Module 4 Introduction to Urban Agriculture
Module 4 Introduction to Urban Agriculture
Introduction to Urban
Agriculture
Lesson 4.1 History of Urban Agriculture
Module Overview
Learning Outcomes
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comment it on our Google classroom where the lesson is posted so the
instructor/professor can help you.
2. Answer the assessment and attached your output in our classroom. Note:
Avoid directly answering the quick assessment without reading the lesson first.
With urbanization and since more and more people would like to do their
farming where they are, urban gardening is considerably being taken up and has been
a successful alternative a shift from the traditional thinking that the cultivation of
crops can only be done in the rural areas.
The history of urban agriculture dates back to about 3,500 B.C., according to
the American Society of Landscape Architects’ (ASLA) blog. At a symposium of
historians and landscape architects, they discussed how Mesopotamian farmers began
setting aside plots in growing cities.
In the same part of the world about 1,500 years later, the semi-desert towns
of Persia offered one of the earliest pieces archeological evidence for urban food
production. Thanks to urban aqueducts, mountain water was brought to oasis to
produce food using a great deal of urban waste within the settlement.
Two other early examples come from the Western Hemisphere in the 1400s
A.D. A notable instance was the nutritionally self-reliant city of Machu Picchu in Peru.
“Scarce water was reused time and again, step-by-step down the mountain,” urban
agriculture expert Jac Smit wrote in the foreword of the book “Continuous Productive
Another notable point in history is from the Aztec civilization. They used
“chinampa,” or floating islands, for farming just outside of cities on lakes, K. Michelle
Glowa noted in “The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies.”
The island became an important part of the Aztecs’ growth when they needed to
support their population, but conquering more land wasn’t feasible.
The precursor to urban agriculture in the 21st century may be the enclosure
movement in England. It foreshadowed the Industrial Revolution, and according to
authors in volume 44 of “Horticultural Reviews,” the movement “divided parishes and
open-access lands with hedges, fences, and walls, wiping out ancient land-use
patterns and excluding peasants from vast tracts of land.” Despite social unrest to
resist the enclosure movement, the rural poor became displaced. Events like the
popular Midland Revolt uprising (and the subsequent Newton Rebellion, which
resulted in 40-50 people killed) led to some concessions, like allotments, which are
public spaces in the city used for food production.
From 1880 to the early 1900s, allotment gardens became a popular way for
European cities like London, Paris, and Stockholm to help the urban poor become self-
provisioning. In peri-urban areas, or land that immediately surrounds a city, poor
families were given land to garden. This idea wasn’t unique to those European cities,
however. Glowa mentioned how several urban planners, designers, and theorist
connected that notion to urban farming. For instance, at the turn of the century,
Ebenezer Howard’s garden city movement included gardens and larger agricultural
fields within walking distance of town. Also, in the 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Broadacre City advocated for agricultural uses on each home’s one-acre allotment.
The result was the separation between food production and urban areas. Urban
agriculture wouldn’t come back into the mainstream until it emerged later in the 20th
century. That began the movement that exists today.
A contributing factor was post war urban manufacturing. According to the non-
profit online journal Grist, factories left for the South, and later to Mexico and Asia.
High rates of unemployment and residents fleeing urban areas had direct
consequences for landlords, who couldn’t make enough in rent to cover their property
taxes. As the following excerpt from a 1977 Time article demonstrates, landlords
often turned to eviction, arson, and a quick insurance settlement.
Communities took the opportunity to start fresh. They cleaned up the ashes
and planted gardens that could produce fresh foods. Gardening became a way to
rejuvenate urban areas and attract more residents. Plus, it helped with inflation and
environmental concerns of the time.
Community gardens in the ’70s marked the origins of the current renaissance in
urban agriculture. Glowa noted that the true renaissance began in the 1990s when
U.S. cities connected urban farms and gardens to solving food insecurity in the mid-
1990s. Later, urban agriculture became increasingly connected to environmental
justice activism, local food promotion, urban sustainability efforts, community health
campaigns, and food justice activism.
Definition
Urban agriculture is farming in the city and other highly urbanized areas. It is
the growing of crops and raising of livestock in small areas within the city or home
consumption or sale in the neighbourhood markets. It is an activity that produces,
processes, and markets food and other products on land and water in urban areas by
applying intensive production methods by reusing natural resources and urban wastes.
