Urban Agriculture and Food Security in the Age of Climate Change

[Music]

i’m here today to talk to you about

urban agriculture

in and food insecurity in the age of

climate change

to me this is a very important topic

because

food agriculture is how we live as

people

every day we eat food every day we need

food

but climate change agriculture

the way it traditionally is by seasons

where there’s rain

um that’s you know pretty much

predictable

uh good soil and sunlight

these are factors that are very

important for food production

but are not guaranteed in the age of

climate change because of these

variations in temperature

rain coming too soon too much

which can cause flooding or drought from

not having enough rain

too much heat too much coal all these

factors are making

agriculture less stable and secure

but i believe that urban agriculture is

is a good alternative and so what i want

to do is to spend some time today

talking to you about these alternatives

because really what we’re looking for

is food security we need to secure our

food

supply and with billions of people on

the earth

and continue to grow we have to have

some alternatives

so in dressing future challenges i have

some urban black solutions that i’d like

to

to talk to you about i will talk a

little bit about urban agriculture

community gardens rooftop gardens school

gardens

controlled environment agriculture

vertical farms

green walls and ecological cities

so why urban based solutions well if you

look at this chart here you can see that

this is look showing the total

population

on the earth and how much is urban and

how much is rural

using percentages and as you can see

from the bar graph here

the light brown is urban

percentage and the darker brown

is rural and if you look at the 1950s

you can see that

30 percent of the world’s population

lived in urban

environments but 70 in rural but over

time

we can see each decade there’s a decline

more people move into the cities

from the rural environments of course

that’s making the rural

population numbers go down and so it

seemed that around

2010 which was about saying well

pretty much a decade ago you can see

that there was a shift where

uh over 50 percent of the world’s

population

live in urban environments and less than

50 percent

was in rural now that we’re in 2020 the

bar graph is showing that’s

60 percent uh people live in cities and

it’s gone down to 40 there’s no bar

for 2030 but one could assume that that

trend will continue so here’s a

definition of urban agriculture

it’s the growing and processing and

distribution of food in non-food

plant tree crops and raising the

livestock directly for the urban market

while within

and in the fringe of urban areas

so another way of thinking of it is

civic agriculture

where the community gardens where people

can get together and grow food in their

own neighborhoods

this is a great thing for children

obviously to get a chance to see where

food comes from

not just from the supermarket but they

could actually grow it themselves

and so the one way for people to feel

like they have more control of their

food supply and feel more secure is to

grow their own food whether it’s

in their backyards or in the front yard

and you can also grow it in empty lots

and so forth

and so this is a way that we can look at

communities having a little more control

over what they eat

particularly if we talk about fresh

vegetables fruits and so forth

really what the issue is is about space

with traditional agriculture

you know we plan across fields on a

horizontal

and that takes up you know a lot of

space spacial area

but rooftop gardens is another space

where we can we can grow food as well

and as you can see from these pictures

there are for commercial use for private

residential use and many ways of doing

it

large scale small scale but when you’re

thinking about these alternatives you

need to look at space

as a way of creating yield

that’s higher food to school linkages is

another way of looking at food

through the lens of schools and

food education is important children

learning

at an early age where food comes from

and having some control that food supply

is an important aspect

of becoming good citizens but also

what i like to call is prosumers those

who

not that who produce as well not just

consume but you also

produce in your society

so as we say with climate change you

know the environment

is uh out in the natural world is

not something we can control but so much

seasonal changes are things that we have

to just deal with

and sometimes season’s seasonal change

works out well other times it can be

very destructive so that’s why

controlled environmental agriculture is

another

alternative way where you grow inside of

everybody’s seen greenhouses

so that concept of growing inside is

really important

geoponics is the groin with soil

and you have to have a rich soil to to

grow plants i mean in fact

plants need soil not dirt dirt is

is not alive but soil is alive it’s

alive with with microbes and bacterias

and

and worms and insects and all kinds of

little creatures

that are in there breaking down the soil

into nutrients and that’s what the

plants roots

use to to to grow and nourish itself and

then we in turn eat those plants

but you can also grow without soil

another alternative

is hydroponics and that’s water based

solutions where you have a nutrient

flow in water and and hydroponics is a

