Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South [1st ed. 2020] 978-3-030-17186-5, 978-3-030-17187-2

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxxviii
Front Matter ....Pages 1-1
Introduction (Alec Thornton)....Pages 3-8
Urban Agriculture in and Around Cities in Developed and Developing Countries: A Conceptualization of Urban Agriculture Dynamics and Challenges (Antonia D. Bousbaine, H. Blaise Nguendo-Yongsi, Christopher Bryant)....Pages 9-25
Urban Agriculture as a Field: Governance, Communication and Collective Action (Daniel Keech, Matthew Reed)....Pages 27-44
Urban Agriculture and the Battle for History in Melbourne and São Paulo (Adrian H. Hearn, Thais Mauad, Luis Fernando Amato-Lourenço, Guilherme Reis Ranieri, Chris Williams)....Pages 45-69
Smart Food Cities on the Menu? Integrating Urban Food Systems into Smart City Policy Making (Israel Dela Cruz, Alec Thornton, Dagmar Haase)....Pages 71-84
Front Matter ....Pages 85-85
Food Sovereignty: A Nirvana Concept for Swiss Urban Agriculture? (Cyril Mumenthaler, Rémi Schweizer, Joëlle Salomon Cavin)....Pages 87-100
Cultural Heritage Preservation and Resilience in Urban Agriculture Through the Lens of Social Justice: A Case Study in Milan (Paola Branduini, Coline Perrin, Brigitte Nougarèdes, Elena Colli)....Pages 101-122
The Emergence of the Food Land Belt in Wallonia: An Innovative System to Feed Local Populations? (Antonia D. Bousbaine)....Pages 123-140
Identifying and Solving Regulatory Issues and Solutions Through Some Case Studies of Urban Farming in Australia (Michael Mobbs, Helen Lynch, John Fry, Bronwyn Richards)....Pages 141-157
Keeping Up Appearances: Conflicting Values in State Opposition to Growing Food in Public (Liesel Spencer)....Pages 159-173
Front Matter ....Pages 175-175
Service Learning and Stakeholder Action: Technology and Education for Urban Agriculture in Johannesburg, South Africa (Naudé Malan)....Pages 177-191
Emerging Enterprises and Sustainability in the Food System: Food Entrepreneurs in South Africa (Naudé Malan)....Pages 193-212
Reconceptualizing Urban Agriculture in Africa: Issues of Scale, Class and Institutional Support in Zambian Copperbelt Towns (Tony Binns, Etienne Nel)....Pages 213-229
Food Security and Land-Use Conflicts Within Regional Planning: The Recent Experience of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, Brazil (Daniela Adil Oliveira de Almeida, Cecilia Rocha, Heloísa Soares de Moura Costa, Melissa Luciana de Araújo)....Pages 231-247
Changing Agricultural Landscape and Immigrant Population in Thimphu, Bhutan (Raghubir Chand)....Pages 249-272
Typological Diversity of Agriculture in a Densely Urbanised Region of São Paulo, Brazil (Giulia Giacchè, Lya Porto, Gustavo Nagib, Angelica Campos Nakamura, Guilherme Reis Ranieri)....Pages 273-289
Urban Agriculture in Chinese Cities: Practices, Motivations and Challenges (Geoff Luehr, Alesandros Glaros, Zhenzhong Si, Steffanie Scott)....Pages 291-309
Back Matter ....Pages 311-320

Citation preview

Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South Alec Thornton

International Political Economy Series Series Editor Timothy M. Shaw Visiting Professor University of Massachusetts Boston Boston, USA Emeritus Professor University of London, UK

The global political economy is in flux as a series of cumulative crises impacts its organization and governance. The IPE series has tracked its development in both analysis and structure over the last three decades. It has always had a concentration on the global South. Now the South increasingly challenges the North as the centre of development, also reflected in a growing number of submissions and publications on indebted Eurozone economies in Southern Europe. An indispensable resource for scholars and researchers, the series examines a variety of capitalisms and connections by focusing on emerging economies, companies and sectors, debates and policies. It informs diverse policy communities as the established trans-Atlantic North declines and ‘the rest’, especially the BRICS, rise. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/13996

Alec Thornton

Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South

Alec Thornton University of New South Wales Australia Canberra, ACT, Australia

ISSN 2662-2483     ISSN 2662-2491 (electronic) International Political Economy Series ISBN 978-3-030-17186-5    ISBN 978-3-030-17187-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

Worldwide, food governance is irreversibly being up-handed by our cities—this is the demography shift. And urban civil society is the one vector drilling a wedge into an increasingly delocalized, mercantilized and artificialized food system—this is the democracy shift. It is about time. Heeding the call for dedicated urban food planning in the New Urban Agenda adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2016,1 this book does so quite differently from other recent releases. It focuses on governance models for cities and countries to transit toward more sustainable food systems, both in the Global North and in the Global South. A new decade dawns on us with deepening social inequalities, more devastating extreme natural events and gathering shifts in climatic regimes, and the rising incidence of unhealthy diet-related diseases (Sonnino 2017). 1  Namely, under Planning and managing urban spatial development: “123. We will promote the integration of food security and the nutritional needs of urban residents, particularly the urban poor, in urban and territorial planning, in order to end hunger and malnutrition. We will promote coordination of sustainable food security and agriculture policies across urban, peri-urban and rural areas to facilitate the production, storage, transport and marketing of food to consumers in adequate and affordable ways in order to reduce food losses and prevent and reuse food waste. We will further promote the coordination of food policies with energy, water, health, transport and waste policies, maintain the genetic diversity of seeds and reduce the use of hazardous chemicals, and implement other policies in urban areas to maximize efficiencies and minimize waste”. http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/New-Urban-Agenda-GA-Adopted-68th-Plenary-N1646655-E.pdf.

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No wonder urban food planning (Morgan 2009, 2015) is coming to the fore in an unprecedented way. Linkages between food policy and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and targets are potentially considerable (Mazzochi and Marino 2018), and recent global summits, declarations and agendas have underscored cities’ central role for progress on SDGs, with food policy development being a critical catalyst (Dansero et al. 2017). Granted, the governance of food systems is a hydra, but in the Global North and increasingly so in the Global South, food movements, urban food policy experiments and alternative food networks have been asserting the key role of governance and action at a local level to move urban food systems more toward what the sociologist Johannes Wiskerke (2015) calls urban systems of food. These are spaces where more of the food activities are integrated locally through functional connections between them, for sustainability, justice and better local economies (Tecco et  al. 2017). Nearly 100 cities in the Global North have now issued urban food strategies and nearly 300 food policy councils have been created across North America alone (Ilieva 2016). This is not insignificant. In the Global South, urban food systems typically still rely more on shorter supply chains than in the Global North, despite advances by corporate retailing. Yet, governments have been less proactive at developing local systems of food, to say nothing of supporting largely informal supply chains. Still, more of them now realize that what until recently was despised as backward can in fact be a foundation on which to build. In the wake of food price surges worldwide a growing number of local and national governments in the Global South—following late-1990s pioneers such as Belo Horizonte, in this book—have been mustering creativity, commitment and leadership, as revealed by assessments of official initiatives in urban agriculture (UA) commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization (2012, 2014), the World Bank (2013) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).2 2  UNEP’s START program published in 2014–2015 a series of nine city-level assessment reports on urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) for Dakar (Senegal), Tamale (Ghana), Ibadan (Nigeria), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Kampala (Uganda), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Kathmandu (Nepal) and Chennai (India). In the References, I only list one of these reports as example (Sabiiti et al. 2014). FAO’s 2012 survey of urban and periurban horticulture in Africa covered 27 countries; its 2014 survey of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean collected data from 110 cities in 23 countries, including 13 city case studies.

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With growing interest in urban food planning, namely in the Global North, for some time now academia has been developing curriculums and inquiry in this field, in reaction to influent professional guilds’ call for planners to embrace food planning as a legitimate area of competence (American Planners Association 2007).3 In late 2015, the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact became the first international food policy pact directly involving cities in food policy, now signed by more than 130 cities worldwide, nearly half of which are in the Global South (Bini et al. 2017). In this, as in other emerging fields of expertise still developing codes and competencies, we cannot hope to devise grounded and viable protocols of intervention unless we first learn from ongoing experimentation. Some planning tools have been developed and used to frame local and territorialized agro-food system experiments. Yet, still few and far between are efforts to capture and distill experiential knowledge on what works and what is responsible for progress (or lack of) in urban food systems planning. Which is exactly what Urban Food Democracy and Governance in the North and South does. This gifts us with a timely complement to Integrating Food into Urban Planning, co-edited by Yves Cabannes and Cecilia Marrochino (2019), on worldwide lessons from city initiatives and instruments to integrate agriculture into urban planning, as well as to A Renewed Reading of the Food-City Relationship: Towards Urban Food Policies, a geography collective’s powerful contribution, led by Egidio Dansero, Giacomo Pettenati and Alessia Toldo (2017). Advances are always at risk of meeting with resistance, even backlash, and Dr. Thornton’s collection lifts the veil, as few do, on the political economy of stakeholders that urban food initiatives must navigate to address development objectives discussed in Cities and Agriculture: Developing Resilient Urban Food Systems, edited by Henk de Zeeuw and Pay Dreschel (2015). Thornton’s book complements the latter by examining urban design and spatial planning through a food-system-wide lens. Finally, Urban Food Democracy and Governance adds value to Integrated Urban Agriculture, edited by Robert France (Green Frigate, 2016) and 3  Dedicated graduate programs in urban/local food planning are still very few. In the US, Kansas State University offers an Urban Food Systems specialization under its Master of Science in Horticulture program. More universities have electives: The University of Memphis has an Urban Food Systems elective under its Master of City and Regional Planning; and Tufts University’s Agriculture, Food and Environment program supports specialized work on local food systems under its Master of Science. A few Canadian universities offer graduate seminars and short courses.

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Sustainable Food Planning: Evolving Theory and Practice, co-edited by André Viljoen and Johannes Wiskerke (2016). While the latter dedicates ten chapters to urban food governance, both of these collections mostly draw on experience from Global North contexts. With its emphasis on socio-political dynamics, Alec Thornton’s edition also complements Food and the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation, edited by Dorothée Imbert (Harvard University Press, 2015), a scholarly acknowledgment by disciplines of the built environment of the place and role of foodscapes in urban development in the Global North and the Global South. 1. How much really does urban agriculture improve the urban poor’s food security and in which way does it so? Where, when and for whom is urban agriculture an effective food security strategy? Answering these questions probably requires finer data than most advocates have been able to present so far. Not only is food security complex, with many components, the impact of food crops or livestock keeping on any of its components, including nutrition, can be highly mediated at the individual and household levels, and beyond (Sebastian et  al. 2008; Yeudall et  al. 2008). Savings from self-provisioning or income from growing food for sale does not automatically translate into better nutrition for oneself or other household members. Beyond households, recent assessments of select urban food systems suggest that these mobilize wide-ranging sources and markets. On the supply side, contributions from foreign imports, distant rural and more local peri-urban and urban sources vary greatly relative to one another; they do so from city to city, from district to district, from one season or one year to the next, and across produce or products. On the demand side, the geography and socio-economics of a city’s sub-markets also influence reliance on some rather than on other sources of provisioning. We know that overall these sources do try to complement each other; so does the range of distribution outlets from which different socio-economic groups procure their food, as shown in Quito (Arrazola et al. 2016). But we also know that food riots are becoming increasingly frequent in those developing-country cities dangerously dependent on food imports and exposed to price fluctuations, this despite extensive urban and peri-urban agriculture, as in Maputo (Bini et al. 2017). We know that urban food production does contribute critically to many cities’ supply of select perishable foodstuffs, even dampening

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off-season price hikes. We also know that lower-income producer households often are found to be less food insecure (Maxwell 1995; Mwangi 1996; Omondi et al. 2017). But this may be less true of the urban poor more generally, as reportedly in Southern Africa (Frayne et al. 2016) and in South Africa especially. While low-income people are often the majority of urban farmers, a higher share of the poor are not engaged in urban agriculture, compared to other income groups. There are still few rigorous studies on urban/local agriculture’s contribution to the food security (by any measure) of larger numbers of poor households not engaged in it in the Global South. How broad is really its halo effect? And there is no guarantee that urban systems of food which include short supply chains do satisfy all of low-income groups’ food demand, let alone their needs. Context is an important discriminator—as shown for the Zambian Copperbelt in this book; food security for all as a whole can only be achieved through multiple measures aimed at different components of the city’s overall food system. In contrast to their Global North counterparts, most Global South cities still hold an important asset, even if this is still disregarded or despised by many. Informal markets drawing on local supply chains can provide the building blocks for stronger urban systems of food. Noteworthy is a new five-year initiative funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC): a coalition of research centers (The Hungry Cities Partnership4) will scrutinize urban food system governance in seven metropolises of different world regions; it will assess what is needed to spur women- and youth-led enterprises in the informal food economy. There are opportunities for informal markets and food enterprises to strengthen the city’s connections with its food shed, particularly among midsized cities. New research by a Swedish-Sub-Saharan Africa university consortium in mid-sized cities of Kenya and Ghana5 points to 4  The Hungry Cities Partnership is co-led by the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada. See: https://www.africancentreforcities.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/ 09/The-Hungry-Cities-Partnership.pdf. 5  African urban agriculture: social, economic and environmental challenges and prospects under changing global and demographic realities, 2013–2016. Funded by VR/U-forsk and FORMAS. Lund University joint project with the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU). See, for instance, Ayerakwa (2017) and Omondi et al. (2017).

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the frequent practice of food-cropping and livestock ­ keeping in urban and/or rural areas by a sizeable share of urban-based households, and their better food security indices as a result. This book sheds new evidence on this, and new projects such as the aforementioned hopefully will provide experiential evidence which Global South cities can use to move beyond a focus on urban agriculture and promote other pillars needed to relocalize more of their supply chains and add value to these in the process. . The role of social movements, communities and local govern2 ment: How to effectively scale up? Thornton’s collection has the merit of underscoring the seminal role played in innovation by social movements, community-level leaders and local governments. Even in centrally planned economies bottom-up pressure has been essential for securing higher-order institutional support. More often than not, such support is not readily forthcoming, even in the Global North: the case of Queensland (Australia) in this book reminds us to negotiate and stagger strategies that can be seen as supporting current priorities in order to elicit political traction. Agriculture is never a top drawer on a city’s agenda, but poverty and unemployment often are, and so are public health, pollution and lack of green spaces, school dropout and drug addiction, public insecurity and lack of recreation. Both in the Global North and in the Global South, consultations, task forces and action plans inclusive of stakeholders both within and outside government tend to deliver more robust initiatives than top-down or sector-specific approaches—as contrasting outcomes of programs in Paris, France (Delgado 2018), Almada, Portugal (Messina and Mourato 2018) and Athens, Greece (Skordili 2018) show. In Colombia, while the departmental office for agriculture and livestock has been leading programs in and around small towns, in the capital city of Cali itself, the many civic organizations active in urban agriculture have struggled to sell a strategy to the City Council that would cater to its policy priorities. Our project experience at IDRC has taught us that local solutions must be shown to address several problems, either at once or in close sequence, so as to garner and retain political sustenance over time; local communities effective at problem-solving are communities of local stakeholders; these also can become crucibles for innovation and larger-scale programs. In fact, we can safely say that where an upscaling of official support to urban agriculture has been

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observed, the process has tended to follow a Matryoshka or ‘nesting Russian doll’ model, from ward to nation. Few large urban centers have dared to launch citywide programs without first trialing pilots in select districts. What has often sped up innovation are networks that have combined more with less experienced cities, a process which Sonnino (2017) coins as ‘trans-localism’. In this context, urban agriculture has often served as a catalyst, leading cities to apprehend other pillars of their food supply system as well. Moving up to the next step on the ward-to-nation ladder has meant new demands for ground-level results, stakeholder alliances and policy currency. This is critical, as, if not well served, support may wane and progress may be halted, even reversed, as in Lima (Peru). In this book, the case of Tamale (Ghana) offers additional insights into this dynamic. In most instances, in order to retain policy currency agricultural initiatives over time do need to put more than food on the table by helping the city also tackle often quite different but related priorities, like preserving heritage landscapes, as in Milan (this book) or Geneva (Viallon et al. 2018), or providing service-learning opportunities, as in Johannesburg (this book). . The need for local producer organizations to become policy 3 actors: How to strengthen local producer organizations as such? Such organizations must be assisted to be more active in social movements for sustainable urban food systems. Despite their key role in technical extension, departments of agriculture traditionally have not had jurisdiction over urban areas. And while in smaller towns and villages rural producers may have the ear of their local Council, this is usually not so in major urban centers. Even when informal urban producers are reasonably well organized, for them to gather and lever political capital is generally an uphill struggle. An IDRC-funded project by the universities of Dar es Salaam, Malawi and Greenwich, UK, did create learning groups among peri-urban vegetable growers; and this demonstrably helped them adapt to climate variability, use fewer resources to produce more, raise their income and improve their livelihood. But sustaining such an approach to innovation in the longer term remained a challenge, due to weak uptake by higher-level managers of agricultural extension services (Liwenga et  al. 2012). Broad-based coalitions can lobby for proper agricultural assistance, when not providing it them-

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selves, so that producers can improve their practices in intra- and peri-urban areas. We therefore need to know more on the political arenas in which organizations of producers play. How effective are such organizations and how can they be more so? Who are or could be their supporters, their allies, their partners? Who are not, and why? How do these organizations reach out to other actors’ interests and concerns? In the city, where sectors are many and diverse interests compete, strategic organization and alliances are key to being heard and being recognized as valid actors. In the Global North, successful urban farms (Hanson and Marthy 2012; Rich 2012) that originally were seen as delinquent often gained legitimacy and support through initially drumming up their educational mission, only broadening their mission later to embrace other pursuits, including for-profit sales. In the Global South, few city-based producer groups are known to have followed similar itineraries, despite an immense need to educate, train and employ youths. But in Nairobi this old man, originally arrived in the city empty-pocketed, when I met him was running, along a major road and across a gas station, a nursery of fruit seedlings and ornamentals, improvised in a drainage ditch next to a sewage line; he employed a handful of youths, giving them hope in themselves, he told me. Likewise, while ‘food sovereignty’ is now being threaded into advocacy for urban agriculture in Global North cities—such as Lausanne and Geneva in this book—initiatives where such an argument may serve as leitmotiv still seem to be rare in Global South cities. We need to know more about arguments which help marginal initiatives gain legitimacy and official support in those cities; also, about those which do not. . The future of local food agriculture’s niche in markets increas4 ingly ruled by agro-industry: How can UA secure/expand market niches? Any strategy for making urban food systems more sustainable must deal with this elephant in the room. We need to better understand corporate food distributors’ both adverse and beneficial impacts on small and local food production. Small-scale UA has always been interacting with mainstream actors in the food chain; large-scale enterprises historically have been capturing market niches originally held by local artisanal operations, pressing these to migrate elsewhere or innovate in order to remain competitive,

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through intensification or specialization. One can think of Nairobi’s large poultry distributors who procure from small peri-urban farms, or of hydroponic farms in Santiago de Chile which supply lettuce to local McDonald restaurants. In large urban centers of the Global South local agriculture is diversifying rapidly, as in São Paulo (this book), with different categories of producers catering to different clienteles, even tourists. In that city, the Eldorado shopping center in Pinheiros is expanding its rooftop acreage of fresh greens, recycling water leaked from its air conditioners and composting waste from its restaurants, and supplies these with organically grown ingredients. A rooftop terrace was recently added to host events. As supermarkets colonize lower-income sub-markets with more affordable offerings—not necessarily healthier ones—what is their impact on the retailing of locally produced food? Local does not always rhyme with safer, particularly in the Global South, but it certainly could be made to be more so. In larger cities with growing middle-class demand for healthier fresh food, local producers develop niches for higher-value products (certified organic) and may even supply specialties to corporate outlets (condiments, sauces, jellies, herbal cosmetics, etc.). This is increasingly the case in Global North cities such as Liège, discussed in this book. In Quito, supermarkets are required to source a percentage of their food locally, but streamlining collection from small growers in the metro area to reliably supply large retailers remains a challenge in logistics (Nandamuri 2017). And if produce grown and livestock raised in risky conditions cater more to lower-income groups, how to transition these producers to safer practices without sacrificing affordability? What is the role of decisions made by government, civil society and the private sector in this? In many Global South settings, the capture of peri-urban agricultural production around smaller cities by larger and richer markets limits towns’ self-reliance and weakens their resilience in times of crisis. This deserves further scrutiny: What is the cost for a city of shipping to elsewhere most of the food produced locally, and what is the cost of supply largely depending on lifelines subjected to disruptions (trucker strikes, oil shortages, landslides or floods, civil strife)? . The role of virtual communications in weaving more sustain5 able urban food systems: What is, or may be, the role of social media and internet networks? An analysis of such networks in sev-

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eral European cities is a much welcome feature of this book. In the US, for instance, case studies of urban farms point to the growing and multipurpose application of ICTs (and open data) to food-­ related activities in cities. ICTs are transforming the way urban farmers operate, coordinate, collaborate, advocate and participate in planning and policy (Hanson and Marti 2012; Rich 2012). Applications are diversifying rapidly and include: modeling of production and yield scenarios under different farm sizes and produce combinations; crowdsourcing of funding for startups; sharing of seeds, implements and recipes, bulk purchasing, event planning, produce swaps, rosters of local skills and tool libraries. Networks are developing everywhere to replicate models, with digital tools supporting outreach activities, setting up satellite and partner locations and produce-marketing networks, as well as exchanging with young rural farmers and teaching new techniques. Virtual platforms increasingly support alliances and advocacy campaigns for changes to restrictive municipal regulations. There is evidence they are transforming business models or urban agriculture and enabling the emergence of local value chains. What do we know of how ICTs are transforming informal food sector activity in Global South cities? Not much so far. Hopefully the book chapter on this question will trigger more inquiry into what should dramatically alter the way urban agriculture and food systems generally operate in coming decades, in both the North and the South. ICTs could greatly improve supply and value chains from production to distribution, the geography of these chains and how they interact with other urban activities, particularly so in larger cities. In Portugal, virtual social media and consumer platforms have been noted to promote more decentralized and responsive decision-­ making (Delgado 2017). Learning from how ICTs are transforming other urban-based value chains may shed light on how we can better use these to further urban agriculture’s integration into urban food systems. What and how we eat is perennially and universally paramount to caring for our personal health, to influencing our social norms and to defining our cultural identities. Yet, our growing reliance on remote-sourced and mass-produced foodstuffs has been stealthily dispossessing us to unprecedented levels from a holistic relationship to food so vital to our existence,

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our well-being and our dignity. The new counterparadigm of place-based strategies being led by a growing number of world-class cities may indeed turn into an effective counterforce to the global intensive food agenda (Sonnino 2017), but only if food literacy and activism push for governments to respond with the needed system reforms. It is my hope that books like Urban Food Democracy and Governance in the North and South will inspire even greater collaboration between thinkers and doers for our cities to win this challenge. Ottawa, ON 9 January 2019

Luc Mougeot

References American Planning Association. (2007). APA Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning. Retrieved from https://www.planning.org/policy/ guides/adopted/food.htm. Arrazola, I., Alvaro, N. P., Renckens, J., Ballesteros, H., & Hollenstein, P. (2016, August). The Role of Private Sector Actors in the Quito Metropolitan District Food System. VECO Andino and RUAF Foundation. Retrieved from http:// www.ruaf.org/sites/default/files/Role%20of%20private%20sector%20in%20 the%20Quito%20city%20region%20food%20system-final.pdf. Ayerakwa, H.  M. (2017, January 10). Urban Households’ Engagement in Agriculture: Implications for Food Security in Ghana’s Medium Sized Cities. Geographical Research. Retrieved from http://portal.research.lu.se/portal/ en/publications/urban-households-engagement-in-agriculture(6fdc12e4bced-486c-8e85-64226eaa9a51).html. Berthelot, J. (2013). Réguler les prix agricoles. Paris: L’Harmattan. Bini, V., Dansero, E., Magarini, A., & Nicolarea, Y. (2017). Urban Food Policies in the Global South: Themes, Approaches, Reference Cases. Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, XIII(X), 46–64. Cabannes, Y., & Marrochino, C. (Eds.). (2019). Integrating Food into Urban Planning. London: UCL Press Publisher. Retrieved from http://bit. ly/2TyaqYF. Dansero, E., Pettenati, G., & Toldo, A. (2017). The Relationship between Food and Cities and Urban Food Policies: A Space for Geography? Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, XIII(X), 4–19. Delgado, C. (2017). Mapping Urban Agriculture in Portugal: Lessons from Practice and Their Relevance for European Post-Crisis Contexts. Moravian Geographical Reports, 25(3), 139–153. Retrieved from https://www.degruyter.com/ downloadpdf/j/mgr.2017.25.issue-3/mgr-2017-0013/mgr-2017-0013.pdf.

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Delgado, C. (2018, April 24). Critical Keys to Understand the Emergence of a Strong UA Movement in Paris. Paper for Connections and Missing Links within Urban Agriculture, Food and Food Systems, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. De Zeeuw, H., & Drechsel, P. (Eds.). (2015). Cities and Agriculture: Developing Resilient Urban Food Systems. New York: Routledge. FAO. (2012). Growing Greener Cities in Africa. First Status Report on Urban and Peri-Urban Horticulture in Africa. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/docrep/016/ i3002e/i3002e.pdf. FAO. (2014). Growing Greener Cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. An FAO Report on Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture in the Region. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from http:// www.fao.org/3/a-i3696e.pdf. France, R. (Ed.). (2016). Integrated Urban Agriculture: Precedents, Practices, Prospects. Oxfordshire: Green Frigate Books. Frayne, B., McCordic, C., & Shilomboleni, H. (2016). The Mythology of Urban Agriculture. In J.  Crush & J.  Battersby (Eds.), Rapid Urbanisation, Urban Food Deserts and Food Security in Africa (pp. 19–31). Springer. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-43567-1. Hanson, D., & Marty, E. (2012). Breaking through Concrete: Building an Urban Farm Revival. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 181 pp. Ilieva, R. T. (2016). Urban Food Planning Seeds of Transition in the Global North. London: Routledge. Imbert, D. (Ed.). (2015). Food and the City: Histories of Culture and Cultivation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Liwenga, E., et al. (2012, June). Exploring Urban Rural Interdependence and the Impact of Climate Change in Tanzania and Malawi. Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam, Natural Resources and Environment Centre, University of Malawi, and Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, UK. Final Narrative Report (IDRC 105836). Maxwell, D. (1995). Alternative Food Security Strategies: A Household Analysis of Urban Agriculture in Kampala. World Development, 23(10), 1669–1681. Mazzochi, G., & Marino, D. (2018, April 24). Linking Food Policies and Sustainable Development Goals. Paper for Connections and Missing Links within Urban Agriculture, Food and Food Systems, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Messina, T., & Mourato, J. M. (2018, April 24). Community Urban Food Gardens Design: A Study Case with Almada (Portugal) and Paris (France). Paper for Connections and Missing Links within Urban Agriculture, Food and Food Systems, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Morgan, K. (2009). Feeding the City: The Challenge of Urban Food Planning. International Planning Studies, 14, 341–348. Morgan, K. (2015). Nourishing the City: The Rise of the Urban Food Question in the Global North. Urban Studies, 52(8), 1379–1394.

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Mwangi, A. M. (1996). Urban Agriculture, Food Security and Nutrition in Low-­ Income Areas of the City of Nairobi, Kenya. African Urban Quarterly, 11(2– 3), 170–179. Nandamuri, S.  S. (2017, June). Urban Agriculture: A Case Study of Quito, Ecuador. Master’s thesis, Lund University. IIIEE Theses IMEN56 20,171 The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics. Retrieved from https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/8923843. Omondi, S. O., Oluoch-Kosura, W., & Jirström, M. (2017, May). The Role of Urban-Based Agriculture on Food Security: Kenyan Case Studies. Geographical Research, 55(2), 231–241. Rich, S. C. (2012). Urban Farms. New York: Abrams, 222 pp. Sabiiti, E. N., Katongole, C. B., Katudomunda, S., Sengendo, H., Basalirwa, C. P. K., Atukunda, G., et  al. (2014). Building Urban Resilience: Assessing Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture in Kampala, Uganda. United Nations Environment Programme, START.  Retrieved from http://www.academia. edu/22004357/Assessing_Urban_and_Peri-urban_Agriculture_in_Kampala_ Uganda. Sebastian, R., Lubowa, A., Yeudall, F., Cole, D., & Ibrahim, S. (2008). The Association between Household Food Security and Urban Farming in Kampala. In D.  Cole, D.  Lee-Smith, & G.  Nasinyama (Eds.), Healthy City Harvests: Generating Evidence to Guide Policy on Urban Agriculture (pp. 69–87). Lima: International Potato Center and Makerere University Press. Skordili, S. (2018, April 24). Urban Agriculture in Times of Crisis: Municipal Gardens in Athens Metropolitan Region. Paper for Connections and Missing Links within Urban Agriculture, Food and Food Systems, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Sonnino, R. (2017). Urban Food Geographies in the Global North. Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, XIII(X), 39–46. Tecco, N., Bagliani, M., Dansero, E., & Peano, C. (2017). Toward the Local Territorial Food System: Spaces of Analysis and Action. Bollettino della Societa Geografica Italiana, XIII(X), 20–38. United Nations General Assembly. (2016). Resolution Adopted by the General Assembly on 23 December 2016. 71/256 New Urban Agenda. Seventy-first session, Agenda item 20. New  York, United Nations. Retrieved from http:// habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/New-Urban-Agenda-GA-Adopted-68thPlenary-N1646655-E.pdf. Viallon, F-X., Bombenger, P-H., & Cherqui, A. (2018, April 24). Inclusive and Exclusive Processes Surrounding the Development of an Urban Farm in Geneva. Paper for Connections and Missing Links within Urban Agriculture, Food and Food Systems, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Viljoen, A., & Wiskerke, J.  S. C. (Eds.). (2016). Sustainable Food Planning: Evolving Theory and Practice. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers.

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Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-187-3 (Hardback published in 2012). Wiskerke, J. S. C. (2015). Urban Food Systems. In H. de Zeeuw & P. Drechsel (Eds.), Cities and Agriculture: Developing Resilient Urban Food Systems (pp. 1–25). New York: Routledge. Yeudall, F., Sebastian, R., Lubowa, A., Kikafunda, J., Cole, D. C., & Ibrahim, S. (2008). Nutritional Security of Children of Urban Farmers. In D. Cole, D. LeeSmith, & G. Nasinyama (Eds.), Healthy City Harvests: Generating Evidence to Guide Policy on Urban Agriculture (pp. 89–107). Lima: International Potato Center and Makerere University Press. World Bank. (2013). Urban Agriculture: Findings from Four City Case Studies. Urban Development Series Knowledge Papers no. 18. Washington, DC: World Bank. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/ 10986/16273.

Contents

Part I Emergent UA Themes and Concepts from North and South   1 Introduction  3 Alec Thornton Urban Agriculture in and Around Cities in Developed and Developing Countries: A Conceptualization of Urban Agriculture Dynamics and Challenges  9 Antonia D. Bousbaine, H. Blaise Nguendo-Yongsi, and Christopher Bryant Urban Agriculture as a Field: Governance, Communication and Collective Action 27 Daniel Keech and Matthew Reed Urban Agriculture and the Battle for History in Melbourne and São Paulo 45 Adrian H. Hearn, Thais Mauad, Luis Fernando Amato-­Lourenço, Guilherme Reis Ranieri, and Chris Williams

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Contents

Smart Food Cities on the Menu? Integrating Urban Food Systems into Smart City Policy Making 71 Israel Dela Cruz, Alec Thornton, and Dagmar Haase

Part II Opportunities for Top-Down/Bottom-Up Collaboration? Case Studies from the Global North  85 Food Sovereignty: A Nirvana Concept for Swiss Urban Agriculture? 87 Cyril Mumenthaler, Rémi Schweizer, and Joëlle Salomon Cavin Cultural Heritage Preservation and Resilience in Urban Agriculture Through the Lens of Social Justice: A Case Study in Milan101 Paola Branduini, Coline Perrin, Brigitte Nougarèdes, and Elena Colli The Emergence of the Food Land Belt in Wallonia: An Innovative System to Feed Local Populations?123 Antonia D. Bousbaine Identifying and Solving Regulatory Issues and Solutions Through Some Case Studies of Urban Farming in Australia141 Michael Mobbs, Helen Lynch, John Fry, and Bronwyn Richards Keeping Up Appearances: Conflicting Values in State Opposition to Growing Food in Public159 Liesel Spencer

Part III The South Takes the Lead: Case Studies from BRICS, Asia and Africa 175

 Contents 

xxi

Service Learning and Stakeholder Action: Technology and Education for Urban Agriculture in Johannesburg, South Africa177 Naudé Malan Emerging Enterprises and Sustainability in the Food System: Food Entrepreneurs in South Africa193 Naudé Malan Reconceptualizing Urban Agriculture in Africa: Issues of Scale, Class and Institutional Support in Zambian Copperbelt Towns213 Tony Binns and Etienne Nel Food Security and Land-Use Conflicts Within Regional Planning: The Recent Experience of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, Brazil231 Daniela Adil Oliveira de Almeida, Cecilia Rocha, Heloísa Soares de Moura Costa, and Melissa Luciana de Araújo Changing Agricultural Landscape and Immigrant Population in Thimphu, Bhutan249 Raghubir Chand Typological Diversity of Agriculture in a Densely Urbanised Region of São Paulo, Brazil273 Giulia Giacchè, Lya Porto, Gustavo Nagib, Angelica Campos Nakamura, and Guilherme Reis Ranieri Urban Agriculture in Chinese Cities: Practices, Motivations and Challenges291 Geoff Luehr, Alesandros Glaros, Zhenzhong Si, and Steffanie Scott Afterword311 Index317

Notes on Contributors

Luis  Fernando  Amato-Lourenço  is an environmental engineer and a researcher at the University of São Paulo Medical School and Institute of Advanced Studies, University of São Paulo (IEA/USP). His research initiatives include biomonitoring of air pollution and health outcomes, healthy urbanization, food safety and sustainable food production. Tony  Binns  is Ron Lister Professor of Geography at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, and a visiting professorial fellow at the University of Sussex, UK. Tony has written widely over 40 years on food production systems, rural change and community-based development, mainly in Africa. Antonia  D.  Bousbaine is a secondary school teacher in Geography, Federation Wallonia-Brussels (FWB), Wallonia-Brussels, and a PhD candidate at the University of Liège. Her research focuses on city/countryside relationships and the role of agriculture in the construction of these new territories in Wallonia. An objective of this research focuses on governance leading to the development of plans and initiatives through a co-construction process, to create a more sustainable management of agricultural land. Paola Branduini  obtained her PhD in Rural Engineering and is a research fellow in the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, Politecnico of Milan. Her research fields concern knowledge, conservation and management of rural landscapes and enhancement of urban agriculture with cultural heritage. xxiii

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Notes on Contributors

Christopher  Bryant obtained his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1970 and was a professor at the Universities of Waterloo and Montréal, and is currently an adjunct professor at the Universities of Guelph and Montréal. He is a widely recognized researcher on urban agriculture and its planning and development. Joëlle  Salomon  Cavin is Senior Lecturer in Urban Geography and Territorial Policies at the University of Lausanne-Switzerland. She has specialized in the study of urban-rural and urban-nature relationships analysed in terms of geographical imaginaries and territorial practices. Raghubir  Chand is Professor in Geography at Kumaun University, Nainital, India. His primary research interests are in mountain geography with regard to the Himalayan environment and society, with a focus on livelihood support systems of tribal communities of Bhutan. Elena  Colli is a PhD candidate in Urban Studies at the University of Milan-Bicocca. She has worked on urban agriculture (Institute National de la Recherche Agronomique), food policies and ageing (Fondazione Cariplo), and transport policies (Stockholm Environmental Institute at York). Daniela Adil Oliveira de Almeida  is a postdoctoral Plataforma Integrada Carlos Chagas (CNPq) researcher, Group of Studies on Urban Agriculture, Geography Department, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. She is an activist and researches connections between agroecology and urban agriculture, and the production of urban space and urban planning. Melissa  Luciana  de Araújo  is a researcher at the Urban Agriculture Studies Group, Department of Geography, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Her research interests are public health and food systems, including food and nutrition security and urban agriculture. Heloísa  Soares  de Moura  Costa is a professor in the Geography Department, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, and a CNPq researcher. Her research interests and graduate supervisions relate to urbanization and nature relations, housing, and urban and environmental planning and politics. Israel Dela Cruz  is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and was a National Project Manager at the United Nations Development Programme. His research and work

  Notes on Contributors 

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e­xperience relate to urban agriculture, sustainable food consumption behaviour, food safety standards, climate change adaptation and risk transfer mechanisms. John Fry  has designed and managed environmental engineering projects with local government: Landcare, Rivercare, Coastcare, and Bushcare throughout NSW and Queensland since 1992. Until recently, he was a manager of the Green Army programme. He has developed a network of partners to adapt to climate change and repair degraded and eroded landscapes with Permaculture and Natural Sequence Farming methodologies. He has also developed the “Evans Shire” reedbed wastewater treatment and reuse programme which uses natural treatment methods to improve grey water and septic tank effluent. Giulia  Giacchè obtained AgroParisTech. Currently, AgroParisTech and member (GEAU) at the Institute of Paulo (IEA/USP).

her PhD in Land Management from she is the coordinator of Exp’AU/ of the Study Group on Urban Agriculture Advanced Studies of the University of São

Alesandros Glaros  is a PhD student in Geography at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on urban food systems, as linked to socio-­ ecological resilience, social innovation theory and environmental values. His master’s research examined the challenges and opportunities for emerging capital-intensive forms of urban agriculture in China and Canada. Dagmar Haase  is Professor of Landscape Ecology and Urban Ecology in the Geography Department, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Berlin, and a guest scientist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research—UFZ, Leipzig, Germany. Her core expertise is modelling urban land-use change and urban system dynamics and urban telecouplings. Dagmar’s secondary focus is on the quantification and assessment of ecosystem services and landscape functions using statistics and earth observation data. Adrian H. Hearn  is Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Melbourne. His work compares urban agriculture projects in Australia, China and Latin America. His recent books consider how local development agendas articulate with China’s emergence as the primary global consumer of commodities.

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Notes on Contributors

Daniel  Keech is a senior research fellow at the University of Gloucestershire’s Countryside and Community Research Institute. His research interests include urban food studies, alternative food networks, and cultural and landscape geography. Geoff  Luehr is an MA candidate in Environmental Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on the modes, motivations and challenges of urban agriculture in Nanjing, China. His broader interests are urban food issues, climate change, sustainable development and vulnerable populations. Helen M. Lynch  has had a vegetable garden wherever she has lived and an interest in urban sustainability. For the last 12 years, she has worked as part-time gardener at Wynlen House Urban Micro Farm in Braidwood NSW with Bronwyn Richards while working part-time in the university sector in learning technologies. In 2015 she took up full-time work with Wynlen House creating a learning centre, on-line and on-farm, to help others grow their own food and achieve a more sustainable future for themselves and their families. Naudé  Malan is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies in the Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, and a convener at iZindaba Zokudla. His research focuses on how urban agriculture, entrepreneurship and technology, amongst others, can contribute to changing food systems. Thais Mauad  is an associate professor at the Department of Pathology, University of São Paulo Medical School, Brazil; coordinator of the Study Group on Urban Agriculture (GEAU), Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA/USP); and Coordinator of the Urban Garden at the São Paulo, University Medical School. Michael Mobbs  is a sustainability coach, creator of Sydney’s Sustainable House, Australia, and author of Sustainable House (2nd ed., 2010) and Sustainable Food (2012). See his website www.sustainablehouse.com.au. Cyril  Mumenthaler  is a geographer and urban planner. He is a PhD student at the Institute of Geography and Sustainability of the University of Lausanne. His research interests are focused on urban agriculture, urban planning, agricultural policy and food sovereignty in Switzerland.

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Gustavo Nagib  is a PhD candidate in Human Geography, University of São Paulo, and member of the Study Group on Urban Agriculture (GEAU) at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA/USP). Angelica  Campos  Nakamura  holds a master’s in Human Geography from the University of São Paulo and is a member of the Study Group on Urban Agriculture (GEAU) at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA/USP). Etienne  Nel  is Professor of Geography at the University of Otago in New Zealand. His research work focuses on issues of local and regional development, including urban agriculture, in Southern Africa and Australasia. H. Blaise Nguendo-Yongsi  is an associate professor at the Institute of Population Studies of the University of Yaoundé II-Cameroon. He is interested in the human health impacts of urban activities, including agriculture and livestock, within sub-Saharan African cities. Brigitte Nougarèdes  is an engineer at the French Institute for Agricultural Research’s joint research unit ‘Innovation and Development in Agriculture and Food’, Montpellier, France. Her work focuses on social issues raised by public policies and innovations on the management of farm buildings in the Mediterranean. Coline Perrin  holds a PhD in Geography and Urban Planning and is a researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, Montpellier, France. Her work focuses on the influence of urban planning on farmland management and interconnections between cities, agriculture and food in the Mediterranean. Lya  Porto holds a PhD in Public Administration, Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV). Currently, she is a consultant on applied research and socio-environmental responsibility for water and sanitation companies and member of the Study Group on Urban Agriculture (GEAU) at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of São Paulo (IEA/USP). Guilherme  Reis  Ranieri holds a bachelor’s in Environmental Management and a master’s in Environmental Science. Research work focuses on cultural heritage dimensions of urban agriculture and urban backyards, including unconventional food plants.

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Notes on Contributors

Matthew  Reed is a reader in Food Citizenship at the University of Gloucestershire’s Countryside and Community Research Institute. His research interests include organic farming and food, urban agriculture, social media use in discussions about the environment and food policy. Bronwyn Richards  has always had a strong interest in organic farming and self-sustainability. Since moving to Braidwood in 2002, she established a small organic four-season, slow-food farm (cool climate) selling produce (vegetables and meat) all year to consumers and local restaurants. The focus is on growing food to be consumed locally. It is about caring where your food comes from, how and where it is grown and how it is processed, prepared and shared. This is simple honest food of the highest quality. Richards also has a strong interest in redeveloping, organic, sustainable, local food systems using agricultural practices that have environmental, economic and social outcomes. Cecilia Rocha  is Professor of Food Policy and Food Security and an associate researcher at the Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University. She has written widely on food policy and programmes in Brazil. Since 2014, she has been a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). Rémi  Schweizer is a former senior researcher and lecturer at the University of Lausanne and the ETH Zürich. His research has focused on environmental and food governance, with more specific interest in politics, governance and sustainability-related issues. Steffanie Scott  is an associate professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo. She conducts research on sustainable food systems and ecological agriculture and organic sector developments in China and Canada. She was president of the Canadian Association for Food Studies and is a co-researcher in the Hungry Cities Partnership, which examines urban food security issues in seven cities, including Nanjing, China. Zhenzhong  Si is a postdoctoral fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs (Waterloo). A Queen Elizabeth Scholarship is supporting his work on the Hungry Cities Partnership project. His research explores aspects of alternative food and rural development in China. Liesel Spencer  is a senior lecturer in the School of Law at Western Sydney University. Liesel’s research interests are in intersections between public

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health law and food systems governance, including food security, urban agriculture and food welfare. Alec Thornton  is Senior Lecturer in Geography and an academic co-lead for Africa, Institute for Global Development at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is a research associate at the School of Anthropology and Development Studies and the School of Tourism & Hospitality, University of Johannesburg. He applies a critical lens to research on urban food activism and urban food governance. Chris Williams  is Lecturer in Urban Horticulture at the Burnley campus of the University of Melbourne, specializing in urban agriculture. Chris developed the Novel Crops Project in 2014, which works to bring new or unusual edible species into cultivation, with an emphasis on perennial plants of high aesthetic value and with links to migrant communities.

Acronymns

ABA ABRASCO ACT ADG AEI AIMS AMAP AMAU AUD AUÊ!/UFMG BBBEE BC BNUS BRICS CAP CATL CDLT CEAGESP CERES CERET CEVAE CGD CNY Cooperapas CSA

Brazilian Association of Agroecology Associação Brasileira de Saúde Coletiva Australian Capital Territory Development Aid of Gembloux Agency for Enterprise and Innovation Areas of Metropolitan Interest Association pour le maintien d’une agriculture paysanne Metropolitan Articulation of Urban Agriculture Australian Dollar Group of Studies in Urban Agriculture Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment British Columbia Bhutan National Urbanization Strategy Brazil Russia India China South Africa Common Agricultural Policy Ceinture Aliment Terre Liégeoise Compagnons de la Terre Companhia de Entrepostos e Armazéns Gerais de São Paulo Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies Centro Esportivo, Recreativo e Educativo do Trabalhador Centres of Agroecological Experience City of Greater Dandenong Chinese Yen Cooperativa Agroecológica dos Produtores Rurais e de Água Limpa da Região Sul de São Paulo Community Supported Agriculture xxxi

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ACRONYMNS

CSO DESIS DoA EAP ELC EMATER EU FEMA FNS FNUPA FOAG GAA GAC GAS GASAP GIS GRTA GRZ HDI HSRC ICT IDRC IMF IPRT IZ KCC LAG LAP LOSAN MAPAQ MDG MDP MMP MRC MSE MSF Muda-SP NCC NGO NPO NSW NZAID

Central Statistical Office Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability Department of Agriculture Economic Activity Parks European Landscape Convention Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Company European Union Fundo Especial do Meio Ambiente Food and Nutrition Security Fonds des Nations unies pour la population Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture Food Purchasing Groups Common Purchasing Groups Solidarity Purchasing Groups Solidarity Purchasing Groups of Peasant Agriculture Geographic Information System Genève Région Terre Avenir Government of the Republic of Zambia Human Development Index Human Sciences Research Council Information Communications Technology International Development Research Council International Monetary Fund Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal iZindaba Zokudla Kitwe City Council Local Action Group Local Area Planning National Law on Food and Nutrition Security Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation Millennium Development Goals Municipal Development Programme Metropolitan Macrozoning Project Medical Research Council Multi-Stakeholder Engagement Multi-Stakeholder Forum Urban Movement of Agro-ecology of São Paulo Ndola City Council Non-Governmental Organization Not for Profit Organization New South Wales New Zealand Aid

 ACRONYMNS 

OCS PAMA PMISAN PROAURP QC RCM RMBH RUAF SAM SCC SDG SPG SSA SUSAN SVP/UDC TCDS TSP TVA UA UFMG UFN UFS UJ UK UN UNDESA UNDP UNECA UNEP UPA USA USD USP USP WB WCED WEF WHO WRL WTO ZIM

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Organização de Controle Social Peasant Agriculture Maintenance Associations Integrated Metropolitan Policy of Food and Nutrition Security Programa de Agricultura Urbana e Periurbana Quebec City Regional County Municipality Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture and Food Security System Alimentaire Montréal Sunshine Coast Council Sustainable Development Goals Sistema Participativo de Garantia Sub-Saharan Africa Municipal Secretariat for Food and Nutrition Security Swiss People’s Party/Democratic Union of the Centre Thimphu City Development Strategy Thimphu Structure Plan Green-Blue Weft Urban Agriculture Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Urban food network Urban Food Street University of Johannesburg United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations Development Programme United Nations Economic Commission for Africa United Nations Environment Programme Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture United States of America United States Dollar Union Suisse des Paysans University of São Paulo World Bank World Commission on Environment and Development World Economic Forum World Health Organization World Rural Landscapes World Trade Organization Zones of Metropolitan Interest

List of Figures

Urban Agriculture in and Around Cities in Developed and Developing Countries: A Conceptualization of Urban Agriculture Dynamics and Challenges Fig. 1

A conceptual framework for urban agriculture

11

Urban Agriculture as a Field: Governance, Communication and Collective Action Fig. 1

Word cloud of 100 most frequently occurring words in the Twitter corpus40

Food Sovereignty: A Nirvana Concept for Swiss Urban Agriculture? Fig. 1

Carton of GRTA whole milk. The rear of the carton presents the four key principles of the brand

94

Cultural Heritage Preservation and Resilience in Urban Agriculture Through the Lens of Social Justice: A Case Study in Milan Fig. 1

Farm dimensions and distribution on Milanese territory. Created by Elena Colli on © CARTO. Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL. Map title on CARTO: “Dimension”. Basemap available at: https://elenacolli42.carto.com/ builder/b4a1b4d8-b7ff-11e5-a5fc-0e98b61680bf/embed108 xxxv

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Fig. 3

List of Figures

Level of collaboration with other farmers. Created by Elena Colli on © CARTO.  Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.  Map title on CARTO: “Collaboration”. Basemap available at: https://elenacolli42.carto. com/builder/67ced686-de9b-11e6-802b-0e233c30368f/embed111 Spatial representation of resilience. Created by Elena Colli on © CARTO. Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL. Map title on CARTO: “Resilience”. Basemap available at: https://elenacolli42.carto.com/builder/ 16a58a12-de7c-11e6-ba4d-0ee66e2c9693/embed115

The Emergence of the Food Land Belt in Wallonia: An Innovative System to Feed Local Populations? Fig. 1

Localisation de la Belgique, de la ville de Liège, de Charleroi et de Ath. Source: Author’s own rendering 133

Reconceptualizing Urban Agriculture in Africa: Issues of Scale, Class and Institutional Support in Zambian Copperbelt Towns Fig. 1

Zambia’s Copperbelt Province (Source: Authors’ research)

214

Changing Agricultural Landscape and Immigrant Population in Thimphu, Bhutan Fig. 1 Location of Thimphu in Bhutan, Thimphu dzongkhag and in Thimphu valley 253

Typological Diversity of Agriculture in a Densely Urbanised Region of São Paulo, Brazil Fig. 1

UA networks in São Paulo along a continuum

286

Urban Agriculture in Chinese Cities: Practices, Motivations and Challenges Fig. 1 Various interactions between the state, private sector and civil society shaping the resulting forms of urban agriculture with Chinese characteristics 295

List of Tables

Urban Agriculture as a Field: Governance, Communication and Collective Action Table 1

Cities appearing in the Twitter corpus

38

Cultural Heritage Preservation and Resilience in Urban Agriculture Through the Lens of Social Justice: A Case Study in Milan Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Comparison between municipality and hospital Barriers and enablers of resilience How are the farmers reacting to the new contracts?

110 115 116

Reconceptualizing Urban Agriculture in Africa: Issues of Scale, Class and Institutional Support in Zambian Copperbelt Towns Table 1

UA practising rated in the study areas

218

Changing Agricultural Landscape and Immigrant Population in Thimphu, Bhutan Table 1 Table 2

Family status and sex composition of sample households in Thimphu, 2010 257 Age distribution of the members of sample households in Thimphu, 2010 258

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List of Tables

Table 3

Educational attainments of sample households in Thimphu, 2010260 Table 4 Occupational structure of sample households in Thimphu, 2010262 Table 5 Reasons for migration analysed for immigrant sample households, Thimphu, 2010 263 Table 6 Immigrant sample households classified by place of birth, 2010 264 Table 7 Year of migration in the sample of immigrant households in Thimphu, 2010 265 Table 8 Attachment of sample households with place of origin, 2010 266 Table 9 Frequency of visits of sample households to place of origin, 2010267 Table 10 Housing and living conditions of immigrants in Thimphu, 2010 269

Urban Agriculture in Chinese Cities: Practices, Motivations and Challenges Table 1 Table 2

Players and governance structures for the three forms of urban agriculture in this study 296 Survey data on motivations for growing food in urban areas of Nanjing (N = 56)298

PART I

Emergent UA Themes and Concepts from North and South

Introduction Alec Thornton

Introduction An expanding global urban population, market volatility and a changing climate are challenging the capacities of cities to ensure equitable access, availability and distribution of fresh, nutritious food (Barthel et al. 2015; Thornton 2017). The existence of agriculture in cities is not unusual and its manifestation can and does differ spatially and temporally. For example, urban food growing can be seen as a postmodern response to socioeconomic problems associated with the often discredited (yet persistent) post-­ war ideas of modernisation and related failings of neoliberal urban industrial growth. These failings are as evident in cities in the developing South, as they are in the developed North, as seen in the de-­industrialisation phenomenon in the ‘rust belt’, where heavy manufacturing declined in the region primarily bordering the Great Lakes (notably, in rust belt cities such as Detroit—previously known as the ‘motor city’). The struggle for agriculture in the city in modern capitalist economies is by no means a forgone conclusion. When considering the rise or fall of urban agriculture (UA) in the context of political economy, its success or failure is not necessarily determined by liberal market systems (e.g. North A. Thornton (*) Department of Geography, University of New South Wales Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_1

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America, Australia, the United Kingdom) or coordinated market systems (e.g. Germany, Japan, Sweden, Austria). This view is supported by instances where urban food activists or social movements for urban food systems change seemingly thrive where actors in the urban food chain engage in coordinated sets of non-market activities and relations (Campbell et al. 2011; Thornton 2018); this engagement can and does occur in both varieties of capitalism (Hall and Soskice 2001). In this context of the neoliberal city, the importance of urban food democracy cannot be understated. Rapid urban population growth and mounting emphasis on creating ‘smart cities’1 from policy makers, industry and planners in the North and South (Randhawa and Kumar 2017) could very well exacerbate urban social inequity, particularly in the urban food systems (Maye 2018). The value of urban food democracy can be seen in its role as facilitating aspects of everyday urban life that deserve to be part of the smart city conversation; specifically, these aspects are social cohesion, improving urban health, and its educational and advocacy role of urban food systems in reducing CO2, conserving energy and improving the local climate (Harrison and Donnelly 2011; Maye 2018). For cities in the global South, population expansion invites a host of challenges, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region that struggled to meet Millennium Development Goals (MDG) targets for eradicating poverty and hunger (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa— UNECA 2014). In this region, urban poor households spend from 50% to over 60% of their income on food (Frayne et al. 2010). This is projected to worsen in the future as, by 2060, the ratio of domestic to imported prices for agricultural products will fall in North America and the EU, though rising substantially in developing countries. The steepest price rises will occur in Southern Africa, followed by North Africa and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)—in that order (African Development Bank 2011: 37). Despite this, many city planners in the global North, though also evident in some BRICS2 states (notably in Brazil), seek to integrate green public or social spaces with increasing densities in urban development.

1  Smart cities are understood as a concept promoted for achieving urban sustainability, through mobilising information technology for urban planning and development (Harrison and Donnelly 2011). 2  BRICS is an acronym for the grouping of the world’s leading emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

 INTRODUCTION 

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Among the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the ‘urban SDG’ (SDG11) seeks inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities. Although urban food systems are not specifically mentioned, SDG 11 seemingly shares synergies with SDG2, which emphasises ending hunger, achieving food security for all and promoting sustainable agriculture. The chapters in this book will critically explore urban food transitions, particularly various forms of urban (and peri-urban) agriculture, in conceptual and applied contexts. The book will benefit city planners, academics and practitioners seeking ‘inclusive, resilient and liveable cities’ through considered integration of urban agriculture and its related activities, as part of a broader policy approach to sustainable urban development. This means, an approach to good urban governance that is economically and socially responsive and in tune with forms of community-driven adaptation of space for the local production, distribution and consumption of nutritious food.

Approach The approach to this book, though broad, would join contributions reflecting on urban food democracy and integration of its related activities, as part of a broader policy approach to sustainable urban development. With municipal or ‘official’ support of citizen-led urban food initiatives expanding in cities globally, the case studies in this collection should be viewed as a ‘snapshot’ of wider trends in urban food democracy. Conceptually, urban governance and social justice provide an analytical framework for holding the collection of conceptual and case study chapters together. This includes the potential enabling role of good urban governance, in developing formal urban food policy that is economically and socially responsive and in tune with forms of community-driven adaptation of space for the local production, distribution and consumption of nutritious food. As a response to spatial marginalised groups, this call is not restricted by boundaries or income levels and is most critical to the health and well-being of an urbanising global population.

Structure of the Book Authors selected to contribute to this book are experts and practitioners from various disciplines, professions and nationalities, offering rich discussions and original research from North and South cities that are not often

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seen in the literature, yet offer robust examples of urban food democracy. This edited volume includes both thematic and empirical chapters that critically engage with themes such as urban agriculture, governance, smart cities, food and social justice, and urban biodiversity issues, to name a few. The chapters to follow offer a multidisciplinary approach to explorations of urban food democracy and governance for food systems change in North and South cities. Part 1 is a thematic section exploring the multifarious ways that cities, at the community and municipal levels, engage in urban food systems change, as they differ conceptually and in practice from place to place. This section will reflect on food systems challenges and opportunities that are unique to culture, governance structures, economy, geography and climate. Bousbaine, Nguendo-Yongsi and Bryant propose a conceptual framework for understanding urban agriculture dynamics and challenges in North and South contexts. In a comparative study of Melbourne and São Paulo, Hearn explores commercial and political interests in UA, as a commodity for upmarket housing development, and its ‘abuse’ of the people-nature tradition of UA. Keech and Reed discuss the role of social media in various European cities where ‘critical networks’ are establishing and disseminating urban food growing and new modes of city governance. Following on from Keech and Reed’s exploration of the networked society, Part 1 will conclude with a chapter exploring prescient issues concerning the increasing global interest in harnessing ICT and digital innovation to develop ‘smart cities’ and to what extent these developments might complicate or create obstacles to local-level efforts to coordinate non-market relations in food democracy. These discussions in Part 1 provide the foundation for the applied chapters in Parts 2 and 3. The diversity of these chapters, both geographically and culturally, will contribute to localised notions of ‘innovation’, to be understood here as the ways in which people adapt urban space and engage with institutions to meet their needs—socially, culturally, ecologically and economically. In Part 2, Case Studies in the Global North, recent research on urban agriculture in Switzerland will critically engage with food sovereignty as a ‘Nirvana concept’ (Schweizer Mumenthaler and Cavin). In a case study of Milan, social justice and heritage preservation provide a lens to explore urban agriculture in maintaining traditions and cultural identity (Branduini, Perrin, Nougarèdes and Colli). From Belgium, Bousbaine examines the potential for food belts, as a form of innovation in agriculture, in the

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f­eeding of urban populations. In case studies from Australia, Mobbs will identify the regulatory and strategic issues and solutions to urban farming in a case study of Sydney. Part 2 concludes with Spencer’s case study of Queensland, Australia, which critically examines the destruction of mature fruit trees on street verges (nature strip) by the local council, in the Urban Food Street community project. In Part 3, Case Studies from the Global South, chapters in this section aim to assess urban change (for better or worse) at the government and institutional levels. In Johannesburg, South Africa, Malan discusses findings from research on service learning and training for urban farmers and entrepreneurs (offering useful parallels with Chap. 5, hinting at the importance of developing ‘smarter citizens’ for ‘smart cities’), and to what extent participants can affect long-lasting food systems change. In a second contribution from Malan, he analyses emerging urban farming enterprises in South African townships, and argues for the integration of society, ecology and economy in business creation for sustainable local food systems. In a case study of Zambia, Nel and Binns examine new trends, or signs of change, in institutional support for urban agriculture—is it moving beyond something that is often ‘tolerated’, and what are the outstanding and locational specific structural issues? In a case study of Thimpu, Bhutan, Chand considers future urban planning decisions where agricultural land is zoned for housing development in response to rapid rural-­ urban migration. From the BRICS nations, Giacchè, Porto, Nagib, Nakamura and Ranieri identify typologies of UA from a suburban to a city centre continuum in São Paulo. In Belo Horizonte, Adil, Rocha, Costa and Araújo consider the challenges of adopting food security programmes across wider metropolitan regions. In China, Luehr, Glaros, Si and Scott address what they have identified as gaps in UA research in China. These gaps include understanding UA typologies, by location and practice; multisectoral perspectives of UA, in terms of producers’ motivations and state actor support; and ways in which China’s political economy affects UA development. This edited book offers a timely exploration of urban food issues and its juxtaposition with international political economy. Contributors to this book will offer multidisciplinary foci on these issues from a range of cultural and geographical North and South contexts, including Australia, Belgium, Bhutan, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Zambia. Contributors have

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expertise in food security, food policy and law, food justice, food democracy, urban agriculture and community-based, urban planning, rural engineering, economics and other related areas that will benefit policy makers and researchers concerned with urban food systems at various levels (e.g. state, regional, city, community) and contexts (e.g. geographical, economic, ecosystem, infrastructural, political).

References African Development Bank. (2011). Africa in 50 Years’ Time: The Road Towards Inclusive Growth. African Development Bank, Tunis, Tunisia September 2011. African Development Bank Group. Barthel, S., Parker, J., & Ernstson, H. (2015). Food and Green Space in Cities: A Resilience Lens on Gardens and Urban Environmental Movements. Urban Studies, 52(7), 1321–1338. Campbell, H., Rosin, C., & Stock, P. (Eds.). (2011). Food Systems Failure: The Global Food Crisis and the Future of Agriculture. London: Earthscan. Frayne, B., W. Pendleton, J. Crush, B. Acquah, J. Battersby-Lennard, E. Bras, et al. (2010). The state of urban food insecurity in southern Africa. Urban Food Security Series, 2. Kingston and Cape Town: Queen’s University and AFSUN. Hall, P.  A., & Soskice, D. (2001). Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harrison, C., & Donnelly, I. A. (2011, September). A Theory of Smart Cities. In Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the ISSS-2011, Hull, UK (Vol. 55, No. 1). Maye, D. (2018). ‘Smart Food City’: Conceptual Relations Between Smart City Planning, Urban Food Systems and Innovation Theory. City, Culture and Society. (Article in press). Randhawa, A., & Kumar, A. (2017). Exploring Sustainability of Smart Development Initiatives in India. International Journal of Sustainable Built Environment, 6(2), 710–710. Thornton, A. (2017). “The Lucky Country”? A Critical Exploration of Community Gardens and City–Community Relations in Australian Cities. Local Environment, 22(8), 969–985. Thornton, A. (2018). Space and Food in the City: Cultivating Social Justice and Urban Governance Through Urban Agriculture. Cham: Palgrave Pivot. United Nations Economic Commission for Africa-UNECA. (2014). ‘MDG Report 2014: Assessing Progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals’. UNECA/AU/AfDB/UNDP: Addis Ababa.

Urban Agriculture in and Around Cities in Developed and Developing Countries: A Conceptualization of Urban Agriculture Dynamics and Challenges Antonia D. Bousbaine, H. Blaise Nguendo-Yongsi, and Christopher Bryant Introduction The urbanization of the planet has become an irreversible phenomenon since the end of the last century. In 1950, less than a third of the world’s population was classified as urban, or 740 million urban dwellers for about 1.8  billion rural people (UN 1995). By 2007, an estimated 3.3  billion people were classified as urban, and by 2050, the figure will be closer to 5 billion, assuming that every day around 180,000 people are added to the urban population (FNUPA 2007). This growth has taken place largely on A. D. Bousbaine (*) Department of Geography, Federation Wallonie Bruxelles, Saint Saulve, France H. B. Nguendo-Yongsi Institute of Population Studies of the University of Yaoundé II, Soa, Cameroon C. Bryant School Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, Canada © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_2

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territories adjacent to the cities, that is, the peri-urban areas, where agricultural activity is often still very present. In developed countries (e.g. Canada, France) and developing countries (e.g. Cameroon, Senegal), urbanization, apart from general population growth and international migration, has also been fuelled by rural-to-­ urban migration as people move hoping to find a better quality of life and higher incomes, which for many people end up as being dreams. Moreover, new relationships have developed in many peri-urban territories, where other functions have been grafted onto agriculture, which until recently was the dominant function. Some researchers have referred to “agriculture in the city’s countryside” (Bryant and Johnston 1992) or “urban countrysides” (Donadieu 1998). Whatever we call it, the simple dichotomy between rural and urban areas has tended to disappear, although the function of “feeding the city” still exists for many farmers. Indeed, many food-oriented initiatives are emerging in peri-urban areas and in urban areas, and these two categories of areas are increasingly merged together under the term urban agriculture (Lohrberg et al. 2016). How are these new ways of producing crops in developing and developed countries viewed today? If in developed countries the choice and the variety of cultivated products remain linked to the demands of urban citizens, in developing countries, urban and peri-urban (or Urban) agriculture produces above all else basic foodstuffs. There are three objectives for this chapter: I. To analyse the new forms of “urban agriculture” (Bryant et al. 2016). II. To address the issues of sustainable agriculture and food security in the regions surrounding large cities and metropolitan centres as well as within them. III. To examine the importance of related environmental and health issues. In order to compare these agricultures in developed and developing countries, a conceptual framework is constructed (Fig. 1). The examples selected illustrate the heterogeneity of these agricultures between and within countries. Our findings are based mainly on fieldwork, in particular on quantitative and qualitative surveys in certain developed countries (France, Canada, Belgium) and developing countries (Cameroon, and the African continent in general), as well as semi-directed interviews and focus

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A. The global context B. The many forces influencing the transformation of urban agriculture and evolving socioeconomic systems Internal forces that influence urban farms (e.g. the financial situation of the family and its estate, training of family members, skills and adaptation capacity, etc.); external forces affecting urban/peri-urban farms (e.g. development pressures, community support and community culture values, the added value of agriculture/food production), technological change, effective communication of pertinent information, market access, competition, urban government programmes, local and regional initiatives (and by whom) to provide advice to farmers, climate change and climate variability, and so on. The socio-economic systems of urban agriculture: for example, traditional family agriculture, capitalist industrial agriculture, organic agriculture (market-linked, sustainable agriculture that respects the environment and human health, etc.), agriculture supported by the community (ASC), subsistence agriculture, and part-time farms and farmers. C. Current and potential functions of urban agriculture For example, food production, production of eco-services such as water resources conservation, heritage landscape preservation (economic, natural, flora and fauna), tourism and recreation, and opportunities for migrants arriving in the city/close to the city that help them integrate socially and economically. D. Conflicts, opportunities and uncertainties Conflicts: related to negative externalities of certain production systems, others related to coexistence with nearby non-agricultural use of farmland. Opportunities: markets and market trends, the multiple functions of agriculture that gather support for farmland preservation and maintenance of urban/peri-urban farming, and so on. Uncertainties: government programmes and support, climate change and variability, technological change, competition, and so on. The positive and negative externalities of agriculture: Positive externalities: contribution to consumers’ well-being, support for multiple functions that benefit society, contributions to local and regional communities and so on; negative externalities: impacts on human health, and environmental impacts (soil erosion, water pollution, etc.). E. Socio-economic challenges and environmental policy Food security, food sovereignty, protection of land and agricultural activities and the sustainability of urban agriculture, the development of agriculture and farmland protection, the appropriation of the value of multifunctionality of agricultural land and activities, and appropriate governance processes.

Fig. 1  A conceptual framework for urban agriculture

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group discussions (Canada, France), questionnaire interviews (Pays de Herve and Wallonia in Belgium), standardized questionnaire surveys and participative observations (Cameroon), as well as a literature synthesis. The target populations are mainly farmers and other food producers, but we have also undertaken interviews with neo-rural populations, political actors and representatives of various citizen associations.

A Conceptual Framework of Urban Agriculture This framework (Fig. 1) facilitates a comparative analysis of urban agricultures in different countries, within a general framework of the dimensions of the global context and four more detailed dimensions. The global context deals with policy, budgets, the roles of different actors, socio-economic considerations and the importance to the environment, all of which are discussed in the examples presented below. The four main dimensions of the framework are presented in this diagram; each has sub-dimensions, which can vary in importance between countries and between regions. This framework allows us to undertake an original comparison of urban agricultures in developed and developing countries.

The Examples Metropolitan Centres and Their Regions in Developing Countries The study of the peri-urban component of urban agriculture was undertaken very early on by English-speaking researchers. In England, World War II and food crises influenced research (see Bryant and Johnston 1992) on the impact of urban sprawl on food production in the late 1940s and 1950s. Food security issues have also contributed to the development of many agricultural land protection programmes (in Canada, British Columbia (BC) (1972), Quebec (1978)) and other initiatives to protect peri-urban farmland (e.g. Ontario (1978) as well as several American states (the 1960s)) (Bryant and Russwurm 1982). Peri-urbanization in North America predates Western Europe because of the early development and diffusion of the automobile, which led to the rapid development of peri-­ urbanization there. In Western Europe, the introduction of public transport (e.g. suburban trains) led to more concentrated growth in towns and villages around major cities.

