14 Pages, iZindaba Zokudla (IZ) is a multistakeholder engagement project that aims to create opportunities for urban agriculture in a sustainable food system in Johannesburg. IZ implements the Farmers’ Lab, a social lab used as a transitional mechanism in a larger transition to sustainability. To move the South African urban food system to an ecologically sound, economically productive, and socially equitable system, significant stakeholder integration is needed, and the iZindaba Zokudla Farmers’ Lab provides that. This reflective essay presents a history of the project (2013 until now) detailing the project’s creation of an ecosystem based on social labs that facilitate innovation in the food system. Emergent entrepreneurs and others use the social labs and their activities, as well as stakeholder engagement in their enterprise development, and these Labs have created opportunities for applied and other research in the university. This has brought innovation and change to agroecological practice in Johannesburg. This reflective essay article situates IZ within the broader evolutionary change in South Africa and considers how conversations about food lead to the creation of sustainable food systems.
Vigne Bennedetti, Luiza (author), Antônio de Almeida Sinisgalli, Paulo (author), Lamano Ferreira, Maurício (author), and Lemes de Oliveira, Fabiano (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2023-01-24
Published:
Netherlands: MDPI
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 206 Document Number: D12839
14pgs, Urban agriculture (UA) can be used as an action to promote sustainability in cities and inform public health policies for urban populations. Despite this growing recognition, its implementation still presents challenges in countries in the Global North and Global South. Background: In this context, this systematic review aims to identify the development of frameworks for the implementation of UA as a sustainable action and its main opportunities and shortcomings in meeting urban socio-environmental demands. Methods: In this review, using the PRISMA protocol, we evaluated 26 studies on the interplay between UA and sustainability surveyed on the Web of Science to provide an overview of the state of the art. Conclusions: In summary, it was possible to identify many key challenges in UA adoption, which regard air and soil contamination, availability of green areas, layout of urban infrastructure, food distribution, among others. Due to numerous socio-economic and environmental contextual factors in cities, especially when comparing realities of the Global North and Global South, there is a need to develop a model that can be adaptable to these different contexts. Thus, it is recognized that the concept of sustainability does not present a universal understanding and that in its search it could be argued that one of the most important gaps is still to address social issues in relation to environmental ones.
5pgs, The Covid-19 pandemic, global trends, and technological advancements lead to the perception that digitalization is about the most sustainable means of growing Africa’s agribusiness and food supply chains. Many global agribusinesses have successfully integrated digital technologies to enhance operational efficiencies and business relations with their upstream and downstream actors. However, evidence is scant on the uptake of digital technologies among small and medium agribusiness firms in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Against this backdrop, this review paper identifies research gaps regarding the adoption and implication of digitalization in building sustainable food systems for African economies. Our preliminary finds show some sustainable practices in the SSA food supply chains by adopting specific technologies related to production, grain storage, food waste management, and warehouse management but very low adoption of food processing technologies and digital marketing platforms. Most importantly, the application of the Internet of Things, Big data, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain and/or Business Analytics is very rare. Most of the digitalization process tends to be mobile-based.
17pgs, There is a lack of data on resources used and food produced at urban farms. This hampers attempts to quantify the environmental impacts of urban agriculture or craft policies for sustainable food production in cities. To address this gap, we used a citizen science approach to collect data from 72 urban agriculture sites, representing three types of spaces (urban farms, collective gardens, individual gardens), in five countries (France, Germany, Poland, United Kingdom, and United States). We answered three key questions about urban agriculture with this unprecedented dataset: (1) What are its land, water, nutrient, and energy demands? (2) How productive is it relative to conventional agriculture and across types of farms? and (3) What are its contributions to local biodiversity? We found that participant farms used dozens of inputs, most of which were organic (e.g., manure for fertilizers). Farms required on average 71.6 L of irrigation water, 5.5 L of compost, and 0.53 m2 of land per kilogram of harvested food. Irrigation was lower in individual gardens and higher in sites using drip irrigation. While extremely variable, yields at well-managed urban farms can exceed those of conventional counterparts. Although farm type did not predict yield, our cluster analysis demonstrated that individually managed leisure gardens had lower yields than other farms and gardens. Farms in our sample contributed significantly to local biodiversity, with an average of 20 different crops per farm not including ornamental plants. Aside from clarifying important trends in resource use at urban farms using a robust and open dataset, this study also raises numerous questions about how crop selection and growing practices influence the environmental impacts of growing food in cities. We conclude with a research agenda to tackle these and other pressing questions on resource use at urban farms.
7pgs, Agricultural subsidies are an important factor for influencing food production and therefore
part of a food system that is seen as neither healthy nor sustainable. Here we analyse options
for reforming agricultural subsidies in line with health and climate-change objectives on one
side, and economic objectives on the other. Using an integrated modelling framework
including economic, environmental, and health assessments, we find that on a global scale
several reform options could lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in population health without reductions in economic welfare. Those include a repurposing of up to half of agricultural subsidies to support the production of foods with beneficial
health and environmental characteristics, including fruits, vegetables, and other horticultural
products, and combining such repurposing with a more equal distribution of subsidy payments globally. The findings suggest that reforming agricultural subsidy schemes based on
health and climate-change objectives can be economically feasible and contribute to transitions towards healthy and sustainable food systems
12 pages, Current food systems fail to directly link urban consumers with rural producers. City-regional strategies need to reconnect consumers with producers through sustainable local food systems. This research developed and distributed a survey questionnaire to 400 consumers in Bangkok. Findings prove that there is a statistically significant association between urban-rural relation and sustainable urban consumer behavior (Pearson’s Chi-square test for independence resulting in a significance level of p < 0.05). Sustainable consumer behavior is influenced by environmental, sociocultural, economic and health drivers, while lack of food traceability, lack of rural experience, lack of access to rural communities and negative social perception disrupt consumer-producer links. Community-based gastrotourism emerges as one of the best practices to link urban consumers with rural producers and plan sustainable food systems in mega-cities like Bangkok.
