To Make a Real Impact on Climate Change, We Must Move Beyond the Carbon Footprint
Focusing on just one emissions metric minimizes all the other benefits of actions like urban agriculture.
By Laney Siegner
Modern Farmer
Mar 20, 2024
Excerpt:
As a researcher of urban agriculture, I was shocked to see a recent news article bearing the headline “Food from urban agriculture has a carbon footprint six times larger than conventional produce, study shows.” I had spent five years researching and publishing peer-reviewed articles and book chapters about urban agriculture during my Ph.D. with the Berkeley Food Institute, and this conclusion seemed to fly in the face of all that I’d read. How could this be?
The researcher and passionate urban gardener in me couldn’t resist digging in deeper and working to illuminate a fuller “truth” around this recent result. Spoiler alert: Avoid carbon tunnel vision, as focusing on a single emissions metric misses the many other benefits that can get us out of the crisis we’re in.
Back up a step: What is urban agriculture? Urban ag is any kind of food production space within a city, inclusive of commercial farms that grow and sell directly to consumers, non-profit farms that serve a broader mission, community gardens, school gardens and even vacant lots turned into thriving personal gardens or homesteads.
Better yet, why do some researchers, farmers and activists prefer the term “urban agroecology?” From 2017 to 2019, my research team helped to define and elevate “urban agroecology” in the US as a better way of acknowledging the multifunctional benefits of urban green spaces. These farms and gardens are not “just” growing food, they are also building community, performing environmental services (think stormwater mitigation and reducing urban heat island effect), providing habitat for biodiversity and educating urban residents.