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The English-Speaking World: The Example of Canada I nternal and External Forces and Evolving Socio-economic Systems With family farms dominating its early agricultural development, the evolution of Canadian agriculture became more and more oriented towards productivist agriculture during the twentieth century. Frequently, farmland around major metropolitan centres is of high quality in Canada (Bryant and Johnston 1992); while climate change and variability requires adaptation, in most cases agricultural development can still contribute substantial food supplies. Since the mid-1980s, there has been recognition of the heterogeneity of agricultural production systems, including the substantial development of part-time farming (Bryant 2015). However, the management and development of agricultural land and farm activities have not evolved as quickly and not much real change occurred until the beginning of the twenty-first century. Over the last two decades, there was little mention of urban agriculture, although different types of food production existed. But there is growing interest in urban agriculture within cities (e.g. Les Fermes Lufa (2015) in Montréal), community gardens, collective gardens (e.g. on the Île-de-­ Montréal) and organic family farms (e.g. near the three major metropolitan centres of Canada—Vancouver, Toronto and Montréal).  urrent and Potential Functions of Urban Agriculture C Multifunctionality as a concept was used in North America, especially in the US, as early as the mid-1940s, 1950s and 1960s, with the term “multipurpose use” and then by Canadian researchers as early as 1970. Multifunctionality began to be integrated systematically into the development of agricultural lands in the 1990s (with a few exceptions, e.g. the establishment of the Ottawa Greenbelt in the 1950s). In the first ten years of the twenty-first century, the concept began to be present through the establishment of the Greenbelt around Toronto (Bunce 2008). On the other hand, an initiative in Quebec since 2008 has encouraged the development of agricultural development plans on agricultural reserves within the regional county municipalities (RCMs), and MAPAQ (Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation; translation: Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) has advised the RCMs to pay particular attention to the multiplicity of land functions and activities supported by agricultural production.

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 onflicts, Opportunities and Uncertainties C Since the 1950s in Canada, the main conflicts around the major metropolitan centres have been generated by the use of very good agricultural land for all forms of urbanization. In addition, recognition of the issue of cohabitation between farming and non-farming activities began in the 1940s near Vancouver and then in Ontario in the 1950s and 1960s. Conflicts associated with productivist agriculture related to negative externalities, for example, water pollution, noise from agricultural machinery and odours, have given rise to certain measures for the development of agricultural areas, which aimed at the separation of agriculture from non-­ agricultural residential development. These situations resulted in some farmland protection laws in British Columbia (BC) and Quebec City (QC). Opportunities in these territories can also be linked mainly to the multifunctionality of these agricultural lands and activities, with the protection of heritage landscapes, the environment and water quality and also opportunities for certain types of agriculture benefiting from the proximity of the metropolitan food market as well as different types of rural touristic activities. The Challenges As in the most urbanized Canadian provinces, the conservation of farmland (and more recently agricultural and food security activities) deserves special attention. Conservation of Agricultural Land and Activities In addition to the two provinces of BC and QC, which have formal legislation to protect agricultural land (and agricultural activities in QC), other provinces, particularly Ontario in 1978, have strengthened the protection of agricultural land in peri-urban areas with tools that favour productivist agriculture (Bryant 2015). Later, there has been growing recognition for protecting agricultural land through the development of sustainable agricultures, from the perspective of both generating sustainable farm incomes and reducing the negative externalities such as water pollution generated by productivist agriculture. Hence, Canada saw the first systematic construction of agricultural development plans in QC, (from 2008 onwards) and the appropriation of the notion of multifunctionality in order to encourage citizens

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and non-agricultural actors to support the protection of agricultural lands and farm activities. Food Security This long-standing challenge has become increasingly important over the past 20 years, through a geographical concentration of some segments of the struggling urban population. Initiatives have been put in place to ensure better food access for certain forms of conventional farming (e.g. dairy production, vegetables and organic fruits) both in and around metropolitan areas. These initiatives involve a wide range of stakeholders (e.g. SAM [System Alimentaire Montréal; translation: Montréal Food System]). France (Île-de-France) and Belgium (Wallonia and Pays de Herve) I nternal and External Forces and Evolving Socio-economic Systems Land pressure remains undeniable for agriculture in these two countries but other problems exist too, for example, a lack of agricultural labour, including that of family origin, as well as the financial situation of farmers. For many peri-urban farmers, the sale of their land makes it possible to realize an interesting added value, which is then developed for urban uses. In addition to these forces that are shared with global peri-urban agriculture, other external forces can disrupt the proper functioning of agricultural activity. In Northern countries, the spectre of hunger experienced in the aftermath of World War II is largely outdated. It is so easy to obtain food, and the shortage has been more or less erased (Vidal 2009) due to agronomic progress. However, it can be seen that this so-called urban agriculture has acquired a not insignificant place over the past few years among urbanites, local authorities and farmers. Above all, spatial proximity gives urban agriculture a special status in the face of the new social demands of city dwellers, who increasingly reject “productivist” agriculture as synonymous with negative externalities, both environmental and the quality of food produced. Hence, the birth of new forms of agriculture that are more environmentally friendly and more humane (e.g. in the Ile-de-France region, Lille, Lyon and AixMarseille). Some authors have described this as “innovative” agriculture (Donadieu 1998).

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Whatever the production system, they respond above all to urban expectations and play a significant role in the supply of cities. The other functions they support remain largely complementary to its principal function of feeding the populations.  urrent and Potential Functions of Urban Agriculture C Urban agriculture retains its original role of nourishing the planet, hence its importance. Urban agriculture is no longer considered in Northern countries as “agriculture for the poor”; it also contributes to the nourishment of certain segments of the population preoccupied with acquiring fresh healthy products, close to their needs and demands. Some researchers (Aubry and Pourias 2013) have stressed the importance of this agriculture in terms of high-quality produce, whereas in the countries of the South, it is above all oriented to “feeding” increasingly important populations. These people do not always have access to adequate food (FAO 2014). However, according to the latest work of Aubry, the place occupied by urban agriculture in the countries of the North and the South is beginning to converge. Many initiatives have taken shape (e.g. in the Ile-de-France region, in the Gally Farms, where the Laureau family quickly realized the importance of this spatial proximity to the city (Fermes de Gally 2015)). These farmers have developed a number of innovations, such as “picking on the farm” through the Réseau Chapeau de Paille, which opened its first collections to the public in 1985; they now have more than 29 sites, 10 in Île-de-­ France and 19 in the provinces. Other initiatives are taking place throughout France, with community gardens (Guiomar 2009) or associations that, in addition to providing foodstuffs, help create social ties between the fringes of populations that barely rubbed shoulders before. These gardens can also enable the poorest populations to reintegrate into society. Other forms of urban agriculture also exist in France with short circuits and AMAPs (Association pour le Maintien de l’Agriculture paysanne; translation: Association for the maintenance of peasant agriculture), a concept born in Japan, which arrived in France in the 2000s in the Province Alpes Côte d’Azur and in 2003 in the Île de France region. This innovative form of agriculture brings farmers and urban dwellers directly into contact and can include pre-financing of crops to farmers irrespective of climatic conditions. There are a little more than 1600 on the French territory, but this new form of supply is found almost everywhere in the Northern countries (CSA [Community-Supported Agriculture] E ­ ­ nglish-­ speaking

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network, CSA in Quebec, Switzerland [Uniterre, Cocagne Gardens], as in Belgium [the GASAP {Groupe d’achat solidaire de l’agriculture paysanne; translation: Solidarity Buying Group for Peasant Agriculture}]). In addition to these actions, in France a so-called organic and local agriculture has been developed through urban agriculture, which supplies a large number of school canteens and collective restaurants. In Belgium, in Charleroi, in the Province of Hainaut, where in some communes the loss of farms has been close to 80% since 1990, farmers have regrouped and used short circuits either with an intermediary or without intermediaries. There are also “food baskets” in vogue in the Brussels region and in Wallonia, a special form of sales. However, in Wallonia, urban agriculture is less developed than in France, and farmers in part of Wallonia produce crops that are oriented more towards exports (Bousbaine 2014). Nevertheless, initiatives are taking shape in the eastern part of Belgium in the Pays de Herve, where farmers, local authorities and consumers are working on initiatives where urban agriculture is taken into account taking advantage of uncontested opportunities. The project “VEDIR” in collaboration with the University of Liège aims to decommission former industrial wastelands in order to create and implement urban agricultural activities on 3600 m2. Multifunctionality in France has been an asset for more than 20 years. In Belgium, this concept is only beginning to be appropriated by certain collective actors (e.g. governments), but farmers are still struggling with this concept.  onflicts, Opportunities and Uncertainties C The interweaving of rural and urban spaces has placed different segments of the population in competition with each other. The agriculture which until the beginning of peri-urbanization dominated these spaces has been relegated into the background against the urban advance. Many researchers have focused on these strategic territories (Bryant and Johnston 1992), but also on the conflicts encountered (Torre and Bourdeau 2013), thus highlighting the ­difficulty of achieving a certain cohabitation between the agricultural and non-agricultural populations (Bryant and Bousbaine 2014), although there are nuances in this complex reality. In terms of conflict, it is mainly land-related problems that take root in these spaces. Other conflicts are present in this new configuration of the territories, for example, for the consumption of water resources, a­ griculture

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as the main consumer initially becomes a competitor for the inhabitants, who no longer identify themselves with this local agriculture. In spite of these conflicts, opportunities are present and urban agriculture in urban areas is important, using non-soil, hydroponic or aquaponic cultures, and can contribute to the recycling of runoff water, leading to a more efficient utilization of water resources. Moreover, it participates in the greening of urban spaces, important for urban dwellers, who are increasingly asking for “urban nature” (Bourdeau and Vidal 2013). Opportunities can exist because of the increasing linkages between urban and agricultural spheres. For instance, urban agriculture creates jobs, for example, through social gardens, which encourage integration of urban dwellers and food production. This has been constantly developing in France and in many other countries. In Wallonia, the non-profit association Gal Transvert aims to develop agriculture by increasing the value associated with local and artisanal products and especially by encouraging the dissemination of seasonal products, bringing producers and consumers closer to each other in their territory. The various actions carried out by this NPO (not-for-profit organization) help farmers to contribute to the preservation of areas, and to develop employment and social integration through privileged economic levers that are the agricultural sectors. The opportunities are indisputable. However, key actors must do their utmost to achieve these objectives, which will benefit both farmers and urban consumers. Some authors highlight the negative externalities of these forms of agriculture, which are harmful to the environment (e.g. soil and water pollution). However, in recent years, agri-environmental measures have done their utmost to prevent these negative impacts, and farmers themselves are aware of these environmental impacts and use agronomic technologies to reduce the use of pesticides and fungicides for their crops. The development of organic crops goes in this direction and the premiums granted for this type of agriculture in some countries encourage more farmers to envisage it, but this movement is still relatively marginal. The Challenges 

Food Security

Urban agriculture, long regarded as developing country agriculture, has succeeded in gaining acceptance in Northern countries by contributing to the food security of certain segments of the urban population. This is still

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even more true in many countries of the South, where access to adequate food remains a recurring problem. The prices of foodstuffs have exploded, and certain fringes of the population remain in situations of great precariousness. However, collective gardens have increasingly given these urban populations access to a regular and healthy diet. Conservation of the Natural Environment Many countries have seized this concept in order to achieve environmental objectives, including France. Urban development has to be “sustainable”, as does agriculture, which represents potentially a very polluting sector of the economy (in terms of water and soil pollution, and CO2 emissions). In this sense, the introduction of this agriculture in the context of sustainable territories is emerging in many countries of the North, and it has become increasingly inescapable for local authorities not to take this into account in their environmental policies. The Supply of Local Products The movement of locavores reinforces the sustainability of agriculture in France, Belgium and North America. Yet some authors question these short circuits (Vidal 2011) because of the ecological footprint of car travel by urban consumers to peri-urban farms. On the other hand, the development of small social networks where a member of the network will seek certain agricultural products for all members of the network once a week can reduce this ecological footprint substantially. Brussels We have already mentioned the initiatives that have appeared in Wallonia. And in the Brussels-Capital Region, many examples have been taking shape, representing a combination of environmental values and recognition of the importance of this urban agriculture to feed more than one million people in the capital. The Center for Urban Ecology organized its first workshop in March 2012 to analyse the impact of urban agriculture on a city like Brussels, where land pressure is very high (40,000–50,000 ha of agricultural land), which handicaps agricultural practices in the Brussels region. Agriculture thus becomes a political concern for citizens, much more so than in Wallonia.

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Projects exist and continue to develop: “vegetable gardens”; under the aegis of a not-for-profit (NFP), the “Beans Begins” project, essentially composed of citizens who work to anchor this urban agriculture in an ecological way; a vegetable garden on the roof of the Royal Library of Brussels (more than 450  m2)—all projects which underline the sustainability of this agriculture. Thus, actions have been undertaken by “committed” citizens, who have managed to challenge local authorities to highlight the growing challenges of this urban agriculture and its multiple economic, social and environmental spin-offs.

Southern Countries (Cameroon and an Overview on Senegal) A great difference compared to the countries of Western Europe and the two countries of North America has been the reduced mobility around cities in most African countries, reflecting the lack of road infrastructure, motorization and poor development of public transport around cities such as Yaoundé, Cameroon. Internal and External Forces and Evolving Socio-economic Systems African urbanization is a real problem for this continent, which has seen the arrival in large numbers of rural people coming to seek work in the city. This intensive urbanization, little controlled in the face of population growth, has naturally been accompanied by problems of survival for these populations, whose only solution is to continue their agricultural activity widely practised by the majority of the rural populations who have settled in these urban spaces. This first observation differs markedly from what we find in the countries of the North, and agriculture or food production remains a primary activity for these populations in the South. It is clear from the cities of Cameroon and Senegal that there is a greater availability of areas that can be cultivated in relation to what municipal administrators and elected representatives have generally put forward. These include vacant lots, public lands around buildings such as schools and hospitals, undeveloped properties and abandoned land. However, the majority of urban agricultural production is concentrated on a limited number of sites.

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In Senegal, the study by Fall et al. (2002) on Dakar has distinguished four production sites around the city and many areas within the city itself. The smallest interstices have given rise to crops, with areas ranging from several tens of square metres to a few hectares. They are mainly vegetable and arboricultural crops most suited to the climates there. In Cameroon, urban agriculture is practised almost exclusively in swampy lowlands. The size of the farms varies in these two countries and the types of crops present are related to the size of the plots. Their primary purpose is to feed themselves and their surplus is for local sales. On larger farms, production is exported or supplied to local markets. This configuration, both economic and food, is also found in a country like Burkina-Faso (Robineau 2013), within the city of Bobo-Dioulasso, described as an “agricultural city”. The researcher also points out three types of urban agriculture—inherited, urban gardeners and market gardeners, who were in the hands of the colonists, caught up, nibbled and gobbled up by urbanization, localized in the fringes of the city, whose survival remains problematic; and finally the innovative and emerging ones, where pig and poultry farms dominate, to meet an increasing demand for animal products. This typology can be compared with what Donadieu (1998) pointed out, with however differences in the cultures themselves and their proximity to the city. Current and Potential Functions of Urban Agriculture What remains relevant is the multiple functions generated by these urban agricultures; the economic and food roles are indisputable, but so also are the social roles. When they arrive in the city, these populations are “isolated”; by practising agriculture, these farmers create social links with other populations, which allows them to better integrate into the urban fabric. This agriculture, practised mainly by the most precarious populations, also participates in the recycling of urban waste, and is therefore integrated into the urban ecosystem, such as brewery grains used to feed animals. Often, fertilizers consist of animal manure, and the use of chemical pesticides or fertilizers remains scarce in urban areas on small plots, and their use is mainly for commercial crops, on the outskirts of cities. In addition to food production, in Cameroon and Senegal floriculture is developing along major roads or empty spaces in certain cities. This type of farming makes it possible for very young populations to have a job, but

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also for the women, who mainly practise this type of agriculture in Sub-­ Saharan Africa. The objectives are very different from urban agriculture in the countries of the North, which are largely aware of the environmental dimensions of this agriculture. Production methods are linked to the products and production processes themselves. In small farms, the use of chemical inputs is often precarious and poorly controlled by these newcomers to agriculture, and the equipment is rudimentary. In large farms, better practices are encountered and the farms are generally mechanized. Conflicts, Opportunities and Uncertainties The problem highlighted in all the studies carried out remains the land in front of the inexorable advance of the city and the cultivable spaces that are reduced. Moreover, this balance is fragile, and without the establishment of good management of the city by the public authorities, this agriculture can disappear in favour of the constructions necessary for the installation of these populations However, in these countries of Africa these forms of agriculture are tolerated by the public authorities, who soon realized the importance of self-consumption for these populations, which converges with what we have stressed in the countries of the North, where these agricultures allow the most deprived populations to eat well, despite the ever-increasing cost of living. A few nuances are needed, however, as animal husbandry is excluded in the vast majority of Northern cities. A fundamental difference remains to be made between Northern and Southern countries in the use of inputs—the environmental issue is hardly taken into account in the countries of the South, where, as the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and WHO (World Health Organization) have pointed out, 30% of the pesticides marketed are not in conformity with the international quality standard and represent a real danger for these populations. In most of the Southern countries, these agricultures are embraced by all sections of the population, divided into two distinct branches: large farmers and smaller-scale farmers, but all aim to make the land profitable and contribute to the food security of the population. Cities in the South are still far from being self-sufficient, and this again diverges from the agricultural peculiarities of the countries of the North. There are four fundamental issues that emerge from our discussion of countries of the South: (1) The issue of food security, which has been a

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long-lasting issue for many countries of the South; (2) the integration of migrants from the phenomen of rural exodus into appropriate parts of the labour market; (3) the problems associated with the environment which have not been extensively discussed in the countries and examples we have presented in this chapter; and (4) the different farm profiles and types of production and their different externalities, especially linked to environmental impacts and healthy foodstuffs.

Conclusions In the Conclusions, we present the common dimensions that are present in both the countries of the North and the South and those dimensions that seem to us to be very different between these two sets of countries. In terms of common dimensions in the North and South, we note two: (1) There is substantial heterogeneity of the agricultural and food production systems both in peri-urban areas and within urban agglomerations. This heterogeneity is very important because it can be linked to the socio-­ economic systems of various production processes and different markets (the city itself, regional, national and international markets) as well as to different negative externalities related to environmental impacts and human health. Understanding this diversity of agricultural and food production systems and their implications is essential in order to support the development of sustainable agriculture, especially in terms of food production. (2) In both North and South countries, we can observe closer linkages between food producers and consumers, which can also contribute to the development of sustainable agricultures related to food production. In terms of dimensions that differ substantially between the countries of the North and South, we note four: (1) The importance attached to the protection or conservation of agricultural lands and farm activities, and how this is reflected in development planning for agriculture. (2) Even though food security has been identified both in the North and in the South, the importance attached to food security varies substantially between the two sets of countries. (3) The role of multifunctionality of farmland and farm activities in the management and planning of ­agricultural spaces varies substantially between the two sets of countries, with multifunctionality having been recognized in the countries of the North much earlier and having been integrated in agricultural development planning and land use planning in several countries of the North. (4) The i­ mportance

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attached to the environment and the negative externalities associated with urban and peri-urban agriculture, which together are increasingly known as urban agriculture (as noted early on in this chapter; Lohrberg et al. 2016).

References Aubry, C., & Pourias, J. (2013). L’agriculture fait déjà partie du métabolisme urbain, Déméter, pp. 135–155. Bourdeau, L., & Vidal, R. (2013). Nature urbaine en débat, Déméter, pp. 195–210. Bousbaine, D. A. (2014). Facteurs d’évolutions et de transformations de l’agriculture dans les communes périurbaines de Charleroi, de 1990 à 2010. Bruxelles: Mémoire Master II, Géographie, Université Libre de Bruxelles. 132 p. Bryant, C. R. (2015). Agriculture and Food. In B. Mitchell (Ed.), Resources and Environmental Management (5th ed., pp.  246–266). Toronto: Oxford University Press. Bryant, C. R., & Bousbaine, D. A. (2014). Cohabitation des populations agricoles et non agricoles: apport du développement durable à l’aménagement du territoire. In F. Mançebo & S. Salles (Eds.), Rapport de recherche Programme PUCA du périurbain à l’urbain. De l’autre côté du miroir (pp.  132–142). Reims: Université de Reims. Bryant, C. R., & Johnston, T. R. R. (1992). Agriculture in the City’s Countryside. London: Pinter Press and Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 226 p. Bryant, C. R., & Russwurm, L. H. (1982). North American Farmland Protection Strategies in Retrospect. GeoJournal, 6, 501–511. Bryant, C.  R., Diaz, J.  P., Karaita, B., Lohgberg, F., & Yokohari, M. (2016). Urban Agriculture from a Global Perspective, Chapter 1.3, pp.  30–37. In F.  Lohrberg, L.  Lica, L.  Scazzosi, & A.  Timpe (Eds.), Urban Agriculture Europe. Berlin: Jovis. Bunce, M. M. (2008). Les défis de la gouvernance du Plan de la Ceinture Verte de la Greater Golden Horseshoe, Ontario, Canada. In S. Loudiyi, C. R. Bryant, & L. Laurens (Eds.), Territoires périurbains et gouvernance. Perspectives de recherche (pp. 72–82). Montréal: Géographie, Université de Montréal. Chapeau De Paille. (1985). Retrieved from www.chapeaudepaille.fr. Donadieu P. (1998). Les campagnes urbaines, Arles, Actes Sud, Versailles, École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage, 219 p. Fall, A. S., Cisse, I., Diao, M. B., & Safietou, T. (2002). Intégration de l’horticulture et de l’élevage: études de cas du Sénégal. Ottawa: Centre de Recherche de Développement International. FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). (2014). Rapport 2013. Fermes de Gally, Les. (2015). Retrieved from www.fermegally.com. Fermes Lufa, Les. (2015). Retrieved from www.lufa.com.

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FNUAP (Fonds des Nations unies pour la population). (2007). État de la population mondiale 2007: libérer potentiel de la croissance urbaine. New  York: Media Services. Guiomar, X. (2009). Les utilisations sociales de l’agriculture aux marges de la ville: les jardins d’insertion en Île-de-France. Innovations agronomiques, 5, 111–125. Lohrberg, F., Lica, L., Scazzosi, L., & Timpe, A. (Eds.). (2016). Urban Agriculture Europe (p. 231). Berlin: Jovis. Robineau, O. (2013). Vivre de l’agriculture dans la ville africaine. Des arrangements entre acteurs à Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina-Faso. Montpellier: Territoires, Temps, Sociétés et Développement, Université de Montpellier 3, CIRAD, INRA, Thèse de doctorat en géographie, 352 p. Torre, A., & Bourdeau, L. (2013). Quand l’agriculture s‘installe en ville… Désir de nature ou contrainte économique? Métropolitiques.eu. UN (United Nations). (1995). World Urbanization Prospects: The 1994 Revision. New York: UNO Publications. Vidal, R. (2009). Réconcilier agriculture et paysage. Changer d’agriculture ou changer de regard? Cahiers thématiques, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, No. 11, pp. 29–36. Vidal, R. (2011). Entre ville et agriculture, une proximité à reconstruire. Métro politiques.

Urban Agriculture as a Field: Governance, Communication and Collective Action Daniel Keech and Matthew Reed

Introduction Urban agriculture (UA) is an age-old practice (Steel 2009; Mazoyer and Roudart 2006), which helps to explain why the post-war binary, which divides the city as a place of culture and commerce from the productive countryside (Antrop 2004; Halfacree 1993; Woods 2009), has not fully taken hold. Food chain industrialisation has generated well-documented social and environmental problems, as well as benefits (Lang 2010), which are visible in cities, but unlike much UA of the past, contemporary farming and growing in and around cities operates in the shadow of, and is closely connected to, modern provisioning. Scholars and change makers have advocated a ‘reconnection’ between consumers and producers. This informs the normative goals of reorganising the governance of local supply chains, supporting food production in city spaces and attempting to secure more equitable distribution of food. The body of literature which captures such developments is rich, drawing on conceptual directions that emerge from areas including niche transfor-

D. Keech • M. Reed (*) CCRI, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_3

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mations (drawing on (Gibson-Graham 1996), for example), urban ­resilience and food security in the Global South (de Zeeuw and Dreschel 2015) and neo-Marxian perspectives (McClintock 2013). Our own recent empirical work focuses on urban and peri-urban food networks in the adjacent cities of Bath and Bristol, in England, and we have worked elsewhere with European colleagues (Grivins et  al. 2017; Reed and Keech 2017; Reed et al. 2016; Curry et al. 2014). Our examinations combine research on the familiar activities of urban food networks (UFNs), such as growing, cooking, distributing, learning, with research on how such groups use contemporary digital forms of communication to further their objectives. This emphasis has led us to consider members of UFNs primarily as actors within social movement structures. Our objective in this chapter is to incrementally contribute to the recent, but as yet only partially successful, attempts to take scholarship about food in cities beyond a collection of vibrant case studies. Our departure is to advocate field theory as a way to recast a discussion about how meso-level institutions unite micro-contexts of ways-of-living in particular cities with the macro-forces that shape cities and their wider relations. We recognise that many recent developments in urban agriculture, as forms of civic activism, contribute to a continuum of social change, through nested and interwoven fields, some emergent, some established and all contested. In doing so, we understand UA as one form of collective action through which people seek to create goods and opportunities, as well as meanings for and about themselves and their peers. Members of UFNs can be framed conceptually as actors within social movements, which in turn can be understood as collective action endeavours, encompassing cultural experimentation. The exciting achievements of UFNs have resulted in limited impacts on the structure of the food chain, or on the governance of the city in relation to food. This is problematic for those more-or-less utopian groups who see food activism as a route towards political ends and/or structural reform (Crossley 1999). Far from undermining such efforts, we outline a case for embracing UA as a field that includes UFNs and their allies, who attempt to achieve shared meaning through collective action. This seems necessary given that a consolidating and competitive food industry seeks commercial outcomes which are nevertheless associated with major social problems. Obesity and hunger are the most pressing of these. We acknowledge that we are experimenting with the concept, yet raise ideas in the conclusion, about how this approach could inform practice and future research.

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Food Networks: Social Movements in the Networked Society Kevin Morgan has reviewed the influences of the diverse coalition of UK urban food activists on municipal procurement and planning policies (Morgan 2015) and feels that ‘fragmented localism’ (p. 10) impedes the development of a unified social movement around food. His assertion resonates strongly, as does his call for iterative and collaborative partnerships to change the way that cities organise food provisioning, opinions which are built on sound qualifications: Morgan was the first chair of the Bristol Food Policy Council, a multi-stakeholder advisory network which has done much to articulate ideas and structure actions for making the food system of a city of over 430,000 inhabitants more sustainable (Carey 2013). In many cities, UFN analyses have highlighted diversity, social innovation (Kirwan et al. 2013) and dynamic entrepreneurialism (Grivins et al. 2017). Yet how should such studies overcome the difficulty that the outcomes of localised activities remain over-shadowed by the power of the dominant food system, the constraints of municipal government and the contested governance of city space associated with democratic citizenship? Might new ‘power-sharing’, multi-stakeholder alliances be needed, and how could these benefit cities? By focusing on the intended outcomes of urban food activism and their potential scalability, scholarship has provided insights into context and innovation, which can be reproduced as long as case studies emerge. An alternative is to situate UFNs within larger, mid-scale networks of collective action in the field of UA. While this is not far removed from Morgan’s position, we suggest that the food-related outcomes of collective action are only a contributory issue. The wider point is to try and understand how, in complex social systems such as cities, food activism is one way in which social life is re-created. In other words, in cities, activism is part of citizenship and collective action is a modus for achieving social change, alongside and nested within other strategic action fields (cf. Purcell (2013) on Lefebvre’s Right to the City). Our intention is to consider the nature and the effect of collective action, not directly its utility, as a tool for influencing food system operations. In pursuing this, we indicate critiques that suggest the discussion has been diverted by a geographical lexicon, including ‘scaling up’, and cautioning that the ‘naming and following of a particular set of norms and imaginaries about place’ (Goodman et al. 2012: 12) can allow food to become apolitical

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and exclusive, or that UFNs follow horizontal replications of best practice (Marsden and Franklin 2013) as a way to achieve scalar impacts to side-step the need for organisational expansion. Such a lexicon has not, in our view, drawn enough on important socio-spatial or socio-cultural discussions. Mark Granovetter considers how to interpret people’s actions in relation to the field of economics. He discusses the multifaceted and complex ways in which action needs to be analysed and indicates what Weber calls ‘value-rational’ actions (Granovetter 2017: 20), where people feel they must act in accordance with values that they are obliged to follow. In our experience, such actions can also be repeatedly observed among people in UFN leadership roles. For example, motivations of UFN leaders are informed by the social relations around action, as well as being influenced by ego-centric concerns, desires and passions for status and material goals. Dropping a simplistic grid of rationalism across complex behaviours is not very revealing, but is common as a way to categorise UFNs as, for example, enterprise innovators or forms of cultural distinctiveness. Many UFNs share motivations with food businesses or municipal policies, which raises questions about how ‘alternative’ UFN organisations and their methods really are. We concur with suggestions that many of the actions of UFNs are orientated towards creating and sustaining new identities (Castells 1997; Melucci 1996; Fligstein 2010) and have been drawn by Castell’s assertion: [R]eflexive life-planning become[s] impossible, except for the elite inhabiting the timeless space flows of global networks and their ancillary locales. And the building of intimacy on the basis of trust requires a redefinition of identity fully autonomous vis-a-vis the networking logic of dominant institutions and organisations. (Castells 1997: 11)

He suggests that reflexivity is unattainable to most people because only elites have influence in the communication flows of the networked society. Such elites create ‘hybrid spaces’, which mix physical places and online spaces, played out simultaneously in cyberspace and, through the impacts of their decisions, on city spaces (e.g. through building development, capital flows and land ownership) (Castells 2012). Although some UFN participants can be identified as having considerable social agency because of their income, professional or social status (Smith and Jehlička 2013),

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these are not the elites to which Castells is referring. In the networked society, both the shaping of cities by those with influence and resistance against such elite interests are played out through the internet (Reed and Keech 2017), with UFNs creating their own forms of networked citizenship. This is, in our experience, substantially self-referential and normative (Reed and Keech 2019). Similarly, despite the work of multi-actor networks such as food policy fora, it remains difficult to develop the notion of a social subject in the city through attempts to strengthen civil society. Some of the resources that UFNs have been able to create are discursive materials we have identified as falling within Dryzek’s schema as ‘civic environmentalism’ or ‘green urbanism’ (Dryzek 1997). These concepts have enabled us to attribute and categorise assumptions, agents, values and activities, for example, to different formats of collective action, with the result that we were able to identify blockages and accelerators facing some Bristol UFNs as they pursued their objectives. One key finding from such a framing has been that, in Bristol, while the objectives of UFNs are normative, and in some cases even utopian, UFNs are not necessarily oppositional in the Castellian sense. Reasons for this may include that, in the networked society, local authorities with prescribed roles are ranked alongside rather than against relatively powerless activists; or perhaps (returning to Morgan), that among the great diversity of active groups, some situate themselves as being in collaboration with municipal authorities and conventional businesses, while others oppose or avoid them. The creation of UFN resources points to the importance of collective endeavours: while reports, webpages, social media postings, banners, artworks, recipes and menus are all collectively created, it is only in being shared that their influence is realised. This indicates the importance of the meso-level as the scale which connects linked individuals (thereby creating the collective) to macro-flows and forces. It leads us to suggest, firstly, that there is scope to expand the use of sociological tools to study the collective actions of UFNS and, secondly, having experimented with such analytical tools to study both urban and rural networks of activists (Reed 2016; Keech 2017), we wish to further refine our attempts to situate UFNs within meso-level arenas of collective action which seek change, by raising the question: can urban agriculture be framed more broadly as a field?

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UA as a ‘Field’ Field theory has recently crystallised as a unified concept in the hands of Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam (Fligstein and McAdam 2015). The central aspects of their theory most relevant in this chapter are the following: 1. Strategic ‘fields’ of action are meso-level social orders and form the basic building blocks of modern organisational life (including commerce, the state and civil society). 2. Because organisational life is inherently unstable (i.e. not fixed, but constantly changing), social actors are concerned with how change can be managed and stability achieved in circumscribed social arenas. 3. Fields are embedded in other, proximate or distal fields, each of which is also organised as a distinct field of social action. 4. Crucially, while material power plays a key role in shaping social change within fields, Fligstein and McAdam indicate that existential considerations drive people’s social capacity to manage change through strategic social action. Social action requires a sense of shared meaning because the organisation of change and stability also depends on actors’ relations with one another. In other words, people have an essential social capacity—‘social skill’, namely inter-­ subjective thought and action which shapes meaning, interests and identity. The suggestion that fields are arenas of collective and reciprocal action that try to organise and manage social change is pertinent to an understanding of UFNs and their functions in city life. UFNs are actors within the field of UA. UA in turn sits within the field of the city. This leads to questions such as how and why does the desire for change emerge? How do new challengers attempt, and then succeed, or fail, to make an impact on the status quo? Which actors and institutions are involved in these dynamics? What happens as new orders become established and, later, superseded? How is stability in the field protected or disrupted? Understanding and describing such dynamics could help to indicate from where particular interventions could come in order to support change through/as a consequence of collective action. In Bristol, many UFNs have occupied themselves with building social networks and innovative practices which seek to mitigate perceived

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­ egative outcomes of the dominant food system. Activities include the n redistribution of surplus supermarket food, the production of crops using business models that support the employment and training of vulnerable people, and the organisation of buying groups to take advantage of economies of scale to support regional farmers using alternative currency (the Bristol Pound). While some UFNs have used physical opposition (including land occupation), members of such networks working in different organisational configurations have influenced municipal policy making and made connections with other distant networks of collective action. In the field context, the consideration of a city’s food systems shifts from being a study of the binary clash between dominant and emergent food ideologies to an observation of how social change is organised or impeded in the food arena. The organisation of UFN research within fields reveals that the city has many systems of food provisioning, and that these are relational rather than mutually exclusive. Because the operation of food systems involves the development of reciprocal alliances and shared understandings and assumptions (e.g. between suppliers, investors, regulators, advertisers, consumers, etc.), social skill is required so that people can collectively imagine the relative position of the others in the field, and where connections with other fields need to be made (e.g. in the case where one UFN tries to support or learn from a UFN elsewhere). Social skill is a key component of field activity and constitutes ‘the ability to take on the role of the other in the service of cooperative behaviour’ (Fligstein and McAdam 2012: 202). The motivation for people to come together within organised networks is, clearly, based on the desire to achieve something through collective action. More fundamentally, Fligstein and McAdam suggest that ‘the need for meaning is at the basis of people’s efforts to get and sustain collective action’ (2012: 46). Within our UFN analyses it is evident that one major way in which cooperation is organised is through social media activity. In the light of these arguments, we suggest, firstly, that the reciprocal/onward communication on which the effectiveness of social media hinges is a form of cooperation. Secondly, we also recognise a high degree of social skill among Bristol’s and (neighbouring) Bath’s UA networks because they have succeeded in developing multi-stakeholder alliances, and in both cities these networks are central in the development of food policies. Thirdly, we suggest that, because the outcomes wanted by food activists are complex, contested (even internally) and normative, the level of social skill within networks helps UFNs to be more, or less, flexible and adaptable about the precise outcome of

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their cooperative collective action: the general direction of travel is usually more important than the specific results. Fligstein and McAdam have outlined a broad road map (2012: 165) for applying field theoretical perspectives in empirical research. We will not recount these in detail here, other than to emphasise that strategic action fields can be observed in relation to three stages of development, namely (1) emergence, (2) stability and (3) crisis. In attempting to trace the strategic engagement of actors with these dynamics, methodological questions arise about where a field boundary lies, who is inside, how the field relates to other fields, what the power structures of the field are and how these are challenged, what forms of collective action are accepted/contested/introduced, and so on. The case for turning towards field theory is not suggested as an alternative, but as an iterative and complementary addition to accumulated knowledge of UFNs and UA networks. A key advancement, as we see it, is that fields do not exist in isolation but are linked to the macro-­ environment. Field theory thus has the potential to address some aspects of ‘the problem with empiricism’ (Fligstein and McAdam 2012: 197) towards a more detailed understanding about how UFNs and UA are social interventions within diverse and multifunctional food systems which are themselves embedded in the strategic action field of the city as a (meso-­ level) whole. We see it as helpful that Fligstein and McAdam are careful not to attribute spatial scale as a principal consideration of strategic action fields, and instead emphasise the importance of shared understandings and social relations, or the absence of these: A strategic action field is a constructed meso-level social order in which actors (who can be individual or collective) are attuned to and interact with one another on the basis of shared (which is not to say consensual) understandings about the purposes of the field, relationships to others in the field (including who has power and why), and the rules of governing legitimate action in the field. (Fligstein and McAdam 2012: 9)

The foundational tasks of some UFNs, such as Food Policy Councils, has been to secure an understanding that the totality of embedded, proximate and distal food fields within the city constitutes a strategic action field, which ought to occupy the municipal state and other actors within each constituent field. With no commercial or legislative imperative to do

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so, this is no trivial task, and has been organised through practice networks (such as Sustainable Food Cities1). Who wields power and agency to coordinate these interrelated fields which combine to represent a city’s complex food system? In some cases, this is seen as a role for the municipality, civil society networks, businesses or usually combinations of all three. The power of the private and corporate interest, while contested, is nevertheless acknowledged through contractual engagements with (public procurement), or adaptations of (production specialisation or outsourcing supply chain functions), entrepreneurial practices. It is also important to recognise that, while UA might generate of its own sub-fields (individual initiatives, including community gardening as well as commercial enterprises), these may appear as self-referential projects. This is the case with food redistribution projects, situated in sub-­ fields with supermarkets and their corporate distribution networks, as well as institutions linked to poverty relief, state welfare and waste regulators. The social dynamics of UA indicates a much larger social system within the city. UA is a social field in formation, characterised by a dispersed collaborative structure, but in contact and dialogue with a wide range of other fields. Such a perspective requires us to also explain the social skills used by those trying to create and stabilise this field, which we locate in micro- and meso-level interventions. UFNs cannot hope to wrest dominance from the main players in the food system because there is no clear idea or consensus of what an ideal city food system should constitute. For us, this is not the point. Instead, the utility of the field concept is that it suggests a broad and flexible structure to integrate urban agriculture and the job of feeding citizens, within a social process of city life.

Methodological Challenges UFNs can be studied as a form of collective action taking place in the field of urban agriculture in an attempt to articulate shared meaning and organise social change within a city. Fligstein and McAdam suggest that recognition of a newly emerged field depends on the degree to which four elements of structure exist (2012: 170)—a common understanding of what is at stake in the field, a set of players with known positions, a common understanding of the rules of the field and a way for actors to i­ nterpret 1

 http://sustainablefoodcities.org/.

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the actors of other field members to frame their own actions. This is clearly useful when observing relatively unified actors, such as those involved in growing and distributing food grown within a community garden, or for businesses involved in developing sustainable supply chains. There are other groups who, as radical innovators, may always identify themselves as underdogs in power hierarchies, such as those wishing to eschew marketbased transactions or whose work is socially redistributive. In other words, fields can reveal the way power hierarchies generate reactions and challenges to hierarchies between actors (e.g. through competition), yet in some cases food networks actively avoid seeking power and instead seek to influence practice (Keech 2017). At stake here is not which model is more effective, innovative or sustainable, in order that horizontal knowledge exchange and experimentation leads to its proliferation. The focus of a field analysis captures the contexts of reciprocal and collaborative responses when new fields of social organisation emerge, try and establish themselves, and are superseded in turn. Succession of social orders is not always achieved on the basis of successful domination of other actors, and we suggest that the efforts of UFNs to shift the ‘rules of the game’ (Fligstein and McAdam 2012: 170) should be seen not as a struggle which may succeed with optimal refinement, but as an integral aspect of the social life in the city, through the field of urban agriculture.

Social Media, Cooperation and Intra-city Collaboration In this section, we present a small corpus of Twitter data which, we suggest, indicates the social skills that are being used to build the collaborative and distributed structures of UA. Twitter Social media has arrived at a dizzying pace, facilitated by the smartphone as the world’s most widely distributed computer connected to a nearly ubiquitous network. Quasi-private networks such as Facebook present problems of access and ethics, but Twitter is published and in the public domain, as well as being an intentionally public act of communication (York and Brewster 2013). Quantitative studies have established the

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parameters of how Twitter can be understood as an indicator of voting intention, as well as purchasing decisions and broader civic engagement (Wilson and Quinton 2012; Conover et al. 2011). Our purpose for presenting an analysis of a small sample is to illustrate how the micro-level social and cultural work of establishing urban agriculture as a social action field is being conducted. We have captured two bodies of Twitter data. Using the NCapture facility of Nvivo 11, 262 tweets were collected by searching for the indexing term (hashtag) of #urbanag; the tweets were published in English between 31 July 2017 and 10 August 2017. Those using the indexing term are attempting to communicate with others interested in the same topic and take part in an ongoing dialogue. The popularity of the Twitter accounts ranged from @Enrich_Ag, purveyors of a mobile app and associated growing technology, with only two followers, through to @CECHR_ UoD, the Centre for Environmental Change and Human Resilience at the University of Dundee with 139,661 followers, suggesting a variety of reach for tweets posted. A second body of Twitter data, 298 tweets for the period 31 July 2017 to 28 September 2017, using the hashtags #urbanag and #urbanagriculture was captured using the IBM Watson Analytics platform. Tweets Captured by Nvivo It is helpful to consider both the geography of those tweeting and their connection to others. Table  1 shows the locations of those tweeting as given on the account biographies, which reveals conversations across the US and Canada, and with European input mostly coming from the UK.  Frequency counts suggest that Saint Louis is a hotspot of activity, although much of these are retweets as local people encourage each other to physical gatherings in the city. New York is the most mentioned location, but this is a composite of those in New York promoting events in the city and those outside passing on information. Another category passes on examples from other cities: Sky Greens is Singapore’s Most Innovative Urban Farm #urbanfarming #singapore #urbanag #agtech … https://t.co/7QMqYIGeXf

This tweet links the reader to a short blog post about vertical farming in the city-state and then to the website of the company producing the

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Table 1  Cities appearing in the Twitter corpus North America

Europe

Australasia

Atlanta Baltimore Boston Brooklyn Calgary Chicago Cleveland, OH Edmonton Gloucester, CT Hamilton, Ontario Indiana Laramie, WY Los Angeles Manhattan Meriden, CT Mexico City Milwaukee New York Newark Oakland, CA Omaha, NE Ottawa Peterborough, Canada Sacramento, CA Saint Louis San Diego Seattle, WA Swindle, MA Stuyvesant Syracuse, NY Temple, AZ Vancouver Victoria Virginia

Berlin Bristol Cheshire, UK Devon, UK Dundee France London Luton Manchester

Wollongong, NSW

vertical farming technology. Changes to zoning (planning) regulations are the focus of tweets, as are discussions about rules about domestic poultry keeping in Vancouver and debates in San Francisco about land being used either for housing or for urban agriculture. In this way information about the development of UA is made available through the network.

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As well as the tweets, we collected materials linked to in those tweets. Tweets frequently signpost readers to other content and we collected 25 blog posts/newspaper articles and 7 YouTube videos. The newspaper and blog corpus ranged from traditional news media such as the New York Times through to the blogs such as ‘Off the Grid’. Most of the ‘news’ focused on actions taken by those engaged in UA or which might facilitate it, from city regulations to business practices or new technologies. Several featured educational initiatives involving children and young people who are receiving additional educational opportunities related to UA. A smaller number of contributors signposted to information that has a greater strategic importance to the future of UA. @iFoodDecisionSc in Seattle directed readers to a report by Bloomberg into the new start-up ‘Plenty’, which had just attracted $200  million in venture capital for a system of indoor, vertical horticulture systems that would be located proximate to cities. ‘Plenty’ links to a series of tweets in the corpus highlighting the work of @BrightAgrotech (Laramie, WY) in establishing indoor growing systems and greenhouses. Other reports focus on the profitability of indoor UA in New York. The most influential tweet in the corpus, posted by @CECHR_UoD with 139,661 followers and retweeted 34 times in the survey period, concerned a project that brings together the two largest themes in the tweets, emerging agri-tech for indoor production and social inclusion. Farm 360, in Indianapolis, is a hydroponics enterprise using a repurposed warehouse site in an area with high poverty and unemployment rates. Despite the headline of the project being based on renewable energy, the text shows it aspires to run the LED lights it is dependent on from solar sources. At the time of research the project had created 12 jobs. As it is not reliant on seasons the project can supply high-value, fragile horticultural crops such as salad leaves and herbs throughout the year to the city. A linked video explaining the project emphasises its sustainability credentials (water efficiency, fewer food miles) but also its social impact in providing local, living wage employment and opportunities to those who might be otherwise excluded from the labour market. The most frequent words used in the entire corpus, including linked media, revealed the importance of linking to other indexing terms, the names of prominent activists and thinkers, as well as the substantive topic (see Fig.  1). A second indexing term #urbanagriculture illustrates how those using Twitter are linking to other debates. Alongside words about farming and growing, the word ‘community’ was very prominent. This

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Fig. 1  Word cloud of 100 most frequently occurring words in the Twitter corpus

term reflected the continued focus in newspaper and blogs on the role of UA in the community, but also the meetings, discussions and initiatives being taken to foster community cohesion: You’re invited! Come out and celebrate Chicago’s urban agriculture community and help grow it. Get tickets: [URL]#urbanAg Tweet @ NetImpactChi

In a blog reflecting on the difficulties of establishing UA in Los Angeles, an activist outlined the role of community organisations: Durbin says finding landowners and farmers who are interested in participating is a big part of the battle. ‘In many cases, we need a matchmaker like a community organization or church to connect us with someone who is interested in farming’, says Durbin who adds that the Los Angeles Food Policy Council is working with the Los Angeles Department of Regional Planning to make those connections.

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Two individuals were referenced, one by name and the other by Twitter account. @wrobertsfood is the account of Wayne Roberts, the UA food pioneer, author and speaker, who featured in the corpus. His tweets were retweeted during this period by @HaLockey in Florida. The presence of these names illustrates the role that key thinkers and actors can play in the networks of Twitter; even when not directly present, retweets ensure they have a constant presence. The second key thinker was Ande Gregson, who is the founder of @GreenLabOrg, a London organisation that was offering development space for indoor horticultural innovation, as well as training and consultancy. Table 1 shows the cities mentioned in the biographies of those tweeting, with a very clear focus on Canada and the US. Figure 1 show how some cities also featured in the content of the tweets. During this period of ten days, those posting tweets were forming a network of cities and locations that would not otherwise be connected, with very different climates and socio-economic conditions. The common indexing term, and thus the collective interest in UA, united this network of more or less realised strategic fields in the cities in question. The shared hashtag means events that can be used as information or inspiration in other cities, but also helps weave together the inter-city network. IBM Watson Platform The IBM platform retrieved fewer tweets than the Nvivo tool, but the sample followed broadly the same pattern of distribution, although in less detail than described above. The most salient pattern suggested by this enquiry is that of a pattern of retweeting that illuminates the way in which Twitter is being used in these networks. German cities do not feature in the Nvivo-based corpus, but it would appear from the IBM platform that Twitter users in Germany were retweeting, so sharing and amplifying, the tweets of others. A key part of any social network posting is sharing and this is salient because the tweets were gathered using a hashtag in English. It is reasonable to expect exchanges in Germany between urban agriculturalists to be conducted in German. In this pattern of retweeting we may be observing how ideas and examples from one country and language bloc are being shared into another.

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Conclusion In this chapter we have attempted to introduce field theory as a way to frame and analyse UFNs, and to cast UA as a field of collective strategic action geared to managing change in social life in the city. We have also illustrated how intra-field networking via social media reveals the need to move beyond the micro-context to focus on the role UFN communication plays in coordinating social action in UA. This perspective has allowed us to consider UFNs beyond their well-studied contributions towards forms of resilience, opposition and innovation. The concept also reframes UA beyond being a predominantly normative, outcomes-directed ideology and towards a field of collective action linking global flows to individual lives, with the potential to strengthen analytical connections between ‘South’ and ‘North’.

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Urban Agriculture and the Battle for History in Melbourne and São Paulo Adrian H. Hearn, Thais Mauad, Luis Fernando AmatoLourenço, Guilherme Reis Ranieri, and Chris Williams

In the gentrifying Melbourne suburb of Moreland, an eco-friendly apartment complex housing 1800 residents has won the Excellence in Urban Renewal award. The development features rooftop solar panels, 300 bicycle racks, and a closed-loop irrigation system for the carrots, tomatoes, and kale grown in a community garden. The developer’s website explains that residents are encouraged to “live sustainably … where history meets style” (Little Projects 2015). In the shadow of the apartments is a less

We thank the Australian Research Council, the Council on Australia-Latin America Relations, and the São Paulo Research Foundation for supporting this work. A. H. Hearn (*) Spanish and Latin American Studies, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] T. Mauad • L. F. Amato-Lourenço • G. R. Ranieri University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil C. Williams The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_4

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noticeable 1970s brick house featuring crumbling walls, worn outdoor furniture, and a front garden tended by Donata, a 72-year-old Italian widow. With her sweatpants and rusting bicycle at the gate, style is not her priority, but her 30-square-metre garden produces vegetables, herbs, and fruits for her family and a nearby restaurant. By contrast, her new ­neighbours count themselves lucky to secure one of the 15 available garden plots, each measuring less than one square metre. Around 13,000 kilometres away in eastern São Paulo, organic farmer José is furious. Researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) have found that vegetables sold by four of ten metropolitan sites—including José’s—contain unsafe levels of lead and cadmium absorbed from traffic fumes (Amato-Lourenço et al. 2016). “I’ve been growing organic food for forty years and my ancestors have been farmers for centuries,” he exclaims through tears, “and last night the news said my vegetables are unsafe. Now my customers don’t trust me!” The study was presented the day before in a forum on urban agriculture followed by interviews with local journalists. Its findings would be relevant to other cities as vegetable gardens spring up on congested street corners and nature strips, exposing an emotionally loaded problem that until now has been largely overlooked. Australia and Brazil are a world apart, but they reflect a comparable history of food production: from indigenous subsistence farming to colonial agriculture, and subsequent reliance on transnational agribusiness to service European and more recently Chinese demand. The expansion of commodity crops in both countries has combined with rapid urbanisation to encroach on peri-urban land, where fresh food has historically been grown for both nations’ cities. At the same time, inner-city gentrification has intensified demand for organic food. These conditions have stimulated an emerging rediscovery of small-scale urban horticulture, but they have also shown that gardening is not what it used to be. Intense competition for land, loss of council allotments and horticulture staff, supermarkets stocked with cheaper alternatives, and contaminated air, water, and soil are among the pressures now confronting the ancient practice of food cultivation in and around cities. According to The Economist, in 2017 Melbourne was the “world’s most liveable city” for the seventh consecutive year, while São Paulo—now the Southern hemisphere’s largest city—continued to grapple with air pollution, lack of green space, and entrenched inequality (Economist 2017). On the ground, though, the liveability criteria of a conservative magazine do not equate to sustainable urban outcomes. Economic streamlining and deregulation are generating a particular kind of ecological renaissance that emphasises marketable aspects of urban agriculture while diverting atten-

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tion away from broader structural challenges. Nevertheless, consumers and local governments in both cities are beginning to recognise the relevance of these challenges to their quality of life. Consequently, progressive initiatives are emerging to address systemic deficiencies accumulated through more than two centuries of food systems industrialisation. Researchers have identified the conflicting agendas that coalesce in urban agriculture, finding that progressive projects are often undermined by “ecological gentrification” (Gould and Lewis 2017; McClintock 2017). The phenomenon of “urban sustainability fix” identified by Aiden While et al. (2004) manifests in Melbourne and São Paulo through the proliferation of ostensibly “green” apartment complexes featuring community vegetable gardens. Although such gardens often measure little more than a few square metres, they are marketed to prospective homebuyers as a means to rediscover nature, improve environmental sustainability, and express personal style (e.g. Farrelly 2018; Gardiner 2017; Strachan 2015). Urban agriculture thus provides a platform for contradictory narratives. The vision advanced in real estate marketing focuses on improving personal well-being and connections with nature, but does not reference the structural conditions that have given rise to these deficits. By contrast, the vision of the community activists described below deals explicitly with these conditions, associating personal and collective well-being with the allocation and protection of productive land, the training and employment of horticultural workers by city councils, and the less polluted ecosystems of the pre-industrial era. The chapter first considers how the recycling of historical grand narratives is widely practised to advance political and economic agendas. While traditions of national dress and cultural heroes carry special meaning for specific communities, urban agriculture draws on a narrative of natural-­ cultural equilibrium with universal appeal. We find evidence of this appeal in the global re-emergence of horticulture in backyards and public spaces, now as a mass-marketed trend advocated by estate agents and restaurants in cities as disparate as Melbourne and São Paulo. While this commercially driven trend evokes a historical narrative, it also reveals selective amnesia: only those practices that advance commercial and political interests are recalled. Four short case studies of urban agriculture activism from Melbourne and São Paulo demonstrate a more nuanced understanding of history as proponents seek to redress the long-term destruction of arable land, protect the livelihoods of producers and improve environmental conditions. We conclude that the history of food production harbours valuable insights for urban renewal, but that harnessing these insights requires action to redress structural shortcomings rather than glossy promises to revive the past.

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Disjunctures with the Past Throughout history and around the world, the past has been reinvented and recycled to legitimise contemporary agendas. Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger (1992) argue that the “invention of tradition” has long underpinned the consolidation of national identities. For instance, Scottish nationalism following the 1707 Act of Union with England turned tartans, bagpipes, and kilts into symbols of a distinctive Highland culture (TrevorRoper 2009). More recently across the Atlantic, the Office of the Historian of Havana is living up to its name by redeveloping the city’s Chinatown for tourism, installing Mandarin street signs and a statue of Confucius despite the district’s Cantonese origins (Hearn 2016: 138–139). Confucius has also been revived in China, where after decades of condemning his teachings as non-scientific and feudal, the Communist Party now celebrates him as a motif for the harmonious development of urban “market socialism” (Kai 2014). And in Tibet, the selfless benevolence traditionally associated wtith the founding of religious temples has provided a “cultural schema” for entrepreneurial Sherpa families to receive foreign donations, evade taxes, and pursue political ambitions (Ortner 1991). The actors behind these temporal manipulations portray specific principles and practices as widespread in an imagined past but deficient today. And critically, they evoke a sense of lost heritage that can be salvaged and revived. Ortner’s notion of cultural schemas recognises human agency in the passage of traditions through time. Actors creatively invoke the past to shape the present, transforming a “model of tradition” into a “model for tradition” (Geertz 1973: 93). The contingency of cultural schemas on particular places, people, actions, and agendas constrains the range of their public appeal. Tartans may serve the purpose of Scottish nationalists but do not stir emotions in China, and Confucius may help to project a sense of stability amidst socio-economic upheaval in Beijing or Shanghai but fails to resonate in the Highlands. The emotional currency of cultural schemas thus holds value within what Philippe Descola (1996) calls “symbolic ecologies.” Urban agriculture constitutes a new breed of cultural schema whose currency holds value across a worldwide symbolic ecology. Its broad appeal is rooted in the grand narrative of interdependence between humankind and nature—a principle expressed in foundational religious texts, origin stories, and other writings since the dawn of civilisation. Prominent examples include the biblical book of Genesis, in which “The Lord God placed

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the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it”; and the Qur’an surah 2-60: “Eat and drink from the provision of Allah, and do not commit abuse on the earth.” The principle appears in pragmatic form in the fifth century B.C. Hippocratic Treatise on Air, Waters, and Places, which teaches that the physical and emotional health of citizens is intertwined with the natural environments of their cities. Beyond the oath sworn by doctors to “first do no harm,” Hippocrates is rarely quoted in the twenty-­first century, much less by property developers and politicians. But the notion of cultural-ecological interdependence is increasingly appearing in public spheres as a past lesson that can inform present urban challenges. If ancient texts provide a broad historical referent for contemporary ecological sustainability, the twenty-first-century urban condition provides a market for reviving it. Lack of green space, inadequate walkability, and nutrition-poor processed and fast foods are fuelling a search for healthier lifestyles. This is evident in the boom of stores marketing ecological homewares, “paleo” and other diets advocating a return to natural superfoods, and institutions dedicated to reviving the “voluntary simplicity” once practised by Gandhi, Buddha, Jesus, and others. In parallel with this trend, urban agriculture has expanded beyond the mission statements of environmental organisations to become standard content for university curricula, political campaigns, and real estate advertisements. As Lyon and Colquhoun write, nostalgia is key: Traditional becomes a metaphor for high quality; a description of ingredients and processes that were in more generous measure than could be expected today … products and packaging often make liberal use of the imagery of yesteryear, the farm, the country kitchen, allusions to fresh or natural ingredients and old-fashioned ways of doing things. (1999: 191)

The revival of tradition, they continue, is mediated by contemporary agendas: Whatever the extent of our involvement with the recent past, experiences cannot be authentic. Retrieval is necessarily, and often consciously, selective. We require the best that yesterday had to offer, we do not require those aspects of it that were dull, tedious, uncomfortable or inconvenient … we are able to extract those design features, artefacts, and even experiences, that please us and forget about those that do not. (1999: 193–194)

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Forgotten in the current urban agriculture boom is the inconvenient truth that food systems have fundamentally changed. In its earlier incarnations, food production for towns and cities relied on the availability of green space for horticulture and market gardening, trained and remunerated gardeners, and appropriate environmental conditions. These conditions seldom figure into commercial and political promises to restore balance between ecology and civilisation. Interpreted as costs rather than market gains, they are subdued in popular discourse and altogether omitted from marketing campaigns. The significance of this phenomenon extends beyond rhetorical omission: ignoring the conditions that were historically critical to healthy food systems deflects attention away from current environmental contamination, inadequate land protection, and socio-economic inequality. Below we consider how the historical development of food systems has set the stage for urban agriculture’s global resurgence. In Australia and Brazil, legacies of colonial land policies and subsequent economic rationalism saw food become progressively industrialised, processed, and mass produced, with severe consequences for family farms and nutritional health. Melbourne and São Paulo demonstrate these structural transformations, and how they are omitted from narratives of ecological balance in current urban agriculture marketing. Several recent initiatives in the two cities have nevertheless begun to stimulate genuine reflection, debate, and action around the relationship of food systems to urban development.

Urban Agriculture Through Time “Gardening” for recreation and subsistence has long been a vital livelihood activity in cities, though the topic has been neglected by agricultural sciences, which focus on increasing large commodity crop yields. Industrial agriculture has become the global model for food production, but it involves high-cost energy and other inputs, and considerable economic risk. Cities are especially vulnerable to food shortages in the face of environmental and political shocks that affect production or distribution. In the wake of Hurricane Debbie in April 2017, citizens of Melbourne saw the price of tomatoes, beans, and other produce increase by 400 per cent, while São Paulo experienced major food price spikes in 2008 and 2011. Urban agriculture responds to quantifiable problems of food security and nutritional health, but it is also shaped by socio-cultural relationships to landscapes, plants, animals, and fellow citizens. Moreover, the push for

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food production in cities draws on traditions of urban green space and residential gardens that are interpreted differently across time and geography. In the United States, for instance, localised food production has been associated with nineteenth-century notions of moral uplift, a tradition that has resurfaced in Detroit and other post-industrial rust-belt cities. Contemporary urban garden programmes use derelict land to grow food and build community resilience, though not without echoes of white middle-­class philanthropy and associated moral economies of patronage. Gardening in Europe is intimately linked to the Industrial Revolution, which saw the rise of suburban cities with botanical gardens, pocket parks, private domestic spaces, and allotments for growing food. As cities grew through the nineteenth century, horticulture became viewed as a public good that was inherently desirable across class and gender divides. Governments employed gardeners in parks, ran nurseries, created horticultural colleges and extension services, and provided land for allotments and community gardens. In wartime and during economic downturns, state funding and zoning policies enabled food growing in private and public spaces to complement the output of farmers and commercial market gardeners. As the nineteenth century’s “factory of the world,” English cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Liverpool experienced rapid growth and the proliferation of disease-ridden slums. This provoked parliamentary enquiries into sanitation, health, and accessibility of urban green space and fresh air for “walks.” Victorian-era reformers were determined to bring the country into the city and in 1887 passed the Allotments Act, which produced subsidised “garden suburbs” featuring community food plots throughout Britain. By 1895 there were 450,000 allotments in Britain, and during World War I, the “every-man-a-gardener” campaign increased the number to 1.5 million. After a decline during the inter-war period, the Dig-for-Victory campaigns of World War II saw the number of subsidised allotments return to historic highs. The campaign aimed to secure food for working-class people and ensure their “moral health” by keeping them occupied with a broadly beneficial pursuit (rather than drinking or gambling), though grassroots activists pushed for access to allotments independently of this discourse (Willes 2014). These ­experiences conditioned overseas colonial practices, setting historical precedent for Australian approaches to urban land use, as discussed below. On the other side of the world, Portuguese colonisation of Brazil in the sixteenth century triggered an extensive exchange of plants with Europe.

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Native varieties of yams, taro, cassava, peanuts, sweet potatoes, pine nuts, pumpkins, and squashes were introduced into settler diets and came to characterise Brazilian cuisine. From Europe came sugar cane, lemons, oranges, mangos, coconuts, figs, pomegranates, lettuces, cabbages, turnips, carrots, cucumbers, spinach, onions, mustard, tomatoes, and ginger. This diversification produced genetic improvements, enabling foreign species to adapt to Brazil’s edaphic and climatic conditions (Madeira et  al. 2008). São Paulo and other colonial settlements were initially dependent on Portuguese food supply, but transportation both from the kingdom and from surrounding rural zones was costly and impractical. Vegetable gardens and urban farms thus became important sources of food, contributing to the consolidation of autonomous Brazilian markets, services, and systems of land governance. This heritage persists to the present day in São Paulo’s “green belt” outskirts, but urban sprawl and environmental contamination is undermining the health benefits of organic food produced in and around the megacity. Food production has never disappeared from the world’s cities, but it has transformed in step with geopolitical trends. The rise of neoliberal policies between the 1950s and the 1980s unleashed private property ownership across Europe, Australia, and the Americas. Around the world, suburbs with residential gardens and backyards expanded, but the intensity of localised food production declined as private front and backyards ostensibly diminished the need for public allotments. By the 1990s, municipal governments were abandoning subsidies for allotments and horticulture training programmes, scaling back to the barest standards of maintenance for public parks and gardens. Agriculture ministries increasingly focused on boosting export-oriented commodity crops and promoting industrialised processed food for domestic consumption. Half a century of economic rationalism has shown that the withdrawal of public funding for fresh food production has correlated with the expansion of the processed food industry, a rise in dietary health problems, and resulting budget crises for national health systems. Over the past 20 years overweight (including obesity) rates have grown to more than 30 per cent in Melbourne’s western suburbs and 54 per cent in São Paulo (Capone 2015; Ministry of Health of Brazil 2016: 14). Consequently, type II ­diabetes and other diet-related diseases are growing across Australian, Brazilian, and other cities. Direct and indirect obesity-related health conditions are estimated to cost Australia more than $100  billion per year (Rose and Hearn 2017), while in Brazil, where only the direct costs of

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obesity are calculated, the public health system spends $270 million annually (de Oliveira et al. 2015).1 As Susan Parham writes, the industrialisation of food systems has incurred an economic and social toll: In the early 21st century, we primarily rely on intensive, chemically dependent and, now increasingly, genetically modified food production, intensive processing and packaging of food, and long-distance transportation, with enormous wholesaling facilities to serve very large-scale, car-dependent industrialised (and now also “functional” and “nutrimedical”) food retailing. Food companies seek vertical integration from farm to plate, as far as possible to externalise environmental and social costs. And these costs are substantial, including impoverishing producers, diminishing consumers’ tastes, and creating unacceptable food miles and food deserts through profit maximising spatial practices. (2005: 89)

As consumers become more aware of these conditions and discerning about the personal and political implications of their diets, urban agriculture has become more popular. Edible landscapes and pop-up patches are appearing in private homes and alongside suburban streets, increasingly supported by municipal governments to improve local health and sustainability indicators. Businesses are also encouraging these spatial transformations. Restaurants increasingly cater to demand for organic ingredients produced locally and responsibly. A minority of these are social enterprises that source ingredients from nearby community gardens, return their organic waste for compost, and employ disadvantaged refugees or former inmates. Most focus narrowly on market opportunity, charging premium prices for pretentious menus, conspicuously displaying miniscule planter boxes to demonstrate sustainability, and retailing mass-produced “traditional” homewares at the counter. Missing the opportunity to provoke reflection about the place of food in urban renewal, the latter inflate property prices and gentrify communities into “gastronomic tourism zones trading on nostalgia about a lost way of life and pandering to the obsessions of wealthy food-literate tourists” (Parham 2005: 94). Below we find that the reinvention of urban agriculture is also evident in the property sector as developers incorporate private vegetable gardens into their premium offerings. Seemingly progressive projects claim to revive citizens’ connections with the land and with each other, and yet fail 1

 Currency values are in USD throughout unless indicated.

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to stimulate awareness or action around the challenges facing urban food systems. More genuine attempts are nevertheless beginning to emerge in Melbourne and São Paulo, four of which are profiled.

