Mainstreaming Urban Agriculture: Opportunities and Barriers to Upscaling City Farming
Abstract
:1. Introduction: Upscaling Urban Agriculture
2. Feeding the City
2.1. Conventional UA
2.2. High-Tech Growing
2.3. UA in the UK
2.4. Key Issues Moving Forwards
3. Methodology
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Growing Urban Farming
4.2. Financial Barriers to Practice
‘We mostly rely on grants from charities’(Salop Drive Market Garden)
‘Given the funding environment, a lot of organizations will do what they can to raise funds, it’s a very challenging environment’(Director of Social Farms & Gardens)
‘We just don’t have time to keep writing bids, we only have a few staff members’(Urban Farm Social Enterprise Lead)
‘Our income is below £25,000 a year… our income from supporters and community, which is the donations box generally and one-off donations people might give us, some people give a couple of hundred pound here and there’(Woodgate Valley Urban Farm)
4.3. Soil Contamination Barriers
4.4. Crime and Urban Farming
4.5. Opportunities with Urban Farming
‘Lots of local people get involved and volunteer’(Woodbank Urban Farm)
‘We have individual allotments or programs for local people to get involved with on the space’(Salop Drive)
‘We’ve worked with the local community for years… there are lots of younger and older people involved’(Woodgate Valley Urban Farm)
‘We have a growing club every Wednesday afternoon with lots of local people turning up to join in and learn’(Wythenshawe Community Farm)
4.6. Contributions to Knowledge: Reviewing the Key Findings
5. Moving Forwards
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Urban Farm | Core Activities | Type |
---|---|---|
Farm Urban |
| High-tech |
Salop Drive Market Garden |
| Market garden |
Woodbank Urban Farm |
| Cooperative farm |
Wythenshawe Community Farm |
| Social farm with meat production |
Woodgate Valley |
| Social farm without meat production |
Northern Roots |
| Upscaled 160 acre urban and peri-urban farm |
Typology | Opportunities | Barriers |
---|---|---|
High-tech urban farms |
|
|
Market gardens/cooperative farms |
|
|
Social farms |
|
|
Large-scale (>50 acres) urban farms |
|
|
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Hardman, M.; Clark, A.; Sherriff, G. Mainstreaming Urban Agriculture: Opportunities and Barriers to Upscaling City Farming. Agronomy 2022, 12, 601. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12030601
Hardman M, Clark A, Sherriff G. Mainstreaming Urban Agriculture: Opportunities and Barriers to Upscaling City Farming. Agronomy. 2022; 12(3):601. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12030601
Chicago/Turabian StyleHardman, Michael, Andrew Clark, and Graeme Sherriff. 2022. "Mainstreaming Urban Agriculture: Opportunities and Barriers to Upscaling City Farming" Agronomy 12, no. 3: 601. https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy12030601