Food Climate Research Network (FCRN) | Knowledge for better food systems

Growing Food in Cities

This report shows, through analysis and a wide variety of case studies, that urban agriculture can, in a very practical way, yield a range of benefits.

These include:

Community development: by reaffirming community identity, promoting active citizenship, combating age, gender and ethnic discrimination, preventing crime and rehabilitating offenders
Economic development: by providing skills training, creating local goods and services, and building an alternative economy
Education: by furthering formal learning at school, non-formal education in the community and helping people with special needs
Environmental improvement: by increasing biodiversity, tackling waste and reducing transport
Health: by improving people's diets, encouraging physical activity and promoting mental health
Leisure: by stimulating voluntary action, generating sustainable tourism and developing arts and crafts
Sustainable neighbourhoods: by reviving allotments and parks, and regenerating housing developments

Urban food growing projects can face difficulties with access to land, water, money, equipment, knowledge and skills. The report therefore makes a number of recommendations (a summary of these is attached) to policy makers to help ease these problems and, more positively, to encourage and support urban food growing initiatives.

You can read related research by browsing the following categories of our research library:

Primary production: Agriculture

Land

And through the keyword categories:

Food and agriculture policy

Green economy/alternative economic models

Socio-economic determinants of health

Urban agriculture

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Growing_food_in_cities.pdf

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Keywords

Region

Region:

Europe

Europe is the world's second-smallest continent by surface area, covering just over 10 million square kilometres or 6.8% of the global land area, but it is the third-most populous continent after Asia and Africa, with a population of around 740 million people or about 11% of the world's population. Its climate is heavily affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent. In the European Union, farmers represent only 4.7% of the working population, yet manage nearly half of its land area.