Agriculture Is Good For Cities And The Environment

A Response to Edward L. Glaeser’s Article “The Locavore’s Dilemma: Urban Farms Do More Harm Than Good To The Environment“

by Colin Cureton

June 22, 2011

Glaeser’s recent article in the Boston Globe provocatively suggests that urban farming does more harm than good. He argues that urban farms’ reduction of emissions due to decreased food shipping is greatly outweighed by increased energy usage. This increase is caused by large-scale urban farms displacing people and driving down population density. While Glaeser raises important questions about what the comprehensive effects of starting urban farms on a large scale would be, his model includes several fatal flaws. Here are just a few.

The biggest assumption is the simplistic (and false) choice between urban land for people and urban land for food. While land is a scarce resource, most urban ag is thriving on what was or otherwise would be vacant urban land. The amount of vacant urban land is vast in cities across the country. For example, the New York City’s Department of City Planning figures show that 6% of NYC is considered vacant. In Detroit, this figure is an astonishing 25-30% (anyone wonder why a revolutionary urban food system is emerging there?). Chicago has 70,000-80,000 vacant lots. This list goes on. Also, much of urban ag is practiced in spaces that does not disrupt nor would it disrupt urban development. Think boulevards, side yards, public parks, rooftops, and so on. These are the spaces where urban ag thrives. As an urban agriculturalist, all four of my farms are on previously vacant or underutilized land. Two are vacant lots, one is at a church, and one is in a public park. Are my urban farms displacing anyone?

Second, Glaeser’s isolation of the reduction in carbon emissions due to shipping as the sole benefit of local food/urban farms is misleading. It excludes all of the other possible energy efficiencies of urban ag. relative to conventional ag. For example, urban ag is often associated with low-input agricultural techniques including agro-ecological practices, bio-intensive farming, integrated pest-management, organic methods, aquaponics, etc. Most urban agriculturalists (or the ones I know at least) aren’t out dousing our plants with fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides. I would be interested in the full energy cost of producing a “conventional” tomato in Chile for domestic US consumption including shipping and fertilizers and pesticides compared to a seasonal, organic tomato grown down the block.

Just because economists like numbers, let’s throw a few in. Let’s posit that I’m growing tomatoes on an average urban farm that is organic or mostly organic. I’m only going off my own experience of being a non-certified, organic urban farmer. The Rodale Institute found that organic farming systems use just 63% of the energy required by conventional farming systems. There’s 40% energy savings on the production end on my urban-farmed tomato. I also save another 10% of total emissions saved on my down-the-block tomato that requires little to no transportation (Glaeser estimates that transportation accounts for 11% of the total carbon emissions generated by the average American household’s food consumption). My urban farm is on a previously vacant lot so growing it does not displace anyone, which means this 10% is saved without Glaeser’s projected emission increase due to decreased density. Lastly, let’s assume that I was able to start this farm based on a forward-thinking urban ag policy that is part of the city’s comprehensive carbon emissions reduction plan. Where does my urban tomato stand now in terms of energy consumption? Contrary to what Glaeser would have us believe, my tomato is an emissions-reducing, chemical-free, energy-saving, community-building machine! It will also taste (and feel) pretty darn good.

Glaeser’s suggestion that urban ag will displace people, decrease population density, and increase emissions is not only over-simplistic, it’s also highly ironic. One would be hard pressed to find a single urban ag enthusiast that has advocated for tearing down houses or businesses to make room for gardens & farms. Far from displacing people, one of the central goals of the urban ag movement is to root and sustain existing communities. To suggest the opposite simply is a serious misunderstanding of the purpose of urban agriculture. On the emissions front, the irony of Glaeser’s argument is that urban agriculture is now being incorporated into an approach to urban planning that tends to support more bikable, walkable, livable, and efficient cities. The emerging models of urban life are designed to increase density and decrease carbon emissions through systematic changes in transportation, energy efficiency, neighborhood planning, and more. Community gardens and urban farms are just small parts of these larger plans to bring people together in increasingly isolated, be it physical or psychological, urban environments and to make more healthy, livable cities. So while Glaeser suggests that urban farms displace people, decrease density, and increase emissions, the reality is that they do the opposite on all three accounts!

Stepping back, we often see the application of simplistic and outdated economic models in ways or places that they really don’t fit. Glaeser’s article is a textbook example. My inner urban ag practictioner also needs me to point out that Glaeser’s article is a classic case of speaking before listening. Had he done even cursory research into urban ag, many of the dynamics would be obvious factors to include in his analysis of the energy costs of urban ag. Instead he talks about simply plopping large, conventional, monocrop farms down in a city. If Glaeser were to re-visit his argument with a few of these complexities in mind, the energy snapshot of urban ag would show a very different picture.

Colin Cureton is a Program Director at the Youth Farm and Market Project and a graduate student in Food and Energy Policy at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.