Guest Entry: Beyond the locovore's dilemma, urban farming for the 21st century

A couple of weeks ago, I read an OpEd article by Edward Glaeser titled "The locovore's dilemma". Glaeser is one of my favourite urban scholars and we have blogged about his ideas a number of times on this blog. However, I didn't agree with many of his points in his OpEd. I passed along the article to my friend, Darlene Seto, to gather her thoughts about the article. She wrote a response to it, which you can view below.

Beyond the locovore's dilemma, urban farming for the 21st century

By: Darlene Seto

As a general admirer of Edward Glaeser’s work, I was most dismayed to see his recent June 16th OpEd for The Boston Globe, where he proclaimed, most erringly, that urban farms do more harm than good to the environment. I disagree.

Glaeser’s principal case against urban farming lies in the carbon output linked to such farms; he equates increasing urban farmland with an automatic reduction in living density, thereby increasing metropolitan sprawl. Yet his homogeneous use of ‘cropland’ fails to differentiate between the more intensive cultivation of vegetables, as more commonly found in urban areas, and the sprawling land involved in the production of commodities like corn, the crop which he uses to cite as a resource intensive no-no for urban agriculture. But not all farming is equal – and Glaeser’s assertions about land density might look a lot different were he to parse out those vast monocultures from his analysis, and especially were he to include the entire carbon life of much industrial corn, which then includes the methane emissions of feedlot cattle and petrochemical plastics.

Glaeser’s main failing, however, is not being able to see beyond the current agricultural paradigm. What agriculture looks like now – in a rural setting - is assumed to be what agriculture is in an urban one. Urban farms, however, are not large crop monocultures plopped down in the middle of a busy and well-utilized urban space.

Here in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I am writing from, a number of urban farms make their existence using vacant land or under-utilized land – spaces such as parking lots, individuals’ backyards (or frontyards!) and similar space. Food is grown in these smaller pieces of land, sometimes solely in hundreds of planters or boxes. By piecing together the yards of cooperative landowners around the city, these entrepreneurial farmers are using the urban context to re-imagine traditional conceptions of agriculture, creating new and vital landscapes in our neighbourhoods. And given the administrative and institutional challenges in which most urban farmers already face in dense urban areas, urban farming hardly imperils the urban densification or the commercial use of prime urban real estate, but rather puts other space into productive use.

Finally, while Glaeser does fleetingly mention some of the other benefits of urban agriculture – such as its educational value to children – such instances do not seem to hold any effective value in his argument. The benefits of having localized food initiatives such as urban farms, however, reach far beyond mere carbon mileage – and indeed are much more important and difficult to quantify. Glaeser’s greenhouse gas focus does not look at the broader environmental impacts of urban food (understanding that the environment is the area in which we live, work and play; another point I would contest in Glaeser’s piece). Increasing food assets in a city through things such as urban farming not only reduces food insecurity and better health outcomes, but promotes greater resiliency in an era of increasing climactic uncertainty, supports local economic activity, and contributes to community development and capacity building.

Take note: If anything, I would agree that the most important benefits to localized food systems are not at all in carbon savings from transportation. But it is through OpEds such as the one to which I am responding, that create an erroneous understanding of the potential for urban agriculture. This is a time where most cities should be attempting to retain all the green space and food assets that they can get. We should be working to understand and support the committed individuals and organizations working in this sector.

Darlene Seto is a graduate student at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, Canada. A keen student of environment policy and governance, her current graduate work revolves around diversity and engagement in alternative food systems.