Can Cities Grow Their Own Food?
It takes land to grow food. Going vertical allowed our cities to house more people. Could vertical farming reduce the food deserts of our urban centers? A new study considers production and crop yields.
By Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA
American Council on Science and Health
September 30, 2022
Excerpt:
What can be grown?
Vegetables lead the way, including lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, beans, and peppers – much of what is seen at urban farmer’s markets. The next category was cereals like rice, wheat, and corn. In third place were fruits, primarily strawberries, but many one-off studies considered avocados, apples, bananas, and melons. Neck and neck were oil crops, mainly rapeseed, and roots and tubers, primarily potatoes. Urban farms also grew jute, a fiber crop, chickpeas, a pulse, and sugar beets, a source of sugar.
All in all, a far range of produce.
Is it productive?
Let’s begin with a caveat; this was small-scale agriculture, designed to feed locally, not regionally, and certainly not nationally. So, productivity does not mean that a few urban farms will feed the planet; it means that multiple, decentralized farms could feed a neighborhood. “Conventional yields” were based on data collected by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization representing the global average considering the most and least productive agriculture.
Except for sugar beets, urban agriculture had greater yields than conventional agriculture.
Fiber crops are 44 times more productive
Vegetables, oil crops, roots, and tubers are more than twice as productive.
Fruits and cereals are 60% more productive.
When the categories were disaggregated, adjusting for more frequently cultivated and probably more productively raised crops being studied, urban farming was at least as productive as conventional farming.