Making Space in Melbourne As elsewhere in the global North, there has been a resurgence of interest in growing food in Australian cities, beginning around 2005 and accelerating after the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2008. With 85 per cent of the national population living in sprawling suburbs, private backyard horticulture is widespread. The large size of Australian front- and backyards has historically tempered demand for public allotments and community gardens, which have never enjoyed comparable support or continuity as in Britain or the United States (Gaynor 2006). Australia has one of the highest rates of urbanisation in the world, with more than 75 per cent of the population living in five cities: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide. As Melbourne’s metropolitan population of four million grows to an expected eight million by 2050, urban lifestyles have engendered cardio-metabolic health problems related to blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. A recent Australian study correlates poor health outcomes with time spent driving, noting that 78 per cent of adults use a car as the main form of transport to work (Sugiyama et al. 2016). While longer commutes reflect Melbourne’s outward expansion, a simultaneous inward contraction is compounding the city’s liveability challenges. As Tony Hall’s (2010) book The Life and Death of the Australian Backyard argues, current urban consolidation policies and planning regulations are shrinking green space and compromising quality of life. As noted, Britain’s earlier experiences with urban industrialisation influenced Australian approaches to land use, for instance, ensuring public accessibility to green space in the colony’s emerging cities. This is evident in Melbourne, which after a globally significant gold rush in the 1850s, came to embody Victorian-era confidence in urban development as a marker of national progress. Embracing the philosophy of large parks and gardens, the colonial government mandated the creation of urban green areas and facilities such as the Burnley horticultural college six kilometres from the city centre on the Yarra River. The physical maintenance of these properties required coordinated workforce planning, training, and employment. At the turn of the twentieth century Burnley employed over

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100 educators and maintenance specialists. This commitment to public resourcing persisted for over 100 years, but has all but disappeared in the face of the twenty-first-century economic rationalism. As publicly subsidised green space disappears, private real estate developers have begun to include community gardens in their prime offerings. Property giant Stockland, for instance, has worked with the Green Building Council of Australia to develop “Green Star” projects. According to its website, “Stockland is one of the largest diversified property groups in Australia with more than [AUD] $15.8 billion of real estate assets” across the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors (Stockland 2017). The community gardens included in its recent developments purportedly enable residents to experience “how different cultures grow things differently” in “really old-style communities” (Lindsay 2016; Strachan 2015). Other developers, such as Shayher Group, believe that installing veggie gardens amidst their high-rise apartments will “draw locals together” and enable them to “remain connected to nature” (Gardiner 2017). Efforts to revive “old-style” traditions and connections with nature sound progressive, but deflect attention from systemic deficiencies. Availability of green space is among the casualties of the emerging trend, evident at the beginning of this chapter in the award-winning eco-friendly apartment block, where 1800 residents struggle to secure a one-square metre vegetable plot. The spatial contrast with Donata’s old but expansive front garden next door illustrates Melbourne’s changing landscape, while the underpinning economic shift is embodied in a strip of boutique restaurants one block away on the iconic Lygon St. Nostalgia, for the district’s Italian heritage appears on the walls of these chic establishments in paintings of bygone Tuscan family farms, grey reprints of early migrants, obsolete coffee grinders, a classic Vespa moped parked casually amongst the tables, and menus that promise traditional and fresh organic ingredients. This eclectic and fashionable experience comes at a price that may be within the reach of the new eco-residents, but not of locals like Donata. Indeed, restaurants specialising in “traditional” Italian fresh cuisine have driven up council tax rates and made the neighbourhood unaffordable for older residents. Houses like Donata’s are thus replaced with apartment blocks with inadequate space for living and socialising, let alone growing food. Gentrification is a universal and arguably inevitable urban process, but many of its negative social and economic consequences can be diminished. Key to this is a more holistic awareness of urban food systems, their

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histories, and futures. Below we outline two projects that attempt to address inadequate green space and remuneration of local food producers. Commercial promises to revive traditional lifestyles and food practices overlook the need for these structural inputs, but they are critical aspects of past urban food systems that with informed intervention may yet have a future. Food Traditions and Public Space in Dandenong Around 25 per cent of Australia’s 24 million citizens were born overseas, but some councils, such as Dandenong in Melbourne’s east, are especially diverse. Once a manufacturing hub but now a rust-belt zone of high unemployment, the council is home to 156,000 residents from 150 different nationalities, more than half of whom were born in a non-English speaking country. Food options reflect the district’s diversity, particularly around the central market that since the 1860s has been a hub of intercultural exchange. To combat high and growing rates of obesity and diabetes, and noting that many residents live in “food deserts” (more than 400 metres away from healthy food), in 2014 the City of Greater Dandenong published its Regional Food Strategy 2015–2018. As the Strategy puts it, “Food is something that connects us all. It is a driver of employment and health and a significant part of our environmental, social, and cultural identity … Dandenong has a long history in all aspects of food” (CGD 2014: 2, 34). In partnership with the horticultural team from the council’s parks department, researcher Chris Williams from the University of Melbourne proposed installing “edible landscapes” in public spaces near Dandenong’s thriving market to help achieve the Strategy’s goals. Drawing on his “Novel Crops” research at Burnley Gardens, he selected varieties of sweet potato and taro whose ornamental appearance would enhance green areas and whose yields would supply a local charity. These species, or cultivars of them, are not widely available in Australian supermarkets and are rarely grown, but many in the municipality consider them as traditional plants from “home.” In 2014 Williams and the council’s parks gardening staff created a 60-square-metre edible planting bed in Dandenong Park. In-house gardening staff have disappeared from most councils—in Australia and elsewhere—since the 1980s, replaced by short-term contractors tasked with the basic maintenance of public landscapes. The Food Strategy had

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supported the retention of horticultural staff through a promise to “stimulate stronger integration of food cultivation and production into urban and peri-urban locations” (CGD 2014: 38). The gardening team had already begun substituting ornamental flowers with lettuce, chillies, and corn for local charities six months prior to the sweet potato project. In its first harvest, in 2015, Dandenong public park produced approximately 100  kilograms of sweet potatoes and taro. The project elicited positive reactions from residents, many of whom reported familiarity with the crops and surprise at seeing them grow in Australia. This feedback encouraged the council to extend the project in 2016 to a plot in front of the market, whose 2017 harvest produced 90 kilograms of sweet potatoes and 20 kilograms of taro and yams. The project would not have been possible without Dandenong council’s progressive vision, which commits staff and resources to the creative remodelling of public land. The horticulture team has access to vehicles, tools, equipment, mulch, and other resources that community groups often spend years raising funds to purchase. The initiative thus marks a departure from decades of state withdrawal from public food production, and resonates with earlier employment practices. Similarly, the productive use of council land demonstrates a defence of urban green space against mounting pressure from commercial real estate. Moreover, the project blends residents’ crop cultivation traditions with Australia’s heritage of ornamental parklands. Reviving history is not an explicit goal, but by engaging local preferences the team is implicitly harnessing past best practices. Past and Future in Moreland: The Case of CERES Established in the early 1980s on a reclaimed Moreland Council landfill, the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES) attracts 400,000 visitors each year and employs over 180 farmers, educators, and service staff. At the core of the organisation’s mission is public education about sustainable food production and practical methods for achieving it. Council grants and land allocation were critical for establishing CERES, but subsequent funding cuts have seen it become 95 per cent self-funded through commercial operations. These include two markets that retail seedlings, plants, and organic produce; a restaurant; an events facility for conferences and workshops; a teaching service for local schools; an educational travel division; and most significantly the Fair

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Food organic home delivery service. Fair Food’s manager Chris Ennis has overseen the development of a major online platform: CERES Market is where the farm and the local community meet, where people can find local, in-season produce and actively support Victorian farmers. This has recently broadened out into the wider community in the form of Fair Food, a home delivery service that each week drops 600 food boxes onto the verandas of Food Hosts for local families to pick up. (Ennis 2012: 7)

Customers place orders online and collect their boxes from 67 “food host” centres throughout Melbourne and its suburbs, attracting 985 members by 2012 (Chung 2012: 16). Fair Food’s turnover has since more than doubled to $3.2 million, enabling it to reach families and restaurants within and beyond the city. As the above health indicators suggest, fresh food (including in supermarkets) is more accessible in wealthier areas of Melbourne while less advantaged zones have a higher proportion of fast food outlets (Burns and Inglis 2007). Fair Food thus offers a pathway to healthier diets in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, where cardiovascular health problems are on the rise. Fair Food’s commercial expansion has increased its purchases from small organic farmers in and around Melbourne. These small operations would not independently be viable, but collectively they benefit from stable demand. This has created jobs, protected land from real estate development, and facilitated long-term leases and tax concessions for productive use of green space. These outcomes align with Moreland’s 2017–2019 Food Systems Strategy, which committed $254,000 to projects that promote fresh food growing, trading, and educating. Supported by the council, Fair Food is increasing the viability of small farms and the availability of productive green space. In addressing the historical challenges of employment and land use the initiative resembles the Dandenong project, albeit through greater reliance on private demand. Online customers may not have space or time to grow food, but many wish to see the diversification of their food system for health, ethical, and other reasons. CERES cannot revive history, but its educational services and adoption of e-commerce are applying historical insights to a food system for the future.

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Feeding the Megacity: São Paulo As in Melbourne, particular aspects of urban agriculture are on the rise in São Paulo, propelled by a unique blend of commercial, political, and historical pressures. The Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), the German NGO Cities Without Hunger, and the USP Urban Agriculture Study Group have each supported local organic food production to ameliorate urban conditions while raising awareness about changes in land use, ecology, and political representation (Giacchè and Silva 2014; Nagib 2016). Supported by these efforts and inspired by a 20 per cent increase in national consumption of organics to $600 million in 2015, 222 São Paulo municipalities ran urban agriculture projects in 2016 (Organics News Brazil 2017; Organicsnet 2016). To service the growing demand for fresh food and sustainable lifestyles, São Paulo real estate developers have begun building veggie gardens into their high-rise projects. As noted below, some advertise that this will revive residents’ long-lost connections with the earth. This promise is as dubious in São Paulo as it is in Melbourne, but below we find evidence that some recent urban agriculture initiatives are more genuinely addressing the shortcomings that have historically eroded the city’s ecology. First, though, we must consider how São Paulo’s urban conditions have changed over time. When Prince Dom Pedro stood in São Paulo in 1822 to deliver Brazil’s Declaration of Independence from Portugal, the city had become a commercial hub producing crops for local consumption, trade with neighbouring regions, and national food security (Blaj 1998). At that time the city’s southern, northern, and eastern zones were fertile floodplains well suited to agriculture. Small farms or chácaras in these areas provided vegetables and meat for the city’s 30,000 residents and for Brazil’s then capital Rio de Janeiro. As there was no legal distinction between urban and rural land, population growth gradually transformed farms into residential zones, pushing the chácaras outward to a food-producing “green belt” around the city’s outskirts (Fernandes 2008). The rise of coffee plantations in the late nineteenth century brought a new wave of European migration, increasing São Paulo’s population from 130,775 in 1893 to 580,000 in 1920. Agricultural became organised into two concentric rings: the inner chácaras belt characterised by small family farms and the outer caipiras dedicated to industrialised production of coffee, livestock, and sugar. The inner ring came under intense pressure as the

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automobile industry began to compete with rail transport in the 1940s, lobbying for highways across the city’s suburbs and beyond. São Paulo’s cultivated land decreased from 12,158 square kilometres to 9536 square kilometres between 1960 and 1970 as a dense network of businesses and factories developed along the new highways. Land beyond the municipal area was turned increasingly to export-oriented agribusiness, stimulated by a forced-draft federal industrialisation policy (Pereira et al. 2012). Employment opportunities brought further migration, especially from rural areas, increasing São Paulo’s population to 12.6  million by 1980. The rapid influx of people was met with a shortage of housing, intensifying the pressure for residential development on the city’s fringes despite the lack of primary services. Disorganised and chaotic settlements, many of them illegal, encroached on forests, waterways, and the remaining chácaras. Economic stagnation in the 1980s saw a dispersion of São Paulo’s industries to other cities, stimulated by federal incentives. The inner-city population began to decline, but the broader metropolitan population had reached 21 million by 2014 and continues to grow in peripheral zones. The local production of São Paulo’s fresh food has dwindled to a few remaining family farms and waterways, which together constitute the last remnants of the green belt, protected since 2003 as the Biosphere Reserve of the Atlantic Forest. The area is under constant pressure owing to land speculation, illegal settlements, air and water pollution, illicit extraction of forest products, and highways that permeate ostensibly preserved areas. Fruits and vegetables cultivated in this area must travel 50–80 kilometres to reach the city’s main supply hub, the CEAGESP (Companhia de Entrepostos e Armazéns Gerais de São Paulo). Servicing the city’s wholesalers and markets, the CEAGESP trades an average of 283,000 tons per month mainly of fruit, vegetables, and derivative products originating from 1500 municipalities in 22 Brazilian states and 19 other countries. Industrial-scale food production has enabled quantity, but mass production has compromised quality. In 2006 and 2007 researchers tested 240 products sold at the CEAGESP, finding that 19 of these contained pesticides beyond the permitted levels and 28 per cent contained unregistered ingredients (Gorenstein 2008). Moreover, the National Sanitary Surveillance Agency’s Report on the Analysis of Residues of Pesticides in Food found that pesticide levels in 15 of 54 samples were unsatisfactory. Brazil is the world’s largest consumer of pesticides, using 914,000 tons in 2014–2015 at a cost of $9.6  billion (ABRASCO 2016). São Paulo

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regulations (law 01-00891/2013) restrict the commercialisation and use of 19 pesticides, but compliance is low among farmers in the green-belt zones, particularly those who do not claim to produce organic food. Among the consequences is contamination of the city’s eight waterways, such as the Guarapiranga system that intersects the green belt and is responsible for 21 per cent of the city’s supply. A recent study identified 31 organic compounds in São Paulo’s water, including pesticides, illicit drugs, and pharmaceuticals (López-Doval et al. 2017). Urban sprawl has aggravated water contamination, particularly in the Guarapiranga and Billings Basins, whose cumulative population has grown to two million people (SABESP 2017). In these and other São Paulo “green” zones, overweight (including obesity) rates exceed the city’s already high average of 54 per cent (Ministry of Health of Brazil 2016: 5). These indicators reflect the lack of fruit and vegetable retail in peri-urban areas, underpinned by two centuries of food systems industrialisation (Santandreu and Lovo 2007). These conditions demonstrate how fundamentally São Paulo’s geographical and economic conditions have changed since the days of Prince Dom Pedro. São Paulo’s transformation cannot be reversed, but history is often cited as a repository of environmental, health, and social practices that can be revived in the present day. As in Melbourne, urban farming is increasingly marketed as a means to forge this link: “It’s not only about the desire for healthy food,” says one São Paulo consultant, “but also about a set of values that recognises the importance of local production and its emotional connections” (quoted in Muniz 2017). Heeding this advice, one developer of luxury condominiums in the upmarket district of Itaím Bibi is installing veggie gardens that enable residents to rediscover “the history of contact with the earth through urban agriculture” (Huma 2017). Another is designing exclusive apartment towers with “agro-forests” that “link aesthetics with functionality, restoring in a pleasant way the conviviality between people and the natural countryside” (Cardim 2017). A quick scan of São Paulo real estate websites confirms a widespread trend: terraces featuring a handful of lettuces in planter boxes are advertised at premium prices as “rooftop gardens.” The promise of return to traditional food production atop luxury apartments cannot contend with the industrialisation of São Paulo’s food system over two centuries. Moreover, this promise deflects public attention from the ongoing impact of urbanisation on green space, subordination of family farming to commodity agribusiness, systemic reliance on

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chemical-­intensive production, and resulting contamination of air and water. Nevertheless, despite its commercial appropriation, urban agriculture maintains a capacity to generate awareness about the historical dynamics of food production and potentially to improve current conditions. The below short cases illustrate how even entrenched problems of urban sprawl and pollution are not beyond improvement. Joining the Dots São Paulo’s expansion into surrounding green zones is a historical process whose impacts on environmental sustainability, social welfare, and dietary health have become acute. The 2014 City Master Plan attempted to slow this process by reclassifying 25 per cent of metropolitan land as rural, prohibiting new residential construction and authorising family farmers to access low-interest loans and subsidies for machinery and seeds. The legal manoeuvre looks good on paper, but according to one study, 90 per cent of São Paulo producers have been unable to secure technical or financial support and urban sprawl continues (Ferreira 2015: 30). Demand-side strategies have proven more successful, evident in municipal procurement of organics from family farms for public schools, hospitals, and enterprises. Underpinned by a price guarantee 30 per cent higher than non-organics and a 2016 municipal ban on several pesticides, these purchases have grown from $180,000 in 2012 to $8 million in 2015 and stimulated a gradual shift to organic farming. The question simmering underneath these results is how to diminish dependency on the state and encourage greater demand from the private sector. Proposing to diversify demand for organics, in 2016 Mayor Fernando Haddad (2013–2016) of the Workers’ Party won the $5 million Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge for a project called Join the Dots. The project envisions an online platform and logistical infrastructure to connect family farmers on the city’s outskirts not only with public schools and hospitals, but also with inner-city restaurants, supermarkets, and fresh food stores. Strengthening the viability of peri-urban farms should enable the retention of green space as land taxes rise, creating a natural barrier to São Paulo’s outward expansion. As an official of the Urban Licensing Secretariat notes, “Restrictive laws were not working … stimulating a productive use of the land through agriculture could be more effective” (quoted in Amigo 2017).

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In 2017 João Doria of the conservative Brazilian Social Democracy Party ousted Haddad on the campaign slogan “I’m a businessman, not a politician.” Promoting business and “joining the dots” between producers and consumers may be complementary propositions, but Doria’s promise to sell off $2 billion of public assets contrasts with the project’s plan for subsidised storage warehouses and distribution hubs. He often cites “modern management techniques,” such as permitting corporate advertising in public parks in return for donations of trees and seeds, as a solution to the city’s historical deficit of green space. His broader “denationalisation” campaign envisions not only more advertising, but also new real estate construction in and around the city, raising questions about the protected status of peri-urban land. Communities on São Paulo’s outskirts have disproportionately endured the negative environmental and health consequences of the city’s industrialisation. Join the Dots aims to redress these consequences not by promising to revive the pre-industrial past but by restoring a measure of urban-rural interdependence. It remains to be seen if the new mayor will maintain this historical sensitivity. Unearthing Food Safety The anecdote at the beginning of this chapter illustrates how the impact of environmental pollution on urban agriculture is emerging as a public concern. José lamented that his family farm, respected for generations as an organic pioneer, was found to be contaminated. Controlling for soil, water, and exposure time, the USP study concluded that airborne lead and cadmium particles, correlated with traffic density, exceeded UN, EU, and Australian safety limits in four of ten urban farms (Amato-Lourenço et al. 2016). The experiment was the first to show that heavy metals penetrate vegetables not only through their roots, but also through leaf and stem pores, and therefore cannot be simply rinsed off. Covered on São Paulo’s most popular television news programme, the study distressed José and potentially thousands of other urban farmers, who now face new public and legal scrutiny (Globo 2016). The study’s silver lining is its recognition of a problem that must be addressed as urban horticulture expands around the world. It notes that distance from traffic and protection behind barriers reduce chemical uptake, and that root crops and legumes are less affected. Urban agriculture

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guidelines, increasingly published by local governments, should take note of these findings to mitigate the impact of air pollution. Brochures and information sheets can recommend, for instance, that gardens be positioned away from dense traffic, that thick bushes encircle leafy vegetables, and that root crops should be prioritised when neither of these options is possible. Such measures are timely as certification procedures for organic food increasingly seek to standardise thresholds for acceptable chemical exposure. The USP study establishes that urban crops should be protected from air pollution, but more broadly it demonstrates the environmental harm caused by overreliance on cars. At the time of writing, mayor Doria is closing bicycle paths installed under his predecessor, arguing that this will improve traffic flow and support small businesses. This argument has precedent in the automobile industry’s advocacy for new roads and roadside businesses over the city’s green spaces since the 1940s. Rolling back the clock on this history is impossible, but as the USP study suggests, awareness of its consequences for ecological sustainability and citizens’ health should inform future actions. Historically informed action is nowhere more urgent than in food systems. Airborne lead and cadmium now join sugar, pesticides, and other industrial inputs to undermine the quality of urban diets. Growing public interest in nutritional health, evident as much in São Paulo as in Melbourne, is beginning to stimulate societal reflection on broader questions of land use and environment. The easy reconciliation with nature offered by planter boxes atop expensive eco-apartments cannot answer these questions. Solutions are more likely to emerge from projects that draw attention to long-term structural shortcomings, offer localised adaptation strategies for farmers like José, and develop policy recommendations that link present challenges with historical circumstances.

Conclusion Urban agriculture’s broad appeal corresponds with a grand narrative of natural and cultural equilibrium that has persisted since the dawn of civilisation. It is debatable whether this balance has ever existed, but clear that it has been undermined by centuries of urbanisation and food systems industrialisation. The structural consequences include loss of green space, dismissal of horticultural workforces, and environmental contamination of food crops by urban pollution and synthetic inputs. The unprecedented

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epidemic of obesity and related health outcomes epitomises the current lack of natural-cultural equilibrium. In response to these conditions, urban agriculture has become more prominent in community activism, political campaigning, gastronomy promotion, and real estate marketing. Horticulture’s commercial renaissance is epitomised in a new wave of gentrification featuring expensive eco-friendly apartments complete with veggie patches. The associated advertising, on display in Melbourne and São Paulo, promises a return to lost traditions of connection with the earth, community, and simplicity. That this promise resonates across such disparate contexts suggests urban agriculture’s qualitative difference from traditions bound by community, place, and nation. However reinvented, the grand narrative of natural-­ cultural equilibrium provides a cultural schema that appeals across a universal symbolic ecology. Reviving a more satisfactory and healthy past may be universally appealing, but global economic circumstances do not favour a return to earlier structural conditions. Availability of green space, employment and training of horticultural staff, and vigilance against pollution diverge from (and often conflict with) commercial priorities. The grand narrative’s revival is therefore incomplete, recalling the benefits of localised food production but forgetting the conditions necessary for its practice. This selective amnesia is not neutral, as it deflects attention from past lessons that could underpin contemporary action. A more comprehensive approach to urban agriculture recognises the systemic deficiencies entailed in the industrialisation of food systems, and the four case studies above from Melbourne and São Paulo suggest that this recognition is growing. The Dandenong project employs council gardeners to plant visually attractive food crops in public parks, creatively addressing the challenges of workforce planning and green space conservation. CERES Fair Food’s online system harnesses growing demand for organics to enable Melbourne family farmers to earn an income and retain productive land. Similarly, Join the Dots aims to support São Paulo family farmers by connecting them with online customers, helping them to remain viable and slow urban sprawl. Finally, USP’s experimental testing reveals unhealthy levels of lead and cadmium in urban farms, generating recommendations for crop protection and an empirical basis for stronger clean air policies. Rather than pursue the impossible task of reviving the past, the four initiatives encourage reflection on the relationship of food to urban

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development over time. Although they make no claims to restore lost traditions, their practical interventions implicitly promote conditions that have historically characterised cleaner and healthier food systems. Food has not figured prominently in urban studies, but its relevance to spatial and social reform resonates with public and private commitments to more sustainable cities. Viewed as a core component of urbanism, food opens theoretical and practical avenues for enriching these visions of the future with insights from the past.

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Smart Food Cities on the Menu? Integrating Urban Food Systems into Smart City Policy Making Israel Dela Cruz, Alec Thornton, and Dagmar Haase

Introduction As the global population continues to urbanize, there is increasing interest in harnessing unprecedented digital advancement and smart systems innovation to develop ‘smart cities’. While a common definition has yet to be established, ‘smart city’ discussions generally refer to efficient and quality urban dynamics, as a result of utilizing information and communication technologies (ICT) (Nathali et al. 2018). Maye (2019) defines the concept as being linked to an urban research agenda which seeks to embed advances in technology and data collection into the infrastructures of urban environments. Hollands (2008, 2015) finds the use of term ‘smart’ often implies ‘some kind of positive urban-based technological innovation I. Dela Cruz (*) • A. Thornton Department of Geography, University of New South Wales Australia, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] D. Haase Humboldt University Berlin, UFZ Leipzig, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_5

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and change via ICTs’ (2008: 304), while lacking a critical edge, as ‘displayed through its ignorance of the complexity of urban problems and processes’ (2015: 65). Similar to earlier critiques from Harvey (1989) of city branding for the ‘entrepreneurial city’, smart cities appear to be a labelling tool adopted by city policymakers justifying dominant neoliberal models of urban entrepreneurialism (Hollands, 2015: 65). Discussions of smart cities are multidisciplinary and typically include discussions of urban environmental sustainability, but to what extent are they affecting the way urban planners, policymakers and citizens think about, interact and construct cities? Critical engagement with smart city concepts is important, as the digital drive to provide ICT-based solutions to urban problems can also disguise and exacerbate existing social inequalities, exclude civic engagement and compromise local and community-based efforts to improve the livability of cities for all citizens. In this chapter, we begin by tracking the rudiments of the so-called smart city concept in order to integrate the issue of urban agri-food systems, which is prominent in discussions of what makes a city ‘livable’ and socially cohesive (Maye 2019; Thornton 2018). Our aim is to contribute to ‘smart food city’ conceptualizations by making it ancillary to the overall goal of food democracy. Approaches to these concepts are discussed in examples from Australia and Germany, where neoliberal efforts in smart city transformation can complicate local-level efforts to coordinate non-­ market relations in food democracy. Making Sense of the ‘Smart City’ Revolution Unlike other issues preoccupied with urbanization, urban governance has recently experienced evolution in its conceptualization that runs parallel with that of digitization.1 This is because technology has always been an indispensable and acceptable instrument of modern statecraft. One of those perspectives that rapidly gained ground is the ‘smart city’ concept that stresses the constitutive role of technology in integrating the infrastructural, social, economic and institutional systems of an urban conurbation. Smart cities aim to mobilize knowledge centres and ICT into innovation hubs, in order to strengthen socio-economic progress (dos Santos 2016). 1  Digitization means the ‘full range of soft-ware driven processes—all the way from datafication and computation to prediction, display, communication and action—that allow increasingly smart machines to intervene in the world’ (Olleros and Zhegu 2016: 2).

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Recent research explains smart cities as a wired urban centre that leverages big data to address broader city challenges (Smith 2017), such as public infrastructure and services. To put this in perspective, some cities worldwide are now utilizing smart technology to clear roads of snow in real time (Chicago), to access public goods through the issuance of ‘citizen card’ (Zaragoza, Spain), to alert the public when storm water runoff overwhelms the system (New York) (Townsend 2013), to steer adaptive traffic signals (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and to save electricity by activating sensor-operated street lights that adapt to the presence or absence of people (Kansas City) (Smith 2017; Salikha 2018). In Canada, the ‘Waterfront Toronto’ development, a quasi-public organization and Sidewalk Labs, a Google affiliate, struck a deal that will commence another project, ‘Sidewalk Toronto’, a 12-acre smart hub in the city’s famous wharf that will continuously collect data on users of this space (Lindeman 2018). More recently, the boundaries of smart cities have expanded beyond computer connectivity to include ‘high density, affordable housing, access to mass transit, climate resilience, and ample green space’ (Garfield 2017). Rationales for such an expansion are partly hinged on the conventional wisdom that a fully wired city remains a vision, rather than a reality. In other words, the smart city, as we know it, is merely a metropolis with outstanding technological projects (Smith 2017). It was not until 2017 that pundits reincarnated the concept worthy of the smart archetype. There was an obvious frisson about building a prefab city from a complete blank slate when MicrosoftTM unveiled another astonishing venture to build the Belmont City (Madan 2017). As fitting proof of its futurism, it will be a fully automated data-centric hub entwined with high-speed digital networks with a total of 80,000 residential units and 1500 hectares of commercial space (Madan 2017). Generally, this ambitious idea may have embarked from the digirati movement, an organized gauntlet of highly influential tech elites propounding the imperious impact of computers to society (Simon 1998). Instrumental to its principle is the Metcalfe’s law, which implicitly asserts that the deepening and widening interconnectedness of computers, characterized by the growing network of users, is well-positioned to challenge the traditional world order (Simon 1998). Meanwhile, providing ‘ready-made’ infrastructure is not without its challenges and criticisms. Emerging controversy rests on the raison d’état  of the construct—what makes a city smart? For technocrats, the depiction should be, relatively, straightforward. Apart from the landmark

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technologies, for example, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, blockchain technology, the underlying concept is, generally, a function of digitization. A city is considered smart only in so far as these galvanizing variables are concerned. But this clarity dissolves when we move the object of analysis beyond the digital domain and involve the ‘non-digital’ lens, which eventually makes the appropriateness of the term ‘smart’ a matter of perspective. Therein lies the difficulty and its oscillation between the realm of academia and policy. Simply put, utilizing information and communication technology (ICT) alone does not make a city ‘smart’ (Hollands 2008); hence, there must be some qualifications to be made. Accordingly, identifying the object of smartness between the digital-non-digital continuum is analytically challenging. This is because many aspects of the concept are now linked to other urbanization activities whose processes and resolutions remain to be problematic, such as sustainability, efficiency, planning, governance, livability, well-being, accessibility, practice and so on. Likewise, within the non-digitals, pre-existing issues of ‘legacy governance, social justice, politics, ideology, privacy, and financial elements’ (Smith 2017: n.p.) loom large. Therefore, a number of perspectives exist, attempting to shed light on smart city’s intractable rudiments by focusing on its objectives, themes, drivers and underpinnings. For example, the nascent multidimensional smart city framework of Yigitcanlar et al. (2018) offers an eclectic approach by consolidating the drivers and outcomes of a smart city to assist different stakeholders in understanding the complex processes within this novel concept. Nonetheless, despite existing efforts over the years, ‘smart city’ remains inadequately conceptualized, which limits our understanding of the phenomenon (FernandezAnez et  al. 2018). Some scholars allude this limitation to the short chronicle of the concept (Yigitcanlar et al. 2018), while others compare it to the thorny experience of the equally divisive ‘sustainable city’ (Jabareen 2008). A main challenge now is to adopt a more discriminating sense of the smart city concept by reconciling all these various perspectives. A lack of conceptual clarity appears to be contributing to confusion with regard to whether a smart city is in fact an urban model or a corporate business plan (Rosati and Conti 2016). It is in this line that we argue the conflicts of interest are not limited to digital and non-digital issues. Rather, the discord lies in the real and perceived differences between what is smart and what is another ‘ideal’ city. We propose that this is one major reason why conceptualizations of ‘smart’ and ‘ideal’ can be cumbersome. If we treat

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‘smart’ as a construct, then what do we mean by ‘smart city’? Once we clarify the smart city as a construct, we ask, ‘how then can we conceptually develop the “smart food city”?’ The ‘Smart Food City’ Concept Like the smart city, urban agriculture (UA) is relevant to discussions of innovative systems in transforming urban space for addressing a multitude of urban dilemmas (Thornton 2017). As a multifunctional system (providing services at each step in the food supply chain), UA has the potential to meet the social, cultural, economic and sustenance needs of urban dwellers, while preserving urban ecosystems (Thornton 2018). Evidence abounds on its contribution to health, social cohesion and interactions; psychological and therapeutic benefits; greater environmental education; activism and organization; gender equity; reconnection of people to the land and promotion of sustainable practices and ecological citizenship; sustainable living; and individual overall well-being (Krasny and Tidball 2009; Mintz and McManus 2014). Despite its broad appeal, there is still a dearth of data in terms of UA’s inclusion in the ambit of urban governance. Maye (2019: 1) attempted to link urban food governance with smart city concept by precipitating the concept of a ‘smart food city’, which highlights the importance of both technological and social innovations. He enumerated four elements of the smart food city, all of which are used to underpin any discussion about urban food security. The first element is city regionalism, demonstrated by food system policies that are made ancillary to a city-rural strategy. In this case, the urban food economy is not an exclusive territory of the cityscape, but assumes ‘relocalization’, meaning inclusive of the countryside, as well as various stakeholders in the value chain (Maye  2019: 22). A survey of the work of Sonnino (2016) in Europe and North America reveals municipal and regional authorities are enmeshed in the urban food discourse. The second element can be interpreted to be a reaction to the first. In this case, ‘connectivities’ (Sonnino 2016: 190) refers to the development of food administration within the confines of a city-rural continuum. Here, the operating principle of ‘institutional transformation’ involves the formation of legally mandated agencies. Furthermore, one way to include sustainability dimensions in the smart food city is to secure the integration of ‘circular metabolism’ as a concept in urban economic activity (e.g. food production) and environmental well-being (Maye 2019: 22). This comprises

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the third element, which equates to the notion of a circular economy. Lastly, Maye (2019) underscored the significance of bottom-up approaches as social practices, which is the fourth element in assisting smart food city’s transition towards sustainability. To wit, the initial formulation of ‘smart food city’ implies the confluence of smart technology and non-traditional innovations, such as social and civic forms, in addressing a city’s food security challenges. According to Nam and Pardo (2011), a city becomes smart when investments in ICT and human capital results in sustainable growth and enhances quality of life (QoL) through participatory governance. Therefore, effective design is contingent upon urban planners, and policymakers must be encouraged to tilt decisively in the direction of bottom-up approaches in decision-making processes and execution by seeking the views and opinions of citizens (Lee and Lee 2014). Thus, a city could be ‘smart’ when it has ‘a strong governance-oriented approach which emphasizes the role of social capital and relations in urban development’ (Albino et al. 2015: 4) as a pathway to ‘economic growth and a better quality of life’ (Macke et al. 2018: 718). This human-centred principle favours the human-driven method (HDM) of Krishna, Kummitha and Crutzen (2017) in facing intractable urban challenges. At its core is the vision that people can exert power to shape and reshape urban processes and dynamics towards the creation of public goods. In carrying out this function, it inevitably courts a similar transformative concept in the global food system research agenda—food democracy—where ‘people can regain control of and actively participate in the food system’ (Booth and Coveney 2015: 1). Food democracy is a term that challenges the profit-driven and market-­ oriented industrialized food system. Its basic premise rests on achieving public goods and (re)aligning food at the centre of democratic processes. As with the smart city, ‘food’s environmental infrastructure is also human’ (Lang 2005: 733). It is in this backdrop that we carve out ‘smartness’, in the agri-food hub, as the intersection of democratic processes that influences its overall feature. Thus, in emphasizing ‘smart citizens’ as a way of centring human capital as a key element in determining a city’s ‘smartness’ (Vanolo 2014, 2016), it shares a relationship with food utilization (one of the four pillars of food security) and, as such, it should be made ancillary to food democracy outcomes (Thornton 2018). Regarding the question ‘what might a smart food city look like?’ (Maye 2017: 5), we proposed that it is an urban conurbation that values public good formation (such as citizen-led local food initiatives) through a digitally democratized agri-­food

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system. Simply put, an agri-food city is ‘smart’ once its value-chain tenets (institutional, physical, social and economic) have been democratized. Only by this interpretation can we distinguish from earlier precepts of smart food city. As Bolivar (2018: 57, in Yigitcanlar et al. 2018) aptly puts it, ‘the creation of public value under the context of the smart cities is based on smart urban collaboration, which promotes the use of new technologies to adopt a more participative model of governance’. Lastly, while the human-driven redefinition of smart city resonates a rationalistic school of thought, we contend that technology still heavily impinges upon the city’s planning and it is only by digitization that we can steer it to change towards its smartness. It goes to explain that our conceptualization of smart food city does not negate the pragmatist approach; in fact we concede to the idea of a human-centred approach, but with the caveat that ‘smart’ remains technologically defined. The distinction is most obvious when it comes to explaining and understanding clear breaks in urban governance strategies in Australia and Germany. Are Smart Agri-Food Cities Possible in Australia and Germany? Chelsea Collier, founder of Digi.City,2 explains that, above all, the smart city is about improving the human experience ‘and how, where, and why we feed ourselves is deeply ingrained in our experience’ (Agritecture 2018: n.p.). If one of the ultimate goals is to have healthy cities with better health outcomes across communities, then urban farming must be an integral part of the smart city conversation. Effective city-community partnerships can provide the supportive policy and cultural environment for smart cities to thrive. A critical element to these partnerships is a strong culture of urban activism (Thornton 2018). There is an increasing call for research that explores synergies between various forms of urban agriculture and smart cities, particularly the integration of UA into smart city planning (dos Santos 2016; Thomaier et al. 2015; Khan et al. 2018; Maye 2019; Thornton 2018). The need to create green and sustainable cities and buildings is widely acknowledged by urban planners and architects, and merging food production with architecture offers a wide range of social and ecological benefits, as ‘building-­ integrated agriculture is highly compatible with bioclimatic design 2  Digi.City is a platform designed to discuss the policy behind deploying and supporting smart city technology.

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principles, advanced by architects and environmental designers’ (Puri and Caplow 2009, in Thomaier et al. 2015: 50). Integrating urban food systems into smart cities calls for innovations in urban policies and land-use planning, particularly concerning zoning codes. Many US cities have zoned urban spaces for UA as an integral part of urban food policy planning (Thomaier et  al. 2015; Thornton 2017, 2018). Urban food systems, which include various forms of UA, are highly relevant to smart cities, as they can localize the production and distribution networks of fresh and healthy food, as well as educate and advocate for the reduction of carbon emissions, conserve energy, protect the local climate and increase biological diversity. As Hollands (2015: 62) argues, with corporate and entrepreneurial governance dominating smart city discussions, an alternative or second version could emanate from ‘small-scale and fledgling examples of participatory and citizen-based types of smart initiatives’. Somewhat similar to earlier critiques of urban agriculture (Crush et al. 2010) is the smart city being promoted as a panacea, or a ‘normative and seductive vision’ for future cities (Luque-Ayala and Marvin 2015: 2106). There is mounting research literature on innovations in the use of urban green space in Germany (discussed below), with a particular focus on the city of Berlin (Dankowska et al. 2017; Vierikko et al. 2017), where the integration of urban green space, including space for local food production, is being discussed as vital ‘urban green infrastructure (UGI)’ in smart city policymaking, for the purpose of ensuring more social and environmental equity  as cities expand and become more culturally diverse (Elands et al. 2018; Fischer et al. 2018). In contrast, there is limited discussion from Australian policymakers of urban green space as vital to social cohesion in market-oriented city planning. In the research literature, urban governance and social equity in Australia are discussed as limited in both local activism and planning for urban green space (Mintz and McManus 2014; Thornton 2017). What does this mean for smart city planning? Smart city planning in Australian cities is largely focused on connecting citizens to municipal open-access services data and market-led initiatives, advocating for technology-driven education and industry (Hollands 2008). Urban activism in Australian cities has not been as impactful on formal policymaking for non-market use of urban green space as compared to cities elsewhere (such as Germany, discussed below). Thornton (2017) discussed forms of alternative food systems (e.g. community food gardens) as largely working within existing neoliberal or

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market-oriented structures, as opposed to challenging them. This is particularly the case where local councils appear to consistently fail to recognize the social use value of space, nor consider such socially coordinated spaces as complementary to economic use value when making land-use decisions (Mintz and McManus 2014; Thornton 2017). Australia’s agricultural space in the built-up and peripheral ‘fringes’ is being lost to housing developments, especially in council areas that do not plan for open urban green space. With a limited culture of urban activism, Australian city officials feel no pressure to constructively engage with stakeholders in the urban food system (local food producers, community or market gardens and larger peri-urban farms) to develop frameworks to preserve productive urban and peri-urban agricultural lands as part of a strategy for sustainable urban development. Overall, such limitations may have the unintended effect of benefiting market-oriented smart city planning and, as a consequence, exclude the voices of marginalized communities as stakeholders in shaping future urban design and development. Although not presently realized in the Australian example, there are many social and environmental, as well as some selected economic, benefits to be gained from thinking about urban green space as cultivated commons for producing a myriad of nutritional, ecological and recreational benefits, including clean food, fresh air, biodiversity and as spaces for encounter and relaxation (Thornton 2018). Ultimately, these benefits improve overall health and lower stress levels of urban dwellers (Haase et al. 2014; Kabisch et al. 2014). In Germany, the expanding former East German cities of Leipzig and Berlin impressively show aspects and legacies, pros and cons, potential and challenges of urban garden spaces in growing towns. Urban space in these cities experiences similar pressures for economic development projects as seen in cities elsewhere (Wolff et al. 2016). What is interesting about many German cities is the level of urban activism that leads to more cooperative forms of urban renewal, as opposed to dominant market-oriented capitalism. Forms of urban activism are, first, gardens as bottom-up initiatives where volunteers gather to claim or ‘prepare’ vacant space for community or social use, with grey spaces transitioning into green spaces. Second, people involved in such forms of ‘urban commons and guerrilla gardening’ are often young and educated, and they tend to attract similar groups to the area (Spilková and Vágner 2016). Third, community gardens can also emerge as more socially exclusive ‘grey eminence’ type of institutional places within a neighbourhood (Holland 2004; Reynolds 2015), where

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other potentially more socially inclusive activities such as festivals, seminars and multiple forms of ‘green lifestyles’ find a home. For various reasons— urban aesthetics, social cohesion, fresh food access or health and well-­ being—populations in neighbourhoods with a community greening outlook are increasing, particularly among young households (Dankowska et al. 2017). This is what smart policymaking in Europe and current science with concepts such as biocultural diversity or ‘the edible city’ (Artmann and Sartison 2018) of UGI promise (Elands et al. 2018), and recent evidence from Leipzig demonstrates that it is an appropriate way forward, but not without trade-offs. In the two German cities used as examples here, forms of pioneering development have (re)captured the interest of urban planning departments and investors. Eventually, gardening pioneers have increasingly become victims of their own success. Property prizes and costs for renting a flat have risen and neoliberal municipality-investor deals have been cutting away garden space for real estate development, and this process is far from being abated (Haase et al. 2017; Wolff et al. 2016). One can conclude that urban gardens, including local food production and social cohesion activities, can act as a successful element of smarter cities, but only when they are fixed to legally binding state or municipal urban land-­ use plans and, most critically, when activists and representatives provide a strong local voice in development agendas impacting their neighbourhood.

Conclusion The scale of forthcoming urban challenges is formidable. In urban food systems alone, expanding global urban population, market volatility and a changing climate are testing the capacities of cities to ensure equitable access, availability and distribution of fresh, nutritious food (Barthel et al. 2015). The concept of ‘smart city’ has recently piqued interest in digital technology as a desirable policy solution to these vexing urban obstacles. However, the existence of ad hoc conceptualizations twinges its recognition as a popular paradigm. As a result of its popularity, the concept has expanded to mean almost any ‘form of technology-based innovation in the planning, development, operation and management of cities’ (Yigitcanlar et al. 2018). As discussed in this chapter, tech start-ups are often accompanied by what appears to be an undemocratic tone, circumventing the city’s statutory public-private partnership procedures and excluding the city officials from knowing the details prior to their approval.

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It is a lesson that could be applied to a wider urban policy realm. Rather than upholding the potential of big data in creating urban corporate utopias, it is imperative for urban governance to adapt to the evolving language of ‘smartness’, where social equity concerns are not compromised amidst urban change.

References Agritecture. (2018). Ideas for Urban Agriculture and Smart Cities. Retrieved from https://www.agritecture.com/post/2018/2/22/exploring-the-smart-cityrevolution. Albino, V., Berardi, U., & Dangelico, R.  M. (2015). Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives. Journal of Urban Technology, 22(1), 1–19. Artmann, M., & Sartison, K. (2018). The Role of Urban Agriculture as a Nature-­ Based Solution: A Review for Developing a Systemic Assessment Framework. Sustainability, 10, 1937. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10061937. Barthel, S., Parker, J., & Ernstson, H. (2015). Food and Green Space in Cities: A resilience Lens on Gardens and Urban Environmental Movements. Urban Studies, 52(7), 1321–1338. Booth, S., & Coveney, J. (2015). Food Democracy from Consumer to Food Citizen. Singapore: Springer. Crush, J., Hovorka, A., & Tevara, D. (2010). Urban Food Production and Household Food Security in Southern African Cities. Cape Town: African Food Security Urban Network. Dankowska, A., Haase, D., & Haase, A. (2017). Urbane Gärten – Alles Kraut und Rüben? Garten und Landschaft, 3, 12–19. dos Santos, M. J. P. L. (2016). Smart cities and urban areas – Aquaponics as innovative urban agriculture. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, 20, 402–406. Elands, E, Vierikko, K., Andersson, E., Fischer, L. K., Goncalves, P., Haase, D., et al. (2018). Biocultural Diversity: A Novel Concept to Assess Human-Nature Interrelations, Nature Conservation and Stewardship in Cities. Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2018.04.006. Fernandez-Anez, V., Fernández-Güell, J. M., & Giffinger, R. (2018, June). Smart City Implementation and Discourses: An Integrated Conceptual Model. The Case of Vienna. Cities, 78, 4–16. Fischer, L. K., Brinkmeyer, D., Honold, J., van der Jagt, A., Botzat, A., Lafortezza, R., et  al. (2018). Recreational Ecosystem Services in European Cities: Sociocultural and Geographic Context Matters for Park Use. Ecosystem Services. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2018.01.015.

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Garfield, L. (2017). Bill Gates’ Investment Group Spent $80 Million to Build a ‘Smart City’ in the Desert – And Urban Planners Are Divided. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-smart-city-pros-cons-arizonaurban-planners-2017-11/?r=AU&IR=T. Haase, D., Larondelle, N., Andersson, E., Artmann, M., Borgström, S., Breuste, J., et  al. (2014). A Quantitative Review of Urban Ecosystem Services Assessment: Concepts, Models and Implementation. AMBIO, 43(4), 413–433. Haase, D., Kabisch, S., Haase, A., Larondelle, N., Schwarz, N., Wolff, M., et al. (2017). Greening Cities  – To Be Socially Inclusive? About the Paradox of Society and Ecology in Cities. Habitat International, 64, 41–48. Harvey, D. (1989). From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism. Geografiska Annale, 71B(1), 3–17. Holland, L. (2004). Diversity and Connections in Community Gardens: A Contribution to Local Sustainability. Local Environment, 9(3), 285–305. Hollands, R. G. (2008). Will the Real Smart City Please Stand Up? Intelligent, Progressive or Entrepreneurial? City, 12(3), 303–320. Hollands, R.  G. (2015). Critical Interventions into the Corporate Smart City. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 8(1), 61–77. Jabareen, Y. (2008). A New Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Development. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 10(2), 179–192. Kabisch, N., Qureshi, S., & Haase, D. (2014). Urban Nature: Human-­ Environment Interactions in Urban Green Spaces – Contemporary Issues and Future Prospects. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 50, 25–34. Khan, R., Aziz, Z., & Ahmed, V. (2018). Building Integrated Agriculture Information Modelling (BIAIM): An Integrated Approach Towards Urban Agriculture. Sustainable Cities and Society, 37, 594–607. Krasny, M. E., & Tidball, K. G. (2009). Applying a Resilience Systems Framework to Urban Environmental Education. Environmental Education Research Month, 15(4), 465–482. Krishna, R., Kummitha, R., & Crutzen, N. (2017, April). How Do We Understand Smart Cities? An Evolutionary Perspective. Cities, 67, 43–52. Lang, T. (2005). Food Control or Food Democracy? Re-engaging Nutrition with Society and the Environment. Public Health Nutrition, 8, 730–737. Lee, J., & Lee, H. (2014). Developing and Validating a Citizen-Centric Typology for Smart City Services. Government Information Quarterly, 31(Suppl.1), S93–S105. Lindeman,T. (2018). Is sidewalk labs building a brotopia on Toronto’s waterfront?. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/j5a39y/ sidewalk-labs-privacy-concerns-toronto-google. Luque-Ayala, A., & Marvin, S. (2015). Developing a Critical Understanding of Smart Urbanism. Urban Studies, 52(12), 2105–2116.

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Macke, J., Casagrande, R.M, Sarate, R., & Silva, K. A. (2018). Smart City and Quality of Life: Citizens’ Perception in a Brazilian Case Study. Journal of Cleaner Production, 182, 717–726. Madan, M. (2017). Bill Gates Just Bought a Huge Chunk of Land in the Desert and Wants to Build His Own ‘Smart City’. Retrieved from https://www.smh. com.au/business/bill-gates-just-bought-a-huge-chunk-of-land-in-the-desertand-wants-to-build-his-own-smart-city-20171117-gzn4zr.html. Maye, D. (2019). ‘Smart Food City’: Conceptual Relations Between Smart City Planning, Urban Food Systems and Innovation Theory. City, Culture and Society, 16, 18–24. Mintz, G., & McManus, P. (2014). Seeds for Change? Attaining the Benefits of Community Gardens Through Council Policies in Sydney, Australia. Australian Geographer, 45(4), 541–558. Nam, T., & Pardo, T. A. (2011). Conceptualizing Smart City with Dimensions of Technology, People, and Institutions. Proceedings of the 12th Annual International Digital Government Research Conference on Digital Government Innovation in Challenging Times – Dg.o ’11, 282. Nathali, B., Khan, M., & Han, K. (2018, January). Towards Sustainable Smart Cities: A Review of Trends, Architectures, Components, and Open Challenges in Smart Cities. Sustainable Cities and Society, 38, 697–713. Olleros, F., & Zhegu, M. (2016). Introduction. In F. Olleros & M. Zhegu (Eds.), Research Handbook on Digital Transformations (p.  2). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Puri, V., & Caplow, T. (2009). How to Grow Food in the 100% Renewable City: Building-Integrated Agriculture. In P. Droege (Ed.), 100% Renewable: Energy Autonomy in Action (pp. 229–241). London, UK: Earthscan. Reynolds, K. (2015). Disparity Despite Diversity: Social Injustice in New  York City’s Urban Agriculture System. Antipode, 47(1), 240–259. Rosati, U., & Conti, S. (2016). What Is a Smart City Project? An Urban Model or A Corporate Business Plan? Procedia  – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 223, 968–973. Salikha, A. (2018). Ranked: World’s Top Best Performing ‘Smart Cities’. Retrieved from https://seasia.co/2018/03/14/ ranked-world-s-top-best-performing-smart-cities. Simon, G. (1998). Internet Governance Goes Global. In V. Kubálková, N. Onuf, & P.  Kowert (Eds.), International Relations in a Constructed World. M.E. Sharpe: Armonk, NY. Smith, K. (2017). The Inconvenient Truth About Smart Cities. Retrieved from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/obser vations/the-inconvenienttruth-about-smart-cities/. Sonnino, R. (2016). The New Geography of Food Security: Exploring the Potential of Urban Food Strategies. Geographical Journal, 182(2), 190–200.

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PART II

Opportunities for Top-Down/ Bottom-Up Collaboration? Case Studies from the Global North

Food Sovereignty: A Nirvana Concept for Swiss Urban Agriculture? Cyril Mumenthaler, Rémi Schweizer, and Joëlle Salomon Cavin

Introduction Food sovereignty, in the Swiss context, has become a ubiquitous rallying cry deployed by many urban agriculture initiatives, including community-­ supported agriculture (CSA), community gardens, local food policies, urban farms and some regional labels. What is actually meant by food sovereignty in these initiatives? Our hypothesis is that “food sovereignty”—just like “sustainable development”—operates as a nirvana concept (Molle 2008): a term that is sufficiently vague, and nice-sounding, for different actors and policies to reference it in order to legitimise their practices. It is also a boundary object offering significant “interpretive flexibility” (Trompette and Vinck 2009) and thereby helping to facilitate connections between actors with widely diverging views. Links between food sovereignty and urban agriculture have previously been addressed primarily in the context of discussions on food justice (Heynen et al. 2012; Tornaghi 2016). This chapter proposes a critical perspective on the use of the food sovereignty concept, especially in relation C. Mumenthaler (*) • R. Schweizer • J. S. Cavin University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_6

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to urban agriculture. The aim is to clarify the diverse understandings of food sovereignty in the Swiss context and more specifically in public urban agriculture initiatives. We will see that even though it originated in the peasant movements of the global South, food sovereignty resonates with the demands of promoters of urban agriculture initiatives and is becoming increasingly prevalent in Switzerland. Food sovereignty appears as a constant, recurring theme even though the specific aims involved vary from one stakeholder and one initiative to the next.

Significant Margin for Interpretation The concept of food sovereignty first emerged in the 1980s (Edelman 2014), but appeared in the aims of the Via Campesina movement at the World Food Summit organised by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1996, where it was defined as: “the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity” (Via Campesina 1996, p. 1). Food sovereignty appears here as a worldwide critical alternative to the concept of food security, which became established in the post-war period via the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), based on economic principles such as trade liberalisation, privatisation, deregulation and the opening of economic markets (Patel 2009; Schanbacher 2010). Food sovereignty is presented as an alternative to industrialised, intensive, large-scale production based on free trade and export—an alternative involving small-scale production based on the sustainable use of natural resources (Ziegler et al. 2002). Supporters of food sovereignty demand a radical reorganisation of agricultural trade; it is often presented as “an alternative global moral economy” (McMichael 2005, p.  290) in opposition to the productivist paradigm which measures food security in quantitative, monetary terms without taking any account of where and how the food is produced. In short, food sovereignty is a civilizational movement, combining a conjunctural critique of neoliberal “food security” (equating agro-exporting with “feeding the world”) with long-held principles of self-determination reframed as democratic rights for and of citizens and humans […] The central ethic—food as a human right, not a commodity—expresses the movement’s potent politicization of neoliberal “food security.” (McMichael 2014, p. 938)

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If the theoretical opposition between “peasant” and “productivist” models lies at the basis of the distinction between food sovereignty and food security, in the rhetoric and in practice the borderline between these two concepts is not always so clear (Edelman et al. 2014). It should be noted, too, that the semantic deficiency of the term “food sovereignty” has been apparent from the start (Edelman et  al. 2014; Patel 2009, p.  663). One frequently cited criticism is that the definition of food sovereignty depends on the identity of the “sovereign”—with a shift over the years from the nation-state towards the people (Edelman et al. 2014; Patel 2009). The Via Campesina definition of 1996 identified “nations” as sovereign, for example—yet this was supplanted by “the people” in later definitions.1 The critical literature on food sovereignty (Edelman et  al. 2014; Patel 2009) demonstrates that key elements for implementing this kind of alternative agriculture remain under-developed—leaving significant margin for interpretation in areas such as the role of international trade, of exports and imports, the link between food sovereignty and food self-­sufficiency, the role of urban agriculture in the construction of food sovereignty, and indeed the role of the state. Given such interpretive latitude, the principle of sovereignty might equally refer to state strategies for getting to grips with food issues—or to measures by which small-scale producers and the wider population can regain control of food chains (Desmarais and Wittman 2014). It therefore legitimises both ground-up initiatives and public policies operating within existing national and international legislative frameworks. We can see, then, that the concept’s vagueness facilitates its appropriation by stakeholders with very different political agendas and therefore with modes of implementation that can diverge significantly, too.

1  “Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture; to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives; to determine the extent to which they want to be self-reliant; to restrict the dumping of products in their markets, and; to provide local fisheries-based communities the priority in managing the use of and the rights to aquatic resources. Food sovereignty does not negate trade, but rather, it promotes the formulation of trade policies and practices that serve the rights of peoples to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production” (People’s Food Sovereignty Network 2002, p. 1).

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Food Sovereignty and Urban Agriculture: A Marriage of Rural and Urban Although it originated in rural peasant movements in the global South (Edelman 2014; McMichael 2014, 2015), the concept of food sovereignty is increasingly extending its reach to cover struggles in urban contexts, too. Henceforth, it is used as well in urban and rural contexts and connects a large range of actors (McMichael 2015). Today we find key elements of the food sovereignty discourse arising in the rhetoric around urban agriculture in countries of the North: reconnecting urban and rural, re-establishing local food chains, reconnecting citizens with the production of the food they eat and democratising food systems (Heynen et al. 2012). These elements are found both in alternative distribution channels developed via community initiatives (CSA, community gardens, etc.) and in initiatives supported by public authorities (food policies, urban farms, institutional catering plans, etc.). The list of features these two concepts share in common can be extended at will; like food sovereignty, urban agriculture is often advocated for its multifunctionality, its contribution to food security, its ability to reconnect consumers and producers or to overcome the “metabolic rift” (Bowness and Wittman 2017; McClintock 2010; Schneider and McMichael 2010; Wittman 2009). A central point of convergence lies in the relocalisation of production and consumption and in food chains controlled by producers and consumers. Both urban agriculture and food sovereignty refer to local food sheds, alternative food network and localisation of economies, which “include reducing ‘food miles’; promoting direct marketing and geographical origin indications; local sourcing for restaurants and […], and maintaining greenbelts around urban areas” (Edelman 2014, p. 968). Invented in the rural contexts of the South, the food sovereignty concept is proving remarkably adaptable to the demands of urban agriculture, primarily in the North. The contexts and stakeholders involved are different, but there are surprising parallels and resonance between the characteristic rural battles and what is being fought in the urban context like “Struggles over access to land, over environmental conditions, over state regulations, and market constrictions” (Bowness and Wittman 2017, p. 10). Bowness and Wittman name “urban agrarianism” these affinities and social processes of alignment. Urban agriculture seems to be functioning as a sounding board for food sovereignty, picking up and amplifying its demands. It is hardly

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s­urprising, then, that urban agriculture is often associated with a wider struggle to radically change the urban food system and achieve food justice (Heynen et  al. 2012; Tornaghi 2016). Viewed in this light, urban agriculture has the potential to build solidarity between urban populations and farmers—to cultivate, in the phrase coined by Bowness and Wittman (2017, p. 3), an “urban agrarianism”: This potential is reflected in the fact that the urban and peri-urban-based food initiatives are important sources of political momentum in food sovereignty advocacy, given that such advocacy is motivated not only by an idea of solidarity with farmers in the distant countryside but also by immediate concerns around public health, access to healthy and affordable foods, dismantling racialized food systems, and the culture and lifestyle of food producers, food sellers, restaurant owners and consumers. (Edelman et  al. 2014, p. 919)

Advocates of food sovereignty and urban agriculture converge, therefore, around common values, questioning the dominant agri-food system, seeking to renew connections between producers and consumers, between city and agriculture, and voicing common demands of agricultural and food systems. The concept even penetrates the more traditional sphere of the agricultural elites, who show no compunction at all in referencing it to promote their ideas. In Switzerland, recent debates (September 2017) on a popular initiative aiming to guarantee the country’s “food security,” launched by the country’s main agricultural organisation, the Swiss Farmers’ Union (USP, Union Suisse des Paysans), clearly showed this dynamic at work: food sovereignty seemed to be on the lips of everyone supporting the initiative, politicians and agricultural professionals alike— even though the concept was originally developed in opposition to the idea of food security.

A Concept Serving Diverse Agricultural Policies Initially supported in Switzerland by grassroots movements (CSA, small-­ scale farmers’ union) in the late 1990s and early 2000s, food sovereignty was rapidly institutionalised at both national and local levels, with meanings that can vary greatly. The farmers’ union Uniterre has been deploying the concept for around 15  years. It defends a vision of food sovereignty with reference to Via

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Campesina, in support of local, small-scale agriculture: “we call for the implementation of the criteria that define food sovereignty, as defined by this movement [Via Campesina] in 1996—including prices linked to production costs, sustainable production and trading systems, and access to land, among others” (Uniterre’s general secretary, quoted in Equiterre Info 2013, p. 7, our translation). Here urban agriculture is identified as a key instrument for implementing food sovereignty, the proximity to consumers encouraging both commercial trading and human communications. This union has also proposed that the principle of food sovereignty should be written into the Swiss constitution. This popular initiative (entirely separate from the popular initiative on “food security”), on which the Swiss population has yet to vote, stresses a commitment to radically transform agricultural policy in Switzerland, in particular by strengthening indigenous production and small-scale agriculture and establishing remunerative prices. At the same time, the Swiss Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) presents food sovereignty as a key component of its agricultural policy for 2014–2017. In contrast to Uniterre’s vision, here food sovereignty does not mean boosting employment in the agricultural sector or questioning the current production and trading system. Instead it would appear to echo Swiss agricultural policy, and especially its aims of enhancing agricultural competitiveness and productivity. This vision contradicts numerous priorities defended by Uniterre and the stakeholders involved in CSA in the name of food sovereignty—access to land, job creation, remunerative prices, social proximity between producers and consumers, and so on. For its part, the Swiss Farmers’ Union (USP, Union Suisse des Paysans) invokes food sovereignty to support a more security-focused vision of agriculture. In line with Dale’s observations (2017) regarding the institutionalisation of food sovereignty in Quebec, here the concept seems, for some actors, to be equated with the concept of food self-sufficiency. According to the USP, food sovereignty aims to fulfil consumers’ needs for diverse, sustainable, high-quality domestic produce, aiming to deliver a high level of self-sufficiency. Supported by representatives of both right and left, this interpretation permits the development of arguments defending a policy of food self-sufficiency that veers at times towards nationalism. For the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP/UDC), for example, food sovereignty is constructed as a core element of a policy focused on national independence. It “requires a clearly defined agricultural policy that ­guarantees the future of indigenous agriculture and small-scale farming,”

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and opposes “attempts to establish global agricultural free trade” (UDC 2009). We can see that the concept of food sovereignty has become a ubiquitous virtuous goal, a “warmly persuasive” keyword (Williams 1985) of the rhetoric around agricultural policy. It seems to be vague enough to be incorporated in different political agendas. This flexibility is also well illustrated by local public urban agriculture initiatives.

Two Illustrations in Geneva and Lausanne Food sovereignty is also increasingly put forward at local level. This is the case, for example, in two initiatives supported by the region of Geneva and the city of Lausanne respectively: a regional agricultural label in Geneva (Genève Région—Terre Avenir [GRTA]) and an urban farm owned by the city of Lausanne (Rovéréaz farm). The region of Geneva is very proactive when it comes to integrating agriculture within its regional policies (Salomon Cavin and Mumenthaler 2015). The GRTA label is an example of this approach. Presented as “an original initiative promoting the food sovereignty of Geneva” (État de Genève 2015, p. 2, our translation), it is based on four principles considered to cover the spectrum of food sovereignty values (Fig.  1): quality, proximity, traceability and fairness. This label is the outcome of advocacy by movements claiming to stand for food sovereignty (Uniterre in particular). In the early 2000s, these movements occupied the public space and secured the creation of a dedicated “food sovereignty task force,” bringing together the agricultural community, consumer representatives, unions and public stakeholders. The task force was set up by the cantonal minister of agriculture at the time (an environmentalist) following a demonstration organised by the agricultural union Uniterre and a number of Genevan CSA initiatives. The demonstration aligned itself with the peasant struggle and La Via Campesina, calling for discussions on the implications of an agricultural policy focused on food sovereignty, across both urban and rural areas, for a canton like Geneva. The task force met over a period of several years, leading, in particular, to the launch of the GRTA label in 2004. For the people who staged the demonstration, this label made it possible to implement, in practice, principles integral to food sovereignty— principles such as the development of remunerative prices and of alternative agri-food systems and a social proximity between producers and consumers.

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Fig. 1  Carton of GRTA whole milk. The rear of the carton presents the four key principles of the brand

However, for the more traditional actors in the agricultural sector (such as the cantonal chamber of agriculture, which represents the various industries involved at cantonal level) mobilising this concept was more about opportunity than any ambition to radically restructure cantonal agricultural policy: “We shouldn’t get stuck on the name. It’s true that afterwards there were various movements that advocated this food sovereignty. I don’t know why we started out from that. In the beginning maybe it didn’t mean quite the same thing as it does today” (interview with a representative of the Geneva chamber of agriculture, 2016, our translation). Within the task force and then the various committees tasked with supervising the label, these differences of vision sometimes generated heated debates around the specifications and principles to be observed in order to

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qualify. On some points compromise was possible; on others the distance between the different parties seemed too great. While the initiative had been launched with the aim of transforming Geneva’s food and agriculture system (at least on the part of some of those involved), food sovereignty ultimately proved to be, at least in part, a common banner or a “machine for manufacturing consent” (Faure et al. 2010, p. 5, our translation). To a large extent the introduction and success of the label effectively legitimise a cantonal agricultural policy based above all on commercial principles. It would be wrong, though, to see it as mere window-dressing, because genuine, unprecedented commitments have been achieved in the name of food sovereignty: exemplary traceability (the producer’s name and the production method are shown on every product, for example), the relocalisation of some processing operations (presses, slaughterhouse, malthouse, oil mills, etc.), the requirement to observe certain minimal employment standards and the diversification of production. The city of Lausanne is also very active with regard to urban agriculture. It pioneered urban gardening in Switzerland with its urban allotment gardens, created in 1996. It is also active in the food planning sphere, having launched an action plan for municipal institutional catering which aims to increase the consumption of local products. Complementing this procurement policy, the city decided to devote one of the land estates it owns (Rovéréaz) to the production of organic fruits and vegetables, primarily destined for use in school meals. The city regularly uses the term food sovereignty in its communications on these initiatives: “In a global market that has spiralled out of control, it is through exemplary initiatives like these that we can make concepts of ‘taste’ and ‘quality’ meaningful again. While simultaneously addressing the question of food sovereignty— unobtrusively, and in a way that enables people to taste the benefits for themselves” (Lausanne municipal website, 2017, our translation). Rovéréaz farm differs from the previous case because here food sovereignty was mobilised from the outset by the public player, the city of Lausanne, and not by activist communities. In both cases, though, food sovereignty appears as an original goal of the project. The city launched a call for proposals in which the farm is presented as an instrument for implementing food sovereignty: “At this stage the aim is to make the Rovéréaz estate an iconic location playing an integral part in the city’s sustainable development policy while promoting, communicating and putting into practice the key principles of food sovereignty, in particular

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those which aim to support food autonomy” (Ville de Lausanne 2014, p. 12, our translation). Despite being given this central role, food sovereignty is never defined by the city authority, which makes no reference to the Via Campesina definition or to the more local definition offered by Uniterre. The only reference of the kind is to the aim of supporting food autonomy. The winning project for running the estate naturally takes up food sovereignty as its central concept, around which its promoters formulate four key areas (organic production, educational activities, economic valorisation and processing, and socio-professional inclusion). But here, too, the definition remains vague and implicit. Interviews with members of the project show that their understandings of the term vary from one project area to the next. For the manager of the educational activities, food sovereignty appears as a genuinely societal project involving a radical change in production methods and human relations; managers of the production operations tend to present food sovereignty as being about local production, respecting the environment and social conditions that develop direct relations between producers and consumers. In this case, food sovereignty appears as an intrinsically virtuous principle that is given material form in the concrete aim of supplying school canteens via local production. An aim that is, by its nature, consensual. To quote a representative of the city authority, how can anyone oppose a project that aims to “feed the city’s children with organic produce grown on the city’s own farm?” (interview with a representative of the city of Lausanne, 2017, our translation).

Discussion In these examples, which are national and local, food sovereignty appears as a concept that is both virtuous and flexible. Virtuous because it defines an ideal horizon that these societies should strive towards, the challenge being not necessarily to reach it but to get closer to it; flexible because the definition of this horizon, and the breakdown of the specific steps for getting there, varies greatly from one case to the other. This is what François Molle calls a nirvana concept (Molle 2008). A nirvana concept is an ideal image, virtuous by its nature, towards which we should aim: “Although, just as with nirvana, the likelihood that we may reach them is admittedly low, the mere possibility of achieving them and the sense of ‘progress’ attached to any shift in their direction

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suffice to make them an attractive and useful focal point” (Molle 2008, p. 132). As with sustainable development, or good governance, nirvana concepts offer a positive alternative to the present-day world, “a vision whereby contradictions would be dissolved” (Molle 2008, p. 132). They offer the significant benefit of making it possible to bring together actors who may have opposing beliefs around aims which are, by their nature, consensual, which erase political dimensions by focusing on benefits while playing down the means by which they are implemented (Molle 2012, p.  233). The Lausanne case illustrates this point perfectly: food sovereignty is instrumentalised as a virtuous, unifying slogan, without any real assessment of the concrete implications of putting it into practice. Feeding school children with organic produce from a city-owned farm is a project that generates support—yet specific methods for implementing the concept in real terms are difficult to find. For example, the authority cannot guarantee to purchase the farm’s produce, and cannot commit to ensuring remunerative prices. Nirvana concepts are sufficiently flexible to be deployed by actors with opposing objectives and “as a means of forwarding their agendas” (Molle 2008, p. 150). The debates around food sovereignty in Switzerland are revealing here: definitions and concepts of food sovereignty vary greatly depending on who is deploying the term—from free-market devotees to defenders of local agriculture. We therefore see the concept invoked both to justify a return to protectionism at national level—and even at local level—and in support of developing alter-globalisation, internationalist agricultural and food policies. In Geneva, the reappropriation by stakeholders in traditional agricultural sectors of opportunities created by food sovereignty advocates again shows the process of instrumentalisation at work. This movement, which initially aimed to radically change how Genevan agriculture operates, ended up by meeting long-standing demands of representatives of Genevan agriculture (differentiation, proximity, traceability) without questioning pricing rationales or relations between producers and consumers. Here, then, food sovereignty appears as a “machine for manufacturing consent” (Faure et al. 2010, p. 5), enabling certain political agendas to be strengthened and legitimised (Schweizer and Mumenthaler 2019). During the negotiations, the traditional stakeholders in the agricultural sector reappropriated the concept in this way, aligning it with their own demands.

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Yet nirvana concepts can also create opportunities for protest and disagreement, acting as a boundary object, a common denominator for negotiation (Molle 2008, p. 150). In the cases analysed, the flexibility of the food sovereignty concept effectively created opportunities for negotiation between players who shared few common interests at the outset. In the case of Geneva’s regional label, the existence of the “food sovereignty” task force illustrates this unifying, federative capacity. This group brought together a wide panel of actors with very different values and strategies to support a common project—which did ultimately materialise. In this respect it can be seen as a facilitator, driving transformation of the dominant agricultural model.

Conclusion Invented in the rural South, food sovereignty is currently being taken up by the North, serving the cause of urban agriculture in particular. Here urban agriculture is functioning as a sounding board, picking up and amplifying more wide-ranging demands to radically change the urban food system and achieve food justice. Rural and urban supporters of a radical vision of food sovereignty are calling for a radical reorganisation of agricultural trade. In this chapter we have shown that the vague, flexible character of food sovereignty allows it to be adopted by a wide range of actors. In line with the observations made by Dale (2017) in Quebec, the current process of institutionalisation—desired by those holding a radical vision of food sovereignty—leads to a reappropriation, diverting its meaning. Eventually, it serves various political agendas, sometimes very distant from the goals of La Via Campesina. In the case of Switzerland, supporters of liberalism and industrial agriculture are citing food sovereignty in support of their policies just as much as activists advocating a small-scale agriculture that brings consumers and producers closer together. Intrinsically virtuous and federative, the concept now appears as a convenient keyword to secure support for local food policies. The idea of the nirvana concept effectively conveys this process of instrumentalisation. Yet even though we might regret the way in which food sovereignty is constantly deployed today, and depleted of its meaning, it must be noted, too, that it represents a driving force for placing urban agriculture, and alternative forms of agricultural production more generally, on the political agenda.

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References Bowness, E., & Wittman, H. (2017). Bringing the Country into the City? Signals of Agrarian Citizenship and Food Sovereignty in the Practice of Urban Agriculture in Brazil and Canada. Presented at Elikadura21, Vitoria-Gasteiz. Dale, B. (2017). Food Sovereignty Struggles in Quebec: Co-optation and Resistance. In Public Policies for Food Sovereignty: Social Movements and the State. New York: Routledge. Desmarais, A.  A., & Wittman, H. (2014). Farmers, Foodies and First Nations: Getting to Food Sovereignty in Canada. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(6), 1153–1173. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876623. Edelman, M. (2014). Food Sovereignty: Forgotten Genealogies and Future Regulatory Challenges. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(6), 959–978. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876998. Edelman, M., Weis, T., Baviskar, A., Jr, S. M. B., Holt-Giménez, E., Kandiyoti, D., & Wolford, W. (2014). Introduction: Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(6), 911–931. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/03066150.2014.963568. Equiterre info. (2013). Cultivons nos villes! (1), 8. Etat de Genève. (2015). Genève Région  – Terre Avenir, directive générale. Retrieved from https://www.geneveterroir.ch/sites/default/files/directive_ generale_grta_version_du_01-10-15_0.pdf. Faure, A., Glassey, O., & Leresche, J.-P. (2010). Démocratie participative et démocratie différentielle. Métropoles (7). Retrieved from http://metropoles. revues.org/4173. Heynen, N., Kurtz, H. E., & Trauger, A. (2012). Food Justice, Hunger and the City. Geography Compass, 6(5), 304–311. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.17498198.2012.00486.x. McClintock, N. (2010). Why Farm the City? Theorizing Urban Agriculture Through a Lens of Metabolic Rift. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsq005. McMichael, P. (2005). Global Development and The Corporate Food Regime. In New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development (Vol. 11, pp. 265–299). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10.1016/ S1057-1922(05)11010-5. McMichael, P. (2014). Historicizing food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 41(6), 933–957. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876999. McMichael, P. (2015). A Comment on Henry Bernstein’s Way with Peasants, and Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 42(1), 193–204. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.936853. Molle, F. (2008). Nirvana Concepts, Narratives and Policy Models: Insights from the Water Sector. Water Alternatives, 1(1), 131–156.

