Category: LANDSCAPES

Public health

Over-processed, over-preserved and over-packaged foods mean that consumers are buying foods of low nutritional value. Diet related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and appendicitis increase as societies move towards the Western diet, low in fruit and vegetables, and high in refined starches, fats and sugars. Pesticide residues pose additional health risks, although it is […]

IMPLICATIONS OF THE FOOD MILES CHAIN

Environment Air pollutants and climate change gases are released as fossil fuels are used for production, transport and packaging of food and drink prod­ucts. The CO2 emissions created by producing, processing, packaging and distributing the food consumed by a family of four come to about eight tonnes a year. Road freight alone is responsible for […]

Air freight

Air freight of fresh foods has doubled in the past twenty years, a trend which is set to continue. Air transport is particularly damaging to the environment as it results in 37 times more carbon dioxide emissions than sea freight, and because pollutants are emitted at high altitudes where more damage is done in terms […]

FOOD MILES

Angela Paxton INTRODUCTION Consumers in rich industrialised countries are accustomed to being able to choose from the global breadbasket whenever they go to the local supermarket. A UK shopper can buy grapes from Chile, green beans from Kenya and bottled water from Canada. However these food choices do not come cheaply: there is a whole […]

CITIES AS SUSTAINABLE SYSTEMS

Urban agriculture is an important aspect of the wider issue of urban sustainability, both by being able to supply food from close-by and by offering livelihoods for city people. Another important issue, as already discussed, is the efficient use of nutrients from the urban metabolism that would otherwise end up as pollutants in rivers and […]

Developed countries

But, anybody who thinks that urban farming is only a phenomenon primarily of poorer countries, should have a look around parts of New York City. In the Bronx, for instance, an astonishing range of vegetable gardens sprang up in the 1980s, prima­rily in areas where drug-related gang warfare resulted in houses being burned down and […]

RELEARNING URBAN AGRICULTURE

Urbanisation, and the shift from rural to urban living by billions of people, has not only resulted in major environmental problems, but also in urban poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition, particularly in developing countries. But, almost unnoticed, it has resulted in the growth of a remarkable phenomenon: urban agriculture. According to UNDP, in 1996 some […]

ENERGY AND LAND-USE

The site of Heathrow airport used to be London’s market garden. Its sandy soil is very suitable for vegetable growing. Today, even though it is largely concreted over, Heathrow is still London’s major food supplier, but in a rather different way: food is flown in from across the globe. Such a global har­vest offers us […]

Local growing and trading of crops

There is no particular reason why fresh, local, seasonal food could not be promoted as powerfully as the limited number of international foods which are available throughout the year. It is understood that urban agriculture will not supply all food needs and that a degree of imported staple and ‘special’ food will always top up […]