At the dawn of the 20th century, we shunned our hectic urban lives in the industrial city as unnatural and unhealthy. We craved a ‘return’ to a tamed appropriation of nature that would allow us to live out the Arcadian Myth: an idealized rural life freeing us from the dark satanic mills of the urban metropolis. This shift is known as the Garden City movement and, although it was never authentically realized, it had a huge influence on the creation of suburbs: peaceful neighbourhoods free from the problems associated with urban centres but still equipped with modern conveniences.
During World War I and World War II, victory gardens were planted in backyards, public parks, or on rooftops in the US, UK, Canada, and Germany in order to alleviate pressure on the public food supply. In addition, these gardens served primarily as ‘morale-boosters’ for gardeners who felt empowered by their labour contribution and gratified by their self-cultivated produce.
Today, this same insecurity wears the guise of modern urban agriculture, within which there are two streams: social justice campaigns and profit-driven commercialization. Social justice campaigns usually revolve around food security and autonomy, whereas profit-driven commercialization utilizes the idea of urban agriculture as a marketing technique. While the social justice focus is on security of cities, the idealization and commercialization of urban agriculture now treats rooftop gardens as a novelty, thereby undermining its ability to be taken seriously as a necessity for a functioning city.
Innovation in urban agriculture is not detrimental in and of itself. But, its true merits require closer consideration—no matter how tempting it is to blindly accept its premise, this movement does not simply allows us to satisfy our appetite for a deeper connection with our food. We’ve reached a point now where some city dwellers have become so obsessed with the idea of local produce that they prefer to pay more for a box of vegetables grown within their city limits rather than from a nearby farmer. They’ve either heard the narrative of diminished transit and the corresponding reduction in pollution, have fallen for the story of the rooftop greenhouse in the middle of the city producing succulent and sustainable heirlooms, or just want to snag a sweet Instagram upload of their responsible, urban-grown kale.
I recently had an opportunity to discuss the value of urban agriculture with Cai Rintoul, a seasoned and energetic pro and co-founder of Provender—a startup that connects restaurants directly with farmers in order to make the process more efficient, provide customers with better produce, and garner more returns for the farmer.
Often, Cai explains, there is this idea that one-fifth of the rooftops in New York could feed the entire city. But, the fact remains that we can’t build massive urban greenhouses on 99% of the rooftops available—it’s an engineering rather than planning problem. The primary issue with growing gardens in the city is that people are pitching it as sustainable when it’s not. Many believe that growing vertically (with vertical trellises in order to optimize space) in an urban centre is extremely sustainable because it cuts out trucking. But, if you actually look at the math behind it, this is false.
Cai breaks it down for us: if you grow heads of lettuce at 30% supplemental light, which is standard for city growing, you need about 230 kilowatts of energy per hour per head of lettuce. At 100% supplemental light that you would get in a field, it works out to 6.5 or 7 kilowatts per hour for a head of lettuce. Now, if you’re not in Quebec where a lot of that energy is coming from hydro, this endeavour can be incredibly resource intensive in the form of coal and nuclear energy. From here, if urban agriculture is to expand, it will actually accelerate problems in sustainability rather than decrease them.
But sustainability sells products and it’s easy to get caught up in the seduction of the idea of things. Yes, a greenhouse on a roof in the middle of downtown is a very novel sight and provides one with a sense of optimism in technology’s ability to deliver us from our disconnect from nature. Sustainability does not, however, automatically follow from all brave new urban agricultural advances. The most carbon-efficient way to grow lettuce is in the field with the sun. Photosynthesis is the cheapest and most abundant source of energy on the planet and that’s not going to change. If we really want a sustainablefood system, we should be promoting rural farming and using the infrastructure that urban agriculture businesses will create to then distribute produce. By preying on consumer anxiety and propagating the idea of sustainability as synonymous with all urban agriculture endeavours, some ventures are actually working against advances in true sustainability.