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Molle, F. (2012). La gestion de l’eau et les apports d’une approche par la political ecology. In Environnement, discours et pouvoir. L’approche Political ecology (Quæ). Paris: Gautier et Benjaminsen. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francois_Molle/publication/269762482_La_gestion_ de_l%27eau_et_les_apports_d%27une_approche_par_la_political_ecology/ links/549583120cf2ec13375b290f.pdf. Patel, R. (2009). Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(3), 663–706. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150903143079. Salomon Cavin, J., & Mumenthaler, C. (2015). Agriculture Integrated into Urban Planning?: A Challenge. In Urban Agriculture Europe (p. 256). Berlin: Jovis. Schanbacher, W. D. (2010). The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict Between Food Security and Food Sovereignty. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO. Schneider, M., & McMichael, P. (2010). Deepening, and Repairing, the Metabolic Rift. The Journal of Peasant Studies. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/abs/10.1080/03066150.2010.494371. Schweizer, R., & Mumenthaler, C. (2019). Agriculture urbaine et souveraineté alimentaire à Genève (Suisse), machines à consentement ou moteurs d’hybridation du référentiel agricole dominant? VertigO - La revue électronique des sciences de l'environnement [En ligne], 17, numéro 3. Tornaghi, C. (2016). Urban Agriculture in the Food-Disabling City: (Re)defining Urban Food Justice, Reimagining a Politics of Empowerment. Antipode, 49(3), 781–801. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12291. Trompette, P., & Vinck, D. (2009). Retour sur la notion d’objet-frontière. Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances, 3(1), 5–27. UDC. (2009). Souveraineté alimentaire: qualité et sécurité de l’approvisionnement. Retrieved from http://www.udc.ch/index.cfm/actualites/exposes/ souverainete-alimentaire-qualite-et-securite-de-lapprovisionnement/. Via Campesina. (1996). The right to produce and access to land. Via Campesina. Retrieved from http://www.acordinternational.org/silo/files/ decfoodsov1996.pdf. Ville de Lausanne. (2014). Rapport préavis no. 2014/37. Une agriculture biologique de proximité à Rovéréaz. Réponse à la motion de M.  Roland Ostermann “Quel avenir pour le domaine agricole de Rovéréaz?”. Retrieved from http://www.lausanne.ch/thematiques/nature-parcs-et-domaines/ espaces-verts/domaines-agricoles/domaine-de-rovereaz-un-avenir-proche-etdurable/extrasArea/00/links/01/linkBinary/Pr%C3%A9avis_2014-37.pdf. Williams, R. (1985). The Country and the City (2nd impr.). London: The Hogarth Press. Wittman, H. (2009). Reworking the Metabolic Rift: La Vía Campesina, Agrarian Citizenship, and Food Sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 36(4), 805–826. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150903353991. Ziegler, J., Berthelot, J., & Berlan, J.-P. (2002). Vía Campesina: une alternative paysanne à la mondialisation néolibérale (Éditions du CETIM). Geneva: CETIM.

Cultural Heritage Preservation and Resilience in Urban Agriculture Through the Lens of Social Justice: A Case Study in Milan Paola Branduini, Coline Perrin, Brigitte Nougarèdes, and Elena Colli Introduction Urban Agriculture and Cultural Heritage Urban agriculture is gaining increasing attention at a global level due to the introduction of food security and urban/rural regeneration policies (Mendes et al. 2008) and the growth of urban farms (Kaufman and Bailkey 2000; McMillan 2008). At the same time, other studies reveal the role of urban agriculture in maintaining traditions and cultural identity (Fairclough P. Branduini (*) ABC Department, Politecnico of Milan, Milan, Italy e-mail: [email protected] C. Perrin • B Nougarèdes UMR Innovation, French Institute for Agricultural Research Lab Innovation, Montpellier, France E. Colli Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_7

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2010), the role of landscape maintenance and the social role of ­community empowerment (Armstrong 2000; Wakefield et al. 2007). The rural landscape is a cultural good for the values of memory, identification and collective identity (Del Mastro 2005; Emiliani 1990; De Marchi 2000). Preserving and maintaining the landscape and promoting eco-sustainable agriculture is now an economic, environmental, social and cultural necessity (ELC [European Landscape Convention],1 WRL initiative,2 Branduini et al. 2016). Dealing with agricultural landscape as a heritage means considering the tangible and intangible aspects (Esbah et al. 2014; Branduini et al. 2016). Tangible heritage pertains to the material elements of agricultural landscape, to their historical authenticity and their physical permanence during the time. Intangible heritage pertains to the interpretation and significance attributed by people to places, techniques and skills that have enabled landscapes creation, to features dictated by economic and behavioural factors (Laviscio and Scazzosi 2015; Branduini et al. 2016); it acquires meaning through history, beliefs and traditions (Daugstad et al. 2006). Beside the scenic and spatial qualities, urban agriculture can be useful to preserve and enhance the historical characters of a landscape, according to environmental requests and community needs (Branduini et al. 2016). In periurban European areas, agricultural heritage can be a public property and may concern large estate and a large part of the territory; public administration may directly manage the property or rent it to a farmer or a group of citizens (especially in periurban areas). In Europe, several examples show an integration between urban agriculture and cultural heritage among common goods. In Geneva, the Canton owns an historic farm in the urban context (Budé farm), managed by a group of farmers: they produce vegetables following ancient techniques (cardoon whitening) and trade them directly in the farmers’ market (Salomon Cavin and Mumenthaler 2015; Branduini 2016). In Seville, an association of urban gardeners took care of the restoration of an old farm (Miraflores farm), in the heart of the present public Parque De Miraflores, and spread their horticultural and cultural knowledge through workshop 1  The preservation and enhancement of the whole landscape, ordinary and outstanding, rural and urban, in good and bad condition, is the fundament of the European Landscape Convention (2000), nowadays ratified by 38 of 47 member states of the Council of Europe. 2  World Rural Landscapes (WRL) is an initiative launched by the International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes (ICOMOS-IFLA) to foster worldwide cooperation in the study, management and protection of rural landscapes. http://www.worldrurallandscapes.org/.

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and courses (Branduini 2016). In Barcelona a consortium of municipalities manages the “Espaj de Gallecs”, a set of agricultural lands taken during the 1970s, which continues to be managed by the same farmers to this day, famers who keep maintaining their buildings and fields and offer a place to relax with high historical and landscape quality (Maldonado et al. 2016). Heritage Preservation and Social Justice The policies of landscape and rural heritage preservation involve, in the first place, the monitoring of land use and building conditions, imposing specific rules and obligations that generally represent extra charges for landowners and farmers. Therefore, even if rural heritage preservation is recognised as a common value, it could become a heavy restriction, and may even be perceived as an injustice by some landowners or farmers, especially when they are unable to bear those costs. For example, in Fiesole—near Florence—the rules imposed for the preservation of olive groves, stonewalls and the agricultural purpose of large rural buildings have sometimes brought one to the abandonment of olive groves and the development of uncultivated land (Perrin 2013). That is the reason why heritage preservation policies generally need public support, which can be accessed under certain conditions. In Italy, there is a wide presence of historical rural heritage of public property, mainly farmsteads owned by public administrations or inherited by social/assistance institutions,3 which are protected by the national law of cultural heritage due to their age and property (D.L. 42/2004). At the same time, the lack of public funds for its ordinary and extra-ordinary maintenance (Branduini 2005, 2011) led these public landowners to rent their rural properties (fields and buildings) on long-term agreements to the farmers (Di Donato et al. 2016; Perrin et al. 2017). Generally, while the maintenance of fields is in charge of the farmers, the rural buildings are in charge of the landlord, whether it is public or private property. In order to tackle the problems of maintenance presented above, the municipality of Milan (MM) and the Major Hospital (MH)—two of the main landowners of rural properties around Milan—have designed and implemented 3  There are several examples in Italy of rural public properties: Ospedale Maggiore, ASP Golgi Redaelli, Pio Albergo Trivulzio, Stelline and Martinitt (Milano); Pia assistenza (Bergamo); Ospedale maggiore (Bologna).

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new forms of agreement for the renting of rural land and buildings, which have the aim to transfer the costs of maintenance to the farmers. This concerns not only the ordinary maintenance (which already was in their charge) but also the extra-ordinary interventions such as roof restoration or rehabilitation of buildings, which on the contrary have always been in charge of the landlord. This was realised with different strategies by the landowners, developing new forms of agreement with different levels of negotiation and participation during the decision-making process, which may originate feelings of injustice among actors. Therefore, an analysis of these preservation policies in terms of social justice seems appropriate; the theories of justice allow to take into account the multiple principles of justice (Walzer 1983; Elster 1991) and to analyse in depth the social acceptability of public policies. In addition, the presence of academic studies about the social impacts of landscape preservation policies is still insufficient and there is the need of a stronger academic attention about social dynamics and policy durability. Some specific aspects of social justice have been part of the research design and analysis: • Inter-generational justice (Soja 2010): long-term actions which are intended to produce equal-access conditions to resources among future generations • Procedural justice (Rawls 1971): participation of all actors in decision-­making processes; • Spatial justice (Soja 2010): attention on spatial distribution of resources • Capability approach (Sen 2010): the real capacities of a person to pursue their projects depend on both their personal capacities and the ones offered by the context (economic, legal, etc.) • Capacity to aspire (Appadurai 2004): capacity to aim towards a better future with a positive attitude, instead of being negatively related to the past Other than the theoretical framework of social justice explained above, we base the following research on the concept of resilience. There are many different definitions of resilience, which come from many disciplines and theoretical perspectives. We refer to resilience as the ability to absorb changes or disturbances (Handmer and Dovens 1996; Adger et al. 2005), to cope with potential impacts (Klein et al. 1998) and to survive (Nicholls and Branson 1998). In this chapter, thinking in particular about the

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c­ apacity of the farmers to react positively to the new agreements (which we consider the “traumatic event”), we define resilience as the capacity of a system—be it an individual, a city or an economy—to deal with change and continue to develop (Landi 2012). This will help in focusing on how resilience is dependent on individual factors and to what extent there is a political responsibility to promote resilience (Morrow 2008), involving social justice dynamics which have consequences on the durability of the preservation policies and, as a consequence, on the quality of landscape preservation itself.

Objective and Methodology The main aim of this chapter is to understand how to guarantee a long-­ term and equitable preservation of cultural heritage. As said in the introduction, preservation policies may have an impact on social equity issues. In the case of Milan, the problem is represented by the high costs that cultural heritage maintenance requires, which brought the main public landowners to implement new forms of agreement in order to transfer those costs to their tenant farmers, who reacted in very different ways. Why some of them had positive reactions, while others are risking abandoning activity and land? Our objective is to understand the elements that enable or hinder the resilience of the farmers in coping with these changes, and what are the consequences on heritage preservation. Looking for the answers to these questions we analyse the dynamics of social justice embedded in the new agreements; we compare the different strategies implemented by the main landowners and the reaction of the farmers; we focus on what are the factors that can shape long-term and equitable preservation policies (Appadurai 2004; Nussbaum and Sen 1993; Ostrom 1990; Sen 2000; Sen 2010; Soja 2010). To do so, we have implemented a qualitative methodology. Thirty semi-structured interviews have been carried out on a group of urban/ periurban farmers (ten tenants of the Major Hospital and ten of the municipality of Milan) and on ten officials from the involved organisations (public landowners, organisations for landscape management, union groups). The interviews aimed at investigating the profile of the local farmers (business strategies, maintenance interventions, history of the farm and future ambitions, opinions about new contracts) and the profile of the landowners’ organisations and landscape management organisations (governance model, motivations that led to changes in contracts and

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dynamic of policy building). The interviews were transcribed and analysed following the three phases of qualitative research: segmentation, qualification and cross-cutting analysis of the data fragments based on the research aims and objectives (Cardano 2011; Kaufmann 2004; Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004). Dynamics of social justice has been extrapolated through sentiment and discourse analysis of the transcriptions. The chapter will follow some main steps: (1) the exposition of the research objective and methodology; (2) an overview of the Milan context and the description of the new forms of agreements, with a comparison between the different dynamics of social justice; (3) the analysis of the barriers and enablers of the farmers’ resilience in the process of facing the new agreements; (4) a categorisation of the farmers’ different strategies and the influence on landscape preservation. As an outcome, we propose some policy guidelines, addressed to public landowners and public institutions, in order to contain the negative impact of preservation policies on social justice. The Milan Context The case of Milan has academic relevance for many reasons: it is representative of the cases of cities with a widespread historical rural heritage of public property to manage and maintain; at the same time, it is unique for its experimentation of new forms of tackling the problem of the costs and responsibility of the maintenance interventions with new forms of rural rental agreement, which have a global interest in order to understand their weaknesses and strengths and elaborate on their potential transferability/ replicability in other cities. Furthermore, Milan became a global benchmark for food and rural policies after hosting the World Expo 2015 with the theme “Feeding the planet, energy for life”. Since 1960, at a global level, three different kinds of policies have been implemented by public organisations in order to protect agricultural land and contain urban expansion: (a) public land acquisition and management, (b) regulation on land use (normative approach) and (c) incentive policies and education/information campaigns (Alterman 1997; Bengston, Fletcher, and Nelson 2004; Maruani and Amit-Cohen 2007). In Milan, the Rural Park South Milan has tried to integrate the normative approach— with prescriptions about intervention on landscape addressed to the

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­ rofessionals (Territorial plan of the Park 20004)—and information/edup cation campaigns for the citizens (fairs, information points, farmer markets). The municipality has changed its policy from passive protection of rural heritage to more proactive interventions, encouraging the farmers to join in a district (Agricultural District of Milan, regulated by the Region) and to invest in agricultural diversification. In addition, these farmland protection policies are implemented in a multi-level governance framework that includes authorities at different levels (region, metropolitan area, municipality, farmers’ associations).5 The municipality also supported Expo 2015 and the signature of the Milan Charter (Urban Food Policy Pact6). In Milan, the utilised agricultural area is 66,461 ha, in a total metropolitan area of 157,500 ha with 3.2 million of inhabitants. The sector of animal production represents 60% of the GSP,7 and cereals (21%) dominate vegetal production (40%) (corn, rice), followed by forage rotations and permanent meadows (irrigated meadows).8 The farms are 592  in total; the average surface is 48 ha and the surface of a rural building can vary between 1000 and 5000 square metres.9 Families that live and work in the same rural building since generations compose the farm enterprises interviewed.10 In these farms, in addition to traditional agricultural activities, it is frequent to see complementary activities, especially near the urban centre: there are profit activities (e.g. agritourist, direct selling, horse boarding, petting zoo, renting spaces for ceremonies, etc.) and non-­profit activities (cultural events in collaboration with public institutions or associations, local fairs, markets, community gardens, open days, etc.) (Fig. 1).

4  Available at http://www.cittametropolitana.mi.it/parco_agricolo_sud_milano/territorio_ e_pianificazione/piano_territoriale_di_coordinamento.html. 5  Milano Metropoli Rurale, based on the agreement “Accordo Quadro di Sviluppo Territoriale” (Agreement Framework for Territorial Development). Available at http:// www.agricity.it/politiche-e-strategie-del-comune-di-milano/. 6  Ibidem. 7  Gross saleable product. 8  ISTAT, 6° censimento agricoltura 2010, www.istat.it. 9   Data available at http://www.cittametropolitana.mi.it/parco_agricolo_sud_milano/ territorio_e_pianificazione/il_territorio_in_cifre.html. 10  With an average of 56 years of presence of the family in the farm. Five between 0 and 29 years; 4 between 30 and 59 years; 6 between 60 and 90 years; 4 over 90 years. The longest period registered was 127 years.

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Fig. 1  Farm dimensions and distribution on Milanese territory. Created by Elena Colli on © CARTO.  Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.  Map title on CARTO: “Dimension”. Basemap available at: https://elenacolli42.carto.com/builder/b4a1b4d8-b7ff-11e5-a5fc0e98b61680bf/embed

The New Agreements of the Municipality of Milan and the Major Hospital Farm renting in Italy represents 42% of the utilised agricultural area; in Lombardy it is 65%.11 The national law about farm renting (law no. 203, 3/05/1982) states that (a) the minimum period of renting should be 15 years; (b) compensations should be given in case of maintenance work or interventions on the building; and (c) at the end of the agreement, the tenant farmer has the right to claim for priority in case of a new agreement. Every variation on the contract duration or obligations imposed by the national law are allowed by derogation (defined by Art. 45), and must be discussed and approved by the landlord, tenants and their representative organisations (landowners’ union; farmers’ union). The mechanism of derogation has been used by both the municipality and the Hospital to shape new agreements. It represents a good tool for the protection of the farmers’ rights because it implies a negotiation process and constructive conflict management (Masia 1992); it restrains the dominant role of landlords and confers flexibility and dynamism to land management (Pirani  Source: ISTAT data elaborated by Federazione Nazionale della Proprietà Fondiaria.

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et al. 2016), giving the opportunity to shape an agreement which reflects the visions of both farmers and landlords in a common project. In Milan, starting from 1920, the municipality became owner of many rural lands because of the urbanisation processes.12 Since 2011, it started to propose policies for rural development and regeneration, which included the enhancement of rural buildings (cascine). The agreement renewal comes with these policies, with some crucial innovative elements, in particular: (a) the introduction of extra-ordinary maintenance in charge of the farmers, with a deduction of those investments on the annual renting fee, and (b) the possibility to sub-locate the unused spaces of the building to complementary activities related to agriculture (agritourist, petting zoo, direct sale of local products, etc.). The extra-ordinary maintenance of the building includes all the interventions of renewal and restoration: for example, substitution of structural parts (roof, walls) or integration with new hygienic and technological services (wiring, sewerage, etc.).13 As mentioned before, the Major Hospital is one of the main landowners in Milan.14 In its case, the costs of extra-ordinary maintenance were already in charge of the farmer, in exchange of a very long-term agreement (30 years) with a lower rental price. This turned counterproductive due to a lack of proper monitoring of tenants’ obligations fulfilment. Therefore, the duration of agreements was reduced again to 15 years, adding a strict system to monitor maintenance obligations, which were the obligation for the farmers to present a maintenance plan (in order to compensate the deficiencies accumulated during previous years) and to meet that schedule year per year, pain of agreement revocation (Table 1). We investigated the level of collaboration between farmers. The results suggest a positive attitude, which breaks the classic stereotype of the isolated and competitive farmer, and allude to a new path of collaboration between the farmers instead of competition, boosted by the creation of the Agricultural District. This is particularly true among the farmers of the municipality (Fig. 2). 12  Today, 2910 ha within the municipal borders are dedicated to rural activities, among which 550 ha owned by the municipality; the farms are 62, among which 11 with rural activities (Casale 2016). 13  The costs incurred by the tenants of the Major Hospital for all the extra-ordinary maintenance interventions started since the contract renewal (60 new contracts in 10 months) is €1,875,966. Source: http://www.fondazionesviluppocagranda.it/. 14  The Major Hospital manages 8500 ha of agricultural land and 100 rural buildings within the province of Milan, Lodi and Pavia. It represents the 1% of total agricultural area in the region of Lombardy. Source: http://www.fondazionesviluppocagranda.it/.

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Table 1  Comparison between municipality and hospital Old agreement

New agreement

Major Hospital (MH) Until 1980  15 years; extra-ordinary maintenance in charge of the landlord Between 1980 and 2010  30 years; extra-ordinary maintenance in charge of the farmers and lower rental prices (€313/ha) Municipality of Milan (MM) Until 2015 • 15 years • Extra-­ordinary maintenance in charge of the landlord

• 15 years • Extra-ordinary maintenance in charge of the tenant • Increase of rental price according to current market values (€800/ha)

After 2015 • 30 years • Extra-ordinary maintenance in charge of the farmers, with a deduction of that investment on the annual renting fee • Possibility of sub-location of the unused space to other agriculture-related activities

Elements in common between the two landowners •  Extra-ordinary maintenance in charge of the farmers •  Better monitoring system on the execution and quality of the interventions •  Obligation to present and accomplish a maintenance plan •  General re-establishment of the governance structure of both organisations

Results and Discussion Landowners’ Strategies: Necessities and Dynamics of Justice Both organisations are aware of the high value of their properties and their responsibility on that heritage, which, however, is currently in precarious conditions and sometimes in a serious state of disrepair and neglect, as a consequence of bad policy choices and implementation. The need to change was due to the risk of collapse of buildings and the necessity to add value to the unused/under-used heritage. Both organisations followed some common steps: (a) recognition and analysis of the current buildings status; (b) re-establishment of the internal governance structure, in order to define specific bodies dedicated to farm renting management; (c) transfer of the responsibility of maintenance to the farmers; (d) elaboration of new forms of contract; (e) strengthening the presence and the control on their lands, with more attention on building conditions and interventions,

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Fig. 2  Level of collaboration with other farmers. Created by Elena Colli on © CARTO. Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL.  Map title on CARTO: “Collaboration”. Basemap available at: https://elenacolli42.car to.com/builder/67ced686-de9b-11e6-802b0e233c30368f/embed

intensifying the dialogue with the farmers, which had been neglected for many years. After the analysis of the different strategies carried out by the landowners in terms of social justice, it is possible to define some crucial points: 1. Capabilities: the municipality has “bet” on the farmers’ capacities; the innovative elements of cost deduction and sub-location have the aim to put the farmers in the condition to develop. The Hospital, instead, had a more “punitive” approach: • “Our farmers have always lived with a low rent, so why should they innovate? Among 100 farms, there is only 1 agritourism and 1 direct sell … in such a wonderful place. Why? If you have a low rent, you do not need to innovate […] the world of agriculture is so retarded because it always benefit from protection policies. And if it’s not stimulated”. (MH official) • “As long as agriculture is considered a weak activity, the challenge is to give it the legal possibility to become strong. If it becomes strong, we all will benefit from it”. (MM official) 2. Procedural justice: the negotiation process between landlords and tenants is crucial to shape an equitable agreement. During contract

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renewal, the municipality carried out with the farmers a long negotiation, shaping conditions acceptable from both parties; the municipality also supported the creation of an Agricultural District, which almost all MM farmers joined, and helped them to gain more bargaining power as a unique strong actor. On the contrary, the contract renewal for the Major Hospital farms followed a top-down approach. • “I would like to show you all the contract drafts … so you can see from what we started!” (MM farmer) • “It’s something imposed by the landlord; so as a tenant either you accept, or you break the agreement”. (MH farmer) The motivations behind the policy changes of the municipality and the Hospital are in both cases the risk of degradation and collapse of their rural heritage: eventually, their strategy was to give the farmers the responsibility to make it profitable. Whilst the strategy may look the same, there are substantial differences in the implementation process, particularly in terms of social justice. On the one hand, the municipality carried out a process of empowerment of the farmers, with several tools (the possibility of sub-location, the deduction of investments) and the inclusion within the decision-making process, with the aim to obtain a mutual benefit on long term (add value to the buildings and land, maintaining the status of a common good). On the other, the Hospital limited the capabilities of the farmers and their voices, excluding them from the decision-making process with a top-down approach, proposing short-term solutions. Concerning heritage preservation, it is important to say that the current crisis of the agricultural sector has put the farmers in a precarious condition, so it is difficult for them to deal with new additional expenditures. This leads to different reactions and business strategies from the farmers, who may fall back on abandoning livestock or less profitable crops, thus causing a significant change in the landscape and a damage to the quality of soil and the biodiversity. Barriers and Enablers of Farmers’ Resilience The cross-cutting analysis of the farmers’ interviews allowed the identification of some recurrent elements, which we will label as the barriers and the enablers of the farmers’ resilience, considering their reaction to the

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new agreement conditions. The most common strategy to face the additional costs is to add complementary activities on the farm; but this is not always feasible because of the presence or absence of certain elements that emerged as recurrent during the cross-cutting analysis of transcript interviews: 1. Visions about the role of the farmer In some cases, a sense of injustice emerged in connection with the new role of “restorer/landscaper” of the farmer: for the farmers, property preservation should not be their responsibility, as they have neither the competences nor the role: “We have to work … I am not a real estate developer!” (MH farmer). Furthermore, a conflict about the farm as a place of work versus a place of leisure emerged. In some other cases, the farmer acknowledges his social and cultural/educational role (as a source of knowledge): “The farmer has to take a stand as an actor on the territory. So its importance on the territory can be acknowledged, and this gratification can motivate him to add complementary activities to the farm, and become a ‘creator’ of the territory” (MM farmer). 2. Family issues In some cases, the lack of an heir who will run the business, ensuring the continuity of the family enterprise, discourages long-­term investments. It is also about family support: diversification works effectively with the family-farm model, because otherwise the costs of employees would be unbearable. “When I first came here I was engaged and I had a life project. Now I’m alone and it’s difficult to manage this [the farm and complementary activities]” (MM farmer). In other cases, there is a “perfectly working” family model that runs the business: men in fields, women in administration/tertiary activities, other relatives in complementary activities. “The intention is to create a family-business. The petting zoo could be run by my wife and children, because diversification in agriculture allows your family to become part of the business” (MM farmer). 3. Relationship with the city “We [the farmers] farm the land; the city uses it” (MM farmer). Other times, urbanity is seen as an advantage, because it is a source of customers and provides good infrastructures: “We are 200  mt from the bus stop, and near the highway. We are in the middle of a green beautiful relaxing area … but two steps away from the city centre. So we opened a B&B” (MH farmer).

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“We have to take advantage of what we are: we are the farmers of Milan. It was once a curse; now it should be an opportunity”. (MM farmer) 4. Social and spatial networks Some farms suffer from spatial isolation that could bring them to social/economic isolation: distance from the city discourages diversification; distance from other farmers creates difficulties to cooperate, to be attractive and to share a sense of injustice with others. “The Agricultural District gathers all farmers of Milan … but I am too far. I am alone. The other farmers are in the western or southern part … there, they managed to do good things. But here …” (MM farmer). Some other farmers are very good in networking; they are open minded and able to build collaborations with other farms, looking at their neighbour as a potential support, instead of as an enemy: “There is solidarity between us. We help each other, even beyond the work or machinery issues … And it’s a rarity” (MM farmer). . Other issues 5 Other elements which hinder a resilient reaction from the farmers are as follows: • Bureaucratic nightmare: the sluggishness of bureaucracy goes against the dynamism of market and financing processes. This causes the exclusion of the ones who have not enough competences and/or resources to pay private collaborators, which could help. • Difficult access to financial support/public funds: the fact that the farmer is not the owner of the building causes difficulties in access to credit and finance; and they need high competences to participate in public funds calls (see above). On the opposite, other elements which facilitate resilience are as follows (Fig. 3, Table 2): • Entrepreneurial attitude: personal attitude to risk/experimentation, often encouraged by long-term contracts; good predisposition to the tertiary sector, which brings one to reinvent the under-utilised spaces with new purposes for market opportunities. • Attachment to the place: the strong bonding with the place fosters the farmers to do their best in order to keep the transmission of the farm from one generation to another.

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Fig. 3  Spatial representation of resilience. Created by Elena Colli on © CARTO. Map tiles by Stamen Design, under CC BY 3.0. Data by OpenStreetMap, under ODbL. Map title on CARTO: “Resilience”. Basemap available at: https:// elenacolli42.carto.com/builder/16a58a12-de7c-11e6-ba4d-0ee66e2c9693/ embed Table 2  Barriers and enablers of resilience Barriers

Enablers

• Farmer ≠ urban actor •  Lack of family support •  Spatial/social isolation •  Bureaucracy/financial access •  Conflict with urbanity

•  •  •  •  •  • 

Farmer = urban actor Support of the family Networking abilities Entrepreneurial attitude Attachment to the place Acknowledgement of urban advantages

Farmers’ Strategies How do the farmers react to these changes? What strategies have they put in place? From the analysis of the results, two opposite profiles emerged (Table 3) as result of a combination of the elements examined in the previous paragraph. These profiles are present transversally in the farmers from both the municipality and the Major Hospital. Also, other combinations of elements may shape some intermediate situations, on a scale from 0 (resignation) to 4 (proactivity):

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Table 3  How are the farmers reacting to the new contracts? Characteristics Resignation No acceptance: “this is not my role” •  Refuse of multifunctionality • Maintenance = burden •  Disillusion about the future • Urbanity = disadvantage Proactivity “I make the changes become an opportunity” • Maintenance = investment in the business •  Long term = planning •  Confidence in the future • Urbanity = advantage

Elements •  •  •  • 

Spatial isolation No family support (role division) No heirs No networks

•  Willingness to diversify • Role division among the family members •  Heirs who guarantee farm continuity • Networks •  Entrepreneurial attitude

1. Immobility: low-risk strategy; the new “role” is not completely rejected, but there is the preference to remain traditional. 2. Impossibility to change: there is the will to diversify activities and preserve the heritage, but there are not the necessary conditions (e.g. economic and/or family situation). 3. Constraint to change: there is entrepreneurial attitude and diversification of activities, but not for a real vocation; it is a forced choice imposed by the current conditions.

Influence on Landscape Preservation In this framework, why can the agreements proposed by the municipality represent an innovation? The long-term contracts encourage the farmers to implement new commercial activities, which have cultural, touristic and productive impacts on the territory. The city starts to be considered as a source of customers, overcoming the old urban-rural rivalry (Branduini 2005). Therefore, new collaborations come up between public and private organisations and the farmers in order to satisfy the growing urban demand of rural services and leisure. This leads to the empowerment of the farmers, who now have more opportunities to dialogue and negotiate. The legitimation of sub-location opens the doors of entrepreneurial risk, giving the farmer more opportunities and motivation to diversify activities;

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the fact that maintenance interventions required from the contract go well together with investments in diversification activities (touristic, social, etc.) brings one to experiment new innovating elements within the contract. Ultimately, what impact does these new contracts have on preservation and land use? The strategy of the municipality—with long-term contracts and possibility to sub-locate—prevents consumption of land because it encourages the reuse of existing buildings. On the other hand, these new policies are likely to impose considerable management costs on the farmers: some of them cannot find alternative solutions, so they abandon traditional agricultural productions; also, subsidies for preservation of traditional agricultural techniques are not sufficient to cope with the new maintenance costs incurred. Listening to the farmers and taking care of procedural justice during the decision-making process help to avoid consequences that fall on the quality of the commons, particularly the landscape. If, on the one hand, the reconciliation of urban population with agriculture leads to the acknowledgement of the value of rural heritage (Branduini 2016), the combination of these two worlds’ frequent contact between the urban population and the farmers generates conflicts that require institutional mediation (regulation, education and information campaigns).

Conclusions This chapter analysed the implications of the new forms of rural rent agreements on the farmers’ resilience and landscape preservation. In particular, the framework of social justice helped us to find the barriers and enablers of the farmers’ resilience, analysing in depth the decision-making process and the role of policy and individual factors in determining positive or negative reactions to changes. Among the new agreements experimented in Milan, some innovations are detected in particular: the deduction of the investments costs, the possibility to sub-locate under-­ used spaces of rural buildings, and the new forms of governance and negotiation between farmers and landowners. The new contracts aim to integrate urban and rural, through the empowerment of the farmer: he is a producer of food, maintainer of landscape, promoter of leisure and cultural activities, keeper of ancient knowledge and heritage to preserve and transmit to future generations. The farmer becomes a full actor of preservation policies; agriculture acquires a new dignity and a new role,

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dialoguing and integrating in the urban environment while keeping its productive vocation. This agreement can be useful for all public organisations, which have to deal with the same problems of management and maintenance of wide public properties. It could be useful to understand how social justice dynamics can be crucial in enhancing the farmers’ resilience, and consequently to understand how to implement decision-making processes and how to address specific policies to enhance the farmers’ conditions (keeping in mind the barriers and enablers of resilience). It is important to highlight that the empowerment of the farmers—and the fact that they are in charge of maintenance—increases the awareness about heritage preservation as a common value and represents a mutual benefit for both the farmer (opportunity to develop with long-term planning) and the landlord (restoration of their heritage). The analysis shows that different justice dynamics depend on elements that involve personal and context characteristics. The municipality recognises the farmers as urban actors, and gives them more instruments for resilience, understanding that this implies a mutual benefit. On the opposite, the Hospital, with a more top-down and punitive approach, had a negative impact on the farmers’ resilience. Imposing new conditions without giving the instruments to face them, the capacity to react to these changes has been more difficult because it only relies on personal attitude and resources of the farmers. Therefore, the cross-cutting analysis of the capacity of the farmers to face the changes (resilience) shows that even without the best personal conditions and resources, a municipality farm can more easily cope with the new costs, thanks to more favourable contract terms. Policy Suggestions As a conclusion, there are proposed some policy interventions useful to maintain a balance between the needs of preserving the heritage of the landlords and the production needs of the farmers: 1. Networking and decision-making processes • Support the network-building process of farmers (e.g. with agricultural districts), which gives them more opportunities to negotiate with public institutions, major weight in the decision-making

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process, more visibility to injustice feelings (which can become part of the activation processes) and less risk of isolation. • Act on spatial isolation/risk of segregation by enhancing infrastructures and activities (internet connection, touristic itineraries, encourage machinery-sharing between farmers). 2. Long term: inter-generational justice and capacity to aspire • Support long-term contracts—which allow long-term and ambitious planning (investments, diversification)—but integrated with a monitoring system for maintenance interventions and effective communication, to avoid risks of non-compliance. 3. Languages and bureaucracy • Offer guidelines to tackle bureaucratic procedures, which can create conditions of inequality. • Facilitate dialogue between farmers and landscape preservation organisations. • Assume the role of guarantor in financial aid. 4. Information and education: supporting personal capacities • Promote education and information programmes acting on entrepreneurial attitude (e.g. exposing best practices) and provide simple guidelines for preservation strategies and marketing strategies (networking, use of social media, etc). The combination of these initiatives could expand the possibility of enhancing the farmers’ resilience, helping them to see the contract changes as an opportunity to develop and innovate, and to improve their real capabilities in a more equitable context. At the same time, this could be an answer to the preservation needs of the landowners and to mitigate the risk of abandonment and mismanagement of their properties, with a positive impact on the landscape and preservation of rural traditions and heritage.

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The Emergence of the Food Land Belt in Wallonia: An Innovative System to Feed Local Populations? Antonia D. Bousbaine

Introduction In recent years, many researchers have studied the food problems affecting cities in both developed and developing countries (Aubry and Chiffoleau 2009), and underscored the emergence of innovative food systems. This chapter analyses alternative innovative systems which have emerged since 2012  in the province of Wallonia, one of the three regions of Belgium, with an area of 16,844 km2 and a total population of 3,610,089 (Walstat 2017). Although Belgium is located in Western Europe, it has specific peculiarities—each region is governed by its own government and there is no homogeneity in terms of agricultural policies. Each has its own agricultural policy under the directives of the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy). It was not until March 2014 that a “Walloon Code of Agriculture” (Code Wallon de l’Agriculture 2014) was established, emphasizing a return to family-based agriculture, a balance between production and environment, and taking account of consumers’ opinions (Nature et A. D. Bousbaine (*) Department of Geography, Federation Wallonie Bruxelles, Saint Saulve, France © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_8

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Progrès 2014). This was a major step forward for agriculture, long been set aside to benefit EAPs (Economic Activity Parks) (Mérenne-­ Schoumacker 2007). Numerous crises experienced by the agricultural world since the 1990s—the “mad cow crisis”, avian flu, “blue tongue of sheep”—have challenged consumers. Walloon consumers thus became suspicious of what has been happening on their plates! This was underlined by the Solidaris Barometer (2013) (Mutuelle de Santé), with 63% of francophone Belgians believing that over 50% of their food supply presents a significant health risk. Moreover, consumers who were questioned complained of a substantial obscurity concerning the whole food chain and felt very much alone in their mistrust (Solidaris 2013). Not surprisingly, the first actions have been initiated principally by consumers, conscious of this productivist agriculture, which has become synonymous with negative externalities— socially, environmentally and economically. With the rise of the sustainable development concept since 1987 throughout the world, sustainability has become central to the developing alternative food systems being put in place. These alternative systems include Peasant Agriculture Maintenance Associations (PAMA), which appeared in France as early as 1990 if we include the “Jardins de Cocagne”, including sales on farms, short circuits, farmers’ shops, community gardens and Solidarity Purchasing Groups of Peasant Agriculture (GASAP). The development of these S3A (système agro-alimentaire alternatif or alternative agri-food systems) raises many questions concerning food and especially agriculture. Agriculture has already been losing ground in the face of increasing urbanization throughout the world. Agriculture has also been struggling to satisfy an increasingly important segment of the population in search of more resilient food systems. Consumers are looking for “healthy” products, whose traceability is known; the development of short circuits in Wallonia in recent years has allowed some of these demands to be met. These methods of procurement have attracted the attention of political actors, but demand remains evidently superior to supply (Jonet 2016). Some consumers have already organized themselves into GAA (Food Purchasing Groups), such as GAS (Solidarity Purchasing Groups), similar to the AMAP (Association pour le maintien d’une agriculture paysanne) in France, as well the GAC (Common Purchasing Groups), established throughout Wallonia for several years. However, since the 1980s agriculture in Wallonia has been in decline; between 1980 and 2010, some municipalities experienced losses of up to 68% (Bousbaine 2014).

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It is becoming urgent for Wallonia to reposition itself regarding policies to “preserve” agricultural lands, which are still experiencing the onslaught of urbanization, including the installation of “Zoning” to house Economic Activities (Bousbaine and Bryant 2015). Lack of farmland is a major concern, especially given the exorbitant land prices. The urgency is in maintaining an “agriculture of proximity” to feed local populations. These issues were analysed by a coalition of actors, who, since 2012, have discussed the establishment of a Food Land Belt (Ceinture Aliment Terre Liège—CATL) in the east of Wallonia around Liège. Its ultimate objective is to feed the population who are trying to re-appropriate their diet, with locally produced sustainable produce (Jonet 2013). The involvement of all actors in the territory is necessary to create alternative agri-food systems that meet consumer expectations and values. Four topics are discussed: (1) agricultural and land issues that constitute a real obstacle to the conservation of a local agriculture, (2) the rise of a local agriculture to meet the populations’ expectations, (3) the creation of Food Land Belts in Wallonia and (4) the importance of constructing a process of food governance in these territories.

Agriculture and Land Issues in Wallonia Walloon agriculture has never been given much attention by political actors. Wallonia, unlike France, has been a highly industrialized region. It was the first region of the continent to have experienced the Industrial Revolution, and the second-largest industrial power in the world behind the UK during the early and late nineteenth century. The region’s wealth is mainly derived from coal mining and the steel and glass industries. Walloon agriculture does not represent a regional source of wealth. Thus, we can read in issue 20 of Vivre la Wallonie (translation: Long Live Wallonia): Agriculture is the salt of life, its motor, its energy, its equilibrium. “In Wallonia, 22,000 people are employed on 13,500 farms with an annual production of €1.5 billion. But Wallonia’s agriculture has seen better days. Poorly treated in the past, it is now necessary to protect it and encourage its development to take back the role that it must occupy in society. The profession must be also revalorized to restore its nourishing function by encouraging diversification and short circuits, thus correcting our view of the agricultural world and helping it evolve towards a sustainable agriculture. This certainly begins with a refocusing of our true values” (translation) (SPWa 2013, p. 11).

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Indeed, Walloon agriculture had for long been abandoned, experiencing for over 30  years a continued loss of farms. Some municipalities recorded losses of farms of more than 70% between 1980 and 2010 (Bousbaine 2014). Each week between 1990 and 2011, 62 farmers on average left the industry; in 1980, there were more than twice as many farmers as in 2012. According to the report on the agricultural and horticultural economy in Wallonia, “the Belgian agricultural labor force, which represents just 0.5% of the European agricultural workforce, produces 2% of the value of the European Union’s agricultural sector. This characterizes an intensive (industrial) agricultural sector on soils with exceptional pedoclimatic qualities” (translation) (DGO3 2013, n.p.). These figures appear very high, but they reflect an excessive use of chemical fertilizers, with negative externalities for soil and farmers’ health. There is also soil erosion, a decrease in humus, a drop in biodiversity and nitrate infiltration, as well as other effects. Furthermore, Walloon agriculture is faced with difficulties in the succession of farms, especially by younger people. Indeed, three-quarters of the farmers have to cope with this lack of succession potential. Furthermore, over 63% of farmers are between 50 and 60 years old, while the 30- to 50-year-old group accounts for 34% of all farmers. Agriculture is no longer attractive and agriculture’s many crises in Wallonia have meant that certain farmers have been repositioning themselves and discouraging the farms’ potential takeover by other people. Labour shortages are notorious, and farmers struggle to find skilled labour. This is also reflected in an increasing concentration of farms, according to the General Directorate of Statistics of the Free Public Services Economy (agricultural sector), and average farm size has more than tripled in 35  years, while Wallonia has lost 37,000 jobs during the last 35  years. While the number of farmers drops drastically from year to year, the agricultural area used does not decline at the same rate. Small farms, whose products are grown essentially for local populations, are in many cases eventually absorbed by larger farms with the more intensive and industrial model of agricultural production. Added to this are the impacts of the CAP on the survival of the large majority of farmers. Indeed, the CAP accounts for 40% of the European Union (UN) budget, or €60 billion per year; although it has contributed to the development and modernization of agriculture since its creation, while removing the “spectre” of hunger that characterized European populations during the Second World War, the CAP is often accused of having increased inequalities between farmers, particularly in Wallonia (Jonet 2013).

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The CAP’s most important pillar subsidizes agriculture per hectare instead of supporting job creation or the environmental services provided by agriculture (Jonet 2013). These subsidies encourage farmers to increase farm size (Bousbaine 2014) and obliges them to acquire more efficient and more expensive equipment, thus leading to over-indebtedness. This explains why since the creation of the AgriCall cell (formerly Preventagri), 29% of farmers suffer from burnout, a constantly increasing number. Many work and end up gaining nothing and struggle to repay their loans. As pointed out by Van Malder (2014), Walloon agriculture is “dependent and vulnerable”; indeed, livestock farmers depend on external food sources to feed their herds, and without this, half the herds would disappear. According to the Walloon Public Service (DGO3 2013), the purchase of complementary foods amounts to more than 51% for beef production and 63% for milk production. This generates a high dependence on the prices of vegetable proteins and directly impacts livestock producers, who represent more than two-thirds of Wallonia’s farmers. Given this situation, many breeders sell their farms and cease all agricultural activity. Only 32% of farmers own their lands (SPWb 2013), yet this heritage constitutes a form of “security”, and without this asset, they cannot transmit their working tools to others. During the last dairy crisis, many dairy producers ceased their activity—between 1984 and 2014 their number went from 15,000 to less than 3500 (SPF 2015). In Belgium, some researchers have discussed the land market issue in recent years whereby some farmers sell their land to speculators. In fact, densities within Belgium are among the highest in Europe—with an average of 368 inhabitants/km2—and in Wallonia, the average is 214 inhabitants/km2, both much higher than France (122 inhabitants/km2). As Jean-Marie Halleux points out: “The predominant idea in Belgium is that soil is not a rare, non-reproducible good, but an abundant good that can be consumed; this can lead to excessive consumption and waste of space” (translation) (Halleux et  al. 2002). Since the nineteenth century, land policies have largely favoured urban sprawl in rural areas and have accentuated peri-urbanization, a “sustained and diffuse” phenomenon (De Lannoy and De Corte 2000). These policies permitted access to property for the Belgian population as a whole, for whom investing in “stone” was a means of managing their heritage, hence the aphorism “Belgian has a brick in the belly” (translation) (Halleux et al. 2002). This “lack” of a real land policy has been denounced by Belgian researchers, which, despite the warnings related to this sprawl (Sporck and Van der Haegen 1985) and its

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harmful consequences, has not increased the understanding on the part of public authorities. The lack of careful management of land use in these peripheral spaces has led to this juxtaposition of multiple functions in these peri-urban spaces. As the not-for-profit organizations ADG (Development Aid of Gembloux) and Terre en vue (Land in Sight) have pointed out, land prices per hectare increased threefold between 1985 and 2006, with the average price in Belgium increasing from €9727 to €27,190/ha. Access to reliable data is very difficult since the Royal Federation of Notaries in 2004 decided not to communicate the price of agricultural land to the Economic Service Public Fédéral (SPF), Directorate of Statistics (SPW, DGORNE). Nevertheless, the author’s fieldwork helped better understand agricultural land prices, which range between €40,000 and €80,000/ha depending on the agricultural region and the quality of the land, without taking into account “under the table” payments. This ancestral practice is illegal but it still operates; it consists in paying an “entry fee”, which varies between €5000 and €10,000/ha, to the owner. This amount “grants” the right to buy the land, and the highest bidder is able to buy it; the competition between farmers is so great that even for the very smallest piece of land, a real race takes place to access new land (Bousbaine 2014). In this context, the installation of young farmers is more than problematic, and for the Nimaculteurs (people who are not from the agricultural world), this is almost impossible. Land is increasingly scarce; 3000 football fields have been urbanized every year in Wallonia on average over a 25-year period. Confronted by these observations, many citizens have been trying for several years to put in place alternative solutions to the productivist agricultural system with its negative externalities.

The Rise of a Local Agriculture to Re-appropriate the Food Issue Although in the main regions of industrialized countries the food supply function of towns was historically provided by local agriculture (Fleury 1996a, b; Fleury and Moustier 1999; Poulot and Rouyres 2000), since the twentieth century this has clearly declined. It still exists through weekly markets, where market gardeners sell their produce, but they are no longer the main form of supplying towns via the horticultural belt described by Von Thünen (Vidal 2011). With the introduction of the “globalized ­agri-­food system” (Morgan et  al. 2006), a greater distance has resulted

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between producers and consumers, both spatially and in terms of relationships. Local agriculture has therefore been pushed farther towards the periphery by urban sprawl, from the years 1950–1960 in North America and from the sixties and seventies in Western Europe, gradually losing its main function of “feeding” the nearby city. For several decades, in the face of rampant urbanization, land-use planners and researchers have focused their attention on the place to be given to this local agriculture (Van Veenhuizen 2006). The links that existed between town and countryside (Phlipponneau 1956) have been gradually reduced, and the horticultural and vegetable belts in most cases disappeared or were supplanted by arable farming. This agriculture is part of a globalized market, and its products are mainly destined for export and contribute little to supplying adjacent cities. However, over the last few decades, there has been a renewed interest in this local agriculture, which has been described as “peri-urban” (Bulletin des Géographes Français 1994), through short circuits, whose definition varies from one country to another. We shall retain the definition given by the DGO3, Walloon Region: “a method of marketing agricultural or horticultural products, whether raw or processed, in which a maximum of one intermediary intervenes between the producer and the consumer” (translation). Many researchers around the world have highlighted the importance of this agriculture (Bryant and Johnson 1992; Vaudois 1994). Their conclusions are without appeal—there is a growing interest for its preservation and its roles, both by politicians and by consumers, who opt for a “secure” supply through short circuits, and a guarantee of transparency and trust (Chiffoleau 2008). These short circuits have developed over the past ten years in Wallonia through the GAAs (Van Gameren et al. 2012), which are above all initiatives of consumers preoccupied by the negative effects of productivist agriculture. A change is taking place in the relationships between producers and consumers, especially since the last crises that shook the agricultural world (Joly and Paradeise 2003). The European Union has been struck, as of 1 August 2017, by the scandal of eggs contaminated with fipronil, an insecticide used against red lice, yet banned in animal husbandry. This scandal started from Belgium and the Netherlands, and currently has affected 41 countries. This has raised even more distrust and a willingness to consume locally produced food. In Wallonia, since 2012, it is important to recognize that consumers, being generally aware of agricultural and associated food problems, have mobilized in order to preserve an agriculture of “proximity” capable of

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meeting their new expectations regarding food whose origins are known and recognized (Verhaegen 2012). In their search for healthy products, it is through the preservation of farms of “proximity” that these consumers can obtain healthy foodstuffs. In addition to preserving local agriculture, another objective is to bring the agricultural sphere closer to the urban sphere through food. This fundamental question has long been in the hands of the large agro-food companies, and the consumer has had a very passive attitude towards supermarkets. More recently, consumers have tried to re-appropriate their diet through short circuits, based on the close proximity between producers and consumers (Mardsen 2000; Goodman 2003). The link between producer and consumer is therefore direct and without intermediaries, leading to a collective re-appropriation of the food chain, bypassing shopping centres. It is this desire for a closer relationship that is represented by the alternative agri-food systems being set up in Wallonia, particular through the concept of Food Belts that are emerging in Wallonia. In this concept, the citizen is central; indeed, the initiatives emanating from this Food Belt concept are in the form of “social cooperatives”, in which citizens, producers and consumers find their place in a democratic and participatory way. These cooperatives are emerging in the face of the food systems that feed us, leading to a democratization of food systems in Wallonia and a collective re-appropriation of food in the Walloon Region (Jonet 2013). This approach involves a local food system accessible to all consumers, who become fully consum’actors (Pleyers 2011), by engaging in militant and committed actions in their choice of food, supporting local producers and perpetuating local agriculture essential for feeding local populations.

The Setting Up of the Food Belts in Wallonia: Sustainably Feeding the Populations Since 2012 in Wallonia, a coalition of heterogeneous actors from civil society has seized the food problem in the East of Wallonia in the province of Liège. Their main objective has been to change the existing food system profoundly. These actors are trying to develop alternative “innovative” systems that fall within the scope of S3A (Deverre and Lamine 2010). The first Walloon Food Land Belt was born in this context, with three main objectives: to relocate food production, render the food system more ­ecological and revitalize the local economy. These actors’ ultimate goal is to feed, by 2050, 50% of the population of Liège in a sustainable way, by

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developing and preserving a local agriculture. During the colloquium “Alliance innovante pour un développement durable” (translation: “Innovative Alliance for Sustainable Development”), the CATL (Ceinture Aliment Terre Liégeoise) was informally created following discussions between social entrepreneurs and members of “Liège en Transition” (translation: “Liège in Transition”). The CATL project was officially launched at the Open Forum (5–6 November 2013), when focus groups successfully brought ideas forward to share between different actors in the territory. These actors worked together to realize this innovative concept involving all actors in the food chain, including consumers. Their reflection relies heavily on the GAA, which have been increasing steadily since 2007  in Wallonia. The CATL also involves cooperatives and social enterprises that favour short circuits (Jonet 2016). The project aims to bring together all the actors in the territory to work together, in order to create lasting solutions anchored in the territory and in a relatively short term to spread the idea throughout the Walloon Region. All these initiatives must be brought together within a “network” of which the Liège Food Belt would be the “Platform”, which thus facilitates the “networking” of actors trying to change the existing food system. The fundamental idea of the Liège Food Land Belt is to encircle the agglomeration with food-producing farmland, thus linking the city and its nearby countryside, and their populations. This would also help limit urban sprawl, thus converging with the broader phenomenon of Green Belt goals (Alexandre and Génin 2014). This first Food Land Belt is therefore part of a landscape where numerous initiatives are taking shape, and where its designers have relied on various scientific studies (Servigne 2014; Centre d’études et de prospective du Ministère de l’Agriculture français 2010)—all of which point to the unsustainability of the existing agro-food system (Feyereisen and Stassart 2017). The CATL actors have thus built upon the conclusions from other initiatives undertaken elsewhere in Wallonia: the necessity and urgency to change the system. At the Open Forum, the question posed by the project’s initiators was: “How in 25 to 30 years’ time can we ensure that most of the food consumed in the province of Liège is produced locally, and is sustainable and equitable?” (translation). Numerous other issues were debated to lay the groundwork for the CATL; there were many participants (170) on the first day, and on the second day—open to the public—more than 400 people participated in the project’s launch. All the actors present

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c­ ontributed to the reflection by the founding members of the CATL. Issues of access to land were discussed, as were producers’ remuneration, their quality of life and access to agricultural knowledge and know-how. A reflexive and participative dynamic took place during the two days of this Open Forum, and consumers were involved in highlighting the relationship between local food and the territory’s potential, thus linking the city to its nurturing countryside. The first workshops the CATL organized began to take shape, representing the integration of territorial intelligence into the process of constructing the CATL (Marcq et al. 2015). The CATL also considered using the network of actors from the short circuits to co-construct projects linking producers and consumers to ensure the real needs of the consumers are taken into account. This Belt aims to support and train project promoters of short circuits in the province of Liège by structuring territorial food projects. The CATL therefore aims to become “a lever for territorial development”, revitalizing the local economy by creating local jobs in a province where its specialized dairy farms recently experienced several crises that raised questions about the future of agriculture in this part of Wallonia. The CATL also emphasized in its reflections the development of new agricultural systems less dependent on fossil fuels (Rockstrom et al. 2009). It is therefore through one of its “flagship” projects—Compagnons de la Terre—CDLT (translation: Companions of the Earth)—that CATL is experimenting with a socio-­economic model which supports Nimaculturists, who work on small parcels of land using agro-ecological practices. This “champion” project is being tested on a plot of 28.5 hectares. It was created in January 2015 as a social cooperative, in which “micro-farms” of 3 hectares are cultivated by these farmers. This cooperative is trying to solve the very real problem of access to land. This project is supported by the scientific community in order to validate an innovative model that can be recognized by the political authorities. To date, the CDLT, with a capital of over €500,000 and more than 500 cooperators, has been developing projects since 2016—Pick-Your-Own is a success and other projects are in the making, notably the construction of an Agricultural Relay Hall (Hall de Relais Agricole), approved and supported by the Walloon Minister of Agriculture in July 2016. This CATL, which initially attracted little political interest, succeeded in reversing this situation in 2016 when it was granted funding from the Cabinet of the Minister of Economy, Marcourt. With its foundation in the territory this CATL (Fig.  1) will inspire other Belts in Wallonia such as at Ath, the project CaliTerre, which was initiated in January 2015. This project was based on

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Fig. 1  Localisation de la Belgique, de la ville de Liège, de Charleroi et de Ath. Source: Author’s own rendering

an Open Forum, as was the CATL, although smaller in scope but with the same objectives. The same applies to the agglomeration of Charleroi, which, within the framework of a call for proposals in January 2017 within the AEI (Agency for Enterprise and Innovation), led to a proposal for a Food Land Belt, received favourably in April 2017. The difference compared to the CATL is that the Charleroi Food Land Belt is financed to the tune of €150,000 for its launch phase of two years. The aims are similar to those of the CATL; however, farmers will have to produce organically or be reconverted. To date, this Belt is in its “implementation” phase. The same is true for the town of Verviers, in eastern Wallonia, which entered a preparatory phase in June 2017. For all these Belts taking shape in Wallonia a “determination” underlies the projects which often reflects the efforts of the citizens to “relocate” their food by supporting the farmers of their territory. These steps are a real turning point in the perception of Walloon’s agriculture. Nevertheless,

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all these citizen initiatives require the establishment of a food “governance” process so that they can be anchored permanently in the territory.

What Kind of Territorial Food Governance Is Wallonia Heading for? While in some Anglo-Saxon countries, strategic plans for food have been put in place, for example, in London, New  York, San Francisco and Toronto (Morgan and Sonnino 2010), in Europe the issue has hardly made it into the urban policy domain. Although in France the concept of “governance” has emerged to a certain extent in some municipalities, such as Perpignan (Perrin and Soulard 2014) and Lyon (Brand 2015), we must acknowledge that this represents above all a “networking of food actors”. This networking is based on an interest in local agriculture both in terms of the food supply and in terms of the living environment (Perrin and Soulard 2014). In this case, we will retain the definition given by Héléne Rey-Vallette et al.’s team of researchers in 2011: “A dynamic process of coordination (hierarchy, conflict, concertation) between public and private actors with multiple identities and resources (in the very broad sense: powers, relations, knowledge, statutes, financial capital) that are asymmetrical around territorialized issues. It aims to achieve a collective construction of objectives and actions by implementing multiple arrangements (organization of procedures, measures, knowledge, know-how and information) based on collective learning and taking part in institutional and organizational reconfigurations/innovations within the territories” (translation).

To this definition, we add the food issue of cities, especially Walloon cities, where a certain awareness of the negative impacts of productivist agriculture has taken place recently. This “new” process is still struggling to become established. Nevertheless, its parameters are certainly understood, namely, the co-­ construction of projects involving all actors in the territory, the concerted management of agricultural and natural areas, the sustainability of short circuits around towns and cities, and the taking into account of open spaces in urban policies (Ascher 2006). The CATL project involves all stakeholders in the food “relocation” domain, in order to co-­construct sustainable initiatives rooted in the territory, and in which the citizens and their food choices are placed at the heart of the project. In addition to the consumer, when this CATL emerged, the designers took care to build a

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genuine and very inclusive “network of actors”, involving institutional, territorial and scientific actors. This would constitute the foundations for a “governance” process involving various collective actors such as LAGs (Local Action Groups), and various public actors (the province of Liège, the Walloon Region and the Walloon-Brussels Federation). In March 2016, the CATL was invited to the Bourgmestres Borough Conference and the Liège Provincial College (Liège Métropole, a non-­ profit organization). This conference took place on the site of the Companions of the Earth, and elected representatives of the agglomeration of Liège considered the Territorial and Multi-Communal Development Plan of the Borough of Liège, the realization of which was entrusted to the consulting firm Pluris in collaboration with the CATL. This meeting made it possible to appropriate the issue of “agriculture and local food” and take a step forward in the issue of the food supply of cities and that also involves political actors in the development of some form of territorial food governance. However, the discussions concerning the establishment of a territorial food governance were essentially the work of the CATL stakeholders (Jonet 2017). The question of food sovereignty was also addressed early on by the initiators of the CATL, and food autonomy remains paramount in the cities but it also requires the involvement of all the actors and particularly of local elected representatives, which will ultimately determine its success (Hochedez 2014). Currently, there are as yet no urban food strategies in Walloon cities; our initial investigations as part of a doctoral thesis (University of Liège) focused on the agglomeration of Charleroi, where a Food Land Belt is being implemented. In Liège, this concept had already been better understood by certain actors. Indeed, in March 2017, the CATL contributed substantially in various meetings focused on food in the province of Liège during the Festival “Nourrir Liège 2017” (Feed Liège 2017). This mobilized over a period of 20 days several hundred civil society actors and political representatives to discuss the agricultural transition around Liège. This was a major step forward to create a certain form of governance aimed at transforming the food system of Liège. About €70,000 was made available by the City of Liège for a project to improve the feeding of children in their schools and make them aware of a healthy and sustainable diet while also preserving the environment, public health and social justice (Morgan and Sonnino 2008). This governance is still embryonic at this time. For instance, the Walloon Minister of Agriculture, within the framework of the author’s thesis noted above, was asked in July 2017 the following question: “If I

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ask you about territorial governance and more precisely, food, what would be your answer?” The Minister replied: “I would like to talk about the measures to be put in place in a given territory to ensure the objective of providing the population of this territory with a sufficient quality and quantity of food. I would add the principle of the rational use of natural and territorial resources. These are precisely the objectives I pursue with the new contract between agriculture and Walloon society through the measures described in the answers to the previous questions” (translation) (Collin 2017). The Minister’s reply was aimed at focusing the actions on a well-defined territory. The notion of “governance” is not really a “priority”, and the Minister referred to “measures” for the territories to reach a form of food security, rather than a process of concertation between the various actors. Nevertheless, he referred to a “contract between agriculture and society”, demonstrating the real recognition of this economic activity that had for so long been neglected. However, while this governance is still far from being firmly established in Walloon cities, remember that in April 2017 Liège signed the Milan Food Policy Pact (Pacte de Politique Alimentaire de Milan), in which the city “is committed to developing an equitable territorial food system, that is resilient and sustainable”. This Pact commits the City of Liège to implement local actions, based on the following six axes: • Local food governance—ensuring an environment conducive to effective action • Promoting sustainable food and nutrition • Ensuring social and economic equity • Supporting food production (rural-urban linkages) • Food supply and distribution • Preventing food waste Liège is the first Walloon city to have signed this Pact—actions on the ground are now expected.

Conclusion The observations of the evolution of Walloon agriculture force us to recognize that this agriculture has been “in decline” for a long time. This agriculture no longer feeds the Walloon population, which is increasingly conscious of the negative externalities of this productivist agriculture. The

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many crises of the agricultural world in recent years and the latest scandal of contaminated eggs in August 2017 raise fundamental questions. Consumers are trying to find alternative solutions for their diets. In this context, the first Food Land Belt was born in 2012, emanating from a coalition of civil society actors, who reflected on the food systems required to meet the expectations of consumers in a province with a population of more than 600,000 inhabitants. The Liège Food Land Belt has made the “bet” to feed more than 50% of the population of Liège with healthy, accessible local products in the next 25–30 years. This innovative concept builds on the existing short circuits developing since 2007  in Wallonia, through the Food Purchasing Groups, whose numbers have grown from 40 in 2003 to 220 in 2015 in the French-speaking Belgium (Nature et Progrès 2015). For the CATL it involves creating a “platform” for all the initiatives to deal with the lack of local producers and a growing demand in Wallonia. The three keywords of this CATL are “relocate”, “green” and “democratize” the dominant food system. The CATL is a pioneer in this field, with impacts on other cities in Wallonia, for example, Ath, Charleroi and Verviers (Feyereisen and Stassart 2017). The conditions for implementation differ somewhat, but the objectives remain the same, that is, to feed local populations in a more sustainable and healthy way and achieve territorial food sovereignty. This concept has recently been taken into account by the political authorities (Jonet 2017), but the road ahead to put in place a complete food governance system is long and actions are still awaited.

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Identifying and Solving Regulatory Issues and Solutions Through Some Case Studies of Urban Farming in Australia Michael Mobbs, Helen Lynch, John Fry, and Bronwyn Richards

Introduction Here are three stories about growing food in Australian cities and towns. Two food growers share their solutions, problems and strategies, and I add my own. To make analysis easier each story is summed up within a common set of headings or parameters. Then, using the stories and summaries of key facts, I offer some comments and suggestions about existing and potential new rules which may achieve more food growing in our cities. Let the stories begin.

M. Mobbs (*) Sustainable Projects, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] H. Lynch • B. Richards Wynlen House Village Farm and Learning Centre, Braidwood, NSW, Australia J. Fry Bathurst Regional Council, Bathurst, NSW, Australia © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_9

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Country Village Urban Farm “From this small beginning our garden of less than 1000 m2 produces an average of 2.5 tonnes of vegetables each year.” Bronwyn Richards, 2017, Wynlen House

Wynlen House Village Farm: Small Village in Rural NSW The urban farm is much more than just an idea for sustainable living. It is becoming a reality for the many who are turning their front- and backyards, verandas and street verges into produce plots for food and extra cash. Wynlen House urban micro farm is proof that this search for sustainability in Australia’s urban and suburban streets is both achievable and very rewarding. Where? Wynlen House is located on a large residential block (1.5 acres) in the village of Braidwood, New South Wales (NSW; a village of around 1000 people), one block back from the main street. Braidwood is located in the very cool climate region encompassing the Southern Tablelands, the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) and the Alpine areas of NSW. The township is 662 m above sea level, and while it rarely experiences snow, it has a long hard frost season officially beginning on 23 March through to 22 November, although there can be a frost outside of this time. The town experiences on average 109 frost nights per year. Average annual minimum temperatures are 0 to −5 degree Celsius. Summers are warm and mild, but the growing season is short. Annual rainfall is around 700 mm. The frequency and duration of frosts are a critical factor for growing in this area. When and How? Wynlen House was started in 2006 by Bronwyn Richards and Helen Lynch (www.wynlenhouse.com.au), as a part-time business running a community-supported agriculture (CSA) box scheme for around five local families. We started as a box scheme. Our customers agreed to purchase whatever we grew, and this gave us the initial confidence in growing for other people without having to concern ourselves further with the retailing aspect. In 2010 we reconsidered our approach and explored organic and sustainable approaches for increased small-farm, all-year, cold-climate production. From this small beginning our garden of less than 1000 m2 produces an

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average of 2.5 tonnes of vegetables each year. We have five houses and a pre-school that adjoin our boundaries. We are lucky to have n ­ eighbours who tolerate our noisy geese breeding pair and our seasonally noisy turkey flock. We do find that a dressed turkey for Christmas dinner by way of a thank you makes up for a lot, and no one really minds our egg-laying flock of 22 birds, who happily range outside the fenced-off vegetable garden. Rules and Regulations in Urban Food Practice It’s worth noting that growing vegetables for sale or home consumption is one of the least regulated activities in Australia. State and local planning law and industry authority regulations don’t have anywhere near the impact on small vegetable growers as they do on, for example, livestock growers. Anyone who keeps chickens in suburbia will know that these regulations can be very demanding. Most council regulations enshrined in Local Environmental Plans allow for horticultural activities on a small scale in residential zonings without development applications. Councils generally only require development applications for large-scaled enterprises such as nurseries. Growing, consuming and selling your vegetables as a hobby will rarely bring you into conflict with your local council—except if you upset the neighbours, for example, by liberally spraying toxic herbicides or pesticides, sending your neighbours into coughing fits, or operate your walk-behind tiller at 2 am. You do need to be aware of council rules around home-based business if you want to grow vegetables commercially on a small scale and of Australian Taxation Office definitions of hobby versus “farm” business. We have had no major problems with the council or with neighbours as our small mixed farm (poultry and vegetable production) is generally within Local Environmental Plan requirements. We follow an age-old tradition of growing food for local consumption, as was the common practice before large-scale farming and food retail business dominated. Compost A farm in an urban or suburban setting may mean that the sourcing of composts and manures nearby can require research and lateral thinking. Manure from stables and small farms on the outer edges of a town or city is often the best source, but you have to look for them. We get great sheep manure, $4 a bag, from a hobbyist sheep-keeper outside Goulburn. He has a small flock and his nephew rakes up and bags the manure. Cheap at the price. There are such people in the most unexpected places, and they

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are invaluable. Sheep manure is a cold manure so can be added when fresh to the garden. Other manures such as horse and poultry are hot and must be somewhat decomposed before use. We use all the different manures we can get. Many councils now recycle green waste into compost, or mulch— to which manures can be added to form compost. We are fortunate to have the first organically certified green waste compost facility in our area and can purchase compost directly when our home-made compost isn’t ready. We have a number of large composts approximately 1–2 m3, always in process. We make our compost using bales of hay or straw (from local farmers) as our containers sides, which we then “fill” with garden waste, manures, shredded paper, coffee grounds, microbes (lactobacillus) and so on over a period of 6–12 months. We then cover with sheafs of straw or hay and leave for a further 6–12  months. Most of our food waste goes through the poultry first. In small gardens, having a closed composting system (anaerobic) or a closed-system worm farm is the best way to avoid attracting vermin if you don’t have the space for large composting systems. Water Water can be a challenge for the urban gardener. Rain tanks take up a lot of space and mains water particularly in regional NSW can be terribly expensive. We have 40,000 litres of rainwater storage and we use tank and town water for both the house and the garden. In areas of low rainfall irrigation is a must. With our low annual rainfall (585 mm a year) we have to irrigate and find that quality in line drip line irrigation is the best. We pipe mains water to a number of points in the garden and use gravity and electric pumps to distribute tank water for irrigation. This year is an extremely tough year, having had only 90 ml of rain in the last six months. We are seriously contemplating digging a well, as underground water was the main water source before town water was introduced in the 1960s. We don’t see any tangible impact from our green suburban space on local temperatures. We are just too small, however a vista of vegetables, even if it can’t defeat climate change, will bring a calm and productive energy to any backyard or homesteading space. Summary Wynlen House is located at 92 Monkittee St., Braidwood, NSW. The farm first started with a community-supported agriculture scheme which oper-

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ated from 2006 to 2010. Then in 2010, it moved to a weekly produce stall, on private property, in the main street of Braidwood. The owners and operators are Bronwyn Richards and Helen Lynch (www.wynlenhouse. com.au). The key impact of the farm has been the continuous improvement of the existing rich, well-drained soil by cultivation and farm animal activities. The micro farm is managed on holistic management principles, where animals are used to help manage land regeneration and soil enrichment. The farm composts around three quarters of a tonne each year comprising weeds, vegetable trimming, straw and mulch composted via poultry activity and compost systems. There are three large water tanks, a hot house, drip line irrigation, fencing, animal shelters and basic machinery. The investment at start-up is around $10,000. Maintenance is around $800 per year. This large suburban yard formerly grassed is now producing around $45,000 a year in gross income. The farm’s total land area is around 1.5 acres or 0.6 of a hectare, with 0.25 acre or 1000 m2 under cultivation. It has a 40,000-litre tank water capacity and access to town water. Annual average town water consumption for both garden and house is 500,000 litres. The farm was established under the Tallaganda Local Environment Plan 1991, repealed and replaced by the Palerang Local Environment Plan 2014. Other regulators include the Braidwood Development Control Plan 2006, State Environmental Planning Policy No. 30—Intensive Agriculture, NSW Food Authority—Poultry Meat Producers & Small Egg Farms, NSW Primary Industries—Local Land Services regulation, NSW Water Catchment and Australian Tax Office. Key strategy(s) used to solve and deal with rules and regulations are to act within legislation, regulations and policies; to argue cases where interpretations are unclear; to appeal unfavourable decisions and to advocate for policy and regulation change. The cost of rules and regulations is in time spent in trying to evaluate and work within a myriad of often-contradictory legislation and regulation located in a great number of different sources. This is a huge challenge and at least an hour each week would be spent keeping up with changes to law, regulation or policy and their implications for our micro farm, particularly because we have a few farm animals. It is worth noting that there are few quality choices available for small machines and hand tools. Everything is either for large-scale market gardens or small backyards. We did end up importing stand-up weeding tools from the US and Germany.