gradient way of um

creating more food through use of water

it’s a way of conserving the water

uh having the nutrients that flow and be

recycled

throughout the system plants grow faster

you can grow it inside protect it from

pests so it’s organic

and and vandalism and and so there are a

lot of advantages of course you need to

have the infrastructure

the pumps and the and the lighting and

all these things but once you make that

initial investment

then it’s about maintenance and you can

grow food

more often and larger volumes

aeroponics is another way of growing

food

using nutrients solution

but it’s it’s basically spraying the

roots of the plant

with sort of a nutrient mist and

that way you conserve water and and the

roots get bathed

but you don’t the roots don’t have to

really pull or leach

the nutrients like out of the soil it’s

sort of free-flowing

and they can just kind of pick it out

the air and it’s another way of growing

plants

much quicker and um and cleaner

aquaponics is mixing uh the growth of

plants and fish

together in somewhat of a artificial

ecosystem

and as you can see in these images here

fish can be grown and contained

and with that the baroponic system is a

system where

the fish the poop from the fish is

circulated

into the plants uh as nutrients

and in the plants uh roots sort of

filter out those nutrients

and put clean water back into the fish

tank

and so this is sort of a circular system

that

can be built uh you know and easily as

well

as you can see a lot of this is about

vertical farms

building upwards rather than just

outwards

you know uh as you can see that you know

with space

being going upwards we can we can put

more

plants uh in a room or even in a

building

as you can see in the image to the far

left here that the this high-rise

building it’s a it’s an artist’s

rendition it doesn’t

really exist right now but it could

exist

and kind of imagine that um instead of

seeing high-rise buildings where people

live

you know you can actually have buildings

where we’re growing food

plants flowers fruits

and can imagine the workforce living

there living in a building

where they tend to the food as uh and

then also

i think at the bottom that you can

imagine having

mini mall with boutiques and maybe

restaurant

maybe a marketplace where the food

that’s grown in the building is actually

being sold down on the first level

and you can also imagine this having

maybe

trucks going out to various

neighborhoods from this building

providing fresh fruit and healthy

vegetables to

local communities so it cuts down on the

carbon carbon dioxide from

emissions because instead of bringing

food in from far away

you have more of a local production

there

and it provides jobs for people in

various areas such as

engineers and botanists and plumbers and

sales people entrepreneurs it could be a

whole nother

economy also green walls

someone could think about green walls as

another helpful solution

to absorbing carbon out the atmosphere

rawls can be decorative but also is

functional to lower the heat

island effect bring the temperatures

down and cool

as well as provide oxygen and if you

wanted to

grow herbs and vegetables and lettuces

and so forth you could have smaller

versions of green walls

in your backyard and so please so once

again these are almost vertical farming

it’s

kind of going upwards on the side of

buildings we talked about beyond tops of

roof

and so all of these

are just the beginning of us thinking

about a notion of creating the

ecological city

or ecological cities it’s a term that’s

been around for a while but i think it’s

a term that we need to revisit

and move forward continue to talk about

how do we make

cities ecological meaning that they

their ecology is part of the whole

aspect of living in a city

and that part of that is food production

some of it can be done

in shipping containers as well

these are secure places where we could

grow food

using vertical farming if there’s

flooding or any reason to move these

containers you can move them to higher

ground you can move them to different

neighborhoods

they’re safe and secure buses there’s a

image of a bus there the interior where

some can even like

old school buses you can grow food in

there it could be a garden

bus or it could be

mobile farms where you could drive food

to various neighborhoods and and

serve vegetables like in a marketplace

out of a bus

so really what it comes down to

innovation if we want to deal with

climate change we need to think about

what are the ways that we can change our

cities

to be more environmentally balanced and

more ecological

and provide more food security the last

two images are

one of mazdar in the middle east

which was the ecological city where they

did focus on

building structures and vegetation and

transportation various ways to make the

city more

ecologically balanced the other last

image is once again an artist’s

rendition of a possible future

but i think this is a future that we

should look at as a division of a place

where we can grow food

for to continue to feed the masses of

people provide jobs and opportunity

to use alternative forms of energy such

as solar and wind

and secure our futures as humans on this

planet

so that’s all i have to say for now

i thank you for your time and interest

and look forward to

seeing you take some of these ideas to

heart

and helping us create a more sustainable

future thank you