Urban Farming: The future of food or Arcadia on the cheap?

In a thought-provoking article in The Global Urbanist, the urban designer Mike Duff discusses How cities can embrace urban agriculture and weaken the grip of 'big food'.  The issue of urban farming has been attracting much attention recently and Duff makes an appealing argument in favour of this form of agriculture. Duff realizes that the main limitation to the growth of urban agriculture from a marginal activity into a significant source of food is its limited scale and therefore urges the loosening of regulation to allow the development of larger, more efficient urban farms capable of competing with large supermarkets. But portraying this important discussion as a David versus Goliath confrontation reveals the romanticised view of the world that drives support for urban farming today. This is no longer a discussion about cities or food but another symptom of our discontent with modernity.

A few months ago, the BBC screened the sublime film Requiem for Detroit? which powerfully captured the decline of the city from a major industrial centre into a post-industrial wasteland. The film provided a snapshot of the extent of land reclaimed by ‘nature’, a staggering area of 40sq miles out of the 139sq mile inner city. Since the national supermarket chains had long abandoned the inner city, thereby cutting off the supply of fresh produce, the locals turned to farming thus sparking off a large-scale movement. The availability of land naturally facilitated this process.