UK: Bees and hoverflies are key to growing more fruit and veg in cities – new researchUK:
Growing more food in cities has the potential to improve people’s access to fresh produce.
By Elizabeth Nicholls
Research Fellow in Ecology, University of Sussex
The Conservation
June 15, 2023
Excerpt:
Accessing affordable fruit and vegetables is a significant challenge for the 1.2 million UK residents living in what are known as “food deserts”.
People in these neighbourhoods are unable to purchase fresh food within walking distance or via a quick trip on public transport. Instead, they have to choose between shopping at convenience stores with scarce fresh food in stock or spending some of their food budget on transportation.
But there is a solution. Growing fruit and vegetables in cities is an effective and sustainable way of improving many urban residents’ access to fresh produce. In newly published research on urban UK allotments, my colleagues and I found that maintaining a diversity of insects in our cities is an important part of this.
Urban farms, which account for around 6% of all farmland worldwide, have the potential to supply a significant amount of fresh food. Several studies, including those based on data collected by urban growers themselves, have demonstrated that small urban farms (typically allotments or community and market gardens that are less than two hectares in size) can match the productivity of conventional rural farms in terms of food production per unit area.
