By Laura Puurunen
In the past, every family had a vegetable patch
in the back yard. When the shift to an industrial society took place and people
moved to the cities, producing one’s own food became unnecessary. Today, however, population growth especially
in the cities sets many challenges for us, food security and pollution not
being the least of our worries. Even though today more than a half of the world’s
population lives in
urbanised areas, the United Nations Development Programme estimates that only 15 percent of the world's food is grown in cities. How is it then possible to feed such a huge,
constantly growing mass of humanity sustainably?
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Urban farming, community gardening, urban
agriculture - no matter what you call it, is suggested to be one of the
solutions for local food production. The loose terms generally refer to farming
in an urban area in a small space, usually on an allotment that you share with
a group of other farmers, but can also mean simply growing your lettuce on your
windowsill in an urban setting. Rooftops are said to have the most future
potential of all sites in the cities because of the huge amount of underutilized space they possess.
In the western world today, a few urbanites are
farming out of necessity, but an increasing environmental awareness and an
interest in back-to-basics lifestyle among city-dwellers has led people to
embrace farming in cities as a relaxing pastime and a way of having fresh,
local, additive-free produce on the table.
As the
benefits of putting wasted space to a good use are becoming evident and urban farming
is gaining more popularity, local governments are starting to show some
interest in allocating public land for city farming. Companies too, are getting
involved: green roofs are being established on top of their corporate HQ’s and
other buildings, where employees can take care of the communal veggies and
forget about work every now and then. As an example, the former Nokia
headquarters’ rooftop garden can be viewed here. Even a high-class restaurant, Savoy, in
Helsinki, established a rooftop garden a few years ago to grow fresh, local ingredients
for their own use. The garden has become an icon; since its opening in 2010 it has
been expanded, reviewed in many media and turned into a sight in itself,
promoting local, urban food production. An impressive example of how an urban
garden can actually become very productive in many ways.
The urban farming list of positives is in fact
long; not only do urban gardens produce food out of land which would often
otherwise be underutilized, but it has a huge impact on people’s well-being and
on their perceptions about the urban environment. The carbon footprint of
locally grown food is obviously much lower compared to things grown far away and
as we all must eat anyway, growing your own veggies is the ultimate green
choice! Green areas also help reduce run-offs of rain water and create small
scale carbon sinks in the cities, purifying the air and mitigating some of the
vast greenhouse gas emissions cities produce. According to a National Geographic article, community gardens even have a positive impact
on the property values.
With all these benefits for human health, the environment
and for the liveability of cities, why is this movement then not embraced
everywhere? Unfortunately the land in cities is scarce and thus expensive, and in
the end it’s often the euros that count. In Finland we have had quite a bit of land
to “spare”, and therefore in the past, city farming might have been considered silly,
if not pointless. In some major European and US’ metropolises where the
situation is quite different, urban farming as a movement, its benefits and
possibilities are much more acknowledged and supported. Around Tampere there
have been public community gardens also during the past summer arranged by an
urban gardening non-profit organisation Dodo, but a lot more could be done.
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The future of cities? Original photo
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So how
about a proposal to your landlord to launch a gardening project in the possibly
unproductive, dull yard? Or then you could just make use of those scarce square
meters in your balcony, like here and grow a few lettuce leaves. The internet is
full of interesting articles on how to use your space wisely to grow yourself
some inexpensive food with very small carbon emissions – just the way we like
it.
References:
We're actually going back to where urban lifestyle started. Roughly a century ago, in the beginning of the 20th century, there were urban farms everywhere. In lower class/worker neighborhoods farming was a necessary thing to insure livelyhood.
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