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Using Greywater to Grow Plants, Trees, Insects and Birds: A Reed Bed Case Study Using Various Sites in NSW “The Evans gravity feed water treatment reed beds have now been tested in varied lwpocations with differing soils types and at altitudes from 600 m to 1200 m AHD for over 25 years and have achieved up to 80% safe water recovery (from greywater), which can contribute to increased plant growth, urban landscape cooling, high-quality bird and reptile habitat, and improvements to the daily water cycle.” Evans Shire Council Where and Why? The Bathurst region (formerly the Evans Shire Council) in rural NSW wastewater gravity feed natural treatment reed bed projects began in 1993 after the council identified large numbers of traditional household septic system absorption trenches, mostly in the rural villages, were failing after medium rain events, causing increasing and unacceptable health and environmental and water table risks. Also water shortages in summer were increasing for some houses and a new recycled water source would help with garden watering and potentially toilet flushing. Reed Beds The Evans Council gravity feed reed bed systems are proven to be more economical, fail-safe, reliable and effective than alternative existing small wastewater treatment systems that rely on high installation costs, high power usage, harmful chemicals and regular servicing commitments. Rules, Trials The reed bed trials were approved and funded by NSW Health subject to the design meeting health standards and the first reed bed being installed under controlled conditions. The government laboratory water quality results were sent to NSW Health for approval before the field trails commenced. The council then approved six reed bed systems, which were installed on dwellings ranging from two to six residents with existing septic systems on rural blocks 750  m2 and larger. The reed beds were constructed

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between the existing septic tank outlets and the absorption trenches. The treated water could be intercepted and stored for garden use or allowed to flow on the existing absorption trenches as high-quality ground water.  apacity, Performance, Quality C The amount of (black and grey split or combined) water processed is determined by the household output and the reed bed water capacity, and detention time is designed to the maximum output of each household. Typically a house with two bathrooms would use up to 1000 litres per day with a 15-day detention time. The reeds (mostly Phragmites australis) uptake nutrients, especially in the spring/summer growth phase, and the biologically active root systems work within the bed media (sand, rocks and mulch) to destroy pathogens. The reeds can be harvested each winter for garden mulching and stock feed. The Evans gravity feed water treatment reed beds have now been tested in varied locations with differing soils types and at altitudes from 600 m to 1200  m Australian Height Datum (AHD) for over 25  years and have achieved up to 80% safe water recovery (from greywater), which can contribute to increased plant growth, urban landscape cooling, high-quality bird and reptile habitat, and improvements to the daily water cycle. Summary The Peel, NSW, Rivulet Road, project commenced in 2005, with John Fry as the project designer and with approval by a registered health inspector. The key impact on the water quality was a radical improvement in quality across the NSW Health Department/Midwest Health Service criteria— BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) less than 20 mg/l, suspended solids less than 45 mg/l, dissolved oxygen greater than 2 mg/l, coliform count not exceeding 100 cfu (colony-forming units)/100 ml, free residual chlorine less than 2 mg/l, nitrates and phosphates significantly reduced. The reed beds are now providing garden mulch and high-quality habitat for reptiles, frogs, worms, birds and a wide range of insects. The septic tank would process about 300–400  kg of human solids per annum. Depending on the size and materials used, the one-off cost for concrete tanks systems would be approximately up to $10,000. Poly liner systems cost much less. Operating costs are negligible. The reed beds produce about 200,000 litres of recycled garden water per annum. Each concrete reed bed tank is approximately 1600 × 1400 × 900. And each tank may need up to 100 m2, including the surrounding grass area.

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Clause 75, Section 68, Local Government Act 1993; Australian Standard 1547; draft Australian Standard 96034; Department of Health (DOH) guidelines for testing wastewater systems; on-site wastewater management systems for domestic households all apply to the project. The prototype design was approved by the NSW Department of Health, and all other subsequent designs must be approved by the local council as the consent authority. A cost of $20,000 was incurred for initial project designs and approvals. It is worth noting that the Bathurst wastewater reed beds can be retrofitted into existing septic tank/absorption systems or designed into new dwellings.

Chippendale Road Gardens, Inner City, Sydney NSW I live in Chippendale, NSW, Australia. It’s a small, closely built suburb beside the city centre with about 6000 residents and 4000 workers, a 45-minute walk from the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. I grow food in the small backyard of my inner-city house and, with my neighbours, in the road gardens we’ve made in about 15 city blocks of our streets. Since 1996 my house has not been connected to town water or sewer and, since 2015, to the main electricity grid. Using the sun and rain that fall on the house four people have since lived here in the 21  years for annual energy and water costs of less than $300 a year. The design, costs, mistakes, monitoring for this house and others are outlined in my book (Mobbs 2010). In 2007 I learnt that eating the typical Australian diet meant the growing, transport, consumption and waste of food uses 20–40 times more energy and water than my four-person household. Even though the house runs using the sun, I need to grow food, too, if I’m to live a sustainable life. But did you know that a modest breakfast of an egg, tomato, slice of bread, some bacon needs over 1200 litres of water? So I began to grow food in my garden. The garden, 5 m wide, 10 m long only has plants and productive herbs in about 15 m2 of the total area of 50m2 due to decking, tanks and structures is mostly filled with rain and blackwater tanks are too small and overshadowed to grow even 5% of the food one person needs, so I began growing fruit and veggies in the road verge outside my house. A dozen or so volunteers from a local gardening group, Permaculture North, advised and assisted us with choosing and planting our initial

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herbs, plants and trees. As neighbours, who liked the look of my road garden, also began to grow food outside their places the idea of turning the suburb’s roads into gardens seemed worthwhile for us to test by holding a community-wide gardening event. Chippendale Food for the Future Fair In October 2008 about 20 residents and businesses of Chippendale put on a one-day “Food for the Future Fair.” Around 6000 people turned up with babies in strollers, dogs on leads, animals and people enjoying the fun in our three city blocks closed to traffic. We had reclaimed the streets! What a day it was. So many conversations with friends, strangers, farmers. So many people on the end of a shovel, most for the first time. For a “how to” guide to run a planting day, and for the list of trees and plants that grow best in shade or sun, see the “Road plants guide” in the book about this project and others for growing food where we live and work (Mobbs 2012). Keep Rainwater Where It Falls To get rainwater flowing into the new road during the day of the fair we residents built leaky drains, each resident being provided with a one page ‘how to do it’ diagram. It’s made to leak and distribute water below ground, or to absorb it. It took about 20 people, all but a couple without gardening experience, working from 9  am to 6  pm to make the leaky drains and to plant the 200 citrus trees, herbs and native shrubs. Costs for Food for the Future Improvements There were a range of costs: • $300 from community pockets for geofabric, pipes, tools and fertiliser. • $1000 from the council pocket: for trees and labour. • This doesn’t count the value of the free community labour. There are now social media locations where others growing food and gardening in the road verge may share information and an Australian Facebook page for road gardens.

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Summary The project started in Chippendale, NSW, Australia in 2008. The residents and businesses of Chippendale were the owners and operators of the project. The project achieved some key outcomes for the environment. Over four million litres of rainfall were kept to irrigate road gardens every year since 2008. Over 100 kg a week was composted in a public compost bin located in the road verge with a 120-litre capacity. The project cost about 18 leaky drains less than the $300 capital cost and has a nil operating cost except where participating gardeners individually buy gardening equipment and fertiliser for their own use. The project has led to an increase in property values estimated at over 5% based on conversations during on-site property sale auctions. Comments heard were: “I love the streets here,” “So many plants and trees,” “Such a strong sense of community.” Road verges vary from no verge (so raised bed gardens are placed on such locations) to 500  cm to 1.5  m, and, due to buildings built to the boundary, about half of the road verges get very little sun throughout the year, so fruit trees and vegetables which need six hours or more of sun are restricted to the sunny side of the street. Rules and regulations for the project were few at the commencement in 2008, but following our 2008 Food for the Future fair, the local council introduced a policy of permitting gardening without approval on the condition that five checklist points were satisfied such as the “Dial Before You Dig” and other commonsense actions.To resolve any problems with regulation was important to gain community support by growing attractive plants on the road verge, then to get the support of local councillors and gain media support and, finally, to propose a low-cost, simple-to-­ administer, approvals-free policy for councillors to ask staff to review and finalise. We estimate that it cost $300 to comply. To overcome any pollution the soils may have, plants have mechanisms for excluding it from the harvest, and advice from health experts is simply to wash the food during preparation.

Analysis These are just three projects out of thousands of urban food-growing examples. They’re selected because they show how key elements for food growing are being used: water, land, nutrients. And they have this c­ ommon

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thread: they’ve each involved the successful use of local community and politics, networking and a commonsense approach to the law or rules. What do these projects tell us about Australian rules and how we might grow more food where we live in our cities and towns? Urban Food Is Scaleable in the City or the Country Local councils own about a quarter to a third of the land in Australian cities in the form of roads and parks (the land area is larger the further the council is from a city centre because roads there are wider). They are custodians of this land and they hold it on trust for our benefit, we residents and workers in the community. What can we do on public and private land? The Wynlen House example is scalable to a smaller backyard or to a larger-size block of land of many hectares, in the city or the country, as are the other projects. Cultural Incentives Compared The three projects happened because the people involved are passionate about food but they’re in the minority in Australia. It’s possible to double a country’s food-growing capacity in 20 years when food and water are available neary where people live and when the people there are passionate about these things. The country- and citywide example of the Netherlands shows: “Almost two decades ago, the Dutch made a national commitment to sustainable agriculture under the rallying cry “Twice as much food using half as many resources.” Since 2000, van den Borne and many of his fellow farmers have reduced dependence on water for key crops by as much as 90 percent. They’ve almost completely eliminated the use of chemical pesticides on plants in greenhouses, and since 2009 Dutch poultry and livestock producers have cut their use of antibiotics by as much as 60 percent … The Netherlands is a small, densely populated country, with more than 1300 inhabitants per square mile. It’s bereft of almost every resource long thought to be necessary for large-scale agriculture. Yet it’s the globe’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass. How on Earth have the Dutch done it?” (National Geographic Magazine 2017) In the last few years of this decade, however, the Netherlands has experienced rainfall and flooding at volumes and frequencies which previously happened only every 200 years or so. Tunnels, building basements, roads,

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and electrical and transport infrastructure were flooded several times across cities and countrysides. That’s manageable now and then, but not several times every year or often. One eighth of the country is 0.5 m below sea level, half is 1 m above sea level and is lived and farmed only because the sea is excluded by large barrier sea walls. The fact of the rising sea level and of climate change is widely known and accepted by the society, which depends on sea walls to exclude the sea from the country. The country risks becoming uninhabitable by 2050 and is building new barriers because it expects a 1 m sea level rise by 2100 (Interesting Engineering 2016). This sense of urgency to sustain the water cycle—the knowledge of the power, purpose and vitality of water, and the social will that provoked action to grow more food, as the Netherlands did—and the incentives to do so are absent in the Australian culture. Using water prudently and growing food is a traditional and key part of the Dutch culture—in that small country farms are close to the villages and cities; strong visual and practical connections exist between urban and country folk. In contrast, Australia exports over two thirds of its food, 40% of which is grown in the remote Murray Darling Basin, which is located far inland from cities located on the coast, and those food-growing places and their viability is dimly understood in the cities, where over 87% of Australians live. Urban farms in Australian cities and towns provide a visual guide for urban people to the way food is grown, what food plants look like, how the plants need water and, if they may taste or buy it, how healthy such food and gardening for it can be; in this context we might think of urban farms as practical and cultural “mini Netherlands.” Small but Big These projects have small numerical figures. But these little garden projects have an impact beyond their physical dimensions. They demonstrate: • Efficiency: how to grow lots of food in a small area in ways that can and are applied in large areas • Water: how to harvest water, not waste it • Soil: how to grow soil, not waste it (by throwing away food—food comes from soil and by composting it we make soil again)

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• Anywhere: how to farm in small road gardens in the heart of a city, in a village, and how to sustain Earth’s water cycle by harvesting greywater from houses In Chippendale, because they’re in the heart of the city, about 1 km from the Sydney Opera House, the road gardens have an unusual, surprising location, which has triggered much media and other gardens, and created opportunities for schools and universities to inspect and pass on the ideas, and many people visit here or look on the Web and have begun their own road and community garden projects. Every week I meet or see at least one stranger using the public compost bin in the road verge outside my house and some of whom have ridden their bike or walked here with their food scraps from another suburb. Changing Council Rules As the Wynlen House garden and Bathurst greywater projects demonstrate, the laws in most Australian urban areas are simple enough for small urban farming projects to navigate to a “yes” and to operate. The Bathurst greywater project shows significant consultation with health and other agencies and lengthy trial and data analysis. Greywater, however, is not well understood in Australia and caution abounds. Four years after we started gardening without approval in our Chippendale roads, in 2012, the City of Sydney put out a draft footpath gardening policy. Its suggestions had already been trialled on the streets of verge gardens like those in Chippendale and across the city without government sanction. The policy—now in force—pre-approves road gardens if they meet criteria about such things as location, size and height. Plan to Sustain Chippendale In 2012, I made a plan to sustain Chippendale and the Sydney City Council displayed it for comment, but staff’s recommendation to councillors was not to proceed with it and that was accepted, so the plan remains an idea; some parts of it, however, are gradually being implemented by the city and elsewhere in Australia. The plan offers solutions for sustaining water, wastewater, energy, city heat, stormwater and social communications, and it proposes that every citizen—resident or business—will receive a rate rebate for composting

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after they complete a council-run workshop and so long as they maintain the bins at least once a month and maintain a contact point for themselves on a council-run website for those claiming rebates (Sustainable Chippendale 2011). Composting The Sustainable Chippendale plan proposes that every citizen—resident or business—will receive a rate rebate for composting after they: –– complete a council-run workshop, and –– for so long as they maintain the bins at least once a month, and –– maintain a contact point for themselves on a council-run website In Sweden and Norway, by composting, citizens get reductions of their garbage fees. They also get a refund of 50% on the purchase price of EU eco-labelled compost bins. Financial Incentives Can Change Behaviour Wasting rainwater is a key, perhaps the main, cause of climate change—yet local, state and federal rules place little weight on water and, specifically in Chippendale, nor does the local council, Sydney City Council, in its plans or rules, which require stormwater to be directed to the street as wastewater (Terra Nova Voice 2015). Wasting water in cities and countrysides appears to cause more rapid climate change than does carbon dioxide pollution. Failing to keep most rain where it falls may be the main contributor to modern sea level rise: “While global warming is commonly attributed to atmospheric CO2, the research shows water vapour has a concentration two orders of magnitude higher than other greenhouse gases. It is critical that landscape management protect the hydrological cycle with its capacity for dissipation of incoming solar energy” (Pokorny et al. 2010, p. 311). Attitudes to what change is possible, including for water and greywater, vary according to our cultural and physical surroundings. For example, most of Singapore’s water is recycled stormwater and sewage because it is cheaper than buying piped water from Malaysia—the Prime Minister famously drank the government’s recycled sewage sold as bottled water, “NEWater,” to show how safe it is (Singapore Government 2017).

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A Whole-of-City, Whole-of-Government Approach to Water This solution is addressed to the Sydney City Council, where the Chippendale road gardens are (it’s difficult to water inner-city road verge gardens by hose), but applies to almost every Australian city, as the rules discussed are similar across the country. In 2016 NSW’s Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPRT) reduced Sydney Water’s stormwater charges by 68% for properties which keep over 60% of rainwater on the site. The Sydney City Council should at least match, I suggest, and preferably, exceed, IPRT’s incentive pricing by which Sydney Water rewards property owners who reduce stormwater from their property. The Sydney City Council makes submissions to IPRT on water, sewage and stormwater pricing by Sydney Water. (It’s unknown whether staff tell or consult the community or councillors about council submissions to IPRT on behalf of the council/us about water, transport, etc.) In its 2016 submission to IPRT on Sydney Water’s prices the Sydney City Council questioned my proposal to IPRT to reduce stormwater ­pricing for properties that have rain tanks or otherwise keep water on site and said it would be complex to administer. Others supported the proposal and IPRT agreed with me, so 2017 stormwater prices are lower for “low-­impact properties.” Despite its proposal to IPRT to reduce water and sewage charges for low-use properties, the council itself still charges property owners, including me, $25 stormwater charges in its annual rates, and offers no reduction for those who significantly reduce water use or waste, that is, use rain tanks and so forth. My property, for example, is charged even though no stormwater leaves here and none has left since 1996. I’m guessing that the amount raised by the levy each year is over a million dollars. The last use of those funds I’m aware of was in some road works in two Chippendale streets around 2012. Keeping rainwater where it falls does not deprive neighbouring lands downstream of precious water: “The conservation of rainwater on land actually helps neighboring lands. The runoff of rainwater from a country is not stopped completely but is merely slowed down. In place of the sudden rain-dictated, often extremely small or extremely large flow rates, particularly from surface runoff, a much more balanced runoff, fed from groundwater, can now be passed on to one’s neighbors. Moderate rain from the small water cycle rooted in a water-­

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saturated country moistens the cities, fields and forests of neighboring lands and thus opens up the opportunity for these places to manage water in the same way. The method of retaining rainwater on land creates cascades of watersheds (or their parts) rich in water instead of dry cascades of watersheds.” (Kravcik et al. n.d.)

Weather Laughs at Rules Look at a plate of food and ask, “How long does it take, and how much water and soil is needed, to grow this food?” It takes a year, one circle by Earth around the sun, to grow one crop of many types of fruit and ­vegetables. Some foods, such as rice, can be grown twice a year or three times, but not many and in few climate and land areas. Before 2030, in 10–15 years, Australia’s three most populated cities— Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne—will go from having no days over 50 degrees to having a few along with many more days over 40 degrees. These temperature rises are built-in, inevitable. They are caused by the dominant rules and practice of using black colour for city roads and roofs, lack of trees and plants, and water design that treats rain as wastewater and sends it past trees in roadsides and gardens to the ocean and rivers, thereby denying a vital element needed to grow trees and plants. Most Australian-­ grown food won’t grow in those high temperatures. How many humans can work to grow and harvest food in weather over 40 degrees? The solution? By planting some food and other plants and trees in our back gardens and road verges we can, if we catch up with countries who have done it, like the Netherlands, cool our cities and harvest cheaper, healthier food. Acknowledgements  I am grateful to and acknowledge again the three storytellers for their contributions: Helen Lynch, Bronwyn Richards, and John Fry.

More Information and Further Reading Wynlen House Urban Micro Farm. Bronwyn Richards and Helen Lynch. 13 Monkittee Street Braidwood NSW 2622 Ph: 02 48421127 Web: www.wynlenhouse.com.au Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wynlenhouse/

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Twitter: @WynlenHouse Reed Bed Case Study John Fry—Projects and Partnerships Manager Skillset Environment Flannery Centre 23 Havannah Street Bathurst, NSW, 2795 Ph: 02 6330 1400 Mobile: 0429 469 476 Web: www.skillset.com.au How to make a leaky drain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v8Paj-xero

References Interesting Engineering. (2016). Retrieved from https://interestingengineering. com/netherlands-billion-dollar-sea-wall. Kravcik, M., Pokorny, J., Kohutior, M., Kovac, M., & Toth, E. (n.d.). Water for the Recovery of the Climate: A New Water Paradigm. Retrieved from http:// www.waterparadigm.org/download/Water_for_the_Recover y_of_the_ Climate_A_New_Water_Paradigm.pdf. Mobbs, M. (2010). Sustainable House. Sydney, NSW: Choice Books. Mobbs, M. (2012). Sustainable Food. Sydney, NSW: Choice Books. National Geographic Magazine. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/. Pokorny, J., Rejskova, A., Huryna, H., & Brom, J. (2010). Solar Energy Dissipation and Temperature Control by Water and Plants. International Journal of Water, 5(4), 311–336. Singapore Government. (2017). NEWater. Retrieved from https://www.pub.gov. sg/watersupply/fournationaltaps/newater. Sustainable Chippendale. (2011). Retrieved from http://sustainablechippendale. com/sustainable-chippendale-plan/. Terra Nova Voice. (2015). Retrieved from http://terranovavoice.tamera. org/2015/11/water-the-missing-link-for-solving-climate-change/4220.

Keeping Up Appearances: Conflicting Values in State Opposition to Growing Food in Public Liesel Spencer

Introduction In Buderim, on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia, a group of residents from 11 local streets have been working together since 2009 to turn the verges—the ‘nature strips’—in their streets into productive, edible gardens of fruit, vegetables and herbs. The ‘Urban Food Street’ gardens have produced significant quantities of fresh produce, which has been shared freely with the community (Taltham and Gaffney 2016). The Urban Food Street project attracted national and international attention and acclaim. In 2016, however, allegedly in response to an as-­ yet-­undisclosed complaint, the local government authority for the area, Sunshine Coast Council (SCC), changed its former approach of non-­ interference with the Urban Food Street project and issued a new policy requiring residents participating in the project to apply for individual household permits from the council, which also had to be accompanied by planting plans and public liability insurance (Bartholomew and Kinninment L. Spencer (*) School of Law, Western Sydney University, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_10

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2016). It was suggested that households could obtain this insurance through their providers of home insurance (Keyte and Sawyer 2017). Households that had planted ornamental species of trees and shrubs on the street verges were either not approached by SCC to obtain permits and insurance, or were approached in the initial distribution of letters to households but then not pursued with enforcement (Kemp 2017). The Urban Food Street organisers asked the council for an explanation as to why the permit and insurance requirements were being enforced in a discriminatory way; no answer was received (Kemp 2017). Some households in the Urban Food Street project complied and obtained permits and insurance; others relocated trees and vegetable gardens from the verge to within private property boundaries; and a third group of households, out of principle or out of economic necessity where unable to obtain insurance, did not comply and did not obtain permits. The council responded by bringing in chainsaws and wood-chipping machines and destroying mature fruit trees, laden with ripening fruits, growing in front of the non-complying households (Gaffney et al. 2017). Protesters and police attended the scene, and footage of weeping residents, including local children mourning the stumps of the trees, was captured and disseminated by news outlets (Gaffney et al. 2017). Widespread outrage followed in conventional media and social media (Gowan 2017; Joyce and McCarthy 2016; Urban Food Street n.d.). The regulation was initially claimed as a governance response to concerns about potential legal liability on council land, requiring mitigation by the obtaining of permits and insurance by participating households. As adverse publicity escalated, later statements by the Mayor on local radio departed from these initial justifications, claiming that as the Urban Food Street project was a commercial project making money, SCC was entitled to charge for the privilege of using its land. The Urban Food Street founders have strenuously rejected the Mayor’s assertion that they have made any profit from the Urban Food Street project. The governance stance adopted by SCC shifted from initial non-­ interference to regulation and finally enforcement, including destruction. The Urban Food Street community’s changing relationship with local government, and the material expression of that relationship in the destroyed trees on the verge, is analysed in this chapter as a case study in the still-evolving status of sustainability—the ‘ecological imperative’ (Wilson 2008, p. 229)—as a value in regulatory decision-making by local-­ level government. Sustainability in this instance conflicted with a legacy of postwar suburban aesthetic norms of rigid, conservative conformity (Allon

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2014, p. 15), which were, in the period leading up to the tree destruction, partially obscured by narratives and messages promoting the council’s environmental credibility and priorities. Those postwar values came to the forefront under the pressure of conflict between the community and the council, and speak to the way in which decision-making is still informed by those older conceptions of the role and purpose of local authorities in controlling land use to enforce an outdated normative ‘standard’ for suburban landscaping (Morgan 2010, p. 8), despite a surface veneer of adoption of more recent environmental and sustainability priorities. The justifications advanced by SCC for choosing enforcement and destruction as a regulatory response and the legal framework for regulation of the edible verge gardens in the Urban Food Street project are examined in this chapter using a source analysis of law and policy. This analysis of law and policy documents suggests an alternative explanation for SCC’s selective regulation of edible verge plantings (but not ornamental verge plantings) as evidencing a conflict of values in what constitutes acceptable modes of public landscaping. This conflict of values between the council and the community resulted in the destruction of community food gardens. Conflict between postwar aesthetic norms and the ‘ecological imperative’ for sustainable urban/suburban land use practices is also evident within SCC itself, and this conflict explains the cognitive dissonance inherent in a local government authority simultaneously proclaiming sustainability values whilst chainsawing an internationally recognised community initiative in local sustainable food production.

The Regulatory Response: Destruction of Community Food Production on Public Land and ‘Public Safety’ as a Scapegoat for Discretionary Enforcement SCC cited public safety and potential liability as its primary motivations for introducing a mandatory scheme of permits and public liability insurance for ‘edible garden plantings on the street verge’. SCC claimed its regulatory intervention was catalysed by a single resident complaint, although whether this was about safety, access, or amenity and aesthetics has not been made clear. Significantly, SCC has not required residents who plant ornamental trees on the verges of the same streets on which the Urban Food Street project is located to obtain permits or insurance, nor have the ornamental plantings of trees and shrubs on those same streets

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been destroyed by the council (Kemp 2017). An objective examination of the justifications advanced by the council for its regulatory interventions, from requiring permits and insurance to destroying plantings which did not conform to those requirements, starts with the relevant legal instruments. After a review of local laws, in 2016 SCC adopted omnibus changes to subordinate local laws, including Local Law 1 (Administration) 2011. Changes to this piece of locally specific subordinate legislation included requirements attaching to prescribed activities in various categories, including in Category 2, ‘alteration or improvement to local government controlled areas and roads’ and ‘undertaking regulated activities on local government controlled areas and roads’ (Sunshine Coast Council 2013b). Activities on the nature strip which expressly do not require a permit under this local law include ‘vegetation maintenance by a person of a nature strip immediately adjacent to the person’s property provided the maintenance is not likely to create a risk to the safety of pedestrian and vehicular traffic’. ‘Vegetation maintenance’ is defined to mean ‘mowing, slashing or edging of grass, weeding or watering’. SCC notes that ‘It is accepted that residents mow and edge the grass on the nature strip beside their property, and a permit is not required to do so’ (Sunshine Coast Council 2013d). The explicit reference to ‘acceptance’ of residents maintaining grass on the public space of the verge is significant from the perspective of aesthetic norms in public landscaping—the lawn is freighted with political and cultural meanings of ‘status’ and ‘suburban respectability’ (Feagan and Ripmeester 1999, pp. 618–619), and its presence here in the regulations reinforces those meanings. Grass maintenance is identified not only as ‘accepted’, but as an activity which is not a threat to public safety, and therefore not requiring a regulatory response. This is objectively not the case—lawn mowers have been associated for decades with injury and death risks for human users, both in Australia and overseas (Hendrickson et al. 2004; Hulme and Askew 1974; Love et al. 1988; Nguyen et al. 2008; Paul and Kluger 1993); lawn pesticides and fertilisers are also a serious risk to health (Robbins 2007, pp. 45-71). Lawn mower emissions are also a direct and indirect threat to health, in creating air pollution and adding to the carbon emissions causing global warming (Priest et  al. 2000). The evidence base does not ­therefore support a conclusion that grass is inherently safer for the public to maintain than other forms of verge planting.

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Activities which do require a permit include all applications to ‘plant, clear or damage vegetation’, which require the applicant to provide to the council ‘(a) a landscape plan showing the plant locations, plant species and plant numbers; and (b) a ‘Dial Before You Dig’ notification (for activities involving machinery); and (c) proof of consent from immediate neighbours’. These applications also require public liability insurance of AUD$20 million. A refundable bond also has to be paid to SCC before a permit will issue (to be refunded after completion of works), currently $510 for ‘installing or removing a garden bed or larger tree without machinery or heavy vehicles’. SCC requires a permit to plant, clear or damage vegetation ‘On road reserves, footpaths and nature strips under council control’; further, ‘Council prefers council staff or contractors to complete this work … Council manages planting on nature strips to ensure everyone can move safely with a clear path and to ensure drivers have clear vision’; other stated concerns include the possibility that ‘services such as water, sewerage, power and telecommunications may be located in nature strips and could be damaged during excavation’. The council website further notes that SCC ‘will not generally issue a permit for … planting street trees’. Public safety, and the safety of public infrastructure, is the stated justification for regulation of gardening activity on land under council control. The regulatory instruments cited above do not distinguish between food plants and ornamental plants; no evidence is proffered that edible species are inherently more dangerous that ornamental species, and thus requiring public liability insurance. On that basis, it might be assumed that SCC would pursue a uniform governance approach in relation to any resident gardening activity on the verge which was not in compliance with the permit and insurance regime set out in the regulatory instruments, regardless of whether the gardening activity involved edible or ornamental species. That has not, however, been the experience of the residents living in the locale of the Urban Food Street project. Residents’ plantings of ornamental ‘Poinciana’ trees, an endemic native species, were not the subject of council enforcement and the permit requirement was not pursued; fruit trees in the same street were required to obtain permits and insurance or be destroyed (Kemp 2017). Some households that had planted ornamental species were not approached by SCC at all, as detailed in email correspondence with one of the Urban Food Street project founders:

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Across the road from us is a home owner who planted 4 or 5 poinciana trees on his verge about 15 years ago. When letters were first served on the neighbourhood he was approached and asked if he had been sent a letter. He had not. Again purely a tree of ornamental value and the historical street tree of Buderim, but again planted by the homeowner on the verge, without action from the council. They still stand today, despite us bringing this to the council’s attention when trying to negotiate a resolution to this matter. The council refused to answer or even make comment as to why his trees were allowed but a fruiting peach or lemon or mandarin was not. They still will not answer that question. (Kemp 2017)

In other instances residents who had planted were initially approached but SCC later abandoned the matter: Our neighbourhood and suburb is dotted with verge gardens of ornamental value that grow beyond boundary lines. The request for permits were served on [more than 50] households in the UFS neighbourhood … In one particular case the home owner was served initially but ceased getting any information early on. That home had one large historical poinciana tree (40 or so years old) surrounded by hydrangeas. Purely ornamental in nature but nonetheless evidently on the verge and planted as an improvement to the environment and aesthetics. The action against them disappeared … It is my understanding that this action wasn’t served universally across the shire but rather in a targeted attack on those who grew fruit and vegetables on the verge our neighbourhood … There are dozens of other examples, with established gardens well beyond the fence line or growing up against boundary verge fences both in and around our neighbourhood and all over the Sunshine Coast. (Kemp 2017)

The relative location of the edible versus ornamental plantings also cannot be advanced as justification for removing the former but not the latter, as evidenced by one instance where council workers carefully unwound and removed a climbing edible ‘dragon fruit’ cactus from an ornamental Bangalow palm planted on the verge, also removing the edible plants growing around the base of the palm tree (Kemp 2017); it cannot be argued, for example, that the location of the planting was creating ‘a risk to the safety of pedestrian and vehicular traffic’. Edible species were subject to enforcement; ornamental species were afforded discretion and overlooked by SCC’s regulatory response. This is not explicable by reference to the regulatory instruments themselves.

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The governance approach of singling out edible species for adverse discretionary enforcement action continues in the imposition of more onerous regulatory requirements applying only to edible gardens on the verge. SCC’s ‘Community Land Permits—Edible Gardens on Street Verge Permit Application’ is specific to edible plantings (Sunshine Coast Council 2013d). Thirty-six permit conditions are part of the edible gardens on street verges’ permit application—including, relevantly, that ‘Plantings must not drop heavy nuts or fruit so as to cause injury of death to the public’; ‘Must ensure the permitted activity is kept safe and tidy at all times’; ‘Must ensure that this Permit is used so that the community purpose of the land can be continued without undue interruption or obstruction’; ‘Must ensure that the operation of the permitted activity does not detrimentally affect the amenity of neighbouring premises’ (Sunshine Coast Council 2013d). The ‘Edible Food Gardens Factsheet’ linked to the permit document also notes that ‘Where high growing plantings (ie: Banana Plants) exist on the kerb side, these will need to be relocated to the private property side of the street verge before the expiry of permits on 30 June 2020’ (Sunshine Coast Council 2013d). This affects in particular the part of the Urban Food Street project nicknamed ‘Banana Boulevard’, in which an entire street planted the verges with clumps of bananas, producing in one year 900 kilograms of bananas, which were shared amongst the community (Taltham and Gaffney 2016). The governance stance of SCC towards residents planting edible species on the street verges is, both in overall approach and specific details, treating edible plantings as requiring tighter regulation and more onerous conditions than ornamental plantings. As discussed above, this differential approach to governance of edible versus ornamental plantings cannot be reconciled with professed concerns about public safety and potential liability. The issue of public liability as a rationale for SCC’s differential regulation and enforcement action towards edible verge plantings also proceeds from a flawed understanding of the relevant civil liability legal principles (Cumming 2017). Australia has relatively uniform civil liability legislation across all states, which provides public authorities with special protections from liability. Resource limitations of public authorities, including local councils, mean that the allocation of resources in relation to, for example, maintaining and inspecting footpaths is not open to challenge (the relevant legislation is Sections 34–37 Civil Liability Act 2003 [Qld]). It would be very difficult to bring litigation over a footpath injury against SCC in relation to the Urban Food Street project. Even so, concerns about

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­ otential public liability could be addressed by SCC in the same way that p Bayswater Council in Western Australia has done (City of Bayswater Council 2017a), by negotiating directly with the council’s insurer to incorporate verge gardening into the council’s insurance coverage so that all residents can, provided they comply with safety guidelines, plant the street verges. Within commonsense guidelines, residents can create edible verge gardens, including raised beds and fruit trees (City of Bayswater Council 2017b). Bayswater’s approach also means individual householders do not need to obtain public liability insurance on a piecemeal basis. The Bayswater approach does not discriminate between ‘native gardens, waterwise gardens or edible gardens’ (City of Bayswater Council n.d.-b). The council’s policy, in contrast with the policies of SCC, expressly ‘aims to reduce the “red tape” burden for residents by not requiring a permit to install a green verge as long as your garden plans meet the requirements outlined in the Guidelines’ (City of Bayswater Council n.d.-a).

Well-behaved Gardens and Lawns as Virtue Signalling in the Suburban Landscape: The Hidden Meanings of Discretionary Enforcement Against Community Food Gardens on the Verge The regulatory responses of local government to urban agriculture on the verges of suburban Australia is informed by a spectrum of values, from conformist postwar conservatism to progressive environmentalism. This spectrum of values is evident between different councils, but also, as in the case of SCC, within the ranks of individual councils. Urban Food Street is a material site of expression for this disarray (Wilson 1991, p.  25) and transition between modernity and ecological/environmentalist ideas of the purpose and form of human habitat. In the period after World War II developments in technology made it easier to look after a lawn. Front lawns spread through the middle classes, with landscape designers for new postwar suburbs imitating the landscape designs of the wealthy British aristocracy (A. Davison 2006, p. 204; Wilson 1991, p. 21). Before the emergence of the middle classes, only the super wealthy could afford the status symbol of a lawn, signalling they could afford not to use all of their available land to grow food. English-style gardens in the postwar period were a ‘measure of good taste’ and of connection to the Empire (Holmes 2011, p.  123). Lawns in the postwar

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period also came to stand for progress and modernity (Wilson 1991, pp.  20–21), for being a good citizen and moral conformity with social expectations that you maintain your ornamental front garden and uphold the tone of the neighbourhood (Boone et  al. 2010, p.  256), and as a means to ‘convey status or serve as external markers of who lives inside the dwelling beyond the front yard’ (Boone et al. 2010, p. 256). Robbins says of the role of the lawn as a social signally device: The lawn was as much a vehicle for the creation and maintenance of social systems as it was a product of those systems. In every period it served to mediate broader ideologies of citizenship and property … it became normalized into a predictable kind of aesthetic, one that is inherently cultural in that it came to be normal, expected and desirable … while lawns are cultural (in the sense that they are meaning-laden), they are not the product of some pre-existing ‘culture’, and are instead the meaningful expression of political and economic forces. The meaning of the lawn and its position in urban and suburban political economy are inextricable … Lawns are a strategy, therefore, both for capital accumulation and for making docile and responsible citizens. (Robbins 2007, p. 32)

Those postwar meanings continue to attach to lawns as a publicly visible communication of political and social values, and this, it is suggested, informed the regulatory response of SCC in pursuing enforcement and tree destruction only against edible, rather than ornamental, plantings. These concealed values underpinning SCC’s regulatory responses were disguised as concern for protecting public safety and legal liability; however, that explanation is not supported by analysis of the differential treatment of edible versus ornamental verge gardens. Thornton (2017) recognises that the regulatory responses to urban agriculture of local-level government in the US are less of Lefebvre’s imagined ‘taking back of the right to the city’ for the socially marginalised, and more of ‘community-city council partnerships … where socially “appropriated” or produced spaces become “dominated” under the purview of city bylaws and neoliberal policy’ (Thornton 2017, pp. 973–974). In contrast, Thornton characterises Australian urban agriculture projects as largely under the umbrella of neoliberal policy and working within the constraints of local government regulation of land use and zoning. The regulatory approach of SCC to community verge garden is a legacy of postwar modernity, which continues to shape urban/suburban form and landscapes. It also continues to shape the patterns of social and cultural

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interaction in communities, in tightly regulating uses of land which deviate from the modernity aesthetic and values. By prescribing permitted uses of verge land and obstructing more communal forms of land use, councils perpetuate modernist values and the dichotomous public/private classification system (Wilson 1991, p. 22) applied to suburban space (G. Davison 1993, p. 63). The hard boundaries of public/private land exist only on paper, of course—in reality boundaries are more porous (Blomley 2005). Water flows across a private block of land, onto the verge and into the road gutters and stormwater system without regard for where the boundary lines are drawn. Plants overhang fences, and trees on either side of the boundary line throw shade and drop leaves, as well as sharing underground water with root systems which traverse the public/private divide. Whilst trees do not behave in a differential manner, depending upon whether they are growing on land designated ‘private’ or ‘public’, people are expected to do so. The solitary act of planting an ornamental tree on the public land of the verge outside the home one owns is acceptably in conformity with the postwar aesthetic and does not incite regulatory enforcement. The communal and active occupation and use of public verge land to grow food, however, deviates from conforming land use practice so as to attract regulation and enforcement. This land use is new and different, breaking the mould of decades of suburban practice, and is perceived as a threat to order and public safety. The language of SCC policies makes clear this perception of a threat to be controlled. Wilson characterises the emergence of an ‘ecological imperative’ in the 1960s as a form of resistance to modernity. The conflicts and tensions of this resistance are also apparent in the internal contradictions between SCC policies and departments, and between SCC rhetoric on sustainability and its actions in relation to the Urban Food Street project. SCC advertises its sustainability credentials on its website (Sunshine Coast Council 2013a), which boasts of winning a 2013 sustainability competition (Sunshine Coast Council 2013c), with the award application proudly claiming ‘proactive engagement with the community’ and listing environmental credentials and achievements. There is a conflict between these professed values and the actions of the council in relation to Urban Food Street. The council handed out annual ‘Glossies’ or sustainability awards from 2011 to 2013, including for ‘best edible landscape—residential’. The council links residents to a website ‘Living Smart’ for advice on how to eat more sustainably. SCC even gave an award in 2013 to a resident for

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his edible garden, which included ‘a publicly visible edible verge or kerbside garden’ and the ‘development of neighbourhood interest and involvement in local food production in the main street’ of his suburb (Sunshine Coast Council n.d.). This demonstrates a level of institutional knowledge within the council that provisioning urban and suburban areas with food has serious impacts on human and environmental health. The material on the council website illustrates a spectrum of values in local government employees and officers. The ‘left hand’ of government is handing out awards for public food gardening and promoting the environment and social value of local food production; the ‘right hand’ is demanding permits, public liability insurance and detailed planting plans, and enforcing non-compliance with these demands with tree and garden destruction. A conflict of values within the council explains the schism between that institutional knowledge and the decision by SCC to selectively regulate community growing edible plants on suburban verges, whilst ignoring ornamental plantings. SCC’s policy on community gardens uses language in a way that reveals further clues to that divergent regulatory approach and clash of values. The policy statement says that ‘Community gardens are unique forms of public open space which are managed by the community primarily for the production of food and to contribute to the development of a sustainable urban environment. They are places for learning and sharing about sustainable living practices, and for community building through shared activities’. However, the policy purpose—the impetus for regulation of this community activity on public land—is focused on control: ‘This policy sets out the framework for ensuring community enquiries in relation to establishing publicly accessible community gardens, on council-owned or -managed land are managed consistently and professionally’. That is the driving force behind council regulatory intervention—to bring community gardening on public land into conformity with the value-laden objective that the gardening activity be ‘managed consistently and professionally’. There is no specific policy for the act of a resident planting an ornamental tree or shrub in a way that encroaches upon the public space of the verge— this is captured by the same policy which specifically regulates all verge plantings. Growing food on public land, in contrast, is seen as meriting a specific policy because of concerns that this activity be ‘managed consistently and professionally’. What would the consequences of a community gardening activity which was managed ‘inconsistently’ or ‘unprofessionally’ be? Would the poten-

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tial for weeds, or overgrown plants, present a problem of safety, or merely an aesthetic affront? This ties into fundamental ideas of the socially acceptable format of public gardening, and references postwar suburban ideals of neatly maintained gardens, clipped shrubs, mowed lawns (Morgan 2010, pp.  9–10), and vegetable and fruit gardening kept out of sight in back gardens (Blomley 2005, p. 286). That format of gardening is less environmentally sustainable than the Urban Food Street model of using available land, visible or otherwise, to supplement the community’s food provisioning with local, fresh, organic, seasonal produce. A value hierarchy is hidden underneath the words of council policies and the regulatory enforcement actions. These values conflicted in the Urban Food Street situation and the conflict is ongoing. The landscapes we see today are legacies of past decisions (Boone et  al. 2010, p.  256). The destruction of mature fruit trees by SCC leaves a legacy which will take years to remedy. Fruit trees take many years to establish and reach maturity and peak fruit production—the future productivity of that piece of land in terms of producing fruits for the community to share has been set back by years: ‘people moving into older homes thus inherit past social preferences of landscapes’ (Boone et al. 2010, p. 258). This reflects a larger pattern of incomplete elevation of sustainability as a priority over aesthetics and outdated landscaping models, and outdated conceptions of what a suburb should look like, the role of local government and the use of public land.

References Allon, F. (2014). At Home in the Suburbs. History Australia, 11(1), 13–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2013.11668498. Bartholomew, K., & Kinninment, M. (2016, December 2). Residents Growing Food by Footpaths Asked to Get Permits and Insurance. ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-02/food-street-residents-askedto-get-insurance-buderim/8086672. Blomley, N. (2005). Flowers in the Bathtub: Boundary Crossings at the Public-­ Private Divide. Geoforum, 36(3), 281–296. Boone, C.  G., Cadenasso, M.  L., Grove, J.  M., Schwarz, K., & Buckley, G.  L. (2010). Landscape, Vegetation Characteristics, and Group Identity in an Urban and Suburban Watershed: Why the 60s Matter. Urban Ecosystems, 13(3), 255–271. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-009-0118-7. City of Bayswater Council. (2017a). Verge Gardens. Retrieved from http://www. bayswater.wa.gov.au/trees/verge-gardens.

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City of Bayswater Council. (2017b, February 22). Street Verges Policy. Retrieved from http://www.bayswater.wa.gov.au/cproot/6159/2/Street-Verge-Policy24022017.pdf. City of Bayswater Council. (n.d.-a). Street Verge Greening Guide. Retrieved from http://www.bayswater.wa.gov.au/cproot/7344/2/Street-verge-greeningguide-28022017.pdf. City of Bayswater Council. (n.d.-b). Verge Greening Guidelines. Retrieved from http://www.bayswater.wa.gov.au/cproot/7347/2/Verge-GreeningGuidelines-24022017.pdf. Cumming, S. (2017, June 2). Lawyer Calls Out Food Street Enforcement “Overreaction.” Sunshine Coast Daily. Retrieved from https://m.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/lawyer-calls-out-food-street-enforcementoverreact/3185060/. Davison, G. (1993). The Past & Future of the Australian Suburb. Australian Planner, 31(2), 63–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/07293682.1993.9657608. Davison, A. (2006). Stuck in a Cul-de-Sac? Suburban History and Urban Sustainability in Australia. Urban Policy and Research, 24(2), 201–216. https:// doi.org/10.1080/08111140600704137. Feagan, R.  B., & Ripmeester, M. (1999). Contesting Natural(ized) Lawns: A Geography of Private Green Space in the Niagara Region. Urban Geography, 20(7), 617–634. https://doi.org/10.2747/0272-3638.20.7.617. Gaffney, A., Atkinson, B., & Bartholomew, K. (2017, May 31). Council Chops Down Fruit Trees in Urban Food Street Precinct. ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-31/urban-food-street-trees-culledsunshine-coast/8576700. Gowan, J. (2017, June 12). SCC Urged to Reconsider Decision to Chop Down Fruit Trees in UFS. Retrieved October 31, 2017, from https://permaculturenews.org/2017/06/12/scc-urged-reconsider-decision-chop-fruit-trees-ufs/. Hendrickson, R. J., Janik, J. P., Janik, J. S., Goldberg, J., Georgopoulos, G., & Bensard, D.  D. (2004). Ride-On Lawnmower Accidents Causing Significant Torso and Extremity Injuries in Childhood: Case Report and Review. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 56(6), 1345–1347. Holmes, K. (2011). Growing Australian Landscapes: The Use and Meanings of Native Plants in Gardens in Twentieth-Century Australia. Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 31(2), 121–130. https://doi.org/10.1080 /14601176.2011.556371. Hulme, J. R., & Askew, A. R. (1974). Rotary Lawn Mower Injuries. Injury, 5(3), 217–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0020-1383(74)80009-4. Joyce, J., & McCarthy, M. (2016, December 7). ABC Gardening Guru Costa Weighs in on Urban Street Food Controversy. ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-07/costa-weighs-in-on-urban-foodstreet-controversy/8099868.

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Kemp, C. (2017, June 5). Legal research on SCC tree destruction. Keyte, S., & Sawyer, M. (2017, May 31). Mayor: Why We Destroyed Urban Food Street. Sunshine Coast Daily. Retrieved from https://www.sunshinecoastdaily. com.au/news/mayor-why-we-destroyed-urban-food-street/3184190/. Love, S.  M., Grogan, D.  P., & Ogden, J.  A. (1988). Lawn-Mower Injuries in Children. Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma, 2(2), 94–101. Morgan, R. (2010). ‘Fear the Hose’: An Historical Exploration of Sustainable Water Use in Perth Gardens in the 1970s. Transforming Cultures EJournal, 5(1). Retrieved from http://learning-analytics.info/journals/index.php/ TfC/article/view/1577. Nguyen, A., Raymond, S., Morgan, V., Peters, J., Macgill, K., & Johnstone, B. (2008). Lawn Mower Injuries in Children: A 30-Year Experience. ANZ Journal of Surgery, 78(9), 759–763. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1445-2197. 2008.04644.x. Paul, D.  B., & Kluger, Y. (1993). Lawn and Garden Tractor Accidents: Small Machines – Big Injuries. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 35(3), 489. Priest, M. W., Williams, D. J., & Bridgman, H. A. (2000). Emissions from In-Use Lawn-Mowers in Australia. Atmospheric Environment, 34(4), 657–664. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1352-2310(99)00192-2. Robbins, P. (2007). Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Sunshine Coast Council. (2013a, September 17). Inspiring Sustainable Lifestyles. Retrieved October 31, 2017, from /Environment/Inspiring-SustainableLifestyles. Sunshine Coast Council. (2013b, September 17). Local Laws Overview. Retrieved October 31, 2017, from /Council/Local-Laws. Sunshine Coast Council. (2013c, September 17). Sustainability Award. Retrieved October 31, 2017, from /Environment/Inspiring-Sustainable-Lifestyles/ Excellence-in-Sustainability. Sunshine Coast Council. (2013d, September 17). Vegetation on Council-­ Controlled Land. Retrieved October 29, 2017, from /Pay-and-Apply/Tree-­ and-­Vegetation-Clearing/Vegetation-on-Council-Controlled-Land. Sunshine Coast Council. (n.d.). Sunshine Coast Council Glossies Awards 2013: Tim Lang – Dinner Garden. Retrieved from http://www.livingsmartqld.com. au/awards/winners-images-2013/winners-posters-2013/TimLang%E2%80%93Dinner-Garden-2013_poster_A1_COMBINED-8.pdf. Taltham, H., & Gaffney, A. (2016, April 22). Food Street: Feeding off the Kerbside and Creating Close Communities  – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). ABC News. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net. au/news/2016-04-22/food-street-feeding-off-the-kerbside-creates-closecommunity/7343456.

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Thornton, A. (2017). “The Lucky Country”? A Critical Exploration of Community Gardens and City–Community Relations in Australian Cities. Local Environment, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1317726. Urban Food Street. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/ urbanfoodstreet/. Wilson, A. (1991). A Social Ecology of Postwar Landscape Design. Border/Lines, 22(Summer), 18–25. Wilson, A. (2008). Nature at Home. In T. Oakes & P. L. Price (Eds.), The Cultural Geography Reader (pp. 224–231). London and New York: Routledge.

PART III

The South Takes the Lead: Case Studies from BRICS, Asia and Africa

Service Learning and Stakeholder Action: Technology and Education for Urban Agriculture in Johannesburg, South Africa Naudé Malan

Introduction Food insecurity in South Africa is both a structural and systemic problem. To address this, iZindaba Zokudla (Conversations about Food—hereafter IZ) postulates new locally based food systems as an alternative. Food insecurity is a ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel and Webber 1973) that needs a broad ‘strategy of change’ (Braungart and McDonough 2008: 44) linking ‘creative and meaningful solutions’ (Altman et al. 2009: 345) at multiple levels in the food system with stakeholders. IZ is able to widely mobilise stakeholders from the university and society, and this chapters addresses the dialectic between small-scale activities and broad and comprehensive change: how can small-scale activities and local actors be mobilised for further systemic change in the urban food system? Systemic change (Dubbeling et al. 2010; Battersby 2015; SA Food Lab 2015; Drimie and McLachlan 2013: 218; McLachlan and Thorne 2009: 29; Burns 2012, 2014) determined the choice of multi-stakeholder engagement (MSE) N. Malan (*) Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_11

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methods used in this project. MSE methods mimic systemic processes and enable a coalition of change agents to make shifts in economic and social patterns of activity.

Multi-stakeholder Engagement and Systemic and Structural Change Service learning, in a transdisciplinary context incorporates community members, civil servants, students and academics. This community of practice can accomplish specialised tasks in the overall endeavour to change the food system. Systemic and structural change refers to the need to institutionalise these efforts that signal a new and innovative way of doing things (Regeer et al. 2011; Moulaert et al. 2013). In South Africa this is consistent with the broader transformation goals of the country, including sustainable development. The empowerment of the marginalised is an opportunity for them to change the system by their participation in it. MSE enables local actors to form coalitions and act independently of outside agents, unlike an ‘assistencialism’ or the direct delivery of a benefit (Figueroa 2015: 5; Claeys 2015: 111, 163). This transformative action can address the structural and systemic causes of food insecurity. Systemic and structural change to the food system implies the creation of new production processes and recognition of alternative producers and new enterprises, which implies new relationships amongst people in civil society that lead to different patterns in both the market and the state (Figueroa 2015; Allen 2010; Sumner et al. 2014). These ‘relationships’ amongst actors in the food system create its peculiar structure, and should this cross a ‘threshold’ so that society and the food system itself respond differently to hunger and food, we may perhaps speak of structural change. South African ‘food insecurity in cities is an unintended consequence of structural causes: although none of the players in the South African urban food system may intend to cause hunger or malnutrition, collectively, their interactions create conditions which result in close to half of the South African population being food insecure’ (Battersby 2015: 30). We cannot blame a singular actor for this, as ‘The injustice that structures produce is not usually the design or intention of the participating agents, but it is often a predictable consequence of the purposes that powerful agents have’ (Young 2011: 148). The solution to this is a ‘shared responsibility … of organising ourselves to change the structures so their outcomes will

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not be so harmful’, which is clearly suggestive of a multi-stakeholder and participatory solution. Nevertheless, ‘Victims of structural injustice in particular have a unique interest in undermining injustice, and they ought to take responsibility for doing so’ (Young 2011: 145). This chapter investigates how marginalised actors utilised the opportunities that the IZ project created to further their own interests in a sustainable food system. iZindaba

Zokudla: 2013–2015

IZ was established by a series of large open participatory workshops (a ‘broad forum’, field notes, September 2013), but soon thereafter developed a service-learning course in Participatory Technology Development that linked urban farmers, stakeholders and university students and departments. This ‘broad forum’ was a series of three public events that developed a ‘Strategic Plan’ for urban agriculture in Johannesburg. These events made it possible for additional stakeholders across the spectrum to participate in the broader project. The project emerged unlike how it was conceptualised, mainly because this ‘broad forum’ brought unexpected collaboration and stakeholders to the fore that later on led to autonomous action amongst local entrepreneurs and the significance of this is highlighted here. Some objectives emerged spontaneously in some of the participatory workshops organised, and continued independently but aligned to the broader project after these workshops were concluded. This is suggestive of an alternative way of ‘doing’ development, and it is presented as such in this chapter. IZ also emerged in such a ‘broad forum’ amongst NGOs that promoted food systems change. From 2002 the NGO Reos Partners conducted ‘change labs’ on how to approach food systems change (Hassan 2014: 45–60). Reos Partners, together with TransForum, a Dutch NGO (Regeer et al. 2011; Latesteijn and Andeweg 2011; Eweg 2014), organised the first MetroAG summit in Rotterdam in 2010 and a follow-up conference at Michigan State University under the banner of the Global Innoversity for MetroAG/Food in Detroit in 2012. This led to the establishment of IZ in 2013–2014 in South Africa as a project under the Global Innoversity banner (http://globalinnoversity.org/). IZ eventually adapted to and contributed to the methods and approaches spread through these events. We took note of the important social theory underlying these attempts at systemic change (Manzini 2015; Latour 2005; Castells 2004) and we introduced critical theory of technology (Feenberg 1999) into the

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discussion, which was appropriate for our attempts at participatory and intermediate technology development. IZ eventually became part of the Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (DESIS) Network. These international collaborators introduced multi-stakeholder and later the social innovation methods (Manzini 2015) that were later adapted and expanded by IZ (Malan and Campbell 2014). In 2016 IZ launched the Farmers’ School and Innovation Lab as a grand event that integrates all the diverse aspects of the project with significant farmer and stakeholder participation. It is one of the few in South Africa that promotes participation by small producers and emergent African farmers in the food system. Participatory Technology Development IZ’s Participatory Technology Development service learning was a collaboration between Development Studies fourth-year coursework students and Industrial Design’s fourth-year final mini-dissertation project (Malan and Campbell 2014). Students were exposed to issues of participatory technology development, human-centred design and social innovation (IDEO 2010; Chambers 2012). A structured process and methodology was developed for each group that aimed at the development of a single artefact and these methods were freely adapted by students for their own ends. Three different prototypes that met specific needs of Sowetan urban farmers were developed. These were developed at urban farming sites from initial interviews and observations identifying needs. It The prototype development process consisted mainly of a process of iterative conceptual sketching and prototyping with regular weekly feedback with and to the farmers in focus groups. This resulted in fully engineered final prototypes, including a DIY water pump, an off-grid food storage system and a seedling-growing system. These products were all listed as provisional patents so that they would be protected in the public domain. What transpired was that this project became a rallying point and means to mobilise numerous farmers into the wider fora, which IZ eventually organised as the Farmers’ School and Innovation Lab. We built both prototypes and a community in this activity. To take a conceptual product design into production is a protracted process requiring long-term investment (in terms of funding and time), and collaboration by more than one group of students over more than one year. This underscores the comprehensive and collaborative nature of

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s­ ystemic and structural change and the need to make real material differences in people’s lives and practices. The process we followed led to many lessons that concern the way technology could be designed with urban farmers at grassroots level, and how these could be embedded in larger change processes. This is a key issue in the idea of systemic and structural change and brings into view issues of intellectual property, manufacturing and impact (Campbell and Harrison 2015), not to mention social organisation and behaviour. Our solution was to embed these small-group activities in larger fora, which are exciting events that are attractive to farmers and entrepreneurs, and which eventually became proto-institutions for agricultural development that are key to systemic change. How the transition was made from artefacts and technologies to institutions is borne out by how additional stakeholders became involved in the project. Graphic Design and Entrepreneurship for Social Change The importance of creating open public fora for mass participation for systems change is vividly highlighted by how the Departments of Graphic Design and Business Management became involved in IZ. These departments attended the broad open fora that formed the initial interventions of this project. The socialisation opportunity enabled them to collaborate together on the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ’s) Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture’s Green Week 2014 independently of IZ.  Later this led to 2014 and 2015 ‘Graphic Design for Social Change’ courses being developed and implemented for IZ, which created branding and marketing materials for urban farmers. These materials were developed using newly developed participatory methods and were continued in 2015 with at least two groups of entrepreneurs using the designs created by the students. These materials enabled IZ to conduct a number of farmers’ markets—the Soweto Imvelo (natural) Market and the ChanchaKasi Market—and the implementation of this proved to be complex but extremely rich in lessons (Malan 2015). ‘Graphic Design for Social Change’ course enabled farmers to use these (visual) technologies themselves, and this ‘secondary instrumentalisation’ of technology (Feenberg 1999) highlights how technology is relevant to autonomous efforts at social change. Graphic Design students developed stencils as opposed to final lithographic proofs, which were highly accessible, and this highlights how design and technology can be adapted and ‘instrumentalised’ by people at grassroots. This proved a key aspect in the

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emergence of local enterprises throughout this project. What is important, however, is how these activities emerged unexpectedly in a context of collaboration that was constituted by both the broad public fora and the small-group participatory technology development activities that were implemented. Later on, this was the ‘design cue’ that inspired the Farmers’ School and Innovation Lab: if unexpected and useful actions emerge spontaneously out of collaborative opportunities, should we not deliberately create opportunities for the emergence of these? In 2015 the project expanded beyond small-group intermediate technology development. Since additional interested departments joined the project, particularly the Business Management Entrepreneurship programme, it could draw on resources that were already available in the university. The Entrepreneurship programme involved the ENACTUS student organisation (http://enactus.org/) and the organisation almost exclusively recruited farmers through the Farmers’ School and Innovation Lab for this programme. IZ attracted the attention of the UJ Division for Community Engagement, which enabled the mobilisation of volunteers. The project also attracted attention in the press, and this attracted stakeholders from civil society like Slow Food. Activities of iZindaba Zokudla are ongoing and in 2016 will include collaboration with a greater number of academic departments, inclusive of Communication Studies and Mechanical Engineering. This has, amongst others, led to the creation of a forum—the Stakeholders Forum—where all stakeholders collaborate to develop service-learning courses and applied research projects for emergent entrepreneurs. IZ, mainly through its Facebook page and other social media, is constantly receiving requests for collaboration from a wide variety of interested parties. Often, these requests are promoted by allocating a slot to them in the Farmers’ School and Innovation Lab programme for a particular day, which enables the creation of a particular programme of action and real-life implementation.

Service Learning and iZindaba Zokudla: Identifying Key Issues for Discussion The IZ experience offers clear lessons for attempts at systemic change, albeit through service-learning initiatives or action research amongst stakeholders. Service learning is variously defined (see the contributions in Campus Compact 2003: 7–10), but central is the idea that students learn

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by conducting a service to satisfy a community’s needs. This has to be done in a ‘thoughtful’ way and in the ‘real world’, and has to include real activities to address needs and include a reflexive and critical as well as an institutional dimension. Service learning links to broader progressive paradigms of enquiry and understanding like Dewey’s civic participatory ethos (Green 2006: 123; Plater 2004: 9), which has clear links to the current participatory action research paradigm (Selener 1996; Chambers 2012) and the idea of social change. Service learning can be conducted with only academic interests in mind, at worst patronising or exploiting ‘beneficiaries’. Anderson and McClachlan (2015: 3) call this ‘epistemic injustice’, and IZ aimed to avoid this, as service learning can in fact lead to meaningful change. The current reality in South Africa is also conducive to a transformative research agenda that (Roy et al. 2016: 4) ‘through the patient work of critical theory [can] … sustain thoughtful and meaningful social change’. Critical theory and the labour of critique however needs many others to complete transformation by collaborative action (Latour 2005: 45, 107,129). IZ offers lessons on how particular small-scale interventions can influence larger processes of social change. Service Learning and Institutional Change Service learning brings into view institutional change (Jacoby 2003: 2; Langseth and Plater 2004), albeit in the university. IZ’s service-learning activities were particular, but executed against the backdrop of a general approach to engagement through public workshops and links to local organisations. Although the particular local organisation that helped with the activities above ‘faded’ away, many other organisations, including the university, did change and benefit. How did this take place? Many encounters in the project, particularly the large open fora, were facilitated and based on formal methods of engagement. The Technology Development students used—and ultimately adapted significantly—a highly structured methodology, whilst the Entrepreneurship and Graphic Design students used tacit approaches and personal contact. This enables us to reflect on methods and ‘non-methods’ of engagement, as well as on the relationship between educational and enquiry-based methods and broader public fora and engagement, as presented below. The experience is mixed as to the need and efficacy of methods, particularly for the designs that emerged. However, we suspect the use of methods would extend and ‘rationalise’ the period of interaction between stakeholders, which would

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lead to a very dense and complex experience gained. A public forum will help to create additional interest in such activities, which would push them to the real world of civil society and the market. It is at this point where activities can be integrated by entrepreneurs in the construction of their own enterprises. This chapter sheds critical light on this dialectic. The approach to partnership adopted in IZ was initially a close collaboration with local organisations and entrepreneurs and the idea that their capacity can be built alongside the development of the project. Surprisingly, those who benefitted did so through open public fora and this is important in the analysis. The idea of ‘partnership’ (Jacoby 2003: 6) can be reinterpreted in the light of the need to bring particular activities into the public sphere, where they can be further transformed into enterprises. These two aspects of the project took unexpected and fortuitous turns and are key insights into how broader processes can integrate with local action for systemic change. Reflexivity, Critical Analysis and Personal Growth Student personal growth is a key concern in service learning, but cannot be divorced from reflexivity and critical thinking. Our students came from both privileged and disadvantaged backgrounds, and an appropriate focus for service learning in this context would be on understanding how poverty is formed and reproduced (Roy et al. 2016: 17), but here we aim for understanding how actors themselves can overcome their own poverty. We aimed to be responsive to the needs of communities but assist them in overcoming their poverty. In order to do so it is important to see beneficiaries and participants as able agents, who can create and execute their own projects (and in this case it would revolve around food gardens, networks of collaboration and links to other actors). Malan (2015) interprets this as an elective use of bonding, bridging and linking social capital, but preferably should be seen as building networks of actors (Latour 2005) that can complete social change projects. We offer evidence of how students interpreted these opportunities and how they were seized by actors. The experience gained through iZindaba Zokudla is rich and varied, and for some overwhelming. The project has grown and in 2017 wider and more extensive collaboration is foreseen. However, this chapter tries to report on and take stock of what was learnt from 2013 onwards. We conclude by reflecting wider on the enigmatic idea of systemic and structural change, as this is the overarching objective of the project.

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Methods and Sources of Knowledge We collected primary information for this chapter through note-taking and recording (written and visual) the events as they took place. We also rely on interviews conducted with key informants, and conversations and experience we have gained as participants in the process. We also draw on student blogs (both private and public) in illustrating our conclusions. We made it a point of gaining informed consent from all participants, although it needs to be said that all the workshops and public events were open to all and in that sense we cannot guarantee confidentiality, although we have taken pains to remove all reference to individual identities in this chapter. It needs to be said that the project is ongoing and a lot of the experiences we gained stem from our own close involvement in the project.

Analysis: Reflecting on Service Learning and Autonomous Action The analysis focusses on autonomous action by stakeholders and how this is embedded (Granovetter 1985) in wider public fora, methods of engagement, service learning, reflection, and the means and networks stakeholders utilise to realise their own interests. These allow us to present preliminary conclusions on systemic and structural change. When previously excluded stakeholders act by building enterprises in the food system we may speak of significant change (particularly in post-apartheid South Africa), and we need to see how this can be accomplished. At the background of this analysis is the presupposition that public fora create space for facilitated and constructive engagement amongst stakeholders, so actionable and transformative changes are possible. This has been borne out by the project to date, and much of the discussion below emerged in this dialectic between particular interests and their deliberation in such public fora. The Use of Structured Methods Participatory development has a peculiar but important fixation on the use of the right methods. Methods themselves can lead to significant changes in how people interact with each other and how they deliberate as a group (Bojer et  al. 2008; Mikkelsen 2005). In IZindaba Zokudla students adapted orthodox client-designer ‘methods’ to a new setting—that of a

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marginalised community. Although the designs that resulted from this project were both exceptional and adequate for the standards of the course, we are interested if such structured engagement enables autonomous action by stakeholders, and how this relates to the context. In South Africa, there is a great divide between those who have and those who do not, and the IZ experience can illustrate how the interaction between these two constituencies can lead to change. Structured engagement enabled student interaction to be significantly more effective than when they engaged informally with farmers. The findings and experience indicate both the need for structured engagement that methods allow and a deep immersion into the context. One student developed her own methods, in the form of a ‘mini assignment’ for her team, and these led to significant inputs into the design process and emphasise the need for a structured engagement. Latour’s ‘concatenations’ (2005: 107) of collaborators may be formed by such structured engagement. However, we should be alert to the benefits of a more authentic approach to engagement, as one student showed that a deeper immersion enabled the collaboration to become appropriate and productive of action: Informing my project up until this point were the interviews, observations and participatory activities based on different farms and RDFF meetings. Desktop research has also clarified some of the scope of the project. Something that was really missing was a good contextual understanding of a market set up in Soweto. It is an important point of purchase that small farmers are interested in, identified through a series of interviews, so attending the launch of the market was key in informing the product development of ….

Although we do recommend structured engagement as a means for service learning in cross-cultural and class settings, the previous quote emphasises the benefits of personal reflection and change. One student asserted: [M]y background, my enthusiastic [sic], my biases have to be put aside and be able to acknowledge the relationship that the Social Scientist, the designer and the farmers are having during the course of this module … The most rewarding part of this project is not receiving my marks—like with most projects—but knowing that I made a difference in somebody’s life (no matter how small) … I now see the importance of Ubuntu and giving back.

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This deep commitment that emerged in students’ own writing enabled them to take on many of the responsibilities for the design process above and beyond what the course demanded and their social roles would suggest. One student observed that ‘Working with … was a humbling experience, so much so that I fought to execute most of the design strategy’. Students can do so, and this is part of their own socialisation as concerned and active citizens. One student addressed ‘the important task of finding two printers’ and found them in the local area so to ‘ensure once we hand over our designs to … they will be able to print the designs for their own easy both easily and cost-effectively’. Others developed stamps and stencils to cut printing costs even further. Students were also able to link their own designs with the bigger picture that structural change implies: It could very well be a brand new business model for rural [sic] business to sustain their communities and turn the disadvantages capitalism has on the lower classes on its head. This could allow for rural economies to expand and keep injecting and rotating money into their own upliftment, rather than corporate supermarkets.

This optimism was not uncritical, and the same student averred that ‘he [the entrepreneur] cannot push these through because he does not have the skills or funding to create a prototype. What he does have are the ideas and the connections’. This indicates a number of actors need to be linked in order to enable marginalised entrepreneurs to participate in the mainstream economy. It is telling that another student developed her own garden at home and appropriated Karl Marx’s ‘we can’t just describe the world, we must change it’ in support of this. One student went ahead, over and above the course requirements, and taught rudimentary classes in lithography to some farmers and translated seed manuals into isiZulu, the vernacular. However, the experience of developing and designing actual prototypes is also relevant, echoing Latour again (2005: 75) that objects are actors. A student remarked: We were able to show the farmers the 1st prototype of the water pump, and they were really impressed. The farmers were shown how the pump would work. Regardless of a few hiccups the prototype boosted the confidence the farmers had in us.

