Urban farming can conjure up images of small plots of land in the midst of concrete jungles ¡ª oases where city-dwellers can come together, forge bonds with neighbors and reconnect with nature.
Yet, urban farming is an opportunity to bring large-scale food production into cities, taking advantage of new technologies and innovation to address issues of sustainability and resilience in the food system that are being exacerbated by climate change and political instability.
¡°Growing food in urban areas gives people the opportunity to transform their relationship with consumption by becoming producers themselves,¡± says Kai Sawyer, founder of , a project he started in 2011 with the mission of promoting a holistic approach to land management and settlement design.
Through grassroots initiatives, including acts of guerrilla gardening that involve growing food and plants on someone else¡¯s land, Sawyer has gradually built a movement that focuses on taking care of people and the environment.
Some of his most well-known projects include community gardens where people come together and learn to grow food in urban settings, an international school for sustainable living ¡ª the Peace and Permaculture Dojo ¡ª in the city of Isumi, Chiba Prefecture, and a crowdsourced and crowdfunded book on how to practice urban permaculture, which he describes as ¡°the ethics of earth care, people care and fair share.¡±
Food is the nexus between basic human needs and the planet, and cities are a crucial area since they¡¯re home to the majority of the world¡¯s population and have the largest impact on the environment.
¡°It¡¯s not like raising a tomato or some lettuce in the center of a city is going to save the planet,¡± says Sara Roversi, president of the, an international organization based in Italy, Japan and the United States that is working to build bridges between countries and bring more sustainable practices to the food industry through education and innovation. ¡°With urban farming, people are re-learning the value of living things and to respect what they¡¯re eating.¡±
Roversi, who has collaborated with, a nonprofit industry association that unites and promotes companies developing technologies for indoor growing, also believes that some form of industrial-scale urban farming can be beneficial.
¡°If balanced with other practices... urban farming can become part of the solution to growing large amounts of food locally, lowering emissions and reducing the amount of toxic substances released into the environment,¡± she says.
It is not only grassroots activists and private entities that recognize the need to protect and promote urban farming, the government is also keen on planting seeds.
In 2018, the Ministry of...
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