found that city farmers were eating better than non-farmers, farming may not explain that benefit, since in many cities farmers tend to be less poor than non-farmers.

Read the complete article here.