{"id":55849,"date":"2024-04-03T01:00:50","date_gmt":"2024-04-03T09:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/?p=55849"},"modified":"2024-04-03T13:25:18","modified_gmt":"2024-04-03T21:25:18","slug":"despite-recent-headlines-urban-farming-is-not-a-climate-villain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/2024\/04\/03\/despite-recent-headlines-urban-farming-is-not-a-climate-villain\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite Recent Headlines, Urban Farming Is Not a Climate Villain"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/div>

At the end of January, multiple publications including Modern Farmer<\/em><\/a> and Bloomberg<\/em><\/a> ran eye-catching stories on the results of a research study<\/a> published in Nature<\/em>. Forbes<\/em> declared<\/a> that, \u201cUrban Farming Has a Shockingly High Climate Cost,\u201d a headline that was outright wrong in terms of the study\u2019s findings. Earth.com led with<\/a> a single, out-of-context data point: \u201cUrban agriculture\u2019s carbon footprint is 6x greater than normal farms.\u201d<\/p><\/div>

\n

On Instagram, urban farmers and gardeners began to express anger and frustration. Some commented on media company posts<\/a>; others posted their own critiques<\/a>. In February, students at the University of Michigan, where the study was conducted, organized a letter<\/a> to the researchers pointing out issues with the study.<\/p>\n

The issue most cited across critiques was simple: When urban farms were separated from community gardens in the study, the higher rate of greenhouse gas emissions reported essentially disappeared.<\/p>\n

Now, two months later, national advocates for the multi-faceted benefits of growing food and green spaces in cities are working to counter what they see as harmful narratives created by a study they say had design flaws to begin with and was then poorly communicated to the public. Of special concern is funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s (USDA) fledgling Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production, which Congress has been shorting<\/a> since it was established. A coalition of groups have been pushing to change that in the upcoming farm bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope the damage isn\u2019t already done, but we fear that publicity around this paper will minimize the advocacy of urban farmers and partners over the past many years and possibly undermine the continued and necessary investment in urban agricultural communities,\u201d reads a letter sent to the study authors by Michigan Food and Farming Systems, the Organic Farming Research Foundation, Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, and the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope the damage isn\u2019t already done, but we fear that publicity around this paper will minimize the advocacy of urban farmers and partners over the past many years…\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Their overall critiques of the study start with the sample set of \u201curban farms.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a conversation with Civil Eats, lead author Jason Hawes, a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan, said this his team compiled \u201cthe largest data set that we know of\u201d on urban farming. It included 73 urban farms, community gardens, and individual garden sites in Europe and the United States. At each of those sites, the research team worked with farmers and gardeners to collect data on the infrastructure, daily supplies used, irrigation, harvest amounts, and social goods.<\/p>\n

That data was then used to calculate the carbon emissions embodied in the production of food at each site and those emissions were compared to carbon emissions of the same foods produced at \u201cconventional\u201d farms. Overall, they found greenhouse gas emissions were six times higher at the urban sites\u2014and that\u2019s the conclusion the study led with.<\/p>\n

But not only is 73 a tiny number compared to the data that exists on conventional production agriculture, said Omanjana Goswami, an interdisciplinary scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists<\/a> (UCS), but lumping community gardens in with urban farms set up for commercial production and then comparing that to a rural system that has been highly tuned and financed for commercial production for centuries doesn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s almost like comparing apples to oranges,\u201d she said. \u201cThe community garden is not set up to maximize production.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, the sample set was heavily tilted toward community and individual gardens and away from urban farms. In New York City, for example, the only U.S. city represented, seven community gardens run by AmeriCorps were included. Brooklyn Grange\u2019s massive rooftop farms<\/a>\u2014which on a few acres produce more than 100,000 pounds of produce for markets, wholesale buyers, CSAs, and the city\u2019s largest convention center<\/a> each year\u2014were not.<\/p>\n

And what the study found was that when the small group of urban farms were disaggregated from the gardens, those farms were \u201cstatistically indistinguishable from conventional farms\u201d on emissions. Aside from one high-emission outlier, the urban farms were carbon-competitive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey call out the fact that that tiny sample of seven<\/em> urban farms that are actually production-focused, competitive with conventional agriculture, but that one line just got buried,\u201d said Hannah Quigley, a policy specialist at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition<\/a> (NSAC). This aspect was especially frustrating to urban farming advocates because, as the groups who sent the letter point out, one of their biggest challenges in working with policymakers in D.C. is to get them to \u201cregard urban farming as farming<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hawes said he found the critiques around lumping community gardens and urban farms together \u201creasonable\u201d but that he stood by the method. He hadn\u2019t considered including backyard gardens in rural areas in the sample, he said, even though city gardens were. