Germany: Berlin Could Grow 80% of its Veggies Locally
There are more than 200 community gardens and more than 73,000 allotment gardens in the city.
Mirage
Science
25 Jan 2023
Excerpt:
Berlin has enough space for urban gardening, and up to 82 percent of Berlin’s vegetable consumption could be produced locally, a new study finds. “The amount of vegetables represents a significant share of the annual consumption,” highlights Diego Rybski, an external faculty member from the Complexity Science Hub and a co-author of the paper that will appear in the April issue of Sustainable Cities and Society journal.
Rybski and his team were interested in finding out how much vegetables could be produced in Berlin. A total of five urban spaces were evaluated for agriculture — non-built residential areas, allotment gardens, rooftops, supermarket parking lots, and closed cemeteries.
A local culture
Urban gardening has been a tradition in Berlin for many years, and there are more than 200 community gardens and more than 73,000 allotment gardens in the city. But rooftops and non-built residential areas — green spaces between large housing complexes — provide a great opportunity for urban gardening because they are underutilized, according to Rybski.
“With Berlin’s plans to shift to fewer cars, parking lots are also good candidates for growing vegetables,” adds Rybski, who is also a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Wuppertal Institute.