It can be an activity that helps enhance the value and quality of life in terms of
economic and sociocultural aspects by growing plants and animals in various spaces in
urban areas.
1. Backyard Gardens
This is cultivating food in the homeland. Its produce is mostly shared between
friends, family, and neighbors as it typically leads to a harvest surplus. The food can be
preserved and conserved as well. Backyard gardens benefit communities as neighbors can
share each other’s backyard and use different farming methods leading to better yields.
2. Street landscaping
3. Forest gardening
This relates to the tradition of growing gardens within an urban forest. Forest
planting is accomplished by the production of various crops, vegetables, and fruits in
urban environments. Forests typically provide an atmosphere conducive to crop
production, and for this purpose, they help preserve forests and can render
deforestation a nonfactor in urban settings. Forest planting may also be part of
afforestation activities, which enables trees to be planted as a step towards
mitigating global warming in urban areas.
4. Greenhouses
5. Rooftop gardens
Since urban areas have limited space, it doesn’t mean that they can’t practice
agriculture. This is where space on the rooftop comes in because they can easily be
used to grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs. The downside of rooftop gardens is that it
can help to minimize urban heat island and enhance the air quality. Apart from these,
gardens on the rooftop can be used to beautify leisure establishments.
6. Green walls
The green wall includes vegetation or food crops growing on a wall’s external
or internal area. It does not take up much room as the system used helps to supply
sufficient water to the food and it uses soil present on the walls. This is a good way to
reduce the runoff from stormwater.
7. Vertical farms
8. Animal husbandry
For urban environments, this is the method of rearing animals for food. An
urban dweller may select a suitable location to hold various animal types or focus on
particular animals such as chickens, goats, rabbits, or sheep. Many towns restrict the
number of animals that you can keep and even the type of animals that you can keep.
9. Urban beekeeping
This is a possibility but comes with a lot of local government restrictions and
regulations depending on the location and the town. Which is to
say, beekeeping requirements can vary from city to city. Nonetheless, if done, it does
have a lot of advantages for the local community. Bees are important for the
ecosystem because not only do they produce honey, they also act as pollinators and
promote biodiversity.
10. Aquaponics
It suggests the tradition in urban areas of rearing marine animals such as fish.
This requires the use of a device that collects rainwater from inside the town and
then produces a self-supporting network of recirculation in tanks or artificial fish
ponds. This is an effective crop rearing process and an alternative protein.
Farming in towns and cities is not a recent concept – urban agriculture has (at
least) been around for centuries. What’s fresh about it today are the opportunities
open to urban farmers and the kinds of ways that practically everyone can grow food
for themselves, no matter the nature or size of their house.
Backyard Permaculture
One of the best ways to reduce the reliance on industrial agriculture and the
inhumane conditions in which many chickens and other animals are kept is by making
their own meat imports. Backyard chicken keeping is a common way to get into urban
agriculture quickly and easily without investing a lot of money or having plenty of
room to garden. The amount of eggs and meat provided by chickens needs relatively
little space and is easy to care for.
Container Gardens
Patio Gardens
The patio garden, an extension of the container garden, is typically similar but
on a much larger scale. Many apartments and condominiums have patios that look out
over the neighbourhood and have clear access to sunshine, most importantly. These
can be transformed into small gardens that grow all kinds of produce. Many patio
Anyone with very little room to grow food would possibly use polyculture as a way to
increase crop yields and diversity. Simply put, polyculture is the combining of plants within a
garden to provide several plants (and crops) at once. For example, growing lettuce at the
foot of corn plants will provide both commodities in a small space. The same allows for the
combination of climbing plants on a trellis with bush-type plants at the trellis’ foot. This
intensive approach provides high yields for small spaces, which requires a great deal of soil
input to make it fertile enough for the plants.
Compost
Composting can be achieved almost anywhere and through composting, most kitchens
can save 30 percent or more of their garbage. Outdoor conventional compost bins will hold
the garden full of nutritious soil additives. And those indoors can use composters designed to
go under the counter by vermicompost (worms) and kitchen composters. There are plenty of
choices and composting is the most organic, sustainable way of building soil for any garden
form.
Beekeeping
For urban farmers, another common alternative is to keep bees. Many have
beehives on the rooftop, hives on the back yard and flower gardens, and more pop up
nationally as people embrace this way of getting fresh, healthy honey.
