Urban food security, urban resilience and climate change - weADAPT

Like Hodgson et al., as per definition above – this leads Mougeot to offer this morecomprehensive and consistent definition:Urban agriculture is an industry located within or on the fringe of a town, a city ora metropolis, which grows or raises, processes and distributes a diversity of foodand non-food products, (re-)using largely human and material resources,products and services found in and around that urban area, and in turn supplyinghuman and material resources, products and services largely to that urban area.As shown later in this report, not all urban food growers identify with the term urbanagriculture, and many do not conceive of it as an ‘industry’. Indeed, many of theactivities as well as the informal networks of food distribution that exist under theumbrella term of ‘urban agriculture’ occur outside of the formal economy throughpractices such as gleaning, food swapping and sharing.In an annotated bibliography of urban agriculture prepared for the SwedishInternational Development Agency (Sida), De Zeeuw notes that:Urban agriculture is not easy to define since a large variety of urban farmingsystems can be encountered, with varying characteristics according to localsocio-economic, physio-geographic and political conditions. (p. 7)In contrast to agriculture, or more specifically, rural agriculture – urban agriculture isdescribed as agriculture:… that it is integrated into the urban economic and ecological system...It is notits urban location which distinguishes urban from rural agriculture, but the fact it isembedded in and interacts with the urban ecosystem. (p. 9)In the cities of developing countries, local food production is often a response toinadequate, unreliable and irregular access to food as well as to poverty or lack ofpurchasing power. In Australian cities the motivations are generally speaking different.They often reflect concerns with the provenance of food, a desire to reduce thedistance food has to travel before it is consumed, and a wish to reconnect with natureby growing more of the food one consumes. While these imperatives may be lesspressing than those facing city dwellers in developing countries, they reflect a set ofpreferences and motivations among city dwellers, which appear to be growing.(Ladner, 2011; Steel, 2008) as part of a wider movement to change urban lifestyles toless consumptive and more sustainable forms [for example Gleeson, 2009; slow cities,transition towns, etc.]. These broader dispositions help shape the prevailingconceptions of urban agriculture in Australia.4.1.4 How might urban agriculture contribute to greater food security?There are few studies that attempt to measure systematically the impact of any urbanagricultural activity in relation to broader notions of food security. Indeed, as Burns(2004) notes,Currently, there are no known systematic reviews of the effectiveness of communityfood security interventions [...] There have been a small number of non-systematicUrban food security, urban resilience and climate change 22