Urban Agriculture as a Resiliency Strategy

Abstract

In the broad sphere of urban agriculture, which can range from green walls and rooftop gardens to community gardens and backyard vegetable plots, people may be motivated by the desire to avoid pesticides, reduce air-miles, increase food security, promote food sovereignty, or by the simple joy of digging in the dirt and growing their own food plants. Here, however, I consider the role of urban agriculture as a resiliency strategy and ponder a future scenario in which our existing food systems fail to function and urban agriculture is needed as part of a strategy to produce not just the microgreens that metropolitan foodies want but the staples that urban citizens need.

“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that we take depend on the ideas lying around. That, I believe is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1962)