What are the barriers and opportunities for compost-based urban farming and gardening in Dschang, Cameroon and Lausanne, Switzerland?
How is compost used in local urban agriculture?
Prof. René Véron and Rolande Kakeu-Tardy
Swiss Network for International Studies
Project Summary
The promotion of composting for urban agriculture has great potential to mitigate global climate change. Composting reduces the uncontrolled decomposition of organic waste that contributes to green-house gas emissions and its use in agriculture helps sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Furthermore, urban agriculture shortens food chains, reduces transportation needs, and contributes to food security.
This project aims to examine the following issues:
– How is municipal waste managed at the neighbourhood and city-level?
– How is compost used in local urban agriculture?
– What are the barriers and opportunities that exist for closing the food- waste-farming cycle?
The project’s interdisciplinary approach assesses compost-induced improvements of local soils and considers actors, social practices and relationships, institutions and changing material properties along the entire food-waste-farming chain starting – from food consumption and waste production, waste management and composting, to compost use in urban farming. To do so, the research team relies largely on interviews and focus groups, but also on laboratory analyses.
Furthermore, the project not only seeks to engage with key stakeholders in both countries, including urban farmers, planners and policymakers, but also to facilitate knowledge exchange across geographical contexts with the goal to develop policy recommendations for localizing and closing the food-waste-farming cycle in different contexts.
