Wythe Marschall, Harvard University, Department of the History of Science; Alice Reznickova, Industry Assistant Professor and Director of Sustainable Urban Environments, Department of Technology
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês
As events such as the pandemic and climate disruption lead to the reconfigurations of cities worldwide, urban agriculture is becoming an increasingly important activity. This is true both for residents of food-insecure communities, where urban gardens have worked for decades to improve access to fresh local food while offering educational opportunities, as well as startup farm businesses that tie the production of pesticide-free, “hyperlocal,” premium produce inside former warehouses to promises of green new jobs and urban renewal.
Urban agriculture is also an increasingly politicized sector, intersecting with debates about urban land use, resilience, and food justice. Many cities — including, recently, New York City — have created offices of urban agriculture to facilitate the study of this sector and spur its growth. Yet the agricultural productivity of urban agriculture, its impact on food insecurity, its ability to generate jobs, and other key markers remain under-researched. Simply determining how much food is grown in a given city is a difficult task.
Inspired by transdisciplinary projects such as the Maryland Food System Map, Cultivate Los Angeles, and Measuring and Mapping Agricultural Production in NYC (managed by the co-chairs), this panel asks: in what ways are environmental and social scientists measuring urban agriculture in different regional contexts? What methodologies — from crowd-sourcing to light detection and ranging — are supplementing surveys? What is at stake in these projects, politically and culturally, as urban agriculture gains more attention from publics, policymakers, and food-system actors? What aspects of representation and structural injustice should researchers engaged in measuring urban agriculture take into account?