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Objects, technology, seeds and even a university thus become a way to form groups of collaborators and a base from which to launch activities. Service learning becomes a means to build a partnership of stakeholders, but this action needs to be sustained, hence our focus on the existence and dialectic with public fora. This is vividly illustrated in one of the workshops in 2015 when an entrepreneur stood up and mentioned that, in the past, Soweto was a place the security forces ‘occupied’ and now, with IZ, farmers are getting instructions ‘in the university’, which indicates a sea change in the social landscape in South Africa. This indicates the potential of service learning and action research to build a coalition of actors that can attempt to change society. The significance of this is contemplated in the conclusion.

Conclusion: Reflecting on Systemic and Structural Change iZindaba Zokudla has accumulated enough experience to create enterprises upon the productive basis that urban agriculture affords. Ideally, ecological integrity will form the basis of economic productivity, and integration with communities of practice and the community at large will form channels for redistribution. IZ proposes that we may see patterns of engagement that MSE intervention would create as proto-patterns of real future systems. Practically, the vision this invokes is one where each garden or farm can be distinguished substantively from the activities of the informal sector. The informal sector is de-humanising, as it does not allow an entrepreneur to build up a reputation for a particular enterprise. Urban gardens can deliver food sustainably with the intensive use of local labour and the recycling of waste. This demands a comprehensive and targeted enterprise development process which will be significantly unlike that found amongst retailers and this innovation is what is needed. How can such an unexpected pattern of economic development emerge in society? The innovation needed will comprise both small-scale and public events, and it is the integration of such new particularities with broad fora that can address and include a critical mass of stakeholders that systemic change demands. In order to establish an alternative food system, a number of stakeholders in the food system need to collaborate. In our experience, ‘successful’ enterprises have all established links to multiple agencies and departments

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and with multiple local actors in order to become established. This ability of entrepreneurs to link diverse opportunities is how we should conceptualise systemic change. This is a collaborative effort that has to emerge organically and unstructured amongst stakeholders. Intervention is the creation of opportunities for multiple stakeholders to interact. Changes happen when the diversity amongst stakeholders are such that transformative and novel activities can take place, and these have to find a place for marginalised stakeholders in a new value chain. Systemic change is unpredictable and non-linear. To shift systems is a deeply democratic practice, where stakeholders realise the collaborative nature of their own agency. It is in collaboration that new systems emerge, and the task of the professional facilitator is to allow those affected by pressing social issues to be the creators of these new systems.

References Allen, P. (2010). Realising Justice in Local Food Systems. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 3, 295–308. https://doi.org/10.1093/ cjres/rsq015. Altman, M., Hart, T.  G. B., & Jacobs, P.  T. (2009). Household Food Security Status in South Africa. Agrekon, 48(4), 345–361. Battersby, J. (2015). A Study on Current and Future Realities for Urban Food Security in South Africa. Johannesburg: SA Cities Network. https://doi. org/10.13140/RG.2.1.4224.6487. Braungart, M., & McDonough, W. (2008). Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. London: Vintage. Campbell, A.  D., & Harrison, P.  H. (2015). A Framework for Socio-technical Innovation: The Case of a Human-Powered Shredder. In Cumulus Milan 2015: The Virtuous Circle: Design Culture and Experimentation Conference Proceedings. Milan: Cumulus Milan. Campus Compact. (2003). Introduction to Service-Learning Toolkit: Readings and Resources for Faculty (2nd ed.). Providence: Campus Compact. Castells, M. (Ed.). (2004). The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Chambers, R. (2012). Provocations for Development. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing. Claeys, P. (2015). Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement Reclaiming Control. London: Routledge. Drimie, S., & McLachlan, M. (2013). Food Security in South Africa – First Steps Toward a Transdisciplinary Approach. Food Security, 5, 217–226. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12571-013-0241-4.

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Dubbeling, M., de Zeeuw, H., & van Veenhuizen, R. (2010). Cities Poverty and Food: Multi-Stakeholder Policy and Planning in Urban Agriculture. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing. Eweg, R. (2014). Towards Sustainable Metropolitan Agriculture. In R. Roggema & G.  Keeffe (Eds.), Why We Need Small Cows, Ways to Design for Urban Agriculture (pp. 295–309). Velp: VHL University of Applied Sciences. Feenberg, A. (1999). Questioning Technology. London: Routledge. Figueroa, M. (2015). Food Sovereignty in Everyday Life: Toward a People-­ Centered Approach to Food Systems. Globalizations. https://doi.org/10.108 0/14747731.2015.1005966. Green, J.  M. (2006). Deepening Democratic Participation Through Deweyan Pragmatism. In C. D. Lisman & I. E. Harvey (Eds.), Beyond the Tower: Concepts and Models for Service-Learning in Philosophy. Sterling, VA: Stylus. Hassan, Z. (2014). The Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving Our Most Complex Challenges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. IDEO. (2010). Human Centered Design Toolkit (2nd ed.). San Francisco: IDEO. Jacoby, B. (Ed.). (2003). Building Partnerships for Service-Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Langseth, M., & Plater, W.  M. (Eds.). (2004). Public Work & the Academy. Boston, MA: Anker. Latesteijn, H., & Andeweg, K. (Eds.). (2011). The TransForum Model: Transforming Agro Innovation Towards Sustainable Development. Dordrecht: Springer. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malan, N. (2015). Urban Farmers and Urban Agriculture in Johannesburg: Responding to the Food Resilience Strategy. Agrekon, 54(2), 51–75. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03031853.2015.1072997. Malan, N., & Campbell, A. D. (2014). Design, Social Change and Development: A Social Methodology. In Design with the Other 90%: Cumulus Johannesburg Conference Proceedings (pp. 94–101). Johannesburg: Cumulus Johannesburg. Manzini, E. (2015). Design, When Everybody Designs: An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. McLachlan, M., & Thorne, J. (2009). Seeding Change: A Proposal for Renewal in the South African Food System. Development Planning Division Working Paper Series No. 16. Midrand: DBSA. Mikkelsen, B. (2005). Methods for Development Work and Research: A New Guide for Practitioners. New Delhi: SAGE. Moulaert, F., MacCallum, D., Mehmood, A., & Hamdouch, A. (2013). The International Handbook on Social Innovation. Cheltenham: Edward Arnold.

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Plater, W.  M. (2004). Civic Engagement, Service-Learning, and Intentional Leadership. In M. Langseth & W. M. Plater (Eds.), Public Work & the Academy (pp. 1–22). Bolton, MA: Anker. Regeer, B., Mager, S., & van Oorsouw, Y. (2011). License to Grow: Innovating Sustainable Development by Connecting Values. Amsterdam: VU University Press. SA Food Lab The Southern Africa Food Lab and Reos Partners South Africa. (2015). The Future of Food in South Africa: Four Scenarios Examining Possible Futures of the Food System in South Africa. Stellenbosch: The Southern Africa Food Lab. Selener, D. (1996). Participatory Action Research and Social Change. Ithaca: Cornell. Sumner, J., McMurtry, J.  J., & Renglich, H. (2014). Leveraging the Local: Cooperative Food Systems and the Local Organic Food Co-ops Network in Ontario, Canada. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 4(3), 47–60. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2014.043.004. Young, I. (2011). Responsibility for Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Emerging Enterprises and Sustainability in the Food System: Food Entrepreneurs in South Africa Naudé Malan

Introduction The need for very urgent food systems change in South Africa (Drimie and McLachlan 2013; McLachlan and Thorne 2009) is harshly illustrated by the juxtaposition of hunger and economic inequality with surplus agricultural production. The World Bank data (2016) show inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient, increasing dramatically in South Africa from 59.3  in 1993 to 63.4  in 2011, one of the highest in the world. This inequality correlates with race, and most of those who are poor are African whilst those who are privileged can be characterised as ‘white’, pointing to de-racialisation as an ideal for food systems and social transformation. When considering food security, the Medical Research Council and Human Sciences Research Council (MRC and HSRC 2013, p. 10) indicate only 45.6% of the South African population as food secure. The current agricultural production system is dominated by large enterprises that N. Malan (*) Department of Anthropology and Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_12

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are consolidating, is shedding labour and farmers, and is capital, chemicals and monocrop-dependent (Greenberg 2010), albeit highly productive. It receives very little state support, as the state aims rather at land redistribution and agricultural development for marginalised smallholders and African farmers. Some have mentioned that ‘90% of [these] redistributed farms are not productive’ (The Economist February 28, 2015) whilst others point out that ‘around 50 percent have improved … livelihoods’ (Chronicle March 12, 2018). Furthermore, hunger and poverty has become an urban phenomenon in South Africa (Crush and Frayne 2011; Rudolph et al. 2012), which resonates with the shrinking number of commercial farmers in the country. A focus on food systems allows consideration of multiple perspectives on change and is a valuable perspective on hunger, ecological decline and inequality at the same time. At the micro-level, new relationships and a sustainable means of production in the food system could indicate opportunities for enterprise creation as one of many means of addressing problems in the food system and wider society. It is however unclear how such relationships and new patterns of production can be sustainably created in both urban areas and the South African food system, and this chapter illustrates how this may be possible through three cases of emerging enterprises. Food systems are products of history and a peculiar ‘food regime’ (Friedman and McMichael 1989; McMichael 2009). We need to think of the industrial agricultural and food system (Pretty 2012) as ‘structurally unjust’ (Young 2011, p. 44), as we often are unavoidably complicit in its workings. Battersby et al. (2015, p. 30) reflect this irony as it pertains to South Africa: ‘food insecurity in cities is an unintended consequence of structural issues: although none of the players in the South African urban food system may intend to cause hunger or malnutrition, collectively, their interactions create conditions which result in close to half of the South African population being food insecure’. A political programme to address this would however have to include ‘Victims of structural injustice in particular [who] have a unique interest in undermining injustice, and they ought to take responsibility for doing so’ (Young 2011, p.  145). This paradoxically emphasises the agency (if not the urgency) of those currently marginalised for structural change. Change must flow from their participation in systems that formerly oppressed them. In South Africa, greater participation of entrepreneurs from disadvantaged African backgrounds will de-racialise the food system, but it is still unclear how this de-­

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racialisation will contribute to direct social benefits and ecological ­integrity, key terms in sustainability. How this may take place is illustrated by the cases discussed below. An entrepreneurial approach is but one amongst many ‘creative and meaningful solutions’ that would draw ‘marginalised work-seekers into economic participation as part of a long term poverty reduction and food security strategy’ (Altman et  al. 2009, p.  345) that the country needs. Around urban agriculture a number of ‘wicked’ problems (Rittel and Webber 1973) converge, which include agricultural change (McIntyre et al. 2009), dietary change (Popkin 2011) and urbanisation (Frayne et al. 2014) made worse by South Africa peculiarities. This, in turn, suggests a broad ‘strategy of change’ at multiple levels in the food system (Braungart and McDonough 2008, p.  44; Dubbeling et  al. 2010; Battersby et  al. 2015; Drimie and McLachlan 2013, p.  218; McLachlan and Thorne 2009, p. 29; Malan 2015a, p. 54). Systemic and structural change to the food system implies the creation of new production processes and recognition of alternative producers and new enterprises, which implies new relationships amongst people in civil society that lead to different institutions in the market, civil society and the state (Figueroa 2015; Allen 2010; Sumner et al. 2014).

Sustainability and Systemic Change to the Food System The enterprises discussed here emerged in the context of a multi-­ stakeholder engagement project that represents in many respects the institutional renewal sustainability calls for. This includes ‘governance mechanisms, processes, institutions, rules, guidelines, policies and normative structures’ and ‘multilevel, multi-stakeholder approaches that enhance interlinkages and cooperation [as part of] participatory governance processes’ (DoA 2008, pp.  17–18). The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP 2016, p.  133) recommends ‘Flexible, participative governance and co-opting with private actors that integrate sustainability as the core of their business’ as an approach to systemic change in the food system. We reflect on this institutional context and how this affected the emergence of these enterprises. However, to understand sustainability in context, we need to see how it integrates ecological, economic and social concerns, and this gives key insights into how a sustainable enterprise needs to be constructed.

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Sustainability as Multifunctional Change to the ‘structure’ of society is evident only from key historical but limited examples, which include the adoption of agriculture, urbanisation, industrialisation and, currently, the rise of the ‘network’ society (Castells 2010). The market as a means to organise production (Polanyi 2001) is key to these changes. Polanyi in the previous century characterised the economy as ‘embedded … in social relationships’ (2001, p. 48). Polanyi stressed the primacy of the family, traditions and culture in economic activity, which led him to use a balancing metaphor (2001, p. 42) to characterise an extractive productive sector and a remedial welfare sector, and this structure underlies much of the imagery behind the welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1990). This ubiquitous balancing structure is in contrast to sustainable development (WCED 1987), where growth itself incorporates normative considerations (Regeer et al. 2011; WEF 2014), hence the mantra: ‘people, planet and profit’. In South Africa, emerging African entrepreneurs are certainly disadvantaged vis-à-vis a cutthroat market and have experienced capitalist exploitation for many generations. They are keenly aware of this and are struggling to find a way to promote normative outcomes (like ‘food for the community’), with the need to participate at all in the economy. It is clear from this emic perspective, and from the macro-perspective that sustainability affords, that the innovation necessary in addressing food systems injustices in South Africa would have to realise economic growth, as it benefits society, and base this on ecological integrity. This seamless link between growth, equity and ecology needs to be incorporated into assessments of sustainable entrepreneurship. Studies of entrepreneurship, from creative destruction in Shumpeter, to Cantillonian equilibrium, to how risk is mediated as in Knight’s theories (Bula 2012, p. 81), have to give way to innovation (Regeer et al. 2011) as a more fundamental approach, as it focusses on rearranging the institutions of society to realise these diverse but nevertheless linked objectives (Moulaert and Nussbaumer 2005). Network theory from Castells (2005, 2010) and actor-network theory from Latour (2005) enable us to characterise the actions these entrepreneurs take to establish enterprises as a network building that links diverse and dissimilar elements with diverse and unlike means. This theoretical contortionism allows us to analyse how entrepreneurs interlink ecology, society and economics as sustainable solutions to food insecurity, ecological decline and economic growth in marginalised townships in South Africa.

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Sustainable Entrepreneurship A focus on entrepreneurship in an urban food systems context brings a promise of significant change by virtue of its affinity with attempts to ‘develop’ both urban areas and smallholder farmers (categories that are most of the time mutually exclusive), and is suggestive of a bottom-up and ‘multifunctional’ attempt at increasing food security. However, this affirmative strategy and outcome, controversially, has to be realised by emerging small, new and African farmers and food processors, who labour under historical racial domination and inequality. However, it might be impossible to benefit the marginalised without their participation in programmes that target them. The analysis of emerging enterprises allows us thus to identify the ways in which such entrepreneurs can construct them in such a hostile context, and this chapter offers three cases studies on how this was done and brings forward key lessons in this endeavour.

The South African Context: Emerging ‘Township’ Enterprises The challenges involved in mobilising emergent urban agricultural and food enterprises for food systems change are considerable. Frayne et al. (2014), Ruysenaar (2013), Battersby (2012), Thornton (2008) have questioned the ability of urban agriculture to contribute meaningfully to the livelihoods and food security of South African urban areas, particularly the ‘townships’, which were labour reserves under the former oppressive apartheid regime. A township is a ‘uniquely South Africa concept’ that indicates a ‘dormitory town at a distance from economic activity as well as from white residential areas… lacking services and … economic infrastructure’ so that ‘even the most entrepreneurial …resident has little chance’ as ‘the economic landscape is not teeming [with] life’ (Mahajan 2014, p. 4, 3). This explains why Ruysenaar (2013) recommends situating interventions to support emergent entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers in a ‘wider developmental programme—albeit with some very necessary redesign and integration with urban renewal, market linkages and institutional support’. Some studies have nevertheless indicated potential, albeit limited, to produce for the market (Thom and Conradie 2012; Thornton 2008, p. 256; Nkosi et al. 2014), and globally there is a significant evidence emerging of this that is suggestive of significant change to the food

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system. Urban farmers in Johannesburg however experience tenure insecurity, lack of proper input markets, water, and training and experience theft and vandalism on a daily basis (Malan 2015a). However the state, mainly through municipal-owned Fresh Produce Markets, is trying to secure better access for small and emergent farmers (Bbun and Thornton 2013). Considering however the needs for food systems sustainability, it is nevertheless important to investigate if and how such emergent entrepreneurs in the South African food system could make a contribution to food systems change. In the background to the emergence of these enterprises stands a number of policies. The Johannesburg ‘Food Resilience’ policy (City of Johannesburg 2012) assists urban farmers in registering as cooperatives and gives them access to pack houses, the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market and ‘Agri-Resource Centres’, amongst others (Malan 2015a). The city also engages in direct relief of food insecurity and has a target to deliver 42,332 (personal communication, June 2016) food parcels a month to poor families (and they have reached 93,732 households in this regard; personal communication, June 2016), who are all encouraged to plant food gardens at home. Most schools in townships are also encouraged to plant food gardens and there is a significant groundswell of urban farmers in townships. Urban farmers are thus poised to enter the mainstream food market and have the potential, should they be viable, to change the food system by their participation in it. The broader context of South African transformation initiatives emphasises the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE) policy, which brings opportunities through ‘preferential procurement’, which would favour contracts with the kind of enterprises being discussed. BBBEE however emphasises mainstream issues in economic development: ownership, management, employment equity, skills development, preferential procurement and enterprise development in all enterprises in the context of a ‘scorecard’ on transformation objectives (DTI 2007). It is often criticised for being elitist, but it also does not voice trans-systemic considerations that sustainability would demand and instead emphasises de-racialisation and mainstream ownership of the economy. Any entrepreneur, in creating a business, can ‘select’ material (in the form of resources, support and opportunities) from both private and public ‘sources’ and this ability of an entrepreneur to build networks that include actors, opportunities, resources, people and technologies, amongst others, informs the analysis that follows.

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Urban farmers need to establish viable businesses that will enable the accumulation of value in ‘township’ areas and need to produce a product that has high value in local and mainstream markets. To be successful as a sustainable business that also remedies the underlying South African inequality, they have to create ecological value and social benefit as they grow economically. Global assessments show that urban agriculture is able to create employment and be productive in supplying food to the communities surrounding urban farms (Dubbeling et al. 2010; Clinton et al. 2018). Nkosi et al. (2014, p. 5) emphasise that ‘community food gardens are potentially an effective tool for coming against the food shortages and income problems that confront many South African households. Community food gardens have been very useful in subsidising the food basket of many households in the townships’. They can be integrated in policy and developmental processes in order to create an alternative food system that relies on local production (incorporating short supply chains; see McLachlan and Thorne 2009, p. 9; Dubbeling et al. 2010, p. 3), and have significant redistributive effects through labour absorption and processing opportunities that they may influence. Understanding Systemic Change from an Actor’s Perspective There are many examples available on how to approach social change, and include ‘development’ and social work (Laws et  al. 2013; Mikkelsen 2005), design (Manzini 2015) and hybrid (Moulaert et al. 2013) contributions. To effect radical change, trans-society (Anderson and McLachlan 2015) and cross-society (Burns 2012, 2014) linkages or social capital (Malan 2015b; Herbel and Haddad 2012) need to be built and implies linkages between privileged and marginalised actors to create a.o. new sustainable opportunities, products and enterprises. The analysis below will emphasise not only the integration of objectives as set out above (mainly in the analysis of the products of these entrepreneurs), but also how entrepreneurs construct coalitions of actors, and here reference will be made to how policy ‘opportunities’ are used in constructing social capital-­style relations amongst themselves and other actors and opportunities. Emerging entrepreneurs exploit opportunities, from ‘workshop’-style events to policy opportunities like BBBEE in South Africa to business niches and ideas, and do so by manipulating the networks both in hierarchical systems and in peer-to-peer networks. Entrepreneurs are opportunistic and strategic actors who aim to integrate a host of different elements

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in an enterprise (Latour 2005, p.  194). These networked relationships overlap events, organisations, spaces, media and products; a.o. and entrepreneurship is thus seen as the creation of productive networks amongst unlike elements that deliver a material benefit. Castells emphasises that such activity aims not to reaffirm systems, but marginalised actors can be expected to realise ‘“projects” that aim to redefine [their] position in society and, by doing so, seek the transformation of overall social structures’ (Castells 2010). The actor, their participation in systems and their ability to influence these systems, all is hereby placed in great relief (Long and Long 1992; Long and van der Ploeg 1989; Giddens 1984). Key in the analysis that follows is how stakeholders are socialised, how such de-centralised action is coordinated amongst stakeholders, and how actors and stakeholders, networks, hierarchies, media and events, technology, and enterprises and organisations are linked together. This allows us to contemplate the broader project wherein these enterprises emerged, and it clarifies how they in fact participate in the economy. How do entrepreneurs position themselves to utilise the diverse and unlike resources available to them? How do they integrate others into the production process? These questions allow us to understand the social benefits and distribution flowing from these enterprises. To understand ecological impact, we need to look at the product that they sell, and to understand how economic benefits flow, we need to understand how relationships are constructed in an enterprise. We thus focus on the product, the relationships and networks evident in its production and the ways these condition the activities of ancillary actors to the enterprises.

Studying Enterprises as Systemic and Structural Change: Methods This chapter concentrates on three distinct enterprises, but reference will also be made to significant findings from the project in general. All the examples discussed here are in a sense partial, as neither would represent a complete solution to food systems change. It is important to note that access to the market itself in South Africa will already indicate a systemic shift (mainly due to the apartheid history), but we will concentrate on the linkages that are used in their market participation and how others participate in these enterprises, and this allows us to generalise on how the means of production are reinterpreted. Each case will be presented in some complexity, as there are numerous instances in the background and context

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that are necessary to note. The approach taken here is necessarily ethnographic, as the author draws on both formal consented interviews and occasional and informal conversations. The author also draws on the material made available by the larger project that surrounds the emergence of these enterprises. This includes recorded notes of all events, blogs from students and other participants, and material created by entrepreneurs, amongst others. Some of this is in the public domain. In this regard the examples are highly abstract to not only protect identities of informants, but to distil only that which would be relevant to a highly focussed discussion.

Retailing Superfoods Moringa oleifera is widely considered as a natural superfood and as such holds potential as a nutritional supplement. There is widespread interest in this plant, and many are attempting to build enterprises around it. Moringa’s system-changing potential lies mainly with its significant health benefits, its proclivity to organic production methods and its novelty, which will allow new entrepreneurs to enter the market. As a natural product it can secure economic benefits along a sustainable production and value chain, and this is the reason it is included in this discussion. An entrepreneur attempted to set up a production chain for a Moringa powder-­based product that includes reference to its benefits to health and nutrition. Two sets of logos for two of this entrepreneur’s products and brands were developed by the project. One of these brands’ vernacular name means ‘change our place’ and emphasises how this entrepreneur integrates self-­ reliance, autonomy and redistribution with entrepreneurship. For him, it is necessary to ‘upgrade’ the township economy and the ‘standards of eating’, and this is part of a move towards better living standards in the townships. This clearly refers to the formalisation of such enterprises, but also to the dearth of acceptable food products or the food desert (Battersby 2012) in townships. It clearly also links economic participation with social benefit. The second set of logos concerns the Moringa product and the vernacular name means ‘your health’, and this is significant in indicating the intentions behind this enterprise. The entrepreneur to date has not yet entered the market in bulk, and is selling products as the need for money arises, but at the time of writing, the enterprise is being incubated by a state business incubator that

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i­mplements BBBEE policy. However, the enterprise has ‘emerged’ with rudimentary products, a make-shift production line spread across a few households, employees and marketing channels in place. The link to the incubator has led to initial support in printing and producing the branding and logos for the product and later in streamlining and industrialising the production line. The entrepreneur is currently in need of finance for this venture, whilst the market is being populated with similar products. To date, he has succeeded in organising operations and used the broader project as a means to market, recruit and advertise his product, and to attract the right and continuing support from stakeholders. This example highlights how the entrepreneur integrates state drivers for transformation, various incubators, networking opportunities and the opportunities that the project makes available. How this intersects with his personal and other networks indicates how actors would attempt to build networks around a productive enterprise in order to capture some of the gains and redistribute them. In the process of developing this business, the entrepreneur and associates engaged in a dispute about participating in this enterprise. The entrepreneur forged ahead without his local associates and he did so as they were not able to ‘add value’ to the enterprise. In conversations he mentioned that they are welcome to continue their association provided ‘value’ can be brought to the enterprise. This highlights that value is distributed through participation, but also that rent is extracted in this way. This highlights how local labour and investment (be it in money or ‘sweat equity’) are incorporated in an emergent enterprise: only those who can bring value can be incorporated, lest they become free riders.

Farming Worms The second case study concerns a wormery that mobilises ordinary households to produce casings (compost-like material), worms, and tea or leachate, all highly prized products. The product is highly sustainable, and this case shows best how such ecological, social and economic links can be integrated. This entrepreneur struggled for a long time in setting up this business and attempted a number of unsuccessful ventures on the road to doing so. He is certainly an organic intellectual and plays a key part in the organisation, training and interacting among farmers, and this looms large in the emergence of this enterprise.

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This entrepreneur was previously employed by a committed individual working for a retailer in the horticultural and hardware sector. During this time, they attempted to register and launch a not-for-profit organisation that focussed on training children in food gardening. They applied for funding from the city, which often funds such small ventures. This proved to be short-lived, as the owners of the horticultural business terminated the committed individual’s employment and closed the shop where he was working. The not-for-profit could not sustain both. During this time, the entrepreneur gained considerable experience in organic and hydroponic gardening, building on his prior qualifications. He then started, and still does, consulting to food gardens (at a significant fee) on design, operations and production. He also secured land at a state welfare centre for his own food garden and actively trained people on this site. The researcher at times bent his own funding rules to find cash to support him after impassioned requests, which led to him lecturing on worm farming and composting as part of the larger project. Throughout this time, the entrepreneur often referred to another individual who owns a large compost farm. This outside entrepreneur proved instrumental in setting up this enterprise. During 2016 the entrepreneur delivered a lecture at a community meeting on how to set up a worm farm at home that signalled the emergence of the enterprise, as it was ‘advertised’ as such in the lecture. This represented a very low-cost technology that can in fact release significant amounts of money. He would come, for a fee, to a client’s house, set up a wormery (either through found materials or with manufactured parts), teach them the basics of worm production, sell them enough seed worms to commence with production, and then return to buy the casings and leachate from them, at market-based prices. The cost of this to the client would be about one-third or one-fourth of the average monthly wage in the country. The price they will receive for the products varies from very expensive for the worms and leachate (per litre almost one-third more than the cost of setting up the wormery) to moderate for the casings or compost. This enterprise, in a material sense, represents how ecology can be integrated with economic and social concerns. The enterprise significantly enhances the ecological integrity of farming, as the product is produced at a very low cost by networked households, as it metabolises local waste. The product uses local labour and very little fossil fuels, and sells at a premium. As such the product itself, its production process, the networking

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and education that comes with the product, and the material it uses (both discarded/recycled and manufactured), all represent a high standard of integration between people, planet and profit. The enterprise also has a significant link with another established enterprise outside the township economy. We discuss this cross-society linkage and discuss the case’s products, the networks used in its emergence and the role played by the idea of ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ in this enterprise.

Aggregating Production The broader project wherein these enterprises emerged attempted in 2014 to hold four farmers’ ‘natural’ markets and made available branding and design for these markets. Two of these markets were successful in the sense that products were sold rapidly, whilst two were dismal failures, with very little sold. Logos, branding, posters and other material were designed and developed for a ‘natural’ market by the broader project, as we were uncertain ‘organic’ could be achieved in all products. This case reflects the ability of local actors to harness a trend and react to that by transforming it by manipulating their own media and materials. These designs were purposefully developed to be manipulated by anyone without access to graphic design software (i.e. by hand on a photocopier, or through MS Word), although this proved more difficult than imagined, but it nevertheless highlights interaction with technology and media and how an entrepreneur manipulates these. The entrepreneur behind this had a strong presence in civil society, as he had experience in organising a farmer’s organisation which built links with farmers that he later exploited. These links in civil society were similarly manipulated in setting up this enterprise. The market stagnated until late 2015 when he was introduced (through a researcher involved in the project) to a person who linked him even further to a retailer who allowed him space to sell vegetables in an affluent area outside the township. This retailer is linked to an international food NGO, which made this connection attractive, as it emphasised a narrative of food systems change that converges with the narrative evident in the townships on progress and change. This enterprise currently aggregates production by township small farmers (drawing on previous civil society experience) and sells the products at a lucrative market outside the township. This would need to happen if small-scale farmers were to enter the market as producers of specialised foods for premium niche markets. This

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enterprise is, however, operating only intermittently. The entrepreneur will leave this opportunity when a better one arises and indicates that the business is not so lucrative as we would want to suppose (and here the key problem is that not enough produce is available, echoing Ruysenaar 2013; Frayne et al. 2014). Key here in the emergence of this enterprise was the use of the branding and media, an international NGO and a progressive local food retailer, and this case thus highlights how this kind of cross-­ society relationship impacts on and distributes the benefits of an enterprise.

Discussion All three enterprises succeeded in mobilising a diversity of others to participate in these enterprises, and the significance of this is explored in this discussion. All three also drew heavily on the broader institutional context, and here linkages between local and international, marginalised and privileged are particularly evident. The discussion emphasises three key themes that contribute to integrating ecological, social and economic concerns. We first of all discuss the products of these enterprises, as this indicates in a material sense how the three objectives are integrated and clearly shows ecological impact. Then we focus on the production regime where social capital and relationships are employed and analyse these relationships and social capital to understand how the diverse objectives are integrated with cross-society concerns like employment, income and distribution. This suggests a hypothesis for the analysis: does integration away from local processes and associates to mainstream systems undermine the achievement of ecological, social and economic objectives at the same time? This is discussed below in the conclusion. The Moringa example had a high level of integration amongst business incubators and amongst state and other agencies promoting entrepreneurship, and, in fact, the entrepreneur encountered conflict with local associates when he moved his products out of the local area to these opportunities. The wormery example had key and extensive links from the bottom up to a formal commercial enterprise at the top. Note however the importance of the bottom links in this enterprise: ordinary households produce the products that are sold, and this integrates local waste recycling with production, as it brings opportunities for equity. The market example also integrates local equity in that local farmers are afforded access to a lucrative market, and this network has clear links to civil society, both national and international. The social capital sets of each example are thus ­different,

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with the wormery example indicating strong local links to the top and bottom whilst the market example cannot be seen as strong, as the final link to a lucrative market is informal and intermittent. The Moringa example has a strong link to the top but tenuous links to the bottom. This suggests that people, planet and profit outcomes are achievable best when we do see strong links to production, and if this production can be controlled by the entrepreneur. However, links to the top also seem important, particularly the link to narratives of sustainability, which is also a key feature of the products the enterprises sell and thus part of the product itself. When we look at the degree of control or power over the production process differences start to become a little clearer. In the wormery example, the truly intermediate technology and knowledge of worms is accessible to and open to manipulation by almost anyone. The market entrepreneur had family connections that afforded him access to software so he could manipulate the designs that the project produced for him. In the Moringa example this ability to manipulate production technology gave way to influence only through social media, particularly when formal support for industrial production emerged, with complicated health and safety regulations built in. Control over complicated health and safety regulations is only possible through control of the abstract business process and not the actual minutiae of growing, grinding and filling, which would benefit local associates. The health and safety regulations create a distance, and all this is suggestive of a ‘normalisation’ of the enterprise, which brings in outside interests that seek a ‘rent’ for their contribution. This prohibited access by local collaborators (as the dispute indicates), with a loss of benefit to them, and distributed benefits along the industrial production line and not downwards to associates. The entrepreneur, in using mainstream systems, creates the conditions for invisible structural processes to condition the enterprise, with a loss of potential to achieve equity and ecology outcomes. This is in clear contrast to the other two case study examples and seems to echo the conclusion that normative outcomes are only possible if there are strong social capital links down to the production process and control over technology and media. Hence the production line in the Moringa example could lie at the heart of the conflict the entrepreneur has with his associates: as soon as the link to the bottom disappears, local associates are squeezed out of the production process and replaced by mainstream associates, who extract fees for ‘professional’ services.

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Enterprises can thus make sustainable inroads into the food system if they construct key social capital relations across established pathways in the economy. This enables an entrepreneur to exert power over the process and opportunities for equity and ecology-enhancing activities are thus created. Normal business development models assume ‘development’ equates with scaling-up to industrial processes. This scaling-up is problematic for the integration of people, planet and profit motives in enterprises. If an entrepreneur needs to be adept at controlling the social capital and other relationships that flow through the products and the systems in the enterprise, the features of the product can be controlled and manipulated (by associates as well) to strategic ends (like sustainability), and these relationships in fact condition the ways in which benefits flow backwards from sales to participants. This suggests that even products that are not immediately ecologically friendly can be structured and produced in ways that do achieve these normative outcomes, should we pay attention to how the product is integrated with participants who are co-producers of the product. The market example illustrates this, as the transport costs, which detract from the ecological impact, can be negated by higher production by the producer. It also explains that even an inherently desirable product, like organic produce, can be structured and integrated into systems in a way that negates its normative potential. Tellingly, the market entrepreneur may from time to time buy products on the open market (without any knowledge of their origin) and mobilise these into the production process. This could either affirm normative outcomes or negate them. The more things are mobilised through mainstream systems, with accompanying distance from production to consumption, the more distant sustainability as an outcome becomes.

Conclusion These enterprises demonstrate the raw material and struggles involved in attempting food systems change and show how to make strategic systemic and structural shifts. In this conclusion we comment on the broader context wherein these enterprises emerged, and this includes reference to policy as well as to multi-stakeholder engagement. We have stated that it is the social capital and relationships that would enable marginalised producers to control the terms of their engagement and incorporation into the food system. How should we understand stakeholder engagement and participation as a means to facilitate this?

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What difference does the ‘institutional context’ make to efforts at systemic and structural change? In all the cases above, entrepreneurs moved in and out of project events. The community of practice constituted in and around these events played a role as a sounding board, a proving ground (many sell their produce at these events), and it brought opportunities to steer the enterprise in particular ways, which is important if we are aiming at alternative practices. It emphasises the networked way in which enterprises emerge and stands in contrast to an individualist perspective on enterprise development. How did marginalised producers succeed in determining the terms of incorporation into the food system? To control incorporation into a networked means of production we need to enable actors to become mediators who can control the flows of power, goods, meaning and activities in these networks. It is not the mere fact that capital (or organic produce for that matter) is being constructed that is significant, but rather how this link is made so that participation in the production line enables actors to contribute to and receive value from the final product. Hence, we need to speak of the strategic positioning of social capital that links privileged and specific interests with marginalised groups so that bridges can be built towards others who have the means to support emerging enterprises. This refers to the sociology of enterprise development for sustainability: it has to emerge out of a context where cross- (Burns 2012, 2014) or trans-society (Anderson and McLachlan 2015) relationships are evident. It is when a group engages with other groups (both different and similar) that difference may emerge. Linking and bridging social capital shows how difference can be made productive, as products by the marginalised need heterogeneous material (in the form of customers) to release sufficient means for enterprises to thrive out of and in marginal contexts. What can we expect and how should we understand enterprise development for sustainability and food systems change? Engagement with diverse stakeholders leads to heterogeneous contexts wherein alternatives may emerge. However, benefit still flows from participation, but then this indicates that participation can be distributive if participants also have control over the technologies and processes in use. In the wormery example, customers are trained and become versed in controlling the entire system and may elect to sell the product on their own. It is this ability to oversee the whole process that leads to radical redistributive effects. It implies the whole value chain needs to be coordinated in order to release sufficient means to change systems. Hence, we can only conceptualise change as

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stemming from people’s participation in the system in question. Our current systems are historically constructed and arbitrary in nature. We are complicit to their effects but not directly responsible for their outcomes. Deliberate efforts that allocate responsibility and opportunity to change them need to be created, but it seems these need to emerge through diffuse events and situations, as opposed to particular interventions. It is this tension between broad, general (and inconclusive engagement processes) and specific actions that lies at the heart of efforts at systemic and structural change. This allows the surprising and the novel to spontaneously emerge, key requirements for significant change. These examples suggested that sustainable enterprise development needs to be done through public fora, which allow a great diversity of inputs to shape their emergence, and the empowerment of participants in the value chain so they can capture the benefits that are created when enterprises grow.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests We declare no conflicts of interest in writing this chapter.

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Reconceptualizing Urban Agriculture in Africa: Issues of Scale, Class and Institutional Support in Zambian Copperbelt Towns Tony Binns and Etienne Nel Introduction Urban agriculture (UA), or the production of food crops and the raising of livestock within and around urban areas, plays an important role in terms of food security, nutrition and livelihoods in the Global South (Mougeot 2000, 2005). However, UA’s overall significance is contested, and research has revealed considerable place-based variations in the practice and its overall significance (Crush et al. 2011; Webb 2011). In this regard, Africa is particularly vulnerable following decades of sluggish economic growth, the legacy of structural adjustment, the presence of some of the fastest-growing cities in the world, employment shortages and low scores in terms of a range of development indicators, which make survival strategies, such as UA, all the more important (Binns et al. 2003; Potter et  al. 2017). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 2012) has recognized the key role that self-provisioning plays, in particular in T. Binns (*) • E. Nel University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_13

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providing food for poor households in African cities. In some eastern and central African cities UA is thought to account for nearly half of all vegetables and maize consumed by urban residents, playing a key role in food security, nutrition and livelihood diversification and as a significant income-­ generating strategy. Estimates suggest that UA accounts for between 20% and 60% of household income in Africa (Lee-Smith 2010). The value of UA is further enhanced in situations of crisis, and, as this chapter will argue, with particular reference to the Copperbelt mining region of Zambia (Fig. 1), in times of economic stress and job loss and in the absence of welfare support, issues relating to access to the means of producing food have become a critical dimension in ensuring human

Fig. 1  Zambia’s Copperbelt Province (Source: Authors’ research)

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s­ urvival and resilience. But UA often requires institutional support if it is to move beyond being a marginal survivalist activity. This chapter draws upon evidence from field-based research undertaken in Zambia’s Copperbelt Province to argue three key points. First, in centres subjected to significant structural challenges, such as deindustrialization and mining closure, UA has come to play a critically important role in terms of ensuring food security, with practising rates exceeding those noted in many other African cities. Secondly, UA is not just an activity practised by poor households, but instead, in areas which are vulnerable to economic precariousness, the middle class is also a key participant in UA.  Thirdly, a clear need exists to support the activity through institutional processes, and in this regard an incipient endeavour to support this process in the city of Ndola is examined. The chapter is based on a study funded by NZAID (New Zealand Aid), which investigated the significance of UA in the three centres of Ndola, Luanshya and Kitwe in the Zambian Copperbelt, which involved nearly 700 questionnaire surveys and 60 key informant (KI) interviews (Binns et al. 2013; Smart 2015). The surveys were undertaken among a representative sample of high- and low-density urban areas, which can be read as poor and middle-class areas respectively. This chapter firstly overviews current research on UA in Africa, before moving on to detail the crisis in the Zambian copper mining industry and its mining centres. The chapter then proceeds to consider the three themes identified above.

Literature Review: Urban Agriculture in Africa Estimates about the practice of UA vary significantly. Crush et al. (2011) suggest that on average 22% of urban households in southern Africa engage in the practice, with participation levels in individual cities varying between 3% and 64%. Globally, the UN estimates that some 800 million people are engaged in UA, which has generated over 150 million jobs, and which is particularly critical in cities experiencing low or even negative economic growth, together with high population growth rates (Lee-Smith 2010; Zezza and Tasciotti 2010). Research suggests that UA can make a significant contribution to ensuring food security, particularly among poor households, as well as providing employment, notably in situations where there are high rates of unemployment, such as where structural adjustment programmes, leading to retrenchment of civil servants and others, have been a feature of the local economy. Evidence shows that a significant

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proportion of UA products are sold in urban markets, helping to satisfy the growing consumer demand in burgeoning cities, while also generating important financial returns for producers (Binns and Lynch 1998; Ellis and Sumberg 1998; Lynch et al. 2001; Simatele and Binns 2008). In the late 1990s a survey undertaken by Smith in a number of West African cities found that UA accounted for between 20% and 60% of urban household income and savings (Smith 2001). Recent literature has also drawn attention to the gendered nature of food insecurity, and the fact that female-headed households are often the most vulnerable to marginalization (Dodson et al. 2012; Cadzow and Binns 2016). Some authors have suggested that the role of UA has been overstated and that statistical evidence regarding its incidence is unreliable. Critics refer to seasonal variations in production levels and the fact that, in most cases, local production only supplements what is bought in commercial markets (Webb 2011; Ruysenaar 2013). Although there is a need for further field-based research, as we will argue in this chapter, in those cities which have been subjected to severe economic shocks with associated job loss and both food and economic insecurity, the role of UA seems to be particularly important. This appears to be the case where the economy is dominated by a single resource or industry such as in the Zambian Copperbelt—the focus of this chapter. The collapse of the mining industry in the Copperbelt since the 1990s has forced tens of thousands of people into poverty and economic distress, with many resorting to UA and informal sector activities in order to survive (Fraser and Lungu 2009). In this context, there is undoubtedly a role for the state and local and international agencies to provide support, either directly or through addressing structural and legal barriers, such as facilitating land access, which may be impeding the development of UA. A 2008 study of UA in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital city, found that plot sizes vary considerably in size, but are generally between 5 and 15 square metres. The most popular crops grown are maize, cabbage, pumpkin, tomatoes, groundnuts, okra, beans, cucumber and sweet potato. Household sustenance and income generation are the main objectives of those practising UA in Lusaka. In Chilenje, a medium−/low-cost housing area, 30% of respondents interviewed between October 2004 and December 2006 reported that UA contributed nearly two-thirds of their vegetable requirements. In the poorer centrally located settlement of Garden Compound, 48% of respondents said that urban agriculture provided a very significant three-quarters of all their vegetable requirements

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in the rainy season, when these crops are mainly grown. A female respondent commented, ‘Life in Lusaka has become difficult. Although my husband and I do not own land, growing our own food has helped us a lot because we are now able to feed ourselves and to save a bit of money for other things’ (Simatele and Binns 2008: 11).

The Zambian Copperbelt and Economic Crisis As a landlocked country in sub-Saharan Africa, Zambia is probably best known for its mineral resources, particularly the rich copper deposits situated in and around the Copperbelt Province. Although the economy has shown some recent signs of renewal, Zambia remains a poor country, ranked 139 out of 188 countries according to the Human Development Index (HDI), though it is classified by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) as a country of ‘medium human development’ (UNDESA 2012; UNDP 2011, 2014, 2016). Zambia’s economy has been dominated since the early twentieth century by the important industrial and mining zone of the Copperbelt Province. By the 1960s the Copperbelt was regarded as a key economic zone in Africa, with Zambia achieving a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) which was nearly three times that of other states in the region (Ferguson 1999). Although dependent on a single resource, the Copperbelt became one of the most urbanized areas in Africa, with considerable wealth and opportunity. However, by the 1990s the region experienced serious economic decline due to a combination of factors, most notably the falling price of copper, structural adjustment and state control of industry and mining (World Bank 2004). As Ferguson (1999: 6) commented, ‘the African Industrial Revolution slipped off the track’. During the 1990s, the privatization of state assets, including the mines and manufacturing industries, led to significant job losses. Ndola, the largest economic centre and also the region’s administrative centre, had by 2000 lost about 75% of its manufacturing activity and some 9000 jobs in manufacturing (PADCO 2001). Unemployment in the city rose from 13.5% in 1990 to 33.2% in 2000 (CSO 2004), and many of the poorest people were attempting to support their livelihoods through the informal sector (NCC 2000; Fallavier et al. 2005). In the city of Kitwe, in the ten years between 1992 and 2002, some 317 companies closed, with a total job loss of 3499 (CSO 2007). The unemployment rate in Kitwe reached 45%, whilst poverty levels soared to 75% (KCC 2005a). A survey revealed

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that of the 47% of household heads who were economically active in 2005, only 36% were in formal employment, while the remainder were self-­ employed in farming and other activities (KCC 2005b; Fraser and Lungu 2009). The economic decline in the Copperbelt also led to massive out-­ migration, representing a somewhat unusual case of counter-urbanization in Africa (Potts 2005). With this serious loss of employment opportunities, many households have turned to UA in an attempt to ensure food security, an activity which has deservedly received increasing attention in the Copperbelt region (Fallavier et al. 2005; Hampwaye 2008).

The Urban Agricultural Response UA Practising Rates and Its Significance A detailed survey of UA in the three cities of Ndola, Kitwe and Luanshya was undertaken in 2012 (Fig. 1). Of the 679 households surveyed in the three centres across a range of high- and low-density areas, it was established that 84% of the total number of households were practising UA, while in the case of Luanshya, the town worst affected by mine closure, the figure was as high as 94% (see Table  1). The survey indicated that economic stress and job loss directly accounted for 50% of the figure of 84%. These figures indicate practising rates which are significantly higher than those found in other African cities (see Crush et al. 2010), suggesting that the economic hardship experienced in the Copperbelt has forced a very significant number of people to rely on UA. This accords with the research of Mususa (2012) and Macmillan (2012) in the Copperbelt, which argued that the extreme nature of the economic crisis, especially in Luanshya, had forced an increased reliance on food self-provisioning.

Table 1  UA practising rated in the study areas Urban centre

No. households practising UA

Luanshya Kitwe Ndola Total Source: Smart, 2015.

187 196 188 571

No. households not practising UA 15 41 52 108

Total households Households surveyed practising UA (%) 202 237 240 679

93 83 78 84

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A range of interviews undertaken with aid agencies and municipal and government officials (key informants [KI] 1, 2, 3), suggested that UA is seen as being one of the few available options to people in light of the severity of the economic crisis which affected the area. Even though the local economy has stabilized over time, it was apparent from interviews with households and key informants (KIs) that dependence on UA remains strong, given prevailing levels of precariousness, limited employment opportunities and what now seems to be the widespread acceptance of UA in the urban communities (KI 4, 5). According to one official (KI 6) ‘desperation made them [ex-mine workers] resort to farming, and with time they have learnt to see it as worthwhile’. Continued levels of economic stress were evident from the surveys, which indicated that 90% of respondents who practise UA do so to produce food and save money, As a result, 67% of respondents commented that they are now ‘food secure’, and 63% said that when combined with sources of income—both formal and informal—UA has enabled them to meet their basic needs. Another measure of the local significance of UA can be derived from details of its impact on local employment, which suggests that UA is much more than a marginal activity. Over and above family employment, job opportunities for 111 full-time workers and 346 part-time/seasonal workers have been created among just over 300 of the surveyed UA practising households (Binns et al. 2013; Smart 2015). The majority of respondents (63%) stated that UA helps them to meet their basic household food needs, and, in terms of food security, some 66% now regard themselves as ‘food secure’. Results indicate that nearly 50% of vegetable and maize (the staple food) requirements were being met through self-production. While most food produced is consumed by the practising households, some 20% of produce is sold, generating valuable additional income. The significance of UA in the Copperbelt is immediately apparent from these statistics. Crush et al. (2011) found on average 22% of households in the southern African cities which they surveyed practised UA. In the Copperbelt the figure is nearly four times higher, and, as the interviews and survey findings suggest, the scale of economic collapse which occurred meant that UA was and indeed still is one of the very few livelihood alternatives available. According to one key informant (KI 6), mine closure ‘was prompt and everyone was taken by surprise … The only thing available for them [the ex-miners] to find an income was to fall back on farming’, while another key informant (KI 7) commented, ‘there is a

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definite link between the decline of the formal sector and the rise of urban agriculture’. Involvement in UA in the Copperbelt Cities In many locations in African towns and cities, UA is not just an activity practised by poorer households (Dossa et al. 2011). Whether for reasons of food security, continuance of rural traditions or utilization of privileged land access, the middle- and upper-income groups are active participants in UA, albeit seldom as a purely survivalist activity, as is so often the case with the poor. These trends were reflected in the Copperbelt study, but what was particularly striking was the high percentage of upper- and middle-­income households participating in UA, and the degree to which many saw it as an insurance policy against another possible economic downturn (Smart 2015). Interviews with key informants and survey participants found that even among households with relatively secure and stable incomes UA was practised out of fear of future potential job losses, and also to ensure that an adequate food ‘safety net’ is in place (KI 7, 8). It was found that between 72% and 79% of households in low-income areas and between 78% and 94% in higher-income areas engage in UA. High practising rates in the wealthier areas are accounted for by the better land access which this section of the community enjoys and, as multiple informants indicated, the precarious economic situation has forced all people, irrespective of income levels and whether or not they lost their jobs, to pursue alternative options in anticipation of possible future job loss (KI 7, 8, 9). In the most negatively affected centre, Luanshya, some 94% of middle- or higher-income households surveyed and 91% of low-­income households practise UA.  In Kitwe, the corresponding figures were 94% and 72%, whilst in Ndola, with its more diversified economy, they were 81% and 76% respectively (Binns et al. 2013). The remarkably high figures in Luanshya and Kitwe are probably directly attributable to the loss of mining jobs (Mususa 2012; KI 7). It should, however, be recognized that the upper- and middle-income people generally have better land access and political control and can capitalize on the potential to create income from their assets, while lower classes are generally less able to exploit such opportunities and are forced to remain in a survivalist position. This corresponds with research elsewhere in Africa which indicates that while the poor use UA as a survival strategy, wealthier people are able to use their position of power to secure better land access and the means to generate income

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(Dossa et al. 2011). This is reflected in the scale of land access in the study area. The average farmed area on the household plot was 0.01 ha in the case of lower-income groups, and 0.15 ha among higher-income groups, while in the case of land access outside the household plot, the land area used varied from 0.9 ha to 1.7 ha. Hence, UA is clearly practised by all social classes in the study area, initially as a crisis response, but over time better-off households continue to practise it, both as an insurance policy against future risk and as a source of food security and income (Binns et al. 2013; Smart et al. 2015). Institutional Support Critical to ensuring the sustainability of UA in the Copperbelt Province, and indeed elsewhere, is the need for greater levels of institutional recognition and support. This is required not only to address key challenges such as ensuring land access and reducing the risk of eviction, but also to address key operational constraints such as poor access to water and extension support (Binns and Lynch 1998). The survey in the Copperbelt centres established that 80% of all respondents believed that UA activities deserved official support. In addition to the perceived lack of support, securing land access was a key problem for 80% of households, while support for the marketing of produce and hygienic food handling were mentioned as requirements which could lead to an increase in both sales and income (Smart 2015). In terms of environmental concerns, there are also clear challenges. Several respondents mentioned the official discouragement of UA on river banks due to erosion damage, siltation and fertiliser run-off. Despite this, UA still occurred in these locations due to the need to produce food on the limited land available. A lack of education regarding fertilisers, composting and contamination was also mentioned as a constraint (KI 9, 10). Irregular water supply and contamination of rivers and boreholes was a frequently raised problem in many areas, and also, according to officials, a consideration which raises serious health concerns (KI 3). In addition, the cost of paying for a reticulated water supply is a barrier to its use by many UA farmers. In terms of financial support, the absence of both state or private sector loans and investment, for what are seen as marginal enterprises, was regarded by many informants as a barrier to expansion (KI 10, 11). In response to these issues, the respective local governments have not been particularly forthcoming, varying from outright discouragement of UA in the cases of Kitwe and Luanshya, and the removal of farmers from

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centrally situated land, to a somewhat half-hearted effort by the local authority in 2012 to support UA in Ndola. A shortage of funds and technical staff prevented the implementation of identified support options, such as addressing key obstacles, including land access and water supply, and supplying extension support and advice (Smart et al. 2015). UA also frequently faces a range of legal restrictions which can directly challenge the security of investments which UA farmers make. For example, the Control of Cultivation Act 1995 (CAP 480, Section 110 of the Laws of Zambia) states that ‘except with the permission of the Council, no cultivation of any kind will be permitted on un-alienated or unoccupied land within the boundaries of the township’ (GRZ 1995a). The Public Health Act, Act 13 of 1994 (CAP 295 of the Laws of Zambia, 1995), stipulates that ‘a person shall not within a township permit any premises or lands owned or occupied by him or over which he has control, to become overgrown with bush or long grass of such nature as in the opinion of the Medical Officer of Health, is likely to harbour mosquitoes’ (GRZ 1995b). In light of such regulations, there have been occasions when Lusaka City Council workers have been instructed to destroy growing crops in the urban area, though this has not happened in recent years (Hampwaye 2008). Evidence does, however, suggest that greater tolerance is now being practised and the recognition of food self-provisioning by city dwellers is gaining popularity among local authorities, and even a degree of legal recognition, albeit that legal provisions are often contradictory (Thornton et al. 2010), Despite this, common perceptions prevail among the ruling elite that urban agriculture is ‘the antithesis of modernization and indicative of an official failure in the urban development process. Accordingly, urban agriculture has been stigmatized as “backward”, “rural”, and “traditional”, an activity that had no place in the context of modernizing cities’ (Hampwaye 2008: 557). Cissé et  al. (2005) found similar perceptions in their study of Francophone West African cities, where agriculture cannot be permitted as an urban activity. In Kano (Nigeria), it seems that the local authorities generally adopt a ‘permissive’ attitude to urban agriculture, in effect ‘turning a blind eye’ to the practice (Binns and Lynch 1998). In an apparent contradiction to the official antagonism towards UA in Zambia, a significant policy development process started in the city of Ndola in 2008. While the reality of UA had long been recognized in Ndola and Kitwe by the Ministry of Agriculture staff, it was when a Dutch NGO, RUAF (Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture and Food Security),

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in collaboration with a southern African collaborator, the MDP (Municipal Development Programme) based in Harare in Zimbabwe, recognized that, given the scale of economic collapse which had taken place in Ndola, external support was necessary (KI 3). In 2008, RUAF and MDP engaged with the Copperbelt University in Kitwe to undertake research into the viability of UA in the city and to suggest how it could be supported. The resulting documentation included a ‘Strategic Agenda’ for UA and a set of recommendations for the Ndola City Council to consider. This led to the establishment of a Multi-Stakeholder Forum (MSF) to oversee the process and to encourage networking between a wide group of stakeholders (government, farmers, NGOs, etc.), with the goal of providing broad-based support for UA. In parallel, a RUAF-funded project entitled ‘From Seed to Table’ was initiated to support UA activities in two communities, in collaboration with the City Council and the Ministry of Agriculture. With the support and encouragement of RUAF, MDP and Ndola City Council (NCC) a document was produced entitled Key Issues and Recommendations on Urban Agriculture. This document clearly identified the key role which UA has played, stating, ‘Ndola city has immensely benefitted from urban agricultural activities. Coming from a background of total economic collapse, a number of residents have had their livelihood upped due to these activities. Loss of jobs in the defunct industry left many without any resources for food. Urban agriculture has bridged the gap by providing food security’ (NCC 2008: iii). This document identified that key issues such as land, water and market access needed to be addressed and that extension support and council funding were essential (Smart 2015). In 2009, a second document entitled Urban Agriculture: Strategic Agenda for City Of Ndola was produced by the Core Team (the MSF and researchers), the RUAF and MDP (NCC 2009). That document argued: The city is predominantly a commercial and industrial city. Change of economic policies in the 1990’s saw a serious economic decline which led to the closure of many companies leading to a lot of people being jobless. Agriculture became an alternative for economic survival: however, since it had not been planned for earlier, some activities have been running into conflict with existing rules and regulations. (NCC 2009: 1)

The 2009 document proposed the following vision for the city and UA, ‘A developed, legal and sustainable urban agriculture for the city of Ndola

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which is well coordinated, participatory and contributes to the city’s economy, while maintaining the resource base’ (NCC 2009: 3), calling for a review of laws, the provision of tenure security and water and market access, training and support. In March 2010, Ndola City Council, based on the preceding research and policy process, and in collaboration with the MSF, MDP and RUAF, approved an Urban Agriculture Policy for Ndola City Council (NCC 2010). According to the document: ‘The principal aim of this policy is to facilitate a participatory environment in the sustainable development of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Ndola to create a framework for food security and poverty alleviation’ (p. 1). The policy’s purpose was identified as the need to provide guidelines for the development of UA in the city and to ‘formally recognise urban agriculture as a permissible land use and commercial activity in Ndola’ (NCC 2010: 7). Work undertaken to date include: land use mapping and policy analysis, identifying conflicts between UA and forestry policy and amending council by-laws which restrict maize and the environmental policy which restricts cultivation of river banks (Smart 2015). Despite the innovative and forward-looking nature of the Ndola policy process, and the degree of legitimatization it has accorded to the practice of UA, unfortunately outcomes have not matched expectations. On the positive side, the City Council has adopted a more tolerant approach to UA and the slashing of crops appears to have stopped. Equally significant, and what is probably the key success of the policy, as identified by the key informants, is the reality that the existence of the policy has de facto legitimized the involvement of the Ministry of Agriculture, with extension support provided within the city boundaries, which is by no means a common practice in Zambian cities (Smart 2015). The provision of advice, support with fencing and seeds, and help rendered to cooperatives have been significant support processes which, according to the farmers interviewed, appear to have made a tangible impact (KI 3, 12, 13). However, on the negative side, the departure of RUAF and MDP from Ndola in 2011, and the later cessation of the ‘From Seed to Table’ programmes, has been a significant step backwards. While the local will c­ ertainly exists in the City Council to support UA, the loss of external funding, support and assistance has been a major blow for the UA process in the city. It would seem that the City Council simply lacks the resources to implement the policy, despite the earlier full support of both the Council and the city’s Executive (Binns et al. 2013). Despite other identified challenges such as the clash with national legislation, the fact that the MSF has effectively ceased

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to exist owing to a lack of funds to support the meetings after the withdrawal of RUAF, there has been a notable increase in local UA production in Ndola, which is reflected in improved provision of local produce in the city’s markets (KI 3).

Conclusion The detailed surveys undertaken in Kitwe, Luanshya and Ndola have revealed that UA plays a critically important role in urban livelihoods. Serious economic challenges and job losses have forced many thousands of people into unemployment and a dependence on UA, and informal sector activities, in order to survive and contribute to household food security. Practising rates for UA in the Copperbelt are undoubtedly higher than those noted in many previous studies (e.g. Crush et al. 2011), which clearly reflects on the extreme nature of the economic shock which the Copperbelt cities and their populations have experienced due to mine closure and industrial collapse. With well over two-thirds of households engaging in UA, including wealthier people, it is clear how important it is for all urban residents and classes. Upper- and middle-income residents, with higher levels of land access than the urban poor, are key participants in UA, driven by both a fear of potential future economic shocks and their capacity to use UA to provide both food and income. As in studies of UA undertaken elsewhere in Africa, access to land and a clean and reliable water supply are serious constraints. Urban authorities in the Copperbelt and elsewhere need to provide significant levels of support, in terms of ensuring access to land, affordable water, market facilities and extension support. Such measures would go a long way towards supporting what is clearly a critical form of self-help in poor, and perhaps not so poor, urban environments. As the Ndola case study shows, significant progress was made in the quest for providing official support for UA in the city from 2008 to 2013. However, while UA received widespread support from within the Council and the Ministry of Agriculture, the withdrawal of NGO funding and expertise from important external donors effectively constrained further official support. Given the significance of urban agriculture in relation to household sustainability, it is regrettable that official recognition of the practice has been somewhat fragmentary within African countries. The practice is still effectively outlawed in by-laws and public health acts, and is seen as a

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nuisance and even a threat to health and modernization. However, there has been some progress in recognizing and legitimizing UA, which represents a major shift in a region where urban agriculture has, since the colonial period, invoked strong associations with backward, rural habits, poverty, criminal activity and malaria. As the FAO (2012) reports, numerous governments in Africa are at least now considering policy options and urban planning interventions to support UA.  Considerations of land access and tenure, water supply and market access are critical and need to be factored into support mechanisms. Cities must collaborate with a range of stakeholders, and need to especially work collaboratively with local branches of Ministries of Agriculture and NGOs in order to maximize impact. At a time when discourse revolves around issues such as sustainability, reducing food miles and greening the city, UA has considerable potential. But support for the practice needs to be factored into future urban physical planning processes, which need to move away from strategies laid down in the colonial period to developing new ‘bottom-up’ planning strategies in which there is formal provision of land for urban farming. This is of critical importance in all African cities, but especially in those which have undergone structural economic change. Acknowledgements  The authors acknowledge the financial support of New Zealand Aid (NZAID) who funded this study (Grant GRA/623/8). They also acknowledge the key role played by Jessie Smart who was a Research Assistant on that project and who subsequently wrote her PhD on the topic.

References Binns, T., & Lynch, K. (1998). Feeding Africa’s Growing Cities into the 21st Century: The Potential of Urban Agriculture. Journal of International Development, 10, 777–793. Binns, T., Maconachie, R., & Tanko, A. (2003). Water, Land and Health in Urban and Peri-Urban Food Production: The Case of Kano, Nigeria. Land Degradation and Development, 14, 413–444. Binns, T., Nel, E., & Smart, J. (2013). The Significance of Urban Agriculture in Food Security and Sustainable Livelihoods. Final Report GRA/623/8, NZAID, Wellington. Cadzow, H., & Binns, T. (2016). Empowering Freetown’s Women Farmers. Applied Geography, 74, 1–11.

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Cissé, O., Gueye, N. F. D., & Sy, M. (2005). Institutional and Legal Aspects of Urban Agriculture in French-Speaking West Africa: From Marginalization to Legitimization. Environment and Urbanization, 17(1), 143–154. Crush, J., Hovorka, A., & Tevera, D. (2010). Urban Food Production and Household Food Security in Southern African Cities. Urban Food Security Series No. 4. Ontario: Queen’s University. Crush, J., Hovorka, A., & Tevera, D. (2011). Food Security in Southern African Cities. Progress in Development Studies, 11(4), 285–305. CSO (Central Statistical Office). (2004). Copperbelt Province Analytical Report. Zambia Census of Population and Housing 2000. Lusaka: Central Statistical Office. CSO (Central Statistical Office). (2007). Company Closures and Job Losses in Zambia. Lusaka: Central Statistical Office. Dodson, B., Chiweza, A., & Riley, L. (2012). Gender and Food Security in Southern African Cities. Urban Food Security Series No. 10. Ontario: Queen’s University. Dossa, H. L., Buerkert, A., & Schlech, E. (2011). Cross-Location Analysis of the Impact of Household Socioeconomic Status on Participation in Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture in West Africa. Human Ecology, 39, 569–581. Ellis, F., & Sumberg, J. (1998). Food Production, Urban Areas and Policy Responses. World Development, 26(2), 213–225. Fallavier, P., Mulenga, C., & Jere, H. (2005). Livelihoods, Poverty and Vulnerability in Urban Zambia: Assessment of Situation, Coping Mechanisms and Constraints. Draft Document. Washington: World Bank. FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization). (2012). Growing Greener Cities in Africa. Rome: FAO. Ferguson, J. (1999). Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Fraser, A., & Lungu, J. (2009). For Whom the Windfalls. Lusaka: Civil Society Trade Network of Zambia. Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ). (1995a). The Control of Cultivation Act 1995 (CAP 80, Section 110 of the Laws of Zambia). Lusaka: GRZ. Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ). (1995b). The Public Health Act, Act 13 of 1994 (CAP 295 of the Laws of Zambia). Lusaka: GRZ. Hampwaye, G. (2008). Decentralisation, Local Economic Development and Urban Agriculture in Zambia. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. KCC (Kitwe City Council). (2005a). Kitwe District Strategic Plan. Kitwe: Kitwe City Council. KCC (Kitwe City Council). (2005b). Kitwe District Poverty Assessment. Kitwe: Kitwe City Council.

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Food Security and Land-Use Conflicts Within Regional Planning: The Recent Experience of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, Brazil Daniela Adil Oliveira de Almeida, Cecilia Rocha, Heloísa Soares de Moura Costa, and Melissa Luciana de Araújo Introduction Belo Horizonte is the third-largest capital city of Brazil and the centre of a metropolitan region that congregates another 33 municipalities in the state of Minas Gerais. The Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte (RMBH) currently has approximately five million people. The municipalities that compose the RMBH have different functions in the region and present different degrees of regional integration and socio-economic inequalities within and between them, with economic activities heavily

D. A. O. de Almeida (*) • H. S. de Moura Costa • M. L. de Araújo Geography Department, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil C. Rocha Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_14

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concentrated in the three most populous cities—Belo Horizonte, Contagem and Betim (Diniz and Andrade 2015; Tonucci et al. 2015). The elaboration of a Master Plan for the Integrated Development of the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte occurred between 2009 and 2011, representing a restart of the metropolitan planning process since the 1970s. According to the analysis presented in the Master Plan, there is a concentration of investments, employment, resources and activities at the central municipality (Belo Horizonte), associated with a fragmented and discontinuous expansion of the urban fabric. These tendencies are seen as detrimental to the well-being of the urban population and need to be reversed. Strategies and policies must be proposed for a new territorial structure of the region, with a view to creating conditions for better national and international insertion of the RMBH and more articulation of the RMBH with its regional environment, as well as providing development alternatives on a more sustainable basis. In the course of the development of the Master Plan, integrated diagnoses and sectorial studies were produced, resulting in a proposal for a metropolitan territorial restructuring and an institutional proposal for the implementation of the Plan. One of the main references of the Master Plan was the construction of a socio-spatial integration process among the 34 municipalities, as well as a sense of metropolitan citizenship and belonging to a common territory (UFMG 2011). A set of 23 metropolitan policies was organized into four Integrating Thematic Axes: Accessibility, Security, Urbanity and Sustainability. As a follow-up and as a new step in the RMBH planning, between December 2013 and mid-2015, the Metropolitan Macrozoning Project (MMP) was developed to promote a metropolitan territorial restructuring, propose criteria and parameters for the control of land use and occupation in RMBH (including agricultural use), as well as to propose areas for the territorialization of other policies and programmes of the Master Plan, including those related to food and nutrition security (FNS). The project followed a participatory process of discussion of metropolitan issues, which proved to be a very creative and fruitful mechanism for formulating proposals. In this chapter, we explore the regional influence of the public policy of FNS formulated in the city of Belo Horizonte, arguing that the organization of a food system in metropolitan contexts necessarily involves intersectorial negotiations in a wider territory. We examine to what extent an

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FNS approach and particular agricultural activities were incorporated into the metropolitan planning process through the Master Plan.

Food and Nutrition Security Programmes in Belo Horizonte Recently, a City Region Food Systems approach has drawn attention to the complexity involved in feeding the population of large urban centres, as well as to the connections and flows of people, goods and services established between large cities and their immediate surroundings, such as rural and agricultural areas and small and medium-sized cities (FAO 2017). The FNS policy in Belo Horizonte serves as a case study in addressing such complexity. In 1993, the municipal government of Belo Horizonte created a new department (the Municipal Food Supply Secretariat, today renamed the Municipal Secretariat for Food and Nutrition Security–SUSAN), to plan and coordinate the implementation of actions aimed at the consumption, production and distribution of food. The innovative principles adopted by this department were fundamental for the development and consolidation of an FNS policy in the region and, later, in the country (Mafra 2004; Braga et al. 2014; Rocha and Lessa 2009; Rocha 2016; Araújo 2016). SUSAN has divided its programmes into seven “lines of work”: (1) subsidized food sales, (2) food and nutrition assistance, (3) food supply and market regulation support for urban agriculture, (5) education for food consumption, (6) job and income generation and (7) management of public policies in FNS.  It coordinates 17 programmes, which reach more than one million people daily (Belo Horizonte 2017). Principles guiding the programmes include the right to food, social justice (favouring marginalized and low-income groups), universality (fighting stigma as they reach their target populations), and food quality and safety. Here we describe the key programmes with the most potential of impacting the city’s surroundings, particularly rural and agricultural areas, and which can be directly affected by regional planning decisions (Braga et al. 2014; Belo Horizonte 2017): • Popular restaurants: four cafeteria-style restaurants, serving over 10,000 nutritious meals per day at subsidized prices. Patrons range from families, to students, to retired bank clerks, to the homeless population of the city (universal access).

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• School meals: serves over 40 million meals/year to 155,000 students in 218 public schools. Federal legislation requires nutritionally balanced meals and that 30% of the food to be purchased from family farms (percentage still not reached by the Prefeitura de Belo Horizonte [PBH]). • Abastecer (or Sacolão): The city licenses sellers to set up stores in city-­ owned property. Under the licence agreement, private operators must sell 20–25 fruits and vegetables at a price set by the city (20– 50% below market prices). Prices of other items sold in these outlets are not regulated, allowing operators a small profit. Besides prices, the city also monitors the quality of the products and provides technical assistance and general information on product display, safe storage and handling. In 2017, 21 of such stores were spread out around the city. • Straight from the field: aims to facilitate direct interactions between small rural producers and urban consumers. By eliminating the intermediaries that normally operate in bringing the products of small rural producers to urban markets, the programme aims at increasing the income of small farmers. Rural producers selected through a public process are assigned fixed sale points throughout the city (often in conjunction with the Abastecer outlets). • Conventional and organic farmers’ markets: The open-air farmers’ markets operate in streets and squares distributed in all the municipality regions, with a total of 53 points of sale. In these spaces are sold fruits and vegetables, dairy products, meat, fish, sweets and biscuits. Producers from municipalities of RMBH have specific incentives and spaces provided. • Centres of Agroecological Experience (CEVAEs): although not a current priority in the FNS policy of the city, five CEVAEs have been created since 1995. Each centre, established in low-income regions of the city, has a multimedia room, a kitchen and a cultivation area, and promote the production of food and medicinal plants in backyards, encouraging community and school gardens, planting fruit trees and experimenting with the recovery of risk areas with food crops. CEVAEs have innovated in popular participation and shared management between the public power and a social organization.