Urban farming has a lot of advantages, not only for those involved but also for
the local city.
Living in the town is fast. Nearly everybody is on the move and there is barely
any room for people to mingle and chat with neighbours. Urban farming is an
important way to bring together urban dwellers — like community planting, urban
farming brings a sense of belonging to most marginalized people within the city. It’s a
perfect way to put together like-minded people for a major cause.
Cities have a growing population, and people suffering from obesity and other
diet-related health problems are frequently found. Urban farming beings offer local
populations affordable and safe food. This helps the community’s people battle life-
threatening conditions such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Urban agriculture
is also a healthy form of exercise and also promotes health and wellbeing.
Localizing the source of a product helps to reduce the fossil fuel consumption
required for processing, transporting, and selling food products. A typical meal has to
fly from the farm to the table 4,200 miles away. Urban farming reduces the carbon
footprint, as well as being affordable.
Urban farmers face the challenge of finding creative solutions to address urban
farming challenges such as land, capital, electricity, and waste, in a city space that
lacks large open, fertile grounds conducive to agriculture. Innovative farming methods
are implemented to help farmers grow products without losing quantity and quality.
The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about urban areas is the tall
buildings and massive infrastructures. Evidently, urban areas lack green spaces, which
significantly influence an area’s climate and environment. Urban farming enables
green spaces to be built which adds a great aesthetic appeal, provides calming and
relaxing spaces, and reduces precipitation. Green spaces also mitigate the heat island
effect by trapping carbon by photosynthesis.
The term urban agriculture has surfaced in cursory discussions among the
members of the administrative council of the Cavite State University (CvSU), then Don
Severino Agriculture College (DSAC), as early as 1990. CvSU research and
development activities focused on multi-storey farming systems with coconut and
coffee base crops. With limited land area available for large scale farming, the
college opted to develop nursery management for ornamentals, rapid propagation of
orchids, greenhouse management of high value crops and vegetables, and the
development of native chicken. It may be noted that these are some components of
urban agriculture.
It has also been observed that muscovy duck can thrive on droppings of poultry
with very little feed supplement. The recycling of chicken manure for fish feed is not
new. This practice has been observed in some small poultry farms in Laguna during
the early 1980s where the structures are built above tilapia or catfish ponds.
However, the psychological impact to consumers has contributed to the demise of the
practice.
use of crops, livestock and fish in the urban setting. Such technologies included
conversion of biodegradable solid wastes into humus or compost, recycling of waste
water, integrated pest management, and use of organic or herbal pesticides, among
others (Morcozo, Technotrends 4, 1995).
In response, Barangay Holy Spirit in Quezon City was identified as the pilot area
representing a city in Metro Manila and Barangay Sto. Toribio, which is along the
railroad tracks in Lipa City representing on urban area in the province. A UAP task
force was formed at DA Region IV to implement the projects. These two projects
succeeded in demonstrating the feasibility of urban agriculture.
Without stretching the mind too far, urban agriculture can mean big business
opportunities to more enterprising ones.
The growing media for the plants can be prepared and sold to those who need
them in case the city dwellers want to have them readily available. This can be
composed of soil mixed with compost, soil and rice hull or sawdust, or garden soil
from the riverbanks.
During the previous year, the adverse effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have
been felt by people globally. In the Philippines, the community quarantine in the
world has been imposed. Although the quarantine has been placed for the benefit of
the people, it has also provided new challenges that threatened how people live. It
cost countless Filipinos their source of livelihood and limited their mobility, which
also obstructed food from reaching the various points in the country.
In 2001, the National Integrated Research and Extension Program for Urban
Agriculture was formed under the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Agricultural
Research (DA-BAR). Through the Special Order No. 111, Series of 2001 issued by then
DA-BAR Director, Dr. Eliseo R. Ponce on May 24, 2001; a Technical Working Group
(TWG) for the Urban Agriculture National Research, Development and Extension (RDE)
was created.
1.5. Postharvest/Processing
This will include studies on processing/packaging of plant and animal products
to prolong their shelf life and add value to the products.
4. Market Development
References
Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and
Development. Urban vegetable production in the Philippines. Los Banos, Laguna:
PCARRD-DOST, 2007. 96p.-(Book series No. 176/2007)
https://www.fftc.org.tw/htmlarea_file/activities/20110719103448/paper-
947796964.pdf