Urban agriculture may be inefficient, but it’s a model for a sustainable future

IAN CLARKE
Contributed to The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016 5:00AM EDT
Last updated Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016 5:00AM EDT

This piece is part of a Globe and Mail/OCAD University summer series highlighting design thinking, issues and innovation. Previously: There’s no innovation agenda without design thinking

Ian Clarke is an artist, brain-cancer stem-cell scientist, urban farmer and biomimicry design researcher. He is associate dean of the faculty of liberal arts and sciences and School of Interdisciplinary Studies at OCAD University.

It’s time we learned to embrace inefficiency. That may sound like heresy in a time when we are told that we must increase our competitiveness to become leaner, to increase productivity, to become more efficient to compete in the global marketplace. But it’s time we stop to reflect on how we use the term “efficient” and the consequences of this goal on the future employment prospects of millions of Canadians, and on the environment.

The burgeoning urban and near-urban agriculture trend in North America and around the world exemplifies how many small-scale, entrepreneurial businesses are inherently inefficient in how much labour they use. But this is something we should encourage and recognize as important for both economies and societies. When we talk about efficiency, we are usually talking about producing the most product or service for the least input or cost, including labour cost. But this definition of efficiency is counterproductive for job creation and for the environment. In Canada, we’ve seen a shift from large, industrial employers to service and entrepreneurial sector jobs.

Canada’s official unemployment rate for July, 2016, was 6.9 per cent, with an additional 18 per cent having only part-time work. More than a quarter of part-time workers say they would like full-time work, but are unable to find it. These figures don’t even include people who have given up trying to find work, as they are not included as unemployed by Statistics Canada. Most estimates put the real rate of unemployed and underemployed as approximately double the official unemployment rate.

So there are about 2.7 million Canadians who are unemployed or underutilized but want to work. This is an enormous drag on our economy and our society’s well-being. The real measure we should aspire to is an economy that is most efficient at producing meaningful jobs and quality of life for as many people as possible, while using only renewable supplies of material resources and energy.

The urban agriculture sector is expanding rapidly, for both personal use and commercial growing. Its scale ranges from tiny backyard plots to community and school gardens to larger commercial farms within and next to the city limits and hydroponic greenhouse operations on industrial rooftops, such as Lufa Farms in Montreal and Gotham Green in Brooklyn, N.Y.

My own research at OCAD University – the Passive Urban Greenhaus project – has demonstrated that with proper solar-heating design, greenhouse growing is possible throughout the cold of a Toronto winter with little to no additional heating. This kind of design could expand urban agriculture into the winter with greatly reduced carbon emissions. These green spaces add benefits to our well-being: In temperatures well below zero, it is a transformative experience to shovel through the snow to our university rooftop greenhouse and step inside, smelling the earth and seeing the plants growing. Gardening has been linked with reduced levels of stress, depression and symptoms of ADHD. It has even been linked to living longer.

Toronto is rapidly becoming a leader in urban agriculture. The city has a greenbelt that protects agricultural land just outside the city. It has a food policy and action plan that encourages urban agriculture and is signatory to agreements such as the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact. Portions of the redeveloped Toronto Downsview Park have been set aside for urban farms.

Globally, a recent survey found that 5.7 per cent of the world’s total cropland is urban, and that it produces more food per hectare than traditional rural farms. Studies have shown that Toronto has 6,200 hectares that could be made available for agriculture on unused rooftops and hydro corridors. These green roofs would provide an ongoing municipal savings of approximately $37-million a year in infrastructure costs and additional savings to businesses and residents on air-conditioning costs. In 2009, research from Detroit showed that if 20 per cent of fresh food was grown within the city, it would create 4,700 jobs and bring in nearly $20-million in taxes. Urban agriculture is very efficient at producing both food and jobs.

To those interested in history, this may sound familiar. During the world wars, the government encouraged people to plant food gardens in all available urban spaces. In 1944, the United States produced more than eight million tons of fresh fruit and vegetables in these so-called victory gardens, equal to the amount grown by all commercial growers that year.