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In addition to actions taken by the government, different non-­ governmental organizations (NGOs), social movements, associations, research groups from universities and other civil society organizations work in diverse networks and councils, interacting with governmental sectors at the municipal, state and national levels. Spaces such as the Metropolitan Articulation of Urban Agriculture (AMAU) and the Urban Network of Agroecology of the RMBH (RUA Metropolitana) have contributed to the consolidation of actions and policies directed to the consumption, production and commercialization of local and regional food, as well as to the social use of the land and the territorial planning in the city and the RMBH (Almeida 2016). In the national scenario, between 2003 and 2010, the government of President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva intensified and consolidated several proposals for intersectoral policies aimed at economic development and reduction of social inequalities. The national Zero Hunger strategy developed during the Lula government was the key political instrument towards greater food and nutrition security in the country. Changes at the federal level, which now support food security programming at municipal levels, also include the passing of a National Law on Food and Nutrition Security (LOSAN) in 2006, and the constitutional amendment adding the right to food to the country’s constitution in 2010. The success of the Zero Hunger strategy was internationally recognized in 2014 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, declaring Brazil off the “hunger map”, since, by the end of 2013, less than 5% of the country’s population showed any degree of undernourishment (FAO 2014). All these advances contributed to the understanding of the multidimensionality of FNS and its potential consequences. The first dimension refers to the availability of food, enough to supply the entire population, in view of international and national trade, as well as the supply and distribution of these products. Another dimension refers to physical or economic access to food, when all individuals are able to have food in a socially accepted way. Finally, there is the dimension of food and nutrient utilization, which encompasses biological utilization, influenced by health issues, by the social role of food in the community and in the family, as well as by food choices and habits at the individual level (FAO 2014). A growing agroecology movement and increasing valorization of urban agriculture were added to concerns about food and nutrition security to influence the planning process in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte. As a reaction to the process of modernization of agriculture

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and the diffusion of the model of the so-called Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, a long international trajectory of research and social movements has exposed the connections between the socio-­environmental crisis experienced by contemporary societies and the processes followed in “industrial” or conventional agriculture (Casado et  al. 2000; Petersen 2009; Altieri 2012). While these conventional farming systems have been successful in supplying large volumes of food, it is increasingly recognized that they generate significant negative impacts on the natural environment and on human health (IPES-Food 2016, 2017). These systems aimed to produce food on an industrial scale, contribute to the loss of local and regional food culture, and promote excessive consumption of unhealthy food and of waste. All these characteristics are also associated with environmental degradation and significant damage to natural systems. A fundamentally different model of agriculture is thus proposed to combat the prevailing negative impacts of conventional systems. In this direction, agroecology is being increasingly viewed as a science, a movement and a comprehensive social practice which denounces the logic of the capitalist way of organizing the food system in general and announces new possibilities for diverse agriculture and different forms of organizing the production and consumption of food. According to the Brazilian Association of Agroecology (ABA) website, agroecology proposes to study development processes from an ecological and socio-­ cultural perspective, and support the transition from conventional models of agriculture and rural development to different styles of agriculture and sustainable rural development. An important aspect of the diversity in agriculture, particularly relevant to the discussion of urban planning, is the discussion on urban agriculture. The emergence of initiatives in urban agriculture, in line with the principles of FNS and agroecology, has been happening simultaneously with the dynamics of public policy making and processes of mobilization and social organization. This field has provoked reflections on the rural-urban relationships, as well as on the role of agricultural practices in the environmental sustainability of metropolitan regions.

Food and Nutrition Security in the Master Plan In the Master Plan developed between 2009 and 2011 there is a set of proposals for the protection of rural areas and the encouragement of agricultural spaces in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte. These were

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summarized in the Integrated Metropolitan Policy of Food and Nutrition Security (PMISAN). Issues related to food and nutrition security (FNS) and agricultural activity were explicitly considered in the Master Plan. Furthermore, urban agriculture was also incorporated as fulfilling a possible social interest role, through the temporary or permanent use of land, as an option to use idle lots and areas, and also on land in vacant lots and inadequate urban voids (such as areas under transmission lines, margins of watercourses, etc.). Also derived from the Master Plan, the Integrated Metropolitan Policy to Support Small-Scale Production is intended to stimulate the great potential for employment and income provision, especially for the population not directly absorbed by large regional investments, through small-­ scale productive strategies and practices. The difficulties faced by small-scale producers arise at various moments, such as: (1) the articulation with the most dynamic centres, (2) access to goods and services that facilitate production, (3) access to credit and technical assistance, (4) support in the management of the enterprise and (5) marketing. The policy aims to act on these bottlenecks, strengthening and expanding local practices and experiences, as well as incorporating a dimension of preservation of cultural traditions in food, aesthetic expression, everyday organization of work or lifestyle in general. In this sense, the incorporation of small-scale agricultural production, particularly the experiences of family agriculture that extend in the rural and urban territories of the municipality, constitutes a deconstruction of the current notion of this economic activity only as a self-subsistence activity. On the contrary, it reinforce that the activity, historically, is part of the circuits of production, distribution and consumption of the local economies. The proposals formulated within the scope of the Metropolitan Macrozoning Project (MMP) did not encompass all the metropolitan territory, but sought to understand, map and assign parameters of land use and occupation to spaces whose potential or present qualities were relevant to the metropolitan area, identified as Zones of Metropolitan Interest (ZIMs) or Areas of Metropolitan Interest (AIMs). These were indicated as priority areas for the implementation of proposed policies, programmes and projects of the Master Plan (UFMG 2015). The MMP identified spaces whose potential or present qualities were relevant to the metropolitan area, such as border areas between municipalities, areas close to major roadways, areas of influence of new centralities and large equipment, and protection zones of water springs. As a result, 19 ZIMs were proposed and

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organized into three broad categories: environmental ZIMs (6), development axes and centrality ZIMs (11), and special ZIMs (2). The six Environmental ZIMs mainly comprise water source areas and have as main motivation the environmental protection and integrity of the metropolitan water supply. The 11 development and centrality ZIMs are characterized by the densification and diversity of uses associated with the proposal of a network of centralities. Two special ZIMs—ZIM Rodoanel and ZIM Serras—although quite distinct, have in common the articulation between the process of urbanization and the environmental question (UFMG 2015). Throughout the MMP, the proposal for the constitution of a Green-­ Blue Weft (TVA), which aims to ensure the continuity of natural, rural and urban spaces and cultural manifestations in the metropolitan area, has been gaining ground. TVA was conceived as a complementary element of structuring the entire metropolitan territory, with multiple uses and functions. Thus, it proposes to articulate spaces and activities in green areas, water courses and landscape elements and incorporate road axes, collective facilities, spaces for public use, urban parks and recoverable areas, with the objective of promoting the integration and interconnection of these areas. The agricultural use of land was not considered as the main criterion for the definition of ZIMs. But the agricultural activity and the protection of the rural spaces were contemplated in the categories of internal zoning in the majority of the proposed ZIMs. In addition, agriculture is explicitly related to the composition, objectives, benefits and criteria for TVA conformation in both urban and rural areas of the RMBH (UFMG 2015). In summary, both the municipal policy and the metropolitan proposals are guided by the same multidimensional food security perspective. Belo Horizonte’s food procurement programmes, particularly for school meals, as well as the granting of public spaces for the holding of farmers’ markets, have historically involved producers of municipalities of the RMBH. These programmes, as well as the trajectory of actions related to the promotion of urban agriculture (such as the CEVAE project), influenced the preparation of the Master Plan and related documents. In turn, the Master Plan and the MMP mark an advance in the definition and protection of areas for food production, which had not been clear in municipal policies. These instruments, while incorporating the protection and expansion of agricultural areas in political proposals and guidelines for territorial restructuring, also made explicit the importance of encouraging the agroecological approach in the practices of urban agriculture and family agriculture.

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Main Results and Challenges The production of the metropolitan space reflects the conflictive and the negotiated actions of the agents that produce that space: the State, private interests (represented primarily by the real estate and industrial and mining sectors), and social organizations and movements. The unequal production of metropolitan spaces and the dynamics of expansion in dispersed and fragmented forms of low density have reproduced old inequalities, provoked new socio-environmental conflicts and imposed new challenges for metropolitan planning (Costa and Mendonça 2012). Worldwide there is growing recognition by metropolitan planning of the challenge of overcoming isolated municipal actions. A legal and institutional order, corresponding to the metropolitan territory, is required. The recent experience of Minas Gerais state is so far the most solid in the Brazilian scenario, involving changes in the state constitution, state legislation and the consolidation of a metropolitan institutional apparatus at the state level (Fernandes 2013: 27). Minas Gerais was the first state in Brazil to adopt specific legislation for urban agriculture (Minas Gerais 2006). In the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, mining, industry and service sectors are the most economically important activities and their representatives often object to more attention given to food production in studies, public policies and public investments. Agriculture is predominantly seen as irrelevant (compared to other urban social and environmental issues), unfeasible (if compared to other uses and occupations of the land with more economic return) and incompatible with urban settings (due to the environmental impacts it may cause or to which it may be subject) (Tupy et al. 2015). However, some of the municipalities of the RMBH are predominantly rural, home to many family farms, and presenting agricultural activities, which play an important role in the regional food supply. Moreover, initiatives related to urban agriculture and agroecology in the region have evidenced innumerable experiences and agricultural practices in backyards, rooftops, community gardens, cottages, agrarian reform settlements and other productive spaces dispersed in the region (Costa and Almeida 2012; Tupy et al. 2015). The FNS approach adopted by the Integrated Metropolitan Policy of Food and Nutrition Security (PMISAN) associates access to food (1) to the conditions under which it is produced, distributed and consumed; and (2) to institutional frameworks that intervene to guarantee the human right to adequate food, through five programmes that aim to: support

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rural activities, with emphasis on family agriculture; offer quality food at affordable prices; eradicate hunger and malnutrition; promote conscious food consumption and urban agriculture; and promote the quality of life of the rural population in the RMBH.  The territorial dimension of the PMISAN represents an important element of metropolitan territorial restructuring, and the guarantee of spaces, of manifestation of the socio-­ spatial diversity, as opposed to the dominant processes of specialization and homogenization of food production and consumption. The programmes and projects foreseen in the PMISAN recognize the metropolitan rural space in its totality and complexity, as well as the integration between the rural and the urban in the municipalities, acting on the production, the supply and the consumption of food. The incorporation of “rurality” and agriculture as a land use to be regulated, protected and encouraged in several ZIMs increased the perception of public managers and social organizations of the agricultural activity in the region. In addition, the proposals of a Green-Blue Weft (TVA) contemplated the incorporation of land where urban agriculture is practised; the agricultural areas that play an important role for the supply of the metropolitan region and that adopt conservation practices of soil and water and principles of ecological agriculture (UFMG 2015). It was considered that the promotion of urban agriculture and family farming activities can create job opportunities and provide important economic alternatives for people living in Areas of Metropolitan Interest (UFMG 2015). The analysis of municipal plans and legislation confirms a historical omission regarding the regulation of agricultural land use, as well as proposals for land-use planning in rural areas, although since the City Statute was approved in 2001, the master plans should explicitly cover the totality of the municipal territory. It is also worth mentioning that, unlike other land uses, which rely on secondary and geo-referenced databases, there is a significant gap in regional information on agricultural activity, especially regarding its spatialization in RMBH. Thus, key moments for a preliminary exercise in the identification of agricultural spaces occurred in the technical visits to some municipalities, in the metropolitan seminars and in the five public workshops that integrated the methodology for developing the MMP. Public workshops and technical seminars were social mobilization activities that integrated the methodological proposal of the MMP. The first cycle of workshops, with a micro-regional scope, put the macro-proposal to the sectors of society

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and the government, and promoted an initial survey on the spaces of metropolitan interest. The second cycle of public workshops deepened the debates on the delimitation of the ZIMs (UFMG 2015). This exercise was also carried out in close dialogue with other initiatives in the region. Among them, there was a joint action of the MMP team with the Group of Studies in Urban Agriculture—(AUÊ!/UFMG), which was initiating a mapping of agricultural practices and initiatives in the RMBH. In this work, key informants were identified, such as the technical team of the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Company (EMATER), officials of city halls and social organizations active in the municipalities. These dynamics were related to another broader process of articulation between different social actors around urban agriculture and agroecology, gradually built over the last few years in the RMBH, around the Metropolitan Articulation of Urban Agriculture (AMAU). In this way, the presence of agriculture and the diversity of the subjects behind agricultural practices in the metropolitan territory were emphasized, enriching the debates about the limits and possibilities of the agricultural use of land in the territorial reconfiguration propositions of the RMBH.

Towards a Discussion of City Region Food Systems and Territorial Planning The experience presented in this chapter seeks to highlight the significance of local FNS policy in the city of Belo Horizonte to the recent restart of the metropolitan planning process. We understand that the approximation between these rich and complementary trajectories can contribute to the construction of more sustainable and fair City Region Food System. Magalhães (2008: 35) links the notion of the city region to the propositions about the “post-metropolis” and emphasizes that city-space always includes in its regional spaces seemingly non-urban and uninhabited areas. However, he argues that these are indeed urbanized spaces, given the synergies generated by the urban agglomeration. Almeida (2016) argues that the perspective of a regional space in the process of metropolization (or city on a regional scale) seems to be quite adequate to understand the contemporary interactions between the organization of food systems and the production of urban space. This territorial scale integrates morphological aspects with current economic processes

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and makes it possible to criticize the conception of the city as a space with defined borders that differs from an environment recognized as non-­ city—a view still quite common in the debates about food production and food security of the urban population. The regional metropolitan scale also allows articulating the contemporary approaches on urban agriculture with a whole trajectory of debates on agroecology, in order to overcome the rural-urban dichotomy that still prevails in the sectorial policies of family agriculture and rural development. However, in order to build a fair and sustainable City Region Food System, it is necessary to develop a critical view of the dominant agriculture model and the current organization of agri-food systems. In this sense, the term “agricultures” has been used in the metropolitan planning process of RMBH, seeking to broaden the perception about different “ways of doing agriculture” in the contemporary world—a result of the juxtaposition and interactions among capitalist agriculture, family farm and the “peasant” style of farming. The combinations between distinct political-economic arrangements indicate that attempts to frame experiences into rigid categories are inadequate (Ploeg 2016). And this complexity is even more significant in metropolitan contexts. In this chapter we emphasized the dimensions of food production and supply as important dimensions for City Region Food Systems. Thus, it is important to make explicit the agroecological perspective as one that makes it possible to identify and characterize agricultural practices oriented towards the reproduction of human life and natural goods and to promote fair and sustainable food systems. The interaction between a trajectory of efforts to build a political agenda around food and nutrition security, urban agriculture and agroecology, and the recent restart of the planning process in the RMBH has broadened the recognition of agriculture in the metropolitan landscape and its possible contributions to territorial restructuring in the region. The process of metropolitan planning has allowed a better understanding of the articulation between the contemporary production of the metropolitan space and important conflicts between the agricultural use of the land and other uses and social demands (housing of social interest), economic uses (mining and industrial activities) and environmental protection. It also allowed for the identification of “convergences” between agricultural land use and other urban uses, which are part of broader debates related to social justice and “urban” sustainability. Throughout the development of the MMP, the participation of different actors has

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broadened, deepening the discussion of conflicts and convergences between agriculture and other land uses, as well as the elaboration of common proposals for a new territorial structure. In addition to the discussions on institutionalized territorial planning, the channels of participation and connections provided by the adopted methodology favoured ongoing socio-spatial dynamics and the unfolding of new institutions and metropolitan identities centred on the practice of agriculture in the RMBH (Almeida 2016). This was possible because, as pointed out by Magalhães et al. (2012), the methodological assumptions of metropolitan planning value social, environmental and cultural dimensions beyond the usual emphasis on the economic dimension that guides the dynamics of urban-regional planning. Within the scope of the Master Plan, the socio-environmental diversity present in the metropolitan territory can be confronted in relation to the socio-cultural integration and homogenization of modernist urbanism and planning geared towards the economic space of production. Thus, disputes in the prioritization, detailing and feasibility of zoning and the interventions proposed in territorial planning that took place, both in the technical debates and in the spaces of social participation, created an environment conducive to the perception of innumerable demands and initiatives to promote agriculture found in metropolitan municipalities. On the other hand, the academic and political debates on the importance of agroecology and urban agriculture that took place in the RMBH also provided visibility to different views and discourses on agriculture and to glimpses of future scenarios motivated by the acknowledgement of the different agricultures present in the metropolitan territory. However, these advances did not happen without conflict. And, as already mentioned, agricultural land use has not at any time occupied a central place in the propositions of metropolitan planning, when compared with issues considered as priorities for economic development or with historical struggles to cope with the conditions of socio-spatial inequality and basic demands for housing, health, education, transportation and basic sanitation. According to Almeida (2016), it is also necessary to contextualize these considerations in a broader order of questions, widely discussed in the Brazilian literature, of the planning logic as predominantly an instrument of territorial ordering and standardization of the space by the State,

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necessary to the process of capitalist accumulation in urban contexts. The implementation of the proposals foreseen in the Master Plan and the MMP imply interinstitutional strategies and a more active action of the State, both in the regulation of the agents that influence the production of the metropolitan space and in the provision of urban infrastructures and services through public investments. Two years after the end of the Macrozoning Project, it is not yet possible to assess to what extent the proposals of metropolitan planning have guided changes in public investment and urban planning legislation. Thus, it is fundamental to deepen the instances of social dialogue and control, to improve metropolitan governance and to increase the allocation of public budgets available to agriculture and agri-food systems. In the same sense, it is important to strengthen the articulation networks that have emerged in the process, composed of public agents, academics, civil society and the private sector. We can note, however, that in the past two years, a set of collaborative actions centred on food security, urban agriculture and agroecology were carried out, indicating some steps towards a metropolitan citizenship. These initiatives converge metropolitan planning with other social dynamics that were already underway in the region, such as the AMAU and the AUÊ! Group. New research and extension initiatives in universities are worthy of note, as well as seminars and meetings promoted by sectors of the state of Minas Gerais; productive ventures in different metropolitan municipalities and activities promoted by groups of people or by social organizations. In April 2016, the Urban Network of Agroecology of the RMBH (RUA Metropolitana) was created as a more structured and permanent collective action in the region. Congregating individuals, public managers and members of different civil society organizations in the same space, RUA Metropolitana will continue the debates that have associated the territorial complexity with the diversity of agricultural experiences and the socio-spatial dynamics found in the region. All these initiatives have faced the challenges of improving the links between food production and consumption, to value RMBH agricultural producers and recognize the diversity in the production of regional, nutritious and chemical-free food. These actions are steps towards the strengthening of local economies on a sustainable basis.

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References Almeida, D.  A. O. (2016). Isto e aquilo: agriculturas e produção do espaço na Região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte (RMBH). Belo Horizonte. Tese (Doutorado) – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Altieri, M. (2012). Agroecologia: bases científicas para uma agricultura sustentável. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro: Expressão Popular, AS-PTA. Araújo, M.  L. (2016). Repercussão da segurança alimentar e nutricional sobre o consumo de frutas e hortaliças. Dissertação (Mestrado em Enfermagem)  – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. Belo Horizonte. (2017). Prefeitura de Belo Horizonte. Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional: Política de Abastecimento e Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional da capital. Disponível jul. 28, 2017, em http://portalpbh.pbh.gov.br/pbh/ecp/ comunidade.do?evento=portlet&pIdPlc=ecpTaxonomiaMenuPortal&app=aba stecimento&tax=8260&lang=pt_BR&pg=5740&taxp=0&. Braga, A.  S. C. et  al. (2014, November). Programas de assistência alimentar e nutricional no município de Belo Horizonte: monitoramento e padronização de condutas. Revista Científica SAN, Belo Horizonte, 1(1), 4–10. Casado, G. G. et al. (Coords). (2000). Introducción a la Agroecología como desarrollo rural sostenible. Madrid: Mundi-Prensa. Costa, H.  S. M., & Mendonça, J.  G. (2012). Novidades e permanências na produção do espaço da metrópole: um olhar a partir de Belo Horizonte. In Oliveria et  al. (Orgs.), Grandes projetos metropolitanos. Rio de Janeiro e Belo Horizonte (pp. 46–65). Rio de Janeiro: Letra Capital. Diniz, A. M. A., & Andrade, L. T. (2015). Metropolização e hierarquização das relações entre os municípios da RMBH.  In Andrade et  al. (Orgs.), Belo Horizonte: transformações na ordem urbana. Rio de Janeiro (pp.  120–135). Belo Horizonte: Letra Capital: Observatório das Metrópoles; PUC-Minas. Fernandes, E. (2013). O elo perdido: o desafio da gestão metropolitana. In M. V. D. Drummond (Org), Pensar metropolitano: arranjos de governança nas regiões metropolitanas (201 p.). Belo Horizonte: Fundação João Pinheiro; Agência de Desenvolvimento da RMBH. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/FAO. (2014). Estado da Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional no Brasil  – Um retrato multidimensional. Brasília: Food and Agriculture Organization  – FAO.  Retrieved 2017, from http://www.fao.org.br/download/SOFI_p.pdf. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/FAO. (2017). Food for the Cities Programme: Building Food Secure and Resilient City Regions. Retrieved September 2017, from http://www.fao.org/in-action/food-forcities-programme/approach/crfs/en/. IPES-Food. (2016). From Uniformity to Diversity: A Paradigma Shift from Industrial Agriculture to Diversified Agroecological Systems. International Panel

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of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. Retrieved 2017, from http://www. ipes-food.org/images/Reports/UniformityToDiversity_FullReport.pdf. IPES-Food. (2017). Unravelling the Food-Health Nexus: Addressing Practices, Political Economy, and Power Relations to Build Healthier Food Systems. The Global Alliance for the Future of Food and IPES-Food. Retrieved 2017, from http://www.ipes-food.org/images/Reports/Health_FullReport.pdf. Mafra, L. A. S. (2004). O município na gestão de políticas locais de segurança alimentar: regulação de mercado e assistência alimentar em Belo Horizonte. Rio de Janeiro. Dissertação (Mestrado). Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro. Magalhães, F. N. C. (2008). Transformações socioespaciais na cidade-região em formação: a economia geopolítica do novo arranjo espacial metropolitano. Dissertação (Mestrado em Geografia). Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. Magalhães, F. N. C., et al. (2012). Em busca de rearranjos metropolitanos: uma discussão crítica da proposta de reestruturação territorial do Plano Diretor de Desenvolvimento Integrado da RMBH.  In XV Seminário sobre a economia mineira. Diamantina. Anais…. Minas Gerais. (2006, January 12). Lei Ordinária n° 15.973, de 12 de janeiro de 2006. Dispõe sobre a política estadual de apoio à agricultura urbana e dá outras providências. Palácio da Liberdade, Belo Horizonte. Petersen, P. (Org.) (2009). Agricultura familiar camponesa na construção do futuro. Rio de Janeiro: AS-PTA. Ploeg, J. D. V. D. (2016). Family Farming in Europe and Central Asia: History, Characteristics, Threats and Potentials. Brasília: Food and Agriculture Organization  – FAO.  Retrieved 2017, from http://www.fao.org/3/ai6536e.pdf. Rocha, C. (2016). Belo Horizonte: The Opportunities and Challenges of Urban Food Security Policy. In M. Deakin, N. Borrelli, & D. Diamantini (Eds.), The Governance of City-Food Systems: Case Studies from Around the World (pp. 29–40). Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli. Rocha, C., & Lessa, I. (2009). Urban Governance for Food Security: The Alternative Food System in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. International Planning Studies, 14(4), 389–400. Tonucci, F., et al. (2015). Estrutura produtiva e mercado de trabalho na Região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte: formação histórica e perspectivas contemporâneas. In L.  T. Andrade et  al. (Orgs.), Belo Horizonte: transformações na ordem urbana (pp.  49–87). Rio de Janeiro; Belo Horizonte: Letra Capital: Observatório das Metrópoles; PUC-Minas. Tupy, I. S., et al. (2015). Notas sobre a produção agrícola na Região Metropolitana de Belo Horizonte: para além da irrelevância, inviabilidade e incompatibilidade. Cadernos de Agroecologia, 10(3). Disponível 10 set. de 2017, em http://www. abaagroecologia.org.br/revistas/index.php/cad/article/view/20039.

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Changing Agricultural Landscape and Immigrant Population in Thimphu, Bhutan Raghubir Chand

Introduction The socio-economic landscape of Bhutan is changing rapidly from primarily a self-subsistent agricultural economy to an urbanized way of living. The urban landscape of Bhutan, which was nearly absent in 1960s, has been now modifying the traditional agricultural landscape of Bhutan at a much faster rate. Bhutan is a developing country and most of its people (69.1%) live in rural areas, while the urban population consists of 30.9% (Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005). Day by day increasing unemployment in the youth population in rural areas, as well as the drive for better opportunities and better jobs in urban centres, is increasing the rate of out-migration gradually. Urbanization and infrastructure development in Bhutan are expanding at a fast pace, and it has been observed that these processes are causing a decrease in the forest cover, agricultural area and shrub lands (Yangchen et al. 2015). Most of the cities in Bhutan are

R. Chand (*) Department of Geography, Kumaun University, Nainital, India © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_15

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experiencing a sudden change from an agricultural to an urban landscape, with rapid land use conversions subjected to urban pressure. There are direct and indirect impacts of the agricultural land use conversions in the cities. The direct impacts are felt when land is taken out of agriculture and built on to add to the existing urban land use (Bruce and Yeates 1993). When land is in the stage of planning to be sold out  through the intentions of the owners is viewed as the indirect less visible impact of the agricultural land use conversions in the cities (Bruce and Yeates 1994). These trends are clear at the national, local and personal levels, which are different but interconnected in the everyday political activity in the urbanizing areas (Malaque and Yokohari 2007). There are several case studies made by Kristensen (1999), Hietala-Koivu (1999), Fjellstad and Dramstad (1999), Lu Qi et al. (2002) and Lipsky (1995) analysing these increasing human and urban interferences in the agricultural landscape brought about by urbanization.

Changing Agricultural Landscape and Urbanization in Bhutan Over the years, increasing human interventions and urban sprawl in particular have disrupted the ecological processes in Bhutan. Until the 1980s, the pace of development had been very slow due to a very late contact to the outside world. However despite the rigorous conservation policies and the development philosophy of Bhutan of “Gross National Happiness” adopted as the major planning agenda by the Royal Government of Bhutan in 1972, rural out-migration and urbanization both are occurring at an accelerating stage in Bhutan. The present development trends and anthropogenic pressures, mostly the increasing demands for modern goods and services and the impact of globalization, have stimulated the process of rural out-migration and concentration of the immigrant population in urban centres of Bhutan. Migration is a socio-demographic process. Therefore, it is crucial to know the loss of agricultural land and the socio-economic status of migrants in the Bhutanese cities. Out of its total population of 745,153 persons, 56.2% of the population is still engaged in agriculture. The availability of agriculture land in Bhutan is barely 2.93% out of the total territorial land area of 38,394 km2 (Bhutan Renewable Natural Resources Statistics 2015). The land use and land cover changes analysed over a period of 13  years from 2000 to

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2013  in Bhutan by Yangchen et  al. (2015) show that the third-largest (14%) share was under agricultural uses. A significant decrease was found in the agriculture area from 14% to 8% and an increase in the built-up area from 5% to 14%. These changes can be attributed to the population growth in the country, which was estimated as 677,934 persons in 2000 (Central Statistical Organization of Bhutan 2000), enumerated as 672,425 persons in 2005 (Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005) and projected as 733,003 persons in 2013 (National Statistical Bureau 2013). Bhutan’s population is estimated to be 757,042  in 2015 (National Environment Commission 2016). In particular, the growth of urban areas due to increasing economic opportunities and rural-urban migration had forced the construction of a large number of buildings to serve as residences, offices and business places. Also the expansion of facilities and amenities, infrastructure, roads, drinking water pipelines and recreational sites is causing reduction in agriculture areas. Such developmental activities have led to a significant conversion of agricultural lands into built-up areas (Yangchen et al. 2015). The land cover map of 2011 also reported the operated agriculture land at 2.93% in Bhutan, though there are some confusing statistics provided by other sources. This prime agricultural land (especially paddy fields) is under increasing pressure from the growth in existing urban areas and creation of new urban settlements. In contrast, agricultural lands in rural areas are increasingly being left fallow due to rural-urban migration. Such pressures and impacts on agricultural land have a huge implication on the food and nutrition security of the country (National Environment Commission 2016). The National Environment Commission Report 2016 (National Environment Commission 2016) states that no comprehensive assessments of trends in land cover and land use changes have been conducted in Bhutan. The only other assessment of land cover and land use is for 1994, as published in the “Atlas of Bhutan, Land Cover and Area Statistics” by the Ministry of Agriculture (Ministry of Agriculture and Forests 1997). Comparison of land cover and statistics between 1994 and 2010 is difficult, as the differences in area and statistics are largely attributed to the different methodologies and technologies of the two assessments (Ministry of Agriculture and Forests 2011). The data provided by the National Environment Commission (2016) suggest that within the 2.93% of agriculture land, the dominant class is kamzhing (non-irrigated agricultural land) at 61.9%, while chuzhing or “wetland” (irrigated land) is 27.86% (Ministry of Agriculture and Forests 2011). Horticulture land accounts

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for 10.24% of the agricultural land and consists mainly of apple, citrus, areca nut and cardamom. However, cadastral data from the National Environment Commission (2016) indicates the proportion of kamzhing is even higher and accounts for 73.3% of all types of non-state land. The differences in the area statistics of agricultural type can be attributed to the different data types of land ownership, which may differ from actual use as captured in satellite imagery. The trend in agricultural land use has been of conversion to other uses, particularly to urbanization and development activities. From 1998 to 2015, a total of 306.55 ha of chuzhing was lost for various purposes and mostly for urban development and other infrastructure development. While the conversion of chuzhing over the years appears to show an increasing trend, it is not clear when conversions have taken place, as legal conversion records may also have taken place postfacto after many years. The dzongkhag (district) with the highest conversion of chuzhing during this period was seen in Punakha, Sarpang and Thimphu, followed by Paro, Wangdue Phodrang, Samtse, Dagana, Tsirang and Trashigang. Paro, Wangdue Phodrang, Samtse, Dagana and Tsirang also lost significant amounts of chuzhing to infrastructure development and urbanization (National Environment Commission 2016).

Changing Agricultural Landscape in Thimphu A limited number of studies have been conducted concerning the loss of agricultural landscape in growing urban centres in Bhutan. The subsistence economy based on the agriculture and associated livelihood patterns disappeared soon after the organization of space in accordance with the growth and evolution of the city landscape. Only 5% of the total population was estimated to be living in urban areas in 1980. This increased to 15% in 1994 and 30.9% in 2005. The recent estimates (National Environment Commission 2016) suggest that the urban population has by now increased to 45% and the remaining 55% of Bhutan’s population resides in rural areas (Department of Labour and Human Resources 2014), proving the pace of urbanization is accelerating. The western region, which includes the capital city Thimphu (Fig. 1), ranks the highest in terms of the urban population (65.1%) and the central western ranks the lowest, with 7.1% (National Environment Commission 2016). Thimphu, a small capital town of the kingdom of Bhutan, is situated at an average elevation of 2330 m in Thimphu dzongkhag. It lies in a narrow valley on the banks of River Wangchu, stretching from Dechencholing in

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Fig. 1  Location of Thimphu in Bhutan, Thimphu dzongkhag and in Thimphu valley

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the north to Babesa in the south. Though it stretches about 13 km, it is not more than 1 km wide at most places. It has an area of approximately 26.13  km2 and a total population of 79,185, as per the first census of Bhutan conducted in 2005 (Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005). The development of Thimphu as a town is very recent. In the past, the Thimphu valley consisted of terraced fields, where people mainly cultivated rice. One of the largest constraints to urbanization in Thimphu is the lack of land. Shortage of land has become intensified over time, with little space available within the cities. Increases in land prices further fuel speculation of land. As a result of urbanization pressures against less available land in central parts of cities, urbanization is now finding its way into agricultural lands in peripheries and hillside (Bajaj 2014). An analysis of GIS data for a period of 12 years from 2001 to 2012 presented by Bajaj (2014) reveals the ongoing impacts of urbanization in the Thimphu municipal area. The data revealed that the total built-up area in all 16 urban villages of Thimphu was 917,386 m2 in 2001, which increased to 1,645,875  m2, recording 79% increase from 2001 to 2012. The rate of increase in the built-up area has been ranging from a minimum of 31% in Dechecnholing Palace to a maximum of 176% in Changzamtog Chang Gedaphu. Some areas within the close proximity of the Tashichhodzong, the capital seat of the kingdom, were regulated strictly (−24%), with a shift of some institutional buildings to other places. The urban village with the largest rate of increase of building area is Changzamtog/Chang Gedaphu at 176%, followed by Chang Bangdu/ Chang Jiji 118%, Simtokha 118%, Taba/Jongshina 117%, Upper Motithang 116% and Babesa 110%. There are significant increases from the central to the southern area of the city, but not much increase can be seen in the northern area. As an absolute value of building area distribution, from the highest core area (+89,719  m2) and fifth-highest Changzamtog/Chang Gedaphu (+56,962 m2), all are local in the central areas. One of the main driving forces behind identified was the construction boom since 2009. The agricultural land at the periphery of Thimphu outside the municipal boundary is more ruthlessly being converted to building purposes, since the Thimphu City Structure Plan does not apply outside the city boundary and there are fewer restrictions on development. Even the wet paddy land, which is not allowed for construction as per the Land Act, is being sold in the form of smaller rural plots for construction.

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A planned development programme for Thimphu was initiated in 1985, that is, the Thimphu Urban Development Plan 1986–2000, when the National Urban Development Commission (now Department of Urban Development and Engineering Services) was established. In 2002, a comprehensive structure plan 2002–2027 was drawn for the future expansion of Thimphu, designating particular areas for specific functions. The Thimphu Structure Plan (TSP 2002–2027) is a main guiding strategy to plan the capital of Bhutan  (Ministry of Works and Human Settlements, 2004). There were 16 urban villages within the Thimphu municipal boundary, which are further divided into 27 local areas for Local Area Plans (LAP). After the implementation of the Thimphu Structure Plan (TSP 2002–2027), the 2005 National Population Census conducted by the Royal Government of Bhutan identified rapid urbanization and limited land for urban development as major development challenges. In order to review measures for such challenges, under the funding from the World Bank, the Bhutan National Urbanization Strategy (BNUS) was formulated in 2008. Furthermore, under the same project, the Thimphu City Development Strategy (TCDS) was formulated (Japan International Cooperation Agency 2014, pp. 3–18). The main objectives of the Thimphu City Development Strategy was to conduct an early review of the Thimphu Structure Plan (TSP) and Local Area Plans (LAP), as well as to ensure consistency with the national-level development strategy indicated in the BNUS. It was also aimed to review both the plans (TSP and LAPs) from the perspective of urban management and by each sector. The main purpose was to utilize the urban development experiences of Thimphu City as an example for the Bhutan National Urbanization Strategy (BNUS). The data presented in the Thimphu Structure Plan 2002–2027, both for existing land use and the land use likely to be changed after the implementation of the Thimphu Structure Plan (TSP) and Local Area Plans (LAP), present a dismal future for the protection of agriculture land (Japan International Cooperation Agency 2014, pp. 3–19). In 2002, before the implementation of the Thimphu Structure Plan, 410.24 ha of land, which was 15.7% of the total land use area in Thimphu, was under agriculture, being the third-largest land use area. The agriculture land is left with only 22.95 ha (0.88%) after the implementation of the Plan. In 2002, the maximum area of 488.11 ha (18.6%) in Thimphu was under forest, which is however maintained at 15.27% even after the implementation of the plan (Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, 2015). The second-largest land use area in 2002 was under residential use (17.8%), which is raised to

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22.36% of the total land use after implementation. One good thing about the plan is to maintain the area under the orchards for apple cultivation, which has been raised from 11.1% to 15.88% even after the implementation of the plan. The existing agricultural land is almost completely lost in the plan in order to accommodate city commercial area, settlements, urban roads, and institutional and recreational spaces. The maximum increase will take place in the recreational spaces, almost from 1.8% to 5.08%, followed by commercial use, from 1.4% to 3.3%. Certain land use categories like defence (6.6%) and water bodies (2.32%) will remain stagnant. Now urbanization is creeping into Kabesa in the north and Debisi in the south, showing an urban sprawl. There is no physical constraint to north-south urban extension to Thimphu. These areas are under the jurisdiction of Thimphu dzongkhag. Urban development is now progressing in an environmentally protected zone of E-4 precinct. The conflict between urbanization pressure and environmental protection are manifesting itself as a political pressure for encroachment (Japan International Cooperation Agency 2014, pp. 3–26). As per the occupation of 30,190 working-class population of Thimphu city residence provided by Bajaj (2014), only 763 persons are engaged in farming, which is just 2.5% of the total workforce of Thimphu. It is therefore certain that agricultural land will disappear completely from the Thimphu valley with the gradual expansion of Thimphu city. Urbanization is a direct factor leading to the loss of agricultural land primarily due to the conversion of agricultural land for urban purposes. The Bhutan National Urbanisation Strategy 2008 (Ministry of Works and Human Settlements 2008) also projects that additional land required nationally for urban areas by 2020 may vary from 900 ha to over 34,000 ha, depending on town densities and additional urban population growth. The strategy also projects that with the most likely scenario of urban population growth of 250,000 by 2020 in Bhutan, the additional land requirement would be 2462 ha (0.06%) of the total land area. The strategy also recognizes that most pressure for urban land would fall on agricultural land (National Environment Commission 2016).

Immigrant Population in Thimphu This study is conducted on two different aspects related to the social ecology of the immigrant population and the changing agricultural landscape of Thimphu. The present section addresses the research questions as to whether the migrants in Thimphu city are engaged in gainful employment to make a significant change in their socio-economic conditions. Are they satisfied after

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their migration to Thimphu? At present people from all different districts in Bhutan are migrating to nearby city centres and to a greater extent to the capital city of Bhutan. The rationale behind this chapter is to explore the socio-economic condition and other matters related to the migrants who have migrated to Thimphu city in the recent past. The study of immigrant population is focused on the demographic status, such as gender and age distributions of sample migrant households, their educational attainment, the economic status, the occupational structure, the reasons for migration to Thimphu, the linkages of sample households with the place of birth, the year of migration, place attachment and visits to the place of origin, the living conditions of sample households in Thimphu and the level of satisfaction.

Demographic Status of Immigrant Sample Households in Thimphu Approximately all households living in Thimphu have an immigrant background. Taking an average household size of 4.6 persons per household, as worked out by the Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005 (PHCB 2005, p. 421), the total number of households in Thimphu town was 21,451 in 2005. However, only 251 sample households are selected for the present study from five city wards out of a total of six city wards of Thimphu town. Each head of sample households was interviewed through a well-structured questionnaire containing questions relating to the various aspects of immigrants. The survey includes key variables such as gender composition and the household’s status and the results are presented in Table 1. For the purpose Table 1  Family status and sex composition of sample households in Thimphu, 2010 Ward Family households

Single households

Total households

Male

Female

Total population

1 2 3 5 6 Total

6 9 8 9 3 35 (13.94)

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

86 96 104 84 102 472 (50.32)

80 97 72 117 100 466 (49.68)

166 193 176 201 202 938 (100)

44 41 42 42 47 216 (86.06)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

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of our analysis immigrant households have been classified according to their family status into two major groups: (1) family households and (2) single households. The reason behind this classification is to understand the maturity and scale of migration and its stages. It is generally assumed that family migration is a permanent form of migration and single family member are likely to change their decision to go back to their villages depending on the prevailing family circumstances. The data revealed that 86.06% households are family immigrants and rest 13.19% are single-­member households. This reflects that Thimphu is a prime choice and a final destination. Likewise there is more or less a balanced gender composition in the immigrant population, with 50.32% as male members and 49.68% as female immigrants. Thimphu does not show a clear case of male-dominant working population as most of the job opportunities in the capital are in the government sectors. The age distribution of the members of sample households is presented in Table 2. As expected, the immigrant population exhibits a demographic profile in favour of a much younger age composition than in average in the city. These notable differences between the younger and old age groups are directly related to the socio-economic conditions and the relatively recent immigration that took place in Thimphu. The highest proportion, 24.53%, of the population belongs to the 25–34 age group, followed by 23.56% in the age group of 16–24. Both the age groups together account for 48.09%, almost half of the total. The third important age group is the 35–44 group, with a share of 15.03%; followed by the age group of 7–15, with a 14.28% share of the total population. The immigrant population in Table 2  Age distribution of the members of sample households in Thimphu, 2010 Ward Below 6 7 to 15

16 to 24

25 to 34

35 to 44

45 to 59

Above 60

Total

1 2 3 5 6 Total

45 33 41 51 51 221 (23.56)

33 52 57 42 46 230 (24.53)

29 31 23 30 28 141 (15.03)

22 35 11 30 17 115 (12.26)

4 11 11 5 13 44 (4.69)

166 193 176 201 202 938 (100)

10 16 10 12 5 53 (5.65)

23 15 23 31 42 134 (14.28)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

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the age group of 45–59 constitutes 12.26%, followed by 5.65% and 4.69% in the age groups of below 6 and above 60 years respectively. A more or less homogeneous pattern is observed in all sample wards as selected. While looking at gender composition by age groups, the female population ranges from a minimum of 2.78% in the age group of above 60 years to a maximum of 28.97% in the age group of 25–34 of the total population. On the other hand, the male population ranges from a minimum of 6.56% above 60 years to a maximum of 23.72% in the age group of 16–24 of the total population. The table also shows that the maximum concentration of both genders are in the younger age groups and the minimum in the old age group.

Educational Attainments of Sample Households in Thimphu Since the education of the immigrants is the most crucial element of the Thimphu population, and will inevitably transform Bhutanese educational and human resource landscape in the coming decades, the educational attainment of the immigrant population is therefore in focus in the survey. The purpose is to elaborate on educational attainments as part of social processes and on the socio-ecological factors that mediate developmental pathways in future. The children below six years of age are tabulated separately and not included for measuring literacy standards. The general literacy condition of immigrant population is 76.66% and it is much above the national literacy rate of 59.5% in Bhutan (Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005); it is also slightly higher than the urban literacy rate of 75.9% in Bhutan (Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005, p. 241). Out of the total female population of 466, the female literacy rate goes up to 71.54%, which is much higher than the national female literacy rate of 48.7% (Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005, p. 241). On the other hand, out of the total male population of 472, the male literacy rate goes up to 81.78%, which is much higher than the national male literacy rate of 69.1% (Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005, p. 241). It is therefore safely assumed that the immigrant population could not only support one another traversing across multiple social contexts but also can play a pivotal role in the urbanizing national economy. The educational attainments are graded in seven categories (Table 3). About one-fifth of the total population (20.36%) are illiterates in sample

9 8 – 6 5 28 (2.98)

1 2 3 5 6 Total

10 3 7 2 6 28 (2.98)

Monastic education 35 45 33 28 50 191 (20.36)

Illiterate 24 33 25 41 37 160 (17.05)

Pm 22 12 26 21 13 94 (10.02)

L.S. 31 34 36 38 – 139 (14.82)

M.S. 27 39 39 30 64 199 (21.26)

H.S

6 18 10 33 20 87 (9.27)

Grad

2 1 – 2 7 12 (1.3)

Tech

166 193 176 201 202 938 (100)

Total

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total; Pm = primary, L.S. = lower secondary, M.S. = middle secondary, H.S. = higher secondary, Grad = graduate, Tech = technical education

Below 6

Ward

Table 3  Educational attainments of sample households in Thimphu, 2010

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households and those below the age of 6 years (2.98%) are not included under any category. Monastic education is a significant element of the Bhutanese traditional education system. The Buddhist monks receive monastic education in monasteries to carry the Buddhist lineage forward. There is a 2.98% population of the total sample households engaged in monastic education in Thimphu, which is more than the share of technical education (1.26%). The data show that a maximum of 21.26% people have obtained the level of higher secondary school education, followed by 17.05% with the primary level. The third important category is middle secondary, with 14.82%, followed by lower secondary (10.02%). The graduates in the sample are 9.27%. High attainments of the immigrant population represented on these seven categories are pillars of Bhutan’s future development fabric.

Economic Status of Sample Households in Thimphu Urban places historically have offered unparalleled economic opportunities to successive generations of immigrants with economic prospects (Terrazes 2011). In the beginning, Thimphu attracted a large number of government servants with the opening of various ministries and growing recruitment in the Royal Bhutanese Army and other government offices. As the capital turned gradually into a commercial place after 1970s, consequently the capital received a larger influx of immigrants looking for business opportunities. A building boom in the 1980s accelerated in the 1990s, with services to support the relatively wealthy government employees and business class in the new urban space, including such facilities as a public pool, a movie theatre, coffee shops and Western cafés (Pommeret 2006). The avenues of employment in Thimphu are opening gradually due to encouraging policy and capital inflows from India and other countries which support entrepreneurial ventures in the real estate as well as various business sectors. The data presented in Table 4 compare occupational structure of migrants’ households on the basis of those who were born in Thimphu and those who were not born in Thimphu, including those who are second-generation migrants. Out of all 251 households, the shopkeepers stand at the top with 62.55%, putting together both categories of migrants. When considered separately, there is a marked difference between the two categories, a maximum of 49% shopkeepers belong to those migrants who were not born in

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Table 4  Occupational structure of sample households in Thimphu, 2010 Ward The 1st- and 2nd-generation migrant households in Thimphu

1 2 3 5 6 Total

Migrant households born in Thimphu

Shopkeepers

Govt. jobs

Private jobs

Shopkeepers

Govt. jobs

Private jobs

31 26 5 41 20 123 (49.00)

10 9 10 2 13 44 (17.54)

2 4 15 1 – 22 (8.76)

4 9 5 5 11 34 (13.54)

2 2 10 1 4 19 (7.59)

1 – 5 1 2 9 (3.56)

Total households

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

Thimphu, while their share in the other category is 13.54% of the total households. This indicated the growing interest of the late migrants more towards the business than the other occupations. The share of government jobs as an occupation is one-fourth (25.10) of both the categories of migrant households, with a 17.54% share of those who were not born in Thimphu and the remaining 7.59% in the other category. However there are fewer avenues in the private sectors, which cover just 12.35% households of the total sample. Their share in the first category of those who were not born in Thimphu is slightly higher (8.76%), with the least, 3.58%, in the other category. While analysing the overall results, it can be safely assumed that a heavy influx of recent migration with their place of birth in other places than Thimphu has an overall impact in favour of all three categories of occupations.

Reasons for Migration As per the Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005, the total urban population of Bhutan was 196,111; out of this, Thimphu city had a population of 79,185 persons, which accounted for 40.38% of the total urban population in the country. The share of Thimphu city’s population in Thimphu dzongkhag is 80.2%. Thimphu dzongkhag gained a maximum population with 39,770 persons due to in-migration from other dzongkhags of Bhutan in 2005 (PHCB 2005). Almost all in-migrants in

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Table 5  Reasons for migration analysed for immigrant sample households, Thimphu, 2010 Ward

1 2 3 5 6 Total

Main reasons for migration Employment

Business

Education

Marriage

Refugee

Total households

23 16 6 20 12 77 (30.87)

10 13 23 16 25 87 (34.66)

1 8 15 6 3 33 (13.15)

14 13 6 9 10 52 (20.71)

2 – – – – 2 (0.79)

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

Thimphu dzongkhag are absorbed by Thimphu city. People have moved to Thimphu drawn by a number of pull factors, which is a complex process. In the present chapter, the reasons for migration are categorized into five groups, which are presented in Table 5. Thimphu provides more ample opportunities for business than other places; that is the main reason, as expressed by 34.66% of the total immigrant households. When ranked at the dzongkhag level, immigrants coming from eastern dzongkhag, with a maximum of 28.73%, have immigrated to Thimphu for business, followed by with in dzongkhag immigrants, with 22.98%. The second important reason for migration to Thimphu is employment, as expressed by 30.98% of sample households. People migrate in large number from rural to urban areas in search of employment. The agricultural base of the rural Bhutanese population does not provide employment to all the people living there. Contrary to this, there is always possibility for employment in Thimphu mainly in the service sector. Various ministries and departments of the Royal Government of Bhutan, private sector enterprises, trade, transport and tertiary services attract immigrants to Thimphu. About 27.27% of total households who migrated for employment come from eastern dzongkhag, followed very closely (25.97%) by central dzongkhag. Marriage is a very important social factor of migration. Of the total sample households who moved to Thimphu, about one-fifth (20.71%) moved due to marriage in 2010. The contribution of eastern and southern dzongkhags is the highest, being 26.92% and 23.07% respectively in this

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category. In general, rural areas, by and large, lack educational facilities, especially those of higher education, and rural people have to migrate to the urban centres for this purpose. However, health and education is provided free by the Royal Government of Bhutan. The higher educational institutions are not spread over all different parts of the country; as such education has been the fourth and the last choice (13.15%) of sample households who moved to Thimphu. Again the migrants from eastern (36.36%) and southern (21.21%) dzongkhags in this category rank the highest.

Dzongkhag-Wise Distribution of Immigrants by Place of Birth Table 6 indicates dzongkhag-wise distribution of immigrants by place of birth. Thimphu city gained the highest number of immigrants (40.64%) from eastern dzongkhags of Bhutan, comprising Mongar, Trashigang, Lhuentse, Trashiyangtse and Pemagatshel dzongkhags, followed by southern (18.74%) dzongkhags, which include Chhukha, Samtse, Sarpang, Dagana and Samdrup jonghkhar. The number of migrants to Thimphu city from eastern dzongkhags is more than double as that of southern dzongkhags. The third important migration area to Thimphu is western dzongkhags, with 15.34%, followed by 13.94% from within Thimphu district itself. Thimphu is also a part of western dzongkhags, so including Thimphu, it comes to 29.28%. The least important source of migrants are central dzongkhags, with 10.86%. The migration results of the survey are Table 6  Immigrant sample households classified by place of birth, 2010 Ward Within dzongkhags

Western dzongkhags

Central dzongkhags

Southern dzongkhags

Eastern dzongkhags

Total households

1 2 3 5 6 Total

8 12 6 8 5 39 (15.34)

5 11 – 6 5 27 (10.86)

5 10 4 18 10 47 (18.74)

26 7 38 12 20 103 (40.03)

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

6 10 2 7 10 35 (13.94)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

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in concordance with those of the Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005 (PHCB 2005). Thimphu dzongkhag in general has received the in-migrants in a similar order as observed in the present survey (Nidup and Lhendrup 2009).

Year of Migration of Sample Immigrant Households One important aspect of migration study is conducted on the temporal scale, which helps us to identify particular phases of migration. The data collected from sample households are grouped into six categories and presented in Table 7. Just one household has migrated to Thimphu before 1960. There is a very slow pace of immigration even during 1960 and 1970, with only 7.97% of the total surveyed households migrating to Thimphu. Thimphu began to take shape as an urbanizing area after 1970 and about 11.16% of sample households immigrated in the 1970s. It was during the following decade of 1980–1990 that about 20.72% of sample households immigrated to Thimphu, which is just double the percentage of the previous decade. Thimphu evolved very rapidly during the 1990s, having experienced a boom in the construction industry. The highest share of sample households migrated to Thimphu in this decade, with 35.86% of the total surveyed households. In the first decade of the twentieth century, 23.90% of sample households immigrated to Thimphu, indicating the slowing pace of migration. The booming decade of the

Table 7  Year of migration in the sample of immigrant households in Thimphu, 2010 Ward Before 1960

1960–1970 1970–1980 1980–1990 1990–2000 After 2000

Total households

1 2 3 5 6 Total

6 6 2 2 4 20 (7.97)

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

1 – – – – 1 (0.39)

9 5 4 3 7 28 (11.16)

13 17 8 7 7 52 (20.72)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

4 19 28 19 20 90 (35.86)

17 3 8 20 12 60 (23.90)

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migration wave was from 1990 to 2010, as  six in ten  of the surveyed households migrated to Thimphu.

Linkages of Sample Households with Place of Birth and Frequency of Visits Urban dwellers are migrants from their areas of origin and become gradually assimilated into their urban setting. There are various consequences of rural-urban migration to migrants’ place attachment. Rural-urban linkage from this perspective is the focus in this section. I use property ownership as an indicator of place attachment. It is a rough estimate of place attachment. The responses received from sample immigrant households are organized into five categories and analysed city ward wise to arrive at a final conclusion. Table  8, which presents these results, indicates that a two-­ third majority of sample households (75.38%) have not sold out their property at rural homes. This may indicate that they keep to maintain their ties strongly. In a similar case study of Thimphu by Malathi (2005) the findings suggest that most migrants still put value to their association with their homelands and 80% of rural migrants possess property at rural homes. It seems that one of their relatives or close relations at home is managing their homeland to cultivate. About 3.26% households have rented their property at the place of birth that is likely to be nearer to some small- or medium-sized towns. Only 11.25% of sample households have sold out their land at rural homes, indicating their lost connections with their place of birth. Interestingly about 7.21% households have Table 8  Attachment of sample households with place of origin, 2010 Ward

No property

Sold property

Rented

Not sold

Not stated

Total households

1 2 3 5 6 Total

2 4 10 – 2 18 (7.21)

9 7 3 4 5 28 (11.25)

– 2 7 – – 9 (3.26)

39 35 30 47 38 189 (75.38)

– 2 – – 5 7 (2.88)

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

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reported that they have no property at all at rural homes. This is the category of rural poor who have migrated to Thimphu for meagre subsistence. There are a few households (2.88%) who have not given any response, which may be the case example of the very poor category of immigrants or they are neutral of their contacts to their rural homes. Most people in Thimphu are still identified with where they come from. Thimphu immigrants, particularly those surveyed under present investigation, have still strong landownership ties with the place of birth they were born in and brought up at, and their relations to their rural homes continue to exist. Those born in Thimphu as second-generation migrants were more inclined to their present homes in Thimphu.

Frequency of Visits of Sample Households to Place of Origin As far as rural-urban linkages in Bhutan are concerned, the focus now shifts to the frequency of visits of sample households to the place of origin. Based on the sample survey, this section demonstrates that urban-rural linkages are not only important for their counterpart in rural households, but are increasingly becoming an important element of the livelihood (or survival) strategies of the urban migrant households. For urban and rural populations in Bhutan, global changes in the last two decades have resulted in deepening social differentiation. The results of the visits are presented in Table  9. In total, 80.08% of migrant households in Thimphu town make visits to their rural homes, leaving behind 19.92% of migrant houseTable 9  Frequency of visits of sample households to place of origin, 2010 Ward Stopped visiting

Once in 2, 3 Once a or 4 years year

Twice a year

Thrice a year

Four times a year

Total households

1 2 3 5 6 Total

14 – – – – 14 (5.68)

3 11 10 7 5 36 (14.34)

1 9 – 3 4 17 (6.88)

8 8 – 10 12 38 (14.44)

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

7 10 10 4 19 50 (19.92)

17 12 30 27 10 96 (38.35)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

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holds who have stopped visiting their rural homes, and thus lost their close personal contacts. Most of the migrants (38.35%) visit their village once a year. These are often the migrants from eastern dzongkhags, since their villages are a two day’s journey time away from Thimphu. Almost equal numbers of households, 14.44% and 14.34% of migrant households, visit four and two times a year respectively. These migrants are mostly from short distances from western dzongkhags. The interesting trend is that the households that migrated to Thimphu between ten years or so maintain their property at rural homes and their visits are frequent in a year. It is also seen that 5.68% of migrant households visit their native place at least once in a two, three or four years’ time during the festival or to attend the annual prayers or rituals at home. The overall pattern of visits clearly indicates that the migrants have strong ties with their native place.

Housing and Living Conditions of Immigrants in Thimphu Thimphu city has grown in a narrow valley and the land available to accommodate a large population is limited. According to current plans, Thimphu can accommodate at most 80,000 people and this saturation point is expected to be reached by 2006 (Planning Commission 1999). As per the Population and Housing Census of Bhutan, Thimphu has recorded population of 79,185 in 2005 already. Given this situation, it is evident that the existing housing facilities in Thimphu may not accommodate the continued influx of immigrants from rural Bhutan. Table  10 gives the distribution of sample households according to owned or rented houses and shops provided by the Royal Government of Bhutan. A majority of more than half, that is, 50.67% have rented houses and 38.65% households live in their own houses. There are 10.76% households who have shops, including a living space provided by government. The additional housing requirements are difficult to meet due  to  difficult terrain. The rising level of rent is another pressure on migrant households. However, by 2020, about half of the population of Bhutan is expected to be urban, in contrast to the 21% in 1999 (Planning Commission 1999). The level of satisfaction about the living conditions as expressed by the respondents is presented in Table  10. Though it is obvious that due to an increasing shortage of housing, drinking water and other basic amenities in Thimphu, people have started facing difficulties, the survey shows that there are

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Table 10  Housing and living conditions of immigrants in Thimphu, 2010 Ward

1 2 3 5 6 Total

Housing conditions

Level of satisfaction

Owned

Rented

Govt. shops Satisfied Not satisfied Not stated

14 47 20 4 12 97 (38.65)

33 3 30 30 31 127 (50.67)

3 – – 17 7 27 (10.76)

30 37 42 39 38 186 (74.10)

18 8 2 11 6 45 (17.93)

2 5 6 1 6 20 (7.97)

Total households

50 50 50 51 50 251 (100)

Source: Fieldwork, 2010 Figures within parentheses are percentages of the total

about two-third (74.10%) households still satisfied with the city life. Those who are not satisfied are 17.93% of the total while 7.97% of the respondents have not given any response.

Conclusion Thimphu has witnessed the highest urban growth, with a heavy influx of immigrant population from all districts in Bhutan. The agricultural landscape of Thimphu, which was nearly intact till 1980s, providing food to urban villages, gradually converted into the urban landscape. The city population is no more dependent on its rich rice fields and is now receiving food supplies from India. It was only in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Thimphu began to take on the form that we see today. The 1980s were marked by new policies and strategies to consolidate development areas and streamline the so far relatively unplanned and haphazard urban development. Migration peaked in the 1990s, but Thimphu has continued to grow vigorously in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The urbanization process has contributed significantly to the development of Thimphu as a capital of Bhutan. Problems and challenges such as the shortage of affordable housing, the huge influx of immigrants, high land prices and disturbances to ecologically fragile areas are being faced by the town now. The city corporation has difficulties in even carrying out the routine responsibility and managing the challenges of a very dynamic urban growth. However, according to the survey, about two-thirds of immigrant households are still satisfied with the city life.

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In 2002, a comprehensive structure plan 2002–2027 has been drawn for the future expansion of Thimphu, designating particular areas for specific functions. The urban development policy as adopted under this plan is also putting pressure on the agricultural land around Thimphu. Migration is still expected to continue. The existing agricultural land is almost completely lost in the plan in order to accommodate future waves of immigration. Acknowledgement  This chapter is the revised version of the paper “Social ecology of immigrant population and changing urban landscape of Thimphu, Bhutan” published in the Journal of Urban and Regional Studies on Contemporary India, 4(1): 1–12 (2017). It is reprinted with kind permission of the copyright holder, who retain the right of reproduction: The Center for Contemporary India Studies, Hiroshima University: home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/hindas/index.html. This chapter is however the updated and changed version according to the framework of the present book. The author is highly grateful to Mr. Jurmey Lotey, Karma Yanmgzome, Kinga Norbu, Thinley Wangmo and Rinzin Lhamo, the student of BA Geography/ Economics III semester, Sherubtse College Kanglun, Royal University of Bhutan, who collected field information for the present research in 2010. This work would not have been undertaken without the field support extended by them during my tenure as the Colombo Plan Professor from India to the Royal Government of Bhutan from 2008 to 2010.

References Bajaj, M. (2014). Thimphu’s Growing Pains: Challenges of Implementing the City Plan. The Centre for Bhutan Studies & Gross National Happiness Research Thimphu, Bhutan, p. 159. Bhutan Renewable Natural Resources Statistics. (2015). RNR Statistical Coordination Section, Policy and Planning Division, Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu. Bruce, A. P., & Yeates, M. (1993). Rural/Urban Land Conversion I: Estimating the Direct and Indirect Impacts. Urban Geography, 14(4), 323–347. Bruce, A. P., & Yeates, M. (1994). Rural/Urban Land Conversion II: Identifying Land in Transition to Urban Use. Urban Geography, 15(1), 25–44. Central Statistical Organization of Bhutan. (2000). Central Statistical Organization of Bhutan, Statistical Year Book 2000, Central Statistical Organisation. Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu. Department of Labour and Human Resources. (2014). Labour Force Survey Report, 2014. Department of Labour and Human Resources, Ministry of Labour and Human Resources, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu.

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Fjellstad, W. J., & Dramstad, W. E. (1999). Patterns of Change in Two Contrasting Norwegian Agricultural Landscapes. Landscape and Urban Planning, 45(4), 177–191. Hietala-Koivu, R. (1999). Agricultural Landscape Change: A Case Study in Ylane, Southwest Finland. Landscape and Urban Planning, 46(1), 103–108. Japan International Cooperation Agency. (2014). Data Collection Survey on Urban Development and Environment in the Kingdom of Bhutan. Final Report, January 2014. Japan International Cooperation Agency, Exe・Idea Ltd. TEC International Co. Ltd. PADECO Co. Ltd. Kristensen, S.  P. (1999). Agricultural Land Use and Landscape Changes in Rostrup, Denmark: Process of Intensification and Extensification. Landscape and Urban Planning, 46(1), 117–123. Lipsky, Z. (1995). The Changing Face of the Czech Rural Landscape. Landscape and Urban Planning, 31(1), 39–45. Lu Qi, Leif, S., Wu, P., & Li, J. (2002). Cultivated Land Loss Arising from the Rapid Urbanization in China. Agrifood Research Reports, 68, 313–327. Malaque, I.  R., III, & Yokohari, M. (2007). Urbanization Process and the Changing Agricultural Landscape Pattern in the Urban Fringe of Metro Manila, Philippines. Environment & Urbanization, 19(1), 191–206. Ministry of Agriculture and Forests. (1997). Atlas of Bhutan, Land Cover and Area Statistics. The Ministry of Agriculture, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu. Ministry of Agriculture and Forests. (2011). Land Covers Assessment Map, 2010. National Soil Service Center, 2011, Ministry of Agriculture and Forests, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu. Ministry of Agriculture and Forests. (2015). Bhutan Renewable Natural Resources Statistics 2015. Ministry of Agriculture and Forests. Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu. Ministry of Works and Human Settlements. (2004). Thimphu Structure Plan: Revision-I.  Department of Urban Development and Engineering Services, Ministry of Works and Human Settlements, 2002. Thimphu Structure Plan 2002–2027, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu, p. 258. Ministry of Works and Human Settlements. (2008). Bhutan National Urbanization Strategy. Policy and Planning Division Ministry of Works and Human Settlements, 2002. Thimphu Structure Plan 2002–2027, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu, p. 92. National Environment Commission. (2016). Bhutan State of the Environment Report 2016, National Environment Commission, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu, p. 67. National Statistical Bureau. (2013). Bhutan at a Glance-2013. National Statistical Bureau of Bhutan. Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu.

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Nidup, J., & Lhendrup, P. (2009). Internal Migration in Bhutan. In S. Namgyel (Ed.), Population Dynamics of Bhutan, an Occasional Publication of Centre of Population and Development Studies (pp. 23–36). Kanglung: Sherubtse College, Royal University of Bhutan. Planning Commission. (1999). Bhutan 2020: A Vision to Peace, Prosperity and Happiness. Thimphu: Planning Commission, Royal Government of Bhutan. Pommeret, F. (2006). Bhutan: Himalayan Mountain Kingdom. Hong Kong: Twin Age. Population and Housing Census of Bhutan. (2005). Population and Housing Census of Bhutan 2005. National Statistical Bureau, Royal Government of Bhutan, Thimphu. Terrazes, A. (2011). The Economic Integration of Immigrants in the United States: Long and Short Term Perspectives. Migration Policy Institute, Washington, DC, p. 16. Yangchen, U., Thinley, U., & Wallentin, G. (2015). Land Use Land Cover Changes in Bhutan: 2000–2013. In Shahnawaz & U. Thinley (Eds.), Climate Change, Environment and Development in Bhutan (pp.  37–46). Occasional Publication No. 1, Centre for Rural Development Studies, College of Natural Resources, Lobesa, Royal University of Bhutan.

Typological Diversity of Agriculture in a Densely Urbanised Region of São Paulo, Brazil Giulia Giacchè, Lya Porto, Gustavo Nagib, Angelica Campos Nakamura, and Guilherme Reis Ranieri Introduction The city of São Paulo passed through a remarkable process of rapid urbanization and, in this process, urban agriculture (UA), which was once visible in the municipality, turned to be an invisible activity for the government and the general public. However, this theme gained strength when different actors in this field started to promote several activities and initiatives

G. Giacchè (*) AgroParisTech, Paris, France L. Porto Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), São Paulo, Brazil G. Nagib • A. C. Nakamura • G. R. Ranieri University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_16

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and enhance networks (Porto 2017). On the one hand, the work of local NGOs and municipal technicians helped to strengthen farmers’ network and their political action, also connected to NGOs’ mobilization. On the other hand, the creation of social networks and agriculture for income generation, in addition to an activist, educational and playful expression, strengthened the visibility of UA to a general public. As a result, different types of mobilization resulted in a greater impact on public action. This mobilization generates a double result: institutional strengthening of UA policies in the city of São Paulo and expansion of UA practices in distinct contexts, from the suburban area to the most valuable and central regions of the city. This chapter aims to present the manifestation of different types of UA and the expansion of these practices, especially those that are organized in networks and do not use agrochemicals in their productions, since those types of UA have gained greater visibility and political mobilization. However, it is important to emphasize that these networks are crossed, connected and mixed together. In the city of São Paulo there are different types of UA organized in network groups such as: income generation articulation network, community articulation network and political activism articulation network. Although generalizations cannot be made, urban agriculture for income generation is related to the process of urban development of São Paulo that occurred in the first half of the twentieth century. Therefore, this model is not really a novelty. However, what is new in this model of UA is its productive and political dimension, especially due to the modifications that enabled adjustments related to agricultural production and agroecology. The political articulation network has been materialized in community vegetable gardens in public spaces and pushed up through the Urban Gardeners network (Hortelões Urbanos). This practice is similar to the “green guerrilla” action that is manifested by taking public spaces without previous permission, for community horticulture purposes. Finally, community articulation networks have been formed in peripheral regions of the city with the purpose of educating, engaging and strengthening the relationship between the residents of a given neighbourhood around the areas used by agroecology and permaculture activities. The analytical framework of this chapter and the method adopted have been developed in the next section, followed by the description of the empirical analysis and the discussion. Some final remarks have also been included.

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Conceptual Model and Method We mobilize the rural-urban continuum framework to base our analysis. This framework has been used and discussed by several authors and by different disciplines. It was developed by Redfield (1941) and discussed by some authors (Bryant et al. 1982; Saraceno 1994; Champion and Graeme 2004; Gant et al. 2011) in order to stress the idea that there are no sharp ruptures to be found in the degree or quantity of differences. Based on this literature on a continuum of urban agriculture, typologies have been implemented by Giacchè et  al. (2015) to link the diversity of actors involved in UA (from gardeners to professional farmers) and the spaces concerned (from intra-urban spaces to periurban spaces), and reveal the possible relations and hybridity between them. The concept of the rural-­ urban continuum indicates that there are no boundaries between the dimensions mentioned above, but rather an idea of recursiveness and correlation. The expansion of UA practices has been analysed based on the observation of the farmers’ trajectory. Therefore, the different types of UA organized in a network have been characterized according to the profile of actors, spaces, action and forms of articulation. In attention to the urban space, it is also possible to rescue Lefebvre’s (1969) “right to the city”, referring to a complaint—a response to the crisis of the city—and a demand—the way of facing the crisis to create a dialectical alternative and a less alienated urban life, opened to the future conflicts. In this way, it provides a method of critical enquiry in order to better understand what is happening today. The political and economic articulations in the cities (both of which result from visionary intentions and practical reasons) have been inspiring many citizens to seek some kind of response to neoliberal capitalism, which proves to be quite aggressive towards everyday life (Harvey 2014). The principal tools adopted to carry out the study were participant observation and interviews conducted by five different researchers. We considered that combining the two methods could allow an understanding of the differences between the discourses that emerged during the interviews and the practices observed by direct participation. The participant observation method was adopted on several different occasions during meetings (i.e. farmers’ associations meetings), events and visits to urban markets and at works in gardens or in family farms. Observation was always accompanied by taking notes of the situation, speeches, practices and dynamics between them. Semi-structured interviews were organized

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differently according to the research focus implemented. Around 100 people, comprising urban farmers and representatives of institutions, associations and NGOs, were interviewed. The studies had different temporalities and goals and this has allowed us to have a wide spectrum of action and information. The shared data and information were analysed by focusing on actors, spaces, forms of organization and structuring with public policies.

