Feeding an Urbanizing World

With a staggering 2 billion more mouths to feed in a short 35 years, a supply-side focus on food security seems to be a logical  approach to feeding the 7.3 billion people who currently occupy Planet Earth. Increasing production is one way to ensure that smallholder farmers in rural areas of developing countries will be able to produce enough food for themselves to eat and sustain a viable business operation. However, in an even shorter 15 years, 5 billion people, most of them in Asia or Africa, will live in urban regions. That’s over half of the world’s projected population. Suddenly, it seems that “feeding the world” is not a challenge of producing enough for us all, but rather, in our food’s distribution.

Urban agriculture can be a partial, yet major solution to this problem. Gaining popularity in recent years, growing food in cities has received heavy press in developed nations as a way to sate the hipster’s hankering for local food. However, urban agriculture has a strong potential to benefit people with real food access issues across the globe.

Urban agriculture can manifest in many forms: subterranean, vertically, on rooftops, in beehives, and in many other innovative variations. However, in most communities, especially in developing countries, urban agriculture mainly appears in the form of community gardens. These small areas of public land are managed by many members of the neighbourhood, each typically cultivating his or her own plot of fresh vegetables and herbs. Many urban dwellers don’t live within a reasonable distance from a grocery, so access to locally- sourced food is important for ensuring a nutritious diet. Even if there is a grocery nearby, self-grown food is likely cheaper than what a store can offer. Additionally, proponents of urban agriculture value it as more than just a way to fill in the gaps of the established food system, citing the activity as a social, environmental, and economic boon.

There is a large amount of untapped potential in urban agriculture. Low-income people in developing countries are beginning to look at it as a way of making a living. Whether they keep a few livestock in a Sub-Saharan African city or work as farmhands on larger-scale operations, urban dwellers can profit from farming and serve their neighbors, too. Urban agriculture won’t be supplanting the current food system anytime soon, but the industry can do a lot of good, and has a lot of growing yet to do (pun not intended). However, according to the RUAF Foundation, a global network focused on urban agriculture and city food strategies, urban farming activities are not legal in many cities around the world, thanks to existing zoning paradigms. RUAF also notes that more cities are becoming aware of urban agriculture’s importance in fighting poverty and malnutrition, and are beginning to amend laws and policies that limit the practice.