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Urban farming has grown by more than 30 percent in the United States in the past 30 years. Although it has been estimated that urban agriculture can meet 15 to 20 percent of global food demand, it remains to be seen what level of food self-sufficiency it can realistically ensure for cities.
One recent survey found that 51 countries do not have enough urban area to meet a recommended nutritional target of 300 grams per person per day of fresh vegetables. Moreover, it estimated, urban agriculture would require 30 percent of the total urban area of those countries to meet global demand for vegetables. Land tenure issues and urban sprawl could make it hard to free up this much land for food production.
Is urban farming a pipe dream, or can appropriating vacant lots for traditional farming or employing hydroponics make it work?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 14 2019, @02:35AM (2 children)
The problem it's trying to solve is that city hipsters look down their noses at "country bumpkin" farmers and are desperate to prove that they don't need them. Embarrassingly (for the sneering cityfolk), they depend on the rural farmers much more than the rural farmers depend on them.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 14 2019, @10:58AM
My father was one such. At three months old, Dad's father and mother packed their pickup with what they could carry, abandoned all their other possessions, then baby daddy, Grandpa, Grandma and the toddler Uncle Herb drove from Santa Cruz California to Grass Valley as Grandpa had heard there was work for carpenters in the gold mines of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
One day when I was six, two of his friends and fellow officers aboard his ship came to visit us. One said to me, "Your father is very intelligent. You should ask him questions."
Uncle Herb went on to be the VP of Finance for Boswell Cotton Corporation, one of California's largest agribusinesses, perhaps one of the world's biggest actually.
Grandpa Speelmon was from way out in the middle of nowhere in Montana. He hitch-hiked from their to Denver to study at the U of Colorado Medical School, where he paid his way by working part time jobs. During World War II, he was a Captain in the US Army Air Force Medical Corps. When he died by his own hand in 1948, he was the Chief Surgeon at Deaconess Hospital in Spokane Washington.
I've met lots more City Bumpkins than those of the Country.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday February 18 2019, @12:37AM
Not where I live they don't. The farmers here don't tend to be gap-toothed racist yokel arseholes though.