UA and Public Policies of UA in São Paulo Policy Framework and Social Network of Urban Agriculture in São Paulo In the city of São Paulo, urban agriculture policies were timidly and incrementally constructed until the strengthening of civil society actions either through the rise of the number of income generation vegetable gardens and community vegetable gardens or through social and political mobilization practices. The first governmental support for the UA occurred in the 1980s, during the Franco Montoro administration in the state of São Paulo. At that moment, the manager of Social Assistance, Lucy Montoro, implemented vegetable garden projects in unused public spaces, such as Eletropaulo, Transpetro and Sabesp properties1 in the East Zone of São Paulo. However, with the change of the government, there was no political continuity of this initiative by the state government. Still, some urban farmers continued urban agriculture, even without institutional support. In 2004, the Law 13.727/2004 established the Urban and Periurban Agriculture Programme of São Paulo (Programa de Agricultura Urbana e Periurbana—PROAURP). At that time, urban and periurban agriculture was seen as a solution to social issues such as income generation and the fight against hunger. However, due to political changes in municipal management, the programme was marginalized and not implemented. It was only in 2009 that the PROAURP started to be recognized by the government, when urban agriculture came to be legitimized as a strategic action for conservation of water sources. These values changed with the creation

1  Public-private spaces, such as energy, water and petrol transmissions, where the construction of buildings is forbidden.

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of the Water Pact through the adhesion of the state government of São Paulo to the International Platform for Water Defense and the signing of the Protocol of Good Environmental Practices between the municipal and the state government of São Paulo. As a result, the PROAURP regulation predicted the creation of two Ecological Agriculture Houses (EAHs): one of them in the extreme South Zone in the Parelheiros region and the other one in the East Zone of São Paulo. In addition, through this legitimation of the agroecological UA, funding for NGO projects was launched through the resources of the Special Fund for Environment and Sustainable Development (Fundo Especial do Meio Ambiente—FEMA) from the Secretary of Green Initiative and Environment, with some calls being specific to urban and sustainable agriculture. Consequently, there was also a strengthening of the NGOs activities in the field of UA, which started to offer technical assistance and support services to the farmers’ marketing. Furthermore, NGOs also helped to improve mobilizations around social claim for policies and laws to improve sustainable agriculture. The joint work of NGOs and municipal technicians from the Ecological Agriculture Houses helped farmers to create the Agroecological Cooperative of Rural Producers and Clean Water in the south of São Paulo (Cooperativa Agroecológica dos Produtores Rurais e de Água Limpa da Região Sul de São Paulo—Cooperapas) and the Association of Organic Farmers of São Mateus, currently named as the East Zone Farmers’ Association. At the same time, community gardening and awareness-raising movements on environmental practices and responsible consumption also grew and two networks were created: the Urban Gardeners network (Hortelões Urbanos) and the Agroecology Urban Movement of São Paulo (Movimento Urbano de Agroecologia de São Paulo—Muda-SP). The Gardeners network started connecting people interested in the practice of home gardens, and it consequently boosted the creation of networks to create community gardens in cities. The Urban Movement of Agro-ecology of São Paulo (Muda-SP) is a network of action and mobilization that drives the dissemination and innovation of agroecological practices (see Box 1). Thus, on the one hand, the actions of NGOs and the implementation of public policies in the extreme east and south of the municipality helped professional farmers to strengthen their cooperation networks. On the

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Box 1 Agroecology Urban Movement of São Paulo (MUDA-SP)

The Agroecology Urban Movement of São Paulo “pursues a new way of living in São Paulo and interact with the countryside, reviving relationships between rural and urban daily life” (MUDA-SP, 2017). Activities developed aim to foster and disseminate agroecology,2 through awareness-raising, material distribution and educational activities in open markets of organic products, congresses and events related to this matter. Groups involved with fostering a fair and cooperative production chain are associated to MUDA-SP, promoting family farmers, aiming to build a greener town and to use public spaces in a responsible way. Also, MUDA-SP includes discussions and initiatives for consumers’ food education; for example, total utilization of food and prioritizing fresh or minimally processed food. MUDA-SP focuses on productive agriculture and garden initiatives related to activism, leisure and environmental education with NGOs, other movements and cultural associations, in different fronts, creating environmental education activities, reforestation activities, support to open markets of organic products and political pressure for the creation and implementation of agroecological policies (Porto 2017). MUDA-SP also provides collaborative mapping of several socio-environmental initiatives related to agroecology in the São Paulo metropolitan region.

other hand, spontaneous actions by civil society encouraged the emergence and expansion of community vegetable gardens, which also helped to fortify the visibility of urban gardeners and farms focused on income generation and created a relationship between them.

2  Agroecology, as an integrative perspective of ecology of food systems, includes economic, ecological and social dimensions (Francis et al. 2003); in other words, it considers food from a productive context and its impact on other spheres. Consequently, it focuses on organic food production combined with environmental restoration and empowerment of family farmers, as well as distribution and marketing chains aiming the democratization of the access to food.

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Generation of Income Network: The Example of Cooperapas and Eastern Zone Farmers’ Association Cooperapas Agricultural practice in the far south of São Paulo, especially in the Parelheiros and Marsilac districts, gained a momentum in the early twentieth century and played a major role until the middle of the century. Immigrants, especially Japanese people, strengthened agriculture. This region stood out with conventional agriculture and, nowadays, farmers still use conventional methods to work. Agriculture currently is not as strong as it was a hundred years ago. The São Paulo municipal government estimated that, in 2016, there were 320 agricultural holdings in this region. Agricultural holdings are generally small, ranging from 2 to 8 hectares. However, agricultural activities still persist and several farmers are searching for a new non-conventional production form, focused on an organic, agroecological and biodynamic agriculture. A group of farmers in this region stands out for this type of production, especially because of its cooperative organization. They are the farmers from the Agroecological Cooperative of Rural Producers and Clean Water—Cooperapas. Cooperapas, with nearly 30 members, was created in a context of public policies development dedicated to urban and periurban agriculture. After PROAURP was created, in 2004, several politics were implemented, such as the creation of the Ecological Agriculture House (EAH) in 2006 in the Parelheiros district and, in 2010, the creation of the Clean Agriculture Programme, with the purpose of promoting the transition from conventional production to agroecological production. Even Cooperapas was a consequence of such policies as mentioned in the previous paragraph. With the support of governmental organizations, assisting the preparation of documents for the creation of the cooperative, in 2011, Cooperapas was created. In addition to public authorities, farmers were involved in the process. Their profiles vary, including farmers whose relatives (parents or grandparents) lived in the region and worked in agriculture production and people who moved to the region and got to know agriculture and EAH activities focused on an agroecological production and took part in Cooperapas (Nakamura 2017). The main focus of Cooperapas is to help farmers to sell their organic and agroecological products. Besides that, the cooperative provides technical and trade support for institutes such as the Kairós, funded by the FEMA fund.

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Cooperapas farmers sell their products to the Ground Institute (Instituto Chão), which is a point of sale of organic products to restaurants and companies. In order to certificate the products sold, participative certification is performed. This certification is known as the Warranty Participative System (Sistema Participativo de Garantia—SPG) or Social Control Organization (Organização de Controle Social—OCS). Both of them are recognized by the Ministry of Agriculture, as set forth in the Law 10.831/2003.  ast Zone Farmers’ Association E Around 3.8 million people live in the eastern part of the municipality of São Paulo (33% of the population of the municipality of São Paulo according to IBGE 2010 data): 31% of the workforce is located there, but also 40% of the unemployed. Very low-income districts far away from the centre of the city are located there. The municipality of São Paulo estimated that there were about 50 agricultural units by 2016, where more than half of them were chácaras or sítios owned by Japanese descendants. Around 20 were productive gardens located in unused or vacant public spaces, such as the lands of Eletropaulo, Transpetro and Sabesp made available by the institutions under two different public programmes: the Montoro government policy in the 1980s and the PROAURP programme launched by the municipality of São Paulo in 2004 (Giacchè and Porto 2015). In 2005, the subprefecture of São Mateus, one of the districts of the East Zone, started the project “Field Days” through PROAURP, which consisted in visiting gardens or farms that did not use pesticides in order to raise the awareness of urban farmers, federating them into a group. The São Mateus Organic Farmers Association was created in 2009 with the important mission of protecting water sources in the region and to empower urban farmers in order to increase their professionalism. Approximately 40 people are associated, but the number of active participants is around 12:6 women and 6 men. Most of them are over 60 years of age, currently retired, and have been cultivating since 1980. They became farmers after retirement to try to fill a void in their lifestyles and to supplement their revenue. Only two people are around 45 years old. Once a month, the urban farmers meet to discuss several issues; in particular, they try to plan and organize the marketing of products in order to gain more independence and autonomy by increasing production and diversifying crops for selling.

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The Association evolved with the entry of new actors: three young people, under 30  years old, who joined the Association with the goal of becoming professional farmers, proposing bio-intensive cultivation. They did not have rural roots like the other associates because they were born in São Paulo and lived there. One of them had his first experience with agriculture by getting involved with the Hortelões Urbanos movement and another participated in the creation of a community garden. Finally, the latter spent months doing an internship in a productive garden in the East Zone that belonged to an active member of the Association. Moreover, another factor that contributed to the implementation of the Association’s activities was technical support in agroecological transition and commercialization of these farmers’ products offered by the Kairós Institute, thanks to the grant of the Special Fund for Environment and Sustainable Development (FEMA) that they received in 2015. Furthermore, the municipal secretary of the Secretariat of Green and Environment appointed four technicians to compose the FEMA Technical Assistance Committee to accompany those farmers. The Association’s name changed in order to formalize the enlargement of the Association to all farmers in the East Zone. This change allowed the access of farmers from other neighbourhoods besides the São Matheus district (such as Guaianases, São Miguel Paulista and Cidade Tiradentes). FEMA funding was fundamental to the existence and strengthening of the Association. Since its founding, the Association has accomplished various achievements, including the participation of farmers in fairs located in different neighbourhoods in the east part of the city and in diverse spaces such as the parking lot of the Sport, Recreational and Educational Centre for Workers (Centro Esportivo, Recreativo e Educativo do Trabalhador— CERET), in the Social Service of Commerce (Serviço Social do Comércio— SESC) and in Carmo Park, in addition to creating other forms of commercialization such as the sale of baskets with organic products. In order to improve and certify the organic quality of the production of these farmers, a Social Control Organization (OCS) was created in July 2017. Political Activism Network: The Example of Urban Gardeners The appearance of Hortelões Urbanos (Urban Gardeners network), in 2011  in São Paulo, was relevant in order to bring together a group of enthusiastic people focused on urban agriculture. At first, the main objective was to discuss food production in São Paulo. However, the members

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urged to create community gardens in public areas. Hortelões Urbanos was created by the journalists Tatiana Achcar and Claudia Visoni, who created a public group (with free access) on Facebook to enable the exchange of experiences and information related to domestic-scale urban agriculture. Both journalists conducted training workshops with the main theme “Urban Sustainability in São Paulo”. In one of these events, the theme was urban agriculture. However, it is more important to expand the debate about urban spaces in São Paulo than to talk about agricultural activity itself. In this meeting, Achcar and Visoni decided to create at main list Google, so people could change information about this matter. Network expansion took place on July 26, 2011, when Achcar and Visoni created a Facebook group, gathering more urban gardeners. The group worked as a virtual forum, at first, with no leaders. The Hortelões Urbanos Facebook group promoted communication between people involved in the project in São Paulo and from all over the world. Many members found the page when they searched the terms “urban agriculture”, “domestic agriculture”, “community vegetable gardens” and so on, and interact in order to exchange information, knowledge and experiences about their projects. At the beginning, some gardeners organized themselves and promoted virtual meetings, in order to discuss options and strategies to occupy the public space for the creation of community vegetable gardens. In 2012, inspired by guerrilla gardening movements from all over the world, the members took action. The first community vegetable garden initiative with activist purposes in São Paulo took place in Praça Dolores Ibárruri, Vila Beatriz (which is part of the regional administration of Pinheiros, in the West Zone of São Paulo). As its area is bathed by Owls Creek (Córrego das Corujas), it is commonly known as Owls Square (Praça das Corujas) and the community vegetable garden is known as Owls Community Garden (Horta das Corujas) (Nagib 2016). At first, Hortelões Urbanos, with a horizontal relationship (with no hierarchy) between the members, aimed to develop itself as an activist movement in favour of food production in an urban area (specially as a community vegetable garden), filling a gap of representation and political mobilization in São Paulo. Consequently, Hortelões Urbanos is a network that enables an online information exchange about food production in São Paulo, without formally structuring itself as an organization with a unique identity or political unit. The expression “urban gardener” is generally used to call a kind of urban farmer, more precisely, in order to identify a citizen who is not a

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farmer (neither does farm work as their main source of income), activist or not, who uses an urban space in order to produce food (using public or private spaces at domestic or community levels) (Nagib 2016). The Hortelões Urbanos Facebook page is very heterogeneous and the discussions focus on how to deal with different species of plants (either food plant or not). The members usually request seeds and seedlings, ask for help on how to handle their plants or on how to control infestations, and even post pictures. Also, members usually post invitations to collective efforts to build community vegetable gardens and other collective activities. However, the magnitude of the network and the activist expressiveness of some members are able to interfere in political decisions in São Paulo, at least regarding urban agriculture and the occupation of public areas. In October 2017, the Urban Gardeners network had more than 76,400 members on Facebook, and many members are volunteers in community vegetable gardens at the expanded centre of São Paulo. Community Articulation Network: The Examples of Nova Esperança and Permaperifa Nova Esperança The community vegetable garden from Vila Nova Esperança, which means “New Hope Community”, is located in the Raposo Tavares district in the far west of São Paulo. It was created in 2013, when the public prosecution filed a population petition to expulse the community from their land, alleging that the community was irregularly residing in an Environmental Protection Area. However, the community organized itself to remain there and created the garden as a way to prove for the public prosecution that they were preserving the environment and that their occupation was not against the environmental protection. After many processes and conflicts, the community could win the petition and they were able to live in the area, with the condition of not allowing new constructions. The community garden was planned to show that the community could live in an Environmental Protection Area helping to preserve nature. The garden counts with the work of around 100 people and it aims to provide healthy food and environmental education for residents. The garden is located in two lands of a public-private water company (Sabesp), and it has a greenhouse, a composting centre and an

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orchard of fruit trees. A fish tank is currently being built and the community is also planning to build a day care centre. The garden is communal, because it is open to the participation and harvest of the whole community, but not all of them work in it. The people who work in the garden do not have a history of working with agriculture; they used to work on other sectors more related to urban environment. During the years 2015 and 2016 some people received grants from the government through the Work Operation Programme, but the vast majority of the participants dedicate themselves voluntarily. To strengthen the economy and the work of those who volunteer to work in the garden, the community created a social currency named Esperança (which means “Hope”). Thus, each person who does some kind of work in the garden receives this social currency and can exchange it for food. The main purpose of the garden is not external marketing, but subsistence, community engagement and environmental education. Thus, in contrast to the suburban neighbourhoods that often focus on income generation, Vila Nova Esperança’s community vegetable garden, located in a low-income community, is more strongly characterized by community empowerment, environmental education and subsistence. Permaperifa (Permaculture) In São Paulo, it is important to point out the high concentration of agroecological urban agriculture in the suburban areas, related to environmental education, urban environment improvement, reappropriation of public spaces and income generation. Many of these initiatives are based on permaculture, which, along with agroecology, includes discussions regarding water management and agroecosystem configuration (Ferguson et  al. 2014). Permaculture involves the planning of an environment inspired by nature, focusing on the use of local resources in order to provide the needs (Ferguson et al. 2014). The Permaperifa network is an example of a crossover of many socio-­ environmental initiatives related to urban agriculture, agroecology and permaculture, where members exchange “experiences and strategies to promote permaculture and healthy eating in the outskirts considering a social and environmental urgency of regenerate nature and human structures as well as regenerate social relations […] discussions and solidary practices, in itinerant collective efforts aiming the implementation of ecologic methodologies and technologies in suburban area of São Paulo” (Ciola 2017).

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The Permaperifa network was created in 2015, gathering many initiatives created by environmental educators in the suburban areas, especially those involved with environmental and agroecology matters, such as Horta di Gueto, Irmãos Guerreiros and Art Horta, in an effort to share permaculture knowledge and techniques, which used to be available only to richer classes. This is due to improvement of environmental quality and the “regeneration of outskirts ecosystem, the culture of agroecologic food, construction of ecologic houses, ecologic water management and clean energy production” (Ciola 2017). The Permaperifa network organizes regular meetings with the members of collective organizations so as to make collective efforts and to provide individual demands.

Discussion: UA Types Along a Continuum The networks have been analysed by focusing on the spaces invested in, the profile of actors involved and the actions implemented. In this section, we discuss those three aspects (actor, space, actions), stressing first the impact of those networks’ actions within the geography of the city and in the design of public policies, and then describing the network of UA based on actors and spaces. Urban agriculture in the municipality was an activity that was extremely invisible until the mid-2000s, even after the creation of the PROAURP programme in 2004. In 2009, the municipality of São Paulo improved the implementation of UA through the establishment of two Houses of Agriculture and the contracting of four technicians: one for the East Zone and three for the South Zone of the city. Nevertheless, many farmers still remain invisible and do not have access to any public financial support or technical guidance. Since 2010, the conjoint actions of those technicians and the NGOs engaged in UA have been successful in promoting better structuring of professional farmers from the southern and eastern areas of the municipality. There, the agricultural sector has become an opportunity to improve a local and sustainable economy, producing local and fresh products intended for urban markets (both centrally and in the outskirts). In addition, the civil society promotes the creation of community gardens and educational gardens. As presented in the text, different actors such as the Vila Nova Esperança community and the Permaperifa network promote those activities and initiatives in the outskirts of the city, where the main goals have been community strengthening and environmental

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Fig. 1  UA networks in São Paulo along a continuum

education. Another actor, Hortelões Urbanos, concentrates its actions on the middle-class neighbourhoods in the central regions of the city, taking on a strong undertone of political activism. Focusing on UA actors and spaces, we have formulated Fig. 1 in order to point out the ongoing dynamics. Therefore, it is possible to identify those urban farmers and gardeners who promote agroecological agriculture, from the outskirts to the city centre, along a continuum. The profile of those farmers and gardeners is heterogeneous and differs according to the region in which they operate and their family history. The gardeners, in fuchsia on the maps, are those who practise agriculture as activism, community empowerment or educational processes. They are gardening in central spaces such as squares, sidewalks and roofs, and they are occupying and gardening these spaces in a more or less institutionalized way. They have created a community of practice that is open to everyone who wants to join, so the limit of this community is not geographical but relational. This means that this community can enlarge their influence and make an impact in different areas of the city, involving a wider spectrum of actors. On the contrary, the Vila Nova Esperança

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community, in green in the figure, inscribes their actions within an area defined as a geographical perimeter. The people belonging to the Vila Nova Esperança community are citizens who develop agriculture as a subsistence activity for community supply and network organization. So, they develop a “self-sufficient” community and agriculture as a symbol of community resistance and a tool for protecting the environment and feeding the community. These subsistence “farmers” are located long the continuum among farmers and gardeners. Regarding the urban farmers, the production networks result from a confluence of actors from diverse origins that are inscribed in a process of inheritance of agricultural activity (Parelheiros) or choices (as the younger farmers in the East Zone). In the southern area of the municipality, Parelheiros and Marsilac, for example, the professional farmers (in yellow in the figure) who participate in the Cooperapas, have different origins. Most of them have roots in agricultural families that have been farming for decades within the municipality, while others lived in the city and decided to move to the region to farm and live closer to nature. Most of the farmers in the East Zone belonging to the East Zone Farmers’ Association (in blue in the figure) are from the northeast of the country and moved to São Paulo looking for work, becoming “urban” farmers when they retired. In recent years, a new generation of urban farmers has emerged together with the growth of an agroecological agriculture awareness. Three young professionals with an urban “background” decided to join this association to become professional farmers while continuing to live in the city. The spaces that those actors invest in are marginal spaces, where urbanization is not allowed but which are located in the intra-urban area. Those spaces have potential (proximity to urban markets) and limitations (in terms of access to the land, theft, conflict of use) due to their location.

Final Remarks Our investigation reveals the challenges and the impact of city dwellers’ commitment and urban farmers’ investments in the implementation of agriculture within the city of São Paulo. Those networks are a local response to growing concerns over impacts of the global food chain and environmental issues, besides the results of a raising awareness on agroecology. The creation of those extended networks contribute to the production of common goods and access to

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­ uality food and public spaces. In this regard, UA represents both social q and physical embodiments of the “right to the city” (Thornton 2017), and a claim to a more just and sustainable food production system. The survey opens some perspectives concerning mainly the theoretical framework of the continuum and the case study selected. The theoretical framework could be enriched according to the dimensions proposed. It therefore appears that the actors and spaces are interrelated to the network form of organization and they are not always convergent. That is why we also underlined the socio-organizational dimension to figure out their spectrum of action. Concerning the case study, we notice that there is no real questioning of the integration of agriculture into the urban planning, but rather a hybridization. It would be necessary to extend the joint action of NGOs and policies in other areas as well. As indicated, the actions of NGOs and the implementation of public policies in the extreme east and south of the municipality helped professional farmers to strengthen their cooperation networks.

References Bryant, C.  R., Russwurm, L.  H., & McLellan, A.  G. (1982). The City’s Countryside  – Land and Its Management in the Rural–Urban Fringe. London: Longman. Champion T., & Graeme H. (dir). (2004). New Forms of Urbanization: Beyond the Urban-Rural Dichotomy. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Ciola, L. B. (2017). Internal Document of Permaperifa Network. São Paulo. Ferguson, R., Lovell, S., & Taylor, S. (2014). Permaculture for Agroecology: Design, Movement, Practice, and Worldview. A Review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 34(2), 251–274. Francis, C., Lieblein, G., Gliessman, S., Breland, T. A., Creamer, N., Harwood, R., et  al. (2003). Agroecology: The Ecology of Food Systems. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture, 22(3), 99–118. Gant, R., Robinson, G., & Shahab, F. (2011). Land-Use Change in the ‘Edgelands’: Policies and Pressures in London’s Rural–Urban Fringe. Land Use Policy, 28, 266–279. Giacchè, G., & Porto, L. (2015, November/December). Políticas Públicas de Agricultura Urbana e Periurbana: uma comparação entre os casos de São Paulo e Campinas. Informações Econômicas, 45(6). IEA, São Paulo. Giacchè, G., Ejderyan, O., Salomon, C.  J., Lardon, S., & Mumenthaler, C. (2015). Exploring the Diversity of Actors in Urban Agriculture. In F. Lohrberg,

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L. Licka, L. Scazzosi, & A. Timpe (dir.), Urban Agriculture Europe (pp. 58–62). Berlin: Jovis Publishing. Harvey, D. (2014). Cidades rebeldes: do direito à cidade à revolução urbana. São Paulo: Martins Fontes. Lefebvre, H. (1969). O direito à cidade. São Paulo: Documentos. Nagib, G. (2016). Agricultura urbana como ativismo na cidade de São Paulo: o caso da Horta das Corujas. São Paulo. Geography dissertation – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo. Retrieved from http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8136/tde-18082016124530/pt-br.php. Nakamura, A. C. (2017). Cooperapas: agricultura e cooperativismo no extremo sul do município de São Paulo. São Paulo. Geography dissertation – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo. Retrieved from http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8136/tde-09032017090516/pt-br.php. Porto, L. (2017). Redes, Ideias e Ação Publica na Agricultura Urbana. São Paulo, PHD Thesis in Public Administration – Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo, Fundação Getulio Vargas. Retrieved from https://bibliotecad i g i t a l . f g v. b r / d s p a c e / b i t s t r e a m / h a n d l e / 1 0 4 3 8 / 1 8 2 2 4 / Te s e _ versa%CC%83o%20final%20Lya%20Porto.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. Redfield, R. (1941). The Folk Culture of Yucatan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Saraceno, E. (1994). Alternative Reading of Spatial Differentiation: The Rural versus the Local Economy Approach in Italy. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 21(3–4), 451–474. https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/21.3-4.451. Thornton, A. (2017). The Lucky Country? A Critical Exploration of Community Gardens and City–Community Relations in Australian Cities. Local Environment, 22(8), 969–985. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2 017.1317726.

Urban Agriculture in Chinese Cities: Practices, Motivations and Challenges Geoff Luehr, Alesandros Glaros, Zhenzhong Si, and Steffanie Scott

Introduction Urban agriculture (UA) has been an integral part of urban livelihoods throughout history; however, it was not until recently that it became of significant interest to the international community and development practitioners (Mougeot 2005). The most widely cited definitions of urban agriculture (Mougeot 2000; Jacobi et al. 2000; Smit et al. 2001) refer to it as any form of farming or gardening that takes place within and/or around cities. The boundaries between peri- and intra-urban agriculture remain unclear within academic circles, as they vary between different socio-cultural, economic and environmental contexts (Simon 2008; Stewart et al. 2013). For the purposes of this study, the term ‘intra-urban’ is used to describe UA that utilizes resources, inputs and services concentrated within

G. Luehr • A. Glaros • S. Scott (*) University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] Z. Si Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo, ON, Canada © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2_17

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urban areas (as defined by each city’s municipal boundaries). In contrast, peri-urban is an “area where agriculture takes places in the close neighborhood of cities in areas that are primarily rural but depend on the city in various economic and social ways” (Mougeot 2000, p. 6). UA has gained increased support from academics, planners and policy makers over the past decade in the Global North (e.g. Benis and Ferrão 2017; Psarikidou and Szerszynski 2010; Schupp and Sharp 2012); however, there is a paucity of empirical, social-science research on the practices of UA in Chinese cities. In light of recent studies of food safety (Si et al. 2017, 2018) and alternative food networks (AFNs) in China (Scott et al. 2014; Si et  al. 2015; Schumilas and Scott 2016; Si and Scott 2016b), unconventional forms of agricultural production, such as UA, have become a topic of great research interest. Our study examines some of the various forms of UA in and around cities of China, and sheds light on the perceptions and challenges facing UA practitioners. Specifically, the objectives of this research are to (1) identify how China’s political-economic context impacts UA developments; (2) develop a typology of UA; and (3) examine the perspectives of producers, enterprises and state officials regarding their motivations for pursuing or supporting UA. To our knowledge, there are few studies that compare the intra- and peri-urban dimensions of UA (especially in China), despite growing scholarly evidence that argues for a more careful differentiation between the two (Opitz et al. 2016).

Methods Between May and July 2017, the two lead authors conducted 56 questionnaires and 38 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders connected to all three forms of UA. Observations were also made at UA sites. A case study approach was used to collect data from three sites: (1) small-scale intra-urban agriculture in Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu province (located 300 kilometres west of Shanghai); (2) a peri-urban ecotourism demonstration zone in Yangling, a city in Shannxi province (located 1500 kilometres west of Shanghai); and (3) capital-intensive intra-urban agriculture operations in Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing. Respondents for questionnaires were recruited through field observations and snowball sampling in Nanjing’s districts. Additional semi-­ structured interviews were conducted with government officials, business or farm managers, and researchers, in Shanghai, Nanjing, Beijing and Yangling. Interpreters summarized and conveyed the respondents’ answers

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immediately to the researcher. Follow-up questions were asked as appropriate. Interviews ranged from 20 minutes to 2 hours. Notes were taken during interviews, and later combined with interview transcriptions to inform thematic content analysis.

Urban Agriculture Discourse and Policies China’s well-documented pollution and environmental degradation challenges, alongside increasing integration within global institutional and market networks, have resulted in increasing emphasis on ecological goals within its development agenda. Agricultural development has narrowly emphasized industrialization processes, with the state predominantly incentivizing and subsidizing capitalistic agricultural firms rather than smallholder agriculture (Schneider 2014; Mol 2006). What this has engendered is a broad integration of small farmers into modern food supply chains and the widespread adoption of industrial agriculture technologies (Yan and Chen 2015). The Chinese government’s agricultural policy underscores yield, quality and technology as key elements, as it seeks to “increase the output of highquality products based on green and innovative production” (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs 2017). To ensure food security, the state is committed to achieving high levels of self-sufficiency across most major staple grains, meat products, fish, and vegetables and fruit (Ghose 2014). Policies such as the Vegetable Basket Programme aim to regionalize food production networks and manage supply issues for large and rapidly growing cities, through streamlining urban production and distribution networks, introducing more agricultural technologies, and ensuring quality and safety in food production practices (Gu 2009). The state also incentivizes the development of multifunctional spaces that provide services beyond just raw agricultural goods. For example, peri-urban agro-tourism serves to reconnect urban dwellers with significant cultural and natural landscapes, and to preserve arable land as cities grow (Yang et al. 2010). It is apparent, through these policies and priorities, that building robust, localized, agricultural industry chains is a strategic priority for the government. Furthermore, while the Chinese government has encouraged traditional high-tech strategies to achieving sustainable agriculture, emerging alternatives have been underdeveloped (Ely et al. 2016; Scott et al. 2014). As one alternative food production strategy, UA’s position within Chinese agricultural discourse is fraught with uncertainty. First,

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dichotomized land-use categories present food production in urban areas as inefficient: a poor use of highly sought-after space for development. This is largely the result of the ‘Urban-Rural Integration Policy’ introduced in the early 2000s, aiming to make cities more urban and rural areas more like the countryside. This policy reflects China’s continued plan to ‘de-­peasantize’ the countryside, where UA is predominantly incentivized in peri-urban areas  to serve cities (Schneider 2014). Concomitantly, the state’s ‘urban modern agriculture’ (dushi xiandai nongye) plan, highlighted in 2012 by the Ministry of Agriculture, emphasizes peri-urban regions for robust domestic production and multifunctional UA, overlooking the potential for intra-urban agriculture (Horowitz and Liu 2017).

Characteristics of Diverse Urban Agriculture Types UA is a broad concept, varying in terms of capital intensity as well as location. Production can use technologies ranging from manual hand-tools to indoor computer-controlled lighting and irrigation systems. With respect to location, Chinese UA or dushi nongye refers to both peri- and intra-­ urban agriculture; however, research has primarily focused on what would be considered peri-urban agriculture by Western definitions (Horowitz and Liu 2017; Jianming et al. 2012; Zhang et al. 2009). Moreover, UA in the West is strongly supported by civil society movements critical of the industrial agricultural system (Schupp and Sharp 2012; Morgan 2015; Bosco and Joassart-Marcelli 2017; Gray et al. 2017). In contrast, in China, the state and the private sector have dominated the development of food production in cities, with UA serving as a way to “reinforc[e] the government’s priorities for agricultural modernization and neo-productivism— [that is] largely absent of any language of justice, food sovereignty, autonomy, empowerment, or fair trade” (Scott et al. 2014, p. 159). Our study examined three distinct forms of UA: small-scale intra-urban, capital-intensive intra-urban and peri-urban agro-tourism. These forms each have great significance within the Chinese context, although there are several other alternative food system arrangements (see Si et al. 2015) that could also be scrutinized through this UA lens. Small-scale intra-­ urban agriculture is mainly undertaken by local residents, alongside a few entrepreneurial individuals who grow for the market. Capital-intensive, intra-urban agriculture organizations are largely privatized, with strong links to researchers and industry. Agro-tourism farms also appear to be

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mostly privatized, with labour often hired from nearby villages. Municipal, provincial and national levels of the state interact with all forms of UA, acting often as policy enforcers in intra-urban areas or, conversely, providing incentive for production in peri-urban regions. Researchers argue that small-scale intra-urban agriculture is an overlooked practice by the state (Horowitz and Liu 2017). In contrast, capital-intensive, intra-urban food production, including vertical farming technologies such as plant factories, hydroponics and aquaponics, and, to a limited but growing extent, 3D-printed or artificially synthesized foods are being heavily researched and developed in China (Hayashi 2016; Roberts 2017). Peri-urban agro-­ tourism farms have also largely been pursued by the state, shaping city outskirts and urban citizens’ access to “natural” spaces in fundamental ways (Yang et al. 2010). Stakeholders, types and management of the three forms of UA examined in this study are outlined in Fig. 1 and Table 1.

Fig. 1  Various interactions between the state, private sector and civil society shaping the resulting forms of urban agriculture with Chinese characteristics

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Table 1  Players and governance structures for the three forms of urban agriculture in this study UA type

Carried out by

Governance

Intra-urban small-scale Residents Unregulated; prohibited in some places Intra-urban capital-intensive Private enterprises State neither incentivizes nor prohibits Peri-urban agrotourism Private enterprises State provides incentives

Small-Scale Intra-Urban Agriculture A substantial portion of the research that informs this study was undertaken in Nanjing, China, where observations were made of various forms of agriculture informally and spontaneously taking place across the city. The majority of this form of UA took place in intra-urban settings, practised by urban residents who capitalized on land that was seen as ‘wasted space’. Despite Nanjing’s by-law that prohibits growing food within public green spaces in residential neighbourhoods since 2013 (Si and Scott 2016a), residents continue to grow within urban areas and are operating outside of any market-oriented structure.

Practices of Small-Scale Intra-Urban Agriculture The empirical research conducted for our study in Nanjing suggested that small-scale intra-urban agriculture remains largely a non-marketized practice, dominated by older (55–75+), lower-income individuals growing vegetables in vacant spaces: around the city (26 of 56 respondents), in areas of ceased development (24 of 56), rooftops (1 of 56) and balconies (1 of 56), or hanging out of windows within neighbourhoods throughout the urban core districts (Gulou and Qinhuai) and the new urban (Qixia) area of the city. There was an almost equal number of male (51 per cent) and female (49 per cent) respondents. Additionally, 67 per cent (29 of 43) of respondents originally worked or lived in a rural area of Nanjing before moving to an urban area, whereas 66 per cent (37 of 56) of respondents had been farmers or spent time farming in their life: a motivating factor in continuing to farm in urban areas. More than 70 per cent of respondents were also retired. Food was grown in older neighbourhood apartments within Gulou and Qinhuai, where the elderly commonly lived. These locations often lacked formal organization or continuous upkeep, allowing more physical space

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to be altered to suit growing needs. In contrast, new high-rises with well-­ planned layouts were highly regulated with less-observed agricultural production. Farmers typically demonstrated an intricate knowledge of plant properties, utilized recycled materials, increased soil quality and made creative adaptations for water collection and planting pots (e.g. sinks), to name a few. Farmers in Gulou and Qinhuai typically grew vertically by constructing a supportive framework for plants, lessening space constraints. However, farmers in the new urban area of Qixia had larger spaces and therefore did not need to grow vertically as often but utilized other farming techniques (e.g. greenhouses), highlighting their previous farming experience. The types of food grown varied slightly across respondents, but the majority grew vegetables (N = 50), which included: cucumber, eggplant and Chinese long bean, to name a few. In addition, many grew herbs (N = 13) and flowers (N = 21)—for example, chrysanthemum, Kalimeris indica and amaranth, for two purposes: to hide food production from municipal enforcement and to contribute to urban green spaces. Respondents also chose to grow quick-growing plants for easy harvest in the event of complaints or inspections. Although rare, one resident had a baby chicken (N = 1) and another raised fish (N = 1) on the rooftop.

Motivations of Small-Scale Intra-Urban Agriculture We asked survey respondents whether they agree with a list of potential motivations to conduct UA. These results are outlined in Table 2. Ninety-­ one per cent of respondents indicated that they were growing food simply as a hobby. Additionally, 84 per cent believe that the ability to grow food is an important part of their culture and traditions. There was clear concern over the impacts of pollution on food production; 88 per cent of respondents believed that pollution in the city was impacting the food they ate. While only 21 per cent highlighted food safety as a primary motivational factor, a further 96 per cent agreed that growing their own food allowed them greater control over food safety and 86 per cent believed their food to be of better quality than food found at wet markets or supermarkets. Small-scale intra-urban UA appeared to be a coping strategy for these residents, who lack trust in food safety monitoring and regulation in Nanjing (Si et al. 2017).

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Table 2  Survey data on motivations for growing food in urban areas of Nanjing (N = 56) Statements

Growing food allows me to control the quality and safety of the food. The food I choose to grow or raise is based on my food preference. I grow food because it is good exercise. Grow food/plants or raise livestock as a hobby in my spare time. I am concerned about the decline of the environment and pollution in the city, and feel it is having an impact on the food we eat. The food I grow at home is of better quality than the wet markets or supermarkets. The ability to grow food is an important part of my life and culture. I grow food/plants because it provides additional income. I feel that food safety at wet markets and supermarkets is a concern for my household and that is why I grow food. I grow or raise food because other jobs have lower wages.

% Agree

% Neither agree nor disagree

% Disagree

96

4

0

95

4

1

93 91

7 2

0 7

88

2

10

86

11

3

84

11

5

32

4

64

21

9

70

11

0

89

A significant percentage of respondents (40.5 per cent) consumed more than 90 per cent of the food that they grew, with a further 33 per cent still consuming at least 70 per cent. Respondents would share unconsumed food with extended family, friends, neighbours first and, as a last resort, sold near their home or in another area of the city. Additionally, growing food allowed individuals to build social networks, which was especially important for those who recently moved into urban areas. Several interviewed respondents learned how to grow properly by asking other people in their neighbourhood and sometimes volunteered their assistance to those who were selling. Based on this data, we identified three motivations for growing food in the city: (1) previous farming experience, (2) to keep active and (3) to ensure access to safe and fresh food. Economic motivations were very low for respondents; only 32 per cent included ‘additional income’ as a

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motivation to grow food, and only 5 per cent of those surveyed considered the food they grew as their primary income. Respondents also noted several unintended environmental benefits to UA that included the recycling of urban and household waste and increased plant biodiversity. Additional values associated with growing included freshness, food safety, and health and recreation.

Challenges of Small-Scale Intra-Urban Agriculture Despite respondents being of a lower socio-economic bracket, the costs associated with growing food in urban areas were not prohibitive. Moreover, many respondents stressed that health benefits and increased access to safe food outweighed any costs that do exist. Roughly three-­ quarters of respondents (32 of 42) spent less than 100 CNY (~$15) per month and a further 14 per cent spent between 100 and 200 CNY/month (~$15–30) on growing inputs (e.g. fertilizers or seedlings). Water and soil nutrient recycling further mitigated these costs. There were no reported land-use fees, as all respondents utilized spaces around the city without formal permissions. It was difficult for respondents to estimate the amount made from selling food they grew as no records were kept, selling was infrequent and most (N  =  28) did not sell at all. The circumstances in which a respondent would sell their produce varied, depending on their growing success and how much they were to keep for family, friends or gifting. When food was sold, 12 per cent (N = 5) reported minimal earnings, while another 22 per cent (N  =  9) reported ~100–200  CNY ($15–30) earnings. Only one respondent in the Qixia district reported that their ‘main source of income’ was selling vegetables that they grew. Several environmental challenges affected small-scale intra-urban agriculture, such as variability in weather, water availability, space limitations and soil quality. Water sources were more abundant for those growing on ‘ceased development’ land, particularly in the new urban area of Qixia, whereas in residential neighbourhoods within the Gulou and Qinhuai districts, water was typically recycled from households. Many respondents, older in age, cited physical challenges to engaging in UA. Carrying water or soil was difficult in all three districts (Qixia, Gulou and Qinhuai), while those in residential neighbourhoods had difficulties if they lived above the first floor of apartment buildings. However, interviewees lived close to their production sites, the farthest living an ~10- to 20-minute walk or bike ride away. The space in which respondents grew varied from an

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estimated 0.5 m2 to 100 m2 (0.00075–0.15 MU) in the Gulo and Qinhuai districts and from 100 m2 to 1300 m2 (0.00075–2 MU) in the Qixia district. The most highly cited issues raised by respondents included confrontations with construction crews, urban management teams and neighbourhood committees, as well as (rarely) the theft of food. There was a lack of consistency regarding enforcement by the urban management team. Authorities cited improvised growing structures (e.g. rooftop structures and containers) as their highest concern, saying that they would impede on the enjoyment, use and safety of public spaces. However, there was no immediate removal in most cases, and no mention of financial penalties in any circumstances. Within the Qixia district, where respondents predominantly grew on ‘ceased development’ land, project managers and construction crews were often in conflict with the growers. In one location, the growers were given written letters indicating that they were to stop growing as the planned development was set to continue; however, this was several years ago and no construction had begun at the time of this research. Around the same time, construction crews had come in the middle of the night (to avoid confrontation) and began bulldozing. Interestingly, some individuals were compensated for the lost food—highlighting the complexity and unique feature of land rights in Nanjing.

Intra-Urban Capital-Intensive Organizations and Peri-Urban Agro-Tourism Farms Practices of Capital-Intensive Intra-Urban Agriculture and Peri-Urban Agro-Tourism The capital-intensive, intra-urban agriculture organizations interviewed in this study were all private enterprises. These businesses designed, developed and planned various small- or large-scale infrastructure and technologies for urban production. For example, one enterprise in Shanghai was involved in planning a vertical farm within a research park, while two others in Yangling and Beijing were designing high-tech apparatuses for small-scale apartment-growing. Urban planners and architects play a large role in the conceptualization of these capital-intensive agricultural spaces. A total of six intra-urban, capital-intensive businesses participated in this study, in addition to one urban planner and four researchers who specialize in these technologies; two of the enterprises were state-owned. Intra-­

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urban, capital-intensive organizations had strong university and industry linkages. However, respondents noted increasing interactions with the state, with respect to negotiating zoning laws and the design of proposed food production spaces. Peri-urban agro-tourism enterprises specialized in growing, and sometimes processing, agricultural products. The size of farms ranged from 3 to over 200 hectares in size, with most around 100 hectares. A total of nine farms participated in this study: one from Nanjing and eight from Yangling. Three farms were involved in the production of meat products, while all others specialized in fruits and vegetables. All agro-tourism farms in this study defined themselves as ‘ecological’ or ‘organic’, though only two identified formal certifications; all provided opportunity for consumers to engage with the production process, from planting to picking and consumption. Three of these farms supported lodging and/or a restaurant. One or a few managers oversaw the operations of the farm, while labour was primarily from local villages: some of which having previously farmed the land on which the farm was located. Motivations of Capital-Intensive Intra-Urban Agriculture and Peri-Urban Agro-Tourism Generally, capital-intensive intra-urban and peri-urban agro-tourism interviewees expressed similar motivations for pursuing their production methods to those of small-scale intra-urban farmers. These include food safety (including food system traceability) as well as various socio-cultural benefits. However, interviewees were also highly motivated by economic opportunity. Food Safety and System Traceability Food safety was a large driver for agro-tourism farms, most of which engaging in ecological or organic production. Like small-scale intra-urban farmers, managers of farms highlighted the increased quality of goods ­produced without chemicals, and in natural growing environments, as compared to conventionally produced food. Interestingly, researchers and businesses in capital-intensive, intra-urban organizations echoed this perception, despite their production methods not necessarily abiding by these principles.

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This study found that peri-urban agro-tourism farms and capital-­ intensive forms of UA were also actively seeking to build greater food system traceability for consumers. This is pursued in both active and passive ways: direct opportunity for consumer participation in production processes, as well as increased ease of consumer access to information regarding production and distribution, respectively. With respect to active methods, interviewees believed, similar to small-scale intra-urban farmers, that direct participation in food production processes (e.g. planting, growing and/or harvesting) allows for greater control over the quality and safety of their products. For example, technologies that allow consumers to grow food at home and intra- or peri-urban farms that can be directly accessed by consumers are active methods of building in trust and transparency into food production practices. The extent to which consumers should directly participate in food production, however, varied across interviewees. Most respondents felt that the bulk of food production should be left to farmers and other professional producers, arguing that this guarantees safety and convenience for consumers, in contrast to the attitudes of most small-scale farmers growing in intraurban areas. Food system traceability through passive means involves indirect consumer participation—a method not highlighted by small-scale intra-urban farmers. This can be attained through multiple methods, such as scanning a product’s barcode with a mobile device. The goal is for customers to simply scan a product to determine information such as whether agro-­ chemicals have been applied, where was the product produced and by which farm. This method is considered convenient for customers, able to track products without having to produce the food or go visit the farm themselves. Furthermore, interviewees suggested that easy access to product information establishes quality control and increased market demand for safer products. Socio-Cultural Benefits Like those benefits highlighted by small-scale intra-urban farmers, there are numerous social opportunities to engage in either capital-intensive intra-urban or peri-urban agro-tourism. Two respondents involved in capital-­intensive, intra-urban enterprises argued that direct engagement in food production creates unique spaces for socialization. One interviewee, when describing a Chinese research and technology park, noted:

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“[It] was pretty quiet when we visited … it is inward looking. Nobody talks to each other; everyone does their own thing. I think [the vertical farm] creates interesting places for people to socialize and mingle. It’s a kind of new experience”.1 Respondents cited increased awareness around food and environmental issues (besides food safety), such as food waste, as a benefit to participating in food production. Furthermore, similar to a large number of small-scale intra-urban farmers who engaged in farming because of previous experience and cultural traditions, these other forms of UA are seeking to reintroduce food production into urban life to contribute positively to urban lifestyles, albeit in non-traditional forms. Economic Opportunity While small-scale intra-urban farmers did not highlight economic opportunity as a strong motivational factor for growing food, all the representatives of agro-tourism and capital-intensive initiatives interviewed in this study were private enterprises, highly motivated by economic considerations. For example, all interviewees from these two forms of UA stressed the economic benefit to localizing food production. Fresher products, such as vegetables and fruits, can be rapidly and cheaply disseminated from field to consumer, with lower storage costs. Moreover, localized closed-­ loop systems minimize resource inputs. Similarly, nearly all interviewees described comparative advantage as a principle that determines the location in which food should be grown. As China’s food system is increasingly modernized and elongated, local production is marginalized. However, the findings from our study highlight the economic potential for local food system development in China. While food safety, increased food system traceability and socio-­ ecological benefits were intrinsically motivational factors for capital-­ intensive intra-urban and peri-urban agro-tourism interviewees, they were also treated as a means to an economic end. For example, nearly all respondents, especially those involved in peri-urban agro-tourism, noted that the area in which food is grown impacts its taste and quality, contributing to its safety and market value. Agro-tourism farms also emphasized the economic opportunity accrued through the social benefits of their business model, including recreational entertainment, beautification and positive 1

 Interview with urban planner, June 23, 2017, Shanghai.

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physical as well as mental health. There were few exceptions who described these social benefits as ends in themselves. Finally, enterprise managers and researchers emphasized the importance of securing a market for their agricultural goods through minimizing the cost of inputs, maximizing outputs and lengthening industry chains. Challenges of Capital-Intensive Intra-Urban Agriculture and Peri-Urban Agro-Tourism A significant challenge for capital-intensive intra-urban and peri-urban agro-tourism forms of UA was establishing a market for their goods (raw or processed), as they were generally not considered as viable production methods for long-term food security. Generally, these interviewees did not believe that localized, regional production chains could provide adequate supplies of food (staple crops or perishable items) to urban areas, given the high cost of intra-urban land and start-up technology (especially for indoor or vertical production firms), and uncompetitive prices with respect to conventionally produced food. Only two interviewees from capital-­ intensive intra-urban firms were optimistic regarding the opportunities of UA to meet domestic food needs, noting that Chinese diets, high in fresh produce, could be best supported by locally sourced products. The goal of one researcher was to develop urban farming technologies that could allow each citizen to produce all their required vegetables in a small apartment. Generally capital-intensive intra-urban and peri-urban agro-tourism enterprises emphasized the quality of their products, in addition to their added services (e.g. recreation, spaces for socialization, education or beautification), rather than their contribution to food security. Related to this is the challenge to make these forms of UA more accessible. Generally, capital-intensive intra-urban and peri-urban agro-tourism managers and researchers noted that the products and services they provided were only accessible to middle or upper classes of consumers. Large-­ scale capital-intensive infrastructure projects examined in this study were intended for communities, not the public. One future site of vertical farming is to be used by a specific set of residents: middle-class commuters travelling to and from Beijing for work. Another future site of vertical farming is set within a research and business district in Shanghai. However, a key component of this specific future vertical farming site is greenhouse space open to schools.

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Conclusion Continuous urbanization will greatly impact how China manages its urban food systems. Based on empirical evidence from four Chinese cities— Nanjing, Beijing, Shanghai and Yangling—the viability of these modes of UA is heavily influenced by ongoing urbanization and various contentious policy issues. Furthermore, the motivations to pursue any of the forms of UA are similar, but also share some marked differences. As this chapter has demonstrated, there are various forms of UA practised across China, which range in their use of capital, as well as their location within or just outside cities. This research examined three types of urban agriculture initiatives: small-scale intra-urban, capital-intensive intra-urban and peri-urban agro-tourism. Intra-urban production can take place on vacated land or unused spaces in buildings, as well as through high-tech, indoor, greenhouse or vertical farming operations. In peri-­ urban settings, production can take place on farms or also in greenhouses; the only form of peri-urban production examined in this study was agro-­ tourism farms. Numerous stakeholders engage to different extents and capacities in these forms of UA.  These stakeholders include residents (often older, and those who formerly had rural hukou) who engage in small-scale, non-marketized agriculture; entrepreneurs or managers who operate peri-urban farms (often employing rural farmers) and capital-­ intensive projects; researchers who study vertical farming/greenhouse technology or agrarian development; urban planners; and the state, especially at municipal and national levels. Dichotomized legal definitions of ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ land designated by the state shape the access of residents to land for agricultural purposes. Conversely, policies that emphasize the multifunctionality of agriculture and food self-sufficiency have promoted capital-intensive practices in intra-­urban settings in addition to peri-urban agro-tourism. There are a multitude of benefits accrued through small-scale intra-urban agriculture; however, it has largely been left out of formal policy (and its associated subsidies), despite sharing similar objectives with China’s ‘urban modern agriculture’ (dushi xiandai nongye) framework. These objectives include the optimization of agricultural production, the guarantee of fresh agricultural products for medium- and large-sized cities, a robust market for domestically-produced agricultural products, and high-quality food (Horowitz and Liu 2017). With respect to small-scale intra-urban UA, local authorities (urban management and neighbourhood committees) mainly interact with

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residents through enforcing municipal policy. However, there is a lack of enforcement consistency, suggesting that authorities recognize, to some extent, the multiple benefits of this practice. Agro-tourism is supported through state policy and incentive structures. The Vegetable Basket Programme and the Urban-Rural Integration policy emphasize peri-urban development and revitalization. Capital-intensive intra-urban initiatives are not mentioned in these policies, although these firms largely embody principles of modern agriculture prioritized by the state. Thus, it seems that capital-intensive intra-urban initiatives are tolerated not as an economically viable, long-term food security strategy, but as a development model for multifunctional agriculture. Agro-tourism farms, capital-­ intensive firms and small-scale intra-urban agriculture are largely not civil-­ society-­led initiatives in China. UA in general does not appear to be perceived as a strategic food security solution by urban farmers, enterprises or the state; rather, motivations for UA are rooted to different extents within the Chinese socio-cultural context that emphasizes food safety, food system traceability and economic development. While similar motivations guide all three forms of UA examined in this study (e.g. food safety and quality, food system traceability), only capital-intensive intra-urban agro-tourism and peri-urban agro-tourism were driven by economic considerations. Challenges for small-scale intra-urban production include access to agricultural inputs, especially land, as well as negotiating zoning laws with urban management committees. Challenges for capital-intensive initiatives and intra-urban agro-tourism farms include competing in mainstream agricultural markets, as well as accessibility for consumers in terms of price and physical admission into UA spaces. However, in several cases efforts are being made to broaden participation to civil society. Despite the challenges, these three models demonstrate an innovative approach to food safety issues and operate in an environment where future food demands are most critical.

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Afterword

Chris Rogerson and Alec Thornton

Arguably, this volume represents a substantive contribution to an ever-­ widening global scholarship concerning urban food systems, urban food democracy and urban food governance, and especially of its relationship to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Among others, Crush (2016, p. 1) points out that the recent inclusion of an urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG11) in the current United Nations Development Agenda “represents an important acknowledgement of the reality of global urbanization and the many social, economic, infrastructural and political challenges posed by the human transition to a predominantly urban world”. This said, whilst the SDGs address goals for land use, housing, cultural heritage, disaster risk prevention and transportation, it is remarkable that food is not mentioned. Against this backcloth of omission, the policy relevance of this collection of original research contributions is underscored by an increasing recognition of the centrality of cities and of urban research agendas in what some observers style as “this century of urbanization” (Reckien et al. 2017, p. 159) when, for the first time in human history, there are more people living in urban as compared to rural areas (Crush 2016). Although it is evidenced here that common threads exist in debates concerning urban food and agriculture relating to Northern as well as Southern cities, certain different geographical emphases are discernible. For cities of the global North this volume raises particular and compelling © The Author(s) 2020 A. Thornton, Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South, International Political Economy Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17187-2

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concerns about food governance, food security and the articulation of agri-food systems within the context of accelerating debates about innovation and of “smart cities”. In the global North there is observed also escalating concerns about the potential role of urban and peri-urban agriculture in new discourses about the “creative food” economy (Blay-Palmer 2005; Donald and Blay-Palmer 2006). By contrast, for researchers of the global urban South the vital importance of expanding urban food and agriculture scholarship is allied mainly to a nexus of parallel debates about managing livelihoods, poverty alleviation, sustainability and of “hungry cities” (Rogerson 2011; Haysom 2014; Crush 2016). Such thematic debates surrounding food and agriculture in Southern cities are underpinned by projections that over the next 30  years virtually all of the expected three-billion increase in human population will be concentrated in these cities. Indeed, by 2030, cities of the global South will absorb 95 per cent of global urban growth and become home to as much as 80 per cent of the global population. With increasing levels of urbanisation, as is demonstrated by findings from recent South African research, “the business of food”—both in terms of a formal and in terms of (especially) an informal economy—must grow both in prominence and strategic usefulness for policy makers in Southern cities (Crush and Frayne 2011; Petersen and Charman 2018; Petersen et al. 2018). Indeed, in a significant intervention, Skinner and Haysom (2017, p. 13) highlight that the informal economy represents “a missing link” in policy debates by showing that it “is a vital, if not the main, means by which the poor in South Africa attain a measure of food security”. The material in this volume confirms that contemporary scholarship around questions about urban food and agriculture is highly diverse and can be embedded in and informed by an array of different theoretical and policy perspectives. This said, in the light of findings of the 2017 global risk report produced by the World Economic Forum identifying economic inequality and societal polarisation as two of the three important dangers facing the globe, it is argued that debates around urban food democracy and governance both in Northern and in Southern cities must be aligned progressively to the challenge of making “sustainable and inclusive cities”, which is acknowledged to be one of the most critical development issues for this century (Mitlin and Satterthwaite 2013; Parnell and Oldfield 2014). More broadly, Benner et al. (2018) point to a growing chorus of international development officials, economists and policy advocates calling for more “inclusive economies” and for the pursuit of more inclusive development strategies by both national and city governments.

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Turok and Visagie (2018, p. 9) aver that the “narrative about inclusion has gained widespread currency over the past decade, arising from international recognition that many groups and communities are failing to share in the benefits of economic growth, technological change and globalisation”. Accordingly, the terms “inclusive growth” and “inclusive development” are very fashionable, albeit “often they are often used rather loosely, without much substance or precision” (Turok and Visagie 2018, p.  5). Indeed, increasingly the language of inclusion is contested and subject to much academic and policy scrutiny, as whilst the concept is intuitive, often it is applied to refer to very different things (Rodriguez-Pose and Wilkie 2015; Benner et al. 2018). The Rockefeller Foundation has been engaged in establishing a wide-ranging framework for rethinking (and potentially measuring) and clarifying inclusive economies. At the outset an inclusive economy is defined now as one that “expands opportunities for more broadly shared prosperity, especially for those facing the greatest barriers to advancing their well-being” and maintains that five critical characteristics or dimensions define an inclusive economy, namely equity, participation, growth, sustainability and stability (Benner et al. 2018, p. 6). RodriguezPose and Wilkie (2015) suggest, however, as an alternative terminology the notion of “equitable economic growth”. This term is “conceptualised as long-term, sustainable economic growth that creates economic opportunity in the form of decent, productive employment opportunities in both the formal and informal sectors that may be accessed by all of society regardless of economic status, gender or ethnicity, thus enabling all of society to both benefit directly from and participate in economic activity and future growth” (Rodriguez-Pose and Wilkie 2015, p. 13). Strategic interventions towards achieving inclusive development highlight the imperative for enacting local strategies or “place-based” interventions, which are emerging widely as a critical planning approach to local economies (Pike et  al. 2015; Rodriguez-Pose and Wilkie 2017). As stressed by Barca et al. (2012) such place-based approaches are premised on the belief that “there is a need to tailor policies and strategies to address unique contextual conditions and reflect the opportunities, challenges and resources that characterise a given territory’s ability to induce growth and development that benefits its residents”. As is implicit from the contributions in this volume, one central constituent of inclusive development or equitable economic growth both in cities of the global North and of the global South is the achievement of urban food democracy, which can be embedded as part of place-based development planning initiatives.

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The thematic and case study chapters appearing in this volume point to markedly different challenges in the quest for food democracy in North and South cities. They also provide multidisciplinary perspectives of the broader development debates concerning inclusive development and equitable urban cities. Lang once described the modern food economy as a “well-mangled plate of tangled spaghetti”—a complex system that can only be understood once disentangled (Lang 1998, p. 14). He explained that food democracy is the inverse of corporate control (and government control of food, triggering food riots in the North and South). It reflects a centuries-old struggle, across cultures, of citizens demanding their rights to affordable food and “health-enhancing diet grown in conditions in which they have confidence” (Lang 1998, p. 18). The term “food democracy” became popularised through the sustainable agriculture movements in the 1980s, which emerged from growing concerns of a handful of corporations having control over the global food supply and reshaping it to maximise their profits and power (Shiva 2000, p. 117). Food democracy is a global call from rural farmers to urban social movements, to regain democratic control over the food system, to hold corporations accountable to producing food that is safe, for human consumption and to the environment, and accessible to all. Income (or lack of it), culture and politics should not prevent people from making their own choices in selecting varieties and quantities of fresh and nutritious food, which are necessities for health, well-being and happiness. On behalf of all of our contributors, we hope that this book makes a respectable contribution to evolving ways we think about urban food systems and food democracy. A strategy of this book was to provide finer-­ grained analyses of urban food democracy and governance issues than what has been available, particularly from voices seldom heard in cities in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and other developing regions. As mentioned in the Foreword and Introduction to this book, this is accomplished in a way that complements similar work found in the geography, political economy, built environment and sociology literatures that precedes it (e.g. Campbell et al. 2011; Viljoen and Wiskerke 2016; Dansero et al. 2017; Cabannes and Marrochino 2019). In doing so, each chapter represents our attempts to untangle the “plate of spaghetti”—the complex global food system. We hope the book will have a positive influence on future policy making and equitable practice in shaping our cities, in North and South contexts, accountable to variations in urban geography, cultural and historical identities, and political-economic change.

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Petersen, L. M., Charman, A. J. E., & Kroll, F. J. (2018). Trade Dynamics in Cape Town Township Informal Foodservice – A Qualitative and Supply Chain Study. Development Southern Africa, 35(1), 70–89. Pike, A., Rodriguez-Pose, A., & Tomaney, J. (Eds.) (2015). Local and Regional Development, 4 vols. London: Routledge. Reckien, D., Creutzig, F., Fernandez, B., Lwasa, S., Tovar-Restrepo, M., McEvoy, D., & Satterthwaite, D. (2017). Climate Change, Equity and the Sustainable Development Goals: An Urban Perspective. Environment and Urbanization, 29(1), 159–182. Rodriguez-Pose, A., & Wilkie, C. (2015). Conceptualising Equitable Economic Growth in Cities. Brussels: Cities Alliance Discussion Paper No. 2. Rodriguez-Pose, A., & Wilkie, C. (2017). Revamping Local and Regional Development Through Place-Based Strategies. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 19(1), 151–170. Rogerson, C.  M. (2011). Urban Agriculture and Public Administration: Institutional Context and Local Response in Gauteng. Urban Forum, 21, 183–198. Shiva, V. (2000). Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply. London: Zed Books. Skinner, C., & Haysom, G. (2017). The Informal Sector’s Role in Food Security: A Missing Link in Policy Debates. Bellville: University of Western Cape Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies Working Paper No. 44. Turok, I., & Visagie, J. (2018). Inclusive Urban Development in South Africa: What Does It Mean and How Can It Be Measured? Brighton: University of Sussex Institute of Development Studies Working Paper 2018/512. Viljoen, A., & Wiskerke, J. S. C. (Eds.). (2016). Sustainable Food Planning: Evolving Theory and Practice. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.3920/978-90-8686-187-3. (Hardback published in 2012).

Index1

A Activism, xv, 28, 29, 47, 65, 75, 77–79, 274, 278, 281–283, 286 Actor-network theory, 196 Agreements, 103–106, 108–113, 116–118, 234 Agricultural policies, 91–93, 123 Agriculture, vn1, 3, 9–24, 28, 46, 77, 123, 144, 166, 177–189, 195, 216, 233, 250, 273–288, 291–306, 311 Agroecology, 235, 236, 239, 241– 244, 274, 278, 278n2, 284, 285 Alternative food systems (AFNs), 78, 124, 188, 199, 292, 294 Autonomous action, 179, 185–188 B Belo Horizonte, vi, 7, 231–244 Big data, 73, 81

Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE), 198, 199, 202 C City region food system, 233, 241–244 Civil society, v, xiii, 31, 32, 35, 130, 135, 137, 178, 182, 184, 195, 204, 205, 235, 244, 276, 278, 285, 294, 295, 306 Class, xiii, xv, 51, 166, 186, 187, 213–226, 251, 256, 261, 285, 286, 304 Climate, xi, 3, 4, 6, 13, 21, 41, 73, 78, 80, 142, 144, 152, 154, 156 Community gardens, 13, 16, 35, 36, 51, 53–55, 79, 87, 90, 107, 124, 153, 169, 239, 277, 281–283, 285

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

Compost, 53, 143–145, 150, 153, 154, 202, 203 Continuum, 7, 28, 74, 75, 275, 285–288 Copperbelt, ix, 213–226 Critical theory, 183 Critical theory of technology, 179 Cultural heritage, 101–119, 311 E Economic shock, 216, 225 Entrepreneurship, 181–183, 196, 197, 200, 201, 205 F Family farm, 13, 50, 55, 59, 60, 62, 63, 113, 234, 239, 242, 275 Fertilizer, 21, 126, 299 Food, v, 3, 10, 28, 46, 87, 101, 124, 141, 159, 177, 193, 213, 231–244, 251, 278, 292, 311 democracy, vii, xv, 4–6, 8, 72, 76, 311–314 security, vn1, viii–x, 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18–19, 22, 23, 28, 50, 59, 75, 76, 88–92, 101, 136, 193, 195, 197, 213–215, 218–221, 223–225, 231–244, 293, 304, 306, 312 sovereignty, xii, 6, 87–98, 135, 137, 294 systems, v–ix, viin3, xi–xiv, 4–8, 29, 33–35, 47, 50, 53–56, 58, 61, 64–66, 71–81, 90, 91, 98, 123, 124, 130, 131, 135–137, 177–180, 185, 188, 193–209, 232, 236, 241–244, 278n2, 301–303, 305, 306, 311, 312, 314 Fresh Produce Markets, 198

G Geneva, xi, xii, 93–96, 102 Green-blue weft (TVA), 238, 240 Green guerrilla, 274 H Household, viii–x, 4, 80, 146–148, 159, 160, 163, 164, 166, 198, 199, 202, 203, 205, 214–216, 218–221, 225, 257–258, 260–269, 299 I Immigrant population, 249–270 Institutional, x, 7, 72, 77, 79, 90, 95, 117, 134, 135, 169, 183–184, 195, 197, 205, 208, 213–226, 232, 239, 254, 256, 274, 276, 293 Intermediate technology development, 182 IZindaba Zokudla (IZ), 177, 179–185, 188 J Johannesburg, xi, 7, 177–189, 198 K Kitwe, 215, 217, 218, 220–223, 225 L Landscape preservation, 104–106, 116–117, 119 Land use conversions, 250 Lausanne, xii, 93–97 Luanshya, 215, 218, 220, 225

 INDEX 

319

M Master plan, 232, 233, 236–238, 240, 243, 244 Methods, 22, 30, 57, 95–97, 124, 129, 156, 178–181, 183, 185–188, 200–201, 274–276, 279, 292–293, 301, 302, 304 Metropolitan region, 7, 231–244, 278 Mulch, 57, 144, 145, 147 Multi-stakeholder engagement, 177–179, 195, 207

R Rain, 144, 146, 148, 154–156 Reed bed, 146–148 Reflexivity, 30, 184 Regulation, xiv, 38, 39, 54, 55, 90, 106, 117, 145, 150, 160–163, 165, 167–169, 206, 222, 223, 233, 240, 244, 277, 297 Resilience, xiii, 28, 42, 51, 73, 101–119 Rural buildings, 103, 107, 109, 109n14, 117

N Ndola, 215, 217, 218, 220, 222–225 Networks, vi, xi, xiii, xiv, 17, 19, 28–36, 38, 41, 60, 73, 78, 90, 114, 131, 132, 180, 184, 185, 196, 198–200, 202, 204, 205, 208, 235, 238, 244, 274–288, 293, 298 Network theory, 196 Nirvana concept, 6, 87–98

S Sao Paulo, xiii, 6, 7, 45–66, 273–288 Service-learning, xi, 179, 182, 183 Smart city, 4, 71–81 Smart food city, 72, 75–77 Smart technologies, 73, 76 Social capital, 76, 184, 199, 205–208 Social innovation, 29, 75, 180 Social justice, 5, 6, 74, 101–119, 135, 233, 242 Soil, 18, 19, 46, 63, 112, 126, 127, 145–147, 150, 152, 156, 240, 297, 299 South Africa, ix, 4n2, 7, 177–189, 193–209, 312, 314 Structural change, 178–179, 181, 184, 185, 187–189, 194, 195, 200–201, 208, 209 Sustainability, vi, 4n1, 19, 20, 39, 47, 49, 53, 62, 64, 72, 74–76, 124, 134, 142, 160, 161, 168, 170, 193–209, 221, 225, 226, 232, 236, 242, 282, 312, 313 Sustainable development, 87, 89n1, 95, 97, 124, 178, 196, 224, 277 Switzerland, 6, 7, 17, 88, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98 Systemic change, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184, 188, 189, 195, 199–200

P Participatory action research, 183 Participatory Technology Development, 179–182 Permaculture, 148, 274, 284–285 Plants, 50, 51, 56, 57, 65, 146–152, 156, 161, 163–166, 168–170, 198, 201, 234, 283, 295, 297, 299 Poor, urban, 225 households, 4 Population growth, 4, 10, 20, 59, 215, 251, 256 global, 3 urban, 3 Public action, 274 Public policies, 89, 104, 233, 239, 276–285

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INDEX

T Township, 7, 142, 196–201, 204, 222 U Unemployment, x, 39, 56, 215, 217, 225, 249 Urban agriculture (UA), vi, 3, 9–24, 27–42, 45–66, 75, 87–98, 101–119, 166, 195, 213–226, 235, 273, 291, 312 Urban farms, xii, xiv, 63, 65, 87, 90, 93, 101, 142–145, 152 Urban food policy, vi, vii, 5, 78 Urban food security, 75 Urban food system, ix, 79, 91, 98, 177, 178, 194 Urban governance, 5, 72, 75, 77, 78, 81 Urbanization process, 269 Urban land, 51, 250, 256, 305 Urban planning, vii, 4n1, 7, 8 Urban policies, 78, 134 Urban spaces, 17, 18, 20, 78, 238, 282

V Vegetables, xi, 15, 20, 21, 46–47, 52, 53, 55, 59–61, 63, 64, 95, 102, 127, 129, 142–145, 150, 156, 159, 160, 164, 170, 214, 216, 219, 234, 274, 276, 278, 282–284, 293, 296, 297, 299, 301, 303, 304, 306 W Waste, vn1, xiii, 21, 35, 127, 136, 144, 148, 152, 155, 188, 203, 205, 236, 299, 303 Water, vn1, xiii, 14, 17–19, 39, 46, 60–63, 73, 144–154, 180, 187, 198, 221, 223, 280, 283, 285, 297, 299 Z Zambia, 7, 214, 217, 222