Dorr Erica, Hawes Jason K, Goldstein Benjamin, Fargue-Lelièvre Agnès, Fox-Kämper Runrid, Specht Kathrin, Fedeńczak Konstancja, Caputo Silvio, Cohen Nevin, Poniży Lidia, Schoen Victoria, Górecki Tomasz, Newell Joshua P, Jean-Soro Liliane, Grard Baptiste
University Paris-Saclay, INRAE-AgroParisTech, UMR SAD-APT, Palaiseau, France.
School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI USA.
Agron Sustain Dev. 2023;43(1):18. doi: 10.1007/s13593-022-00859-4. Epub 2023 Feb 1.
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 m 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.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13593-022-00859-4.
关于城市农场使用的资源和生产的食物，目前缺乏相关数据。这阻碍了人们量化城市农业对环境的影响或制定城市可持续粮食生产政策的努力。为了填补这一空白，我们采用了公民科学方法，从五个国家（法国、德国、波兰、英国和美国）的72个城市农业场所收集数据，这些场所代表了三种类型的空间（城市农场、集体花园、个人花园）。我们利用这个前所未有的数据集回答了关于城市农业的三个关键问题：（1）其土地、水、养分和能源需求是什么？（2）相对于传统农业以及不同类型的农场，它的生产力如何？（3）它对当地生物多样性有哪些贡献？我们发现参与的农场使用了几十种投入物，其中大部分是有机的（例如，用作肥料的粪肥）。农场每收获一公斤食物平均需要71.6升灌溉水、5.5升堆肥和0.53平方米土地。个人花园的灌溉量较低，使用滴灌的场所灌溉量较高。虽然产量变化极大，但管理良好的城市农场的产量可以超过传统农场。虽然农场类型不能预测产量，但我们的聚类分析表明，个体经营的休闲花园的产量低于其他农场和花园。我们样本中的农场对当地生物多样性有显著贡献，每个农场平均有20种不同的作物（不包括观赏植物）。除了使用强大且开放的数据集阐明城市农场资源利用的重要趋势外，本研究还提出了许多关于作物选择和种植方式如何影响城市粮食种植环境影响的问题。我们最后提出了一个研究议程，以解决这些以及其他关于城市农场资源利用的紧迫问题。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s13593-022-00859-4获取的补充材料。
