Imagine a city where your favourite fruits and vegetables are all grown next door, maybe in raised garden beds under a hydro corridor or on the roof of an apartment building.
Not only does urban agriculture hold the key to improving access to different types of food in large urban areas, it might also help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process.
“Urban areas have so much food-growing potential, but our knowledge about how, where and what kind of crops can be grown in and around cities is limited,” says Marney Isaac, a professor in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Global Development Studies at U of T Scarborough.
“We know even less about how well urban agriculture can capture and store carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is a major contributor to climate change.”
Professor Marney Isaac taking measurements of soil carbon levels at the Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute (BCI) urban farm in Etobicoke.
To help answer these questions, Isaac will lead a multifaceted project with a team of researchers and partners from the private and public sector thanks to a $3.9-million grant from the NSERC- and SSHRC-funded Sustainable Agriculture Research Initiative.
The project, called TOsustain (Toward Sustainable Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture for Net-zero Food Systems), is broken into five thematic areas.
The first task is to create an inventory of current and potential land for agriculture in urban and peri-urban (the land immediately surrounding urban areas) spaces across Toronto and the GTA. This includes smaller farms and large-scale growing operations in the GTA, public lands, powerline corridors, community gardens, green roofs and unused greenspaces.
Professor Marney Isaac taking measurements of soil carbon levels at the Burnhamthorpe Collegiate Institute (BCI) urban farm in Etobicoke.
In addition to the land inventory, the project will look at measuring the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions urban agricultural land can potentially trap and store and identifying farm management practices that can reduce GHG emissions. It will also include research looking at regulations and policies that either constrain or promote urban agriculture and develop the first ever model to estimate GHG emissions from urban agriculture.
Isaac says there are many benefits to having a robust urban agricultural system.
If we can do more to localize food production and enhance crop diversity, it can help make our food system more resilient.
In addition to improving access to culturally relevant foods and cutting GHG emissions, she points to the added security of having to rely less on food imports. There’s also the benefit of cutting GHG emissions through food transportation.
“The majority of our food is imported, so there’s a huge security element,” says Isaac, who is an expert on making agriculture more sustainable.
If we can do more to localize food production and enhance crop diversity, it can help make our food system more resilient.
“This really came to light during the pandemic. If we can do more to localize food production and enhance crop diversity, it can help make our food system more resilient.”
The researchers also want to explore how sustainable agricultural practices – those that require less intensive use of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation – in urban areas can help reduce GHG emissions compared to conventional agricultural systems. Isaac adds that greater urban food production might also help reduce the pressure on converting forests to farmland in rural areas, a major environmental concern and contributor to global GHG emissions.
Postdoc Lutchmee Sujeeun at Black Creek Community Farm in North York.
The project is pulling together an interdisciplinary team of 15 researchers, including 11 from U of T, with expertise in soil biogeochemistry, crop biology, microbial ecology and urban food systems, among others. It also includes eight partner organizations from the private and public sectors that are involved in food production, food distribution and land management.
Adam Martin, a colleague of Isaac’s in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences and co-lead on the project, says urban farming isn’t about replacing large-scale agricultural systems that supply wheat, for example. Rather, it can produce relatively large quantities of fruits and vegetables that can bring economic benefits to households living in cities.
Martin says that improving access to food in urban areas also has a host of positive downstream effects.
“Local food banks rely heavily on local small-scale farms and community gardens for fresh produce and food bank use is on the rise,” he says, adding that many urban communities are located in “food deserts,” where the cost of accessing certain food, particularly fresh produce, is much higher than in other communities.
Postdoc Lutchmee Sujeeun at Black Creek Community Farm in North York.
“By increasing people’s access to nutritious and affordable food, it can go a long way in addressing these social and economic challenges.”