Estimating Food Production in an Urban Landscape

hubie writes:

Food security and agricultural sustainability are global issues, and how to feed a growing global population is a topic of constant concern. Urban agriculture is an area that people look to help address the issue. Urban farming provides benefits beyond the value of the food produced, but it hasn't been clear as to how much the crop yields could contribute to the needs of the community. In a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, researchers developed a methodology to estimate the current and potential food production in an urban UK setting.

The researchers estimated food production on allotments and residential gardens based on: GIS-derived data for the total area of allotments and gardens across three towns (Bedford, Luton and Milton Keynes), survey data for the proportional areas of allotments and private gardens that are cultivated for food growing, and measured yields for commonly grown crops in the UK. They also considered the yields of existing fruit-bearing trees. They considered a range of scenarios from the most conservative that estimated the amount of crops that could be grown on the land presently set aside for food growing, to the maximum potential assumption where all of the available garden plots grew food. The researchers estimated the most conservative scenario resulted in production that could meet about 9% of the region's annual need (about 30 days), whereas about half of the annual need was met under the maximal potential scenario. Their methodologies and assumptions can all be found in the open-access paper.

Journal Reference:
Grafius, D.R., Edmondson, J.L., Norton, B.A. et al. Estimating food production in an urban landscape. Sci Rep 10, 5141 (2020). (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62126-4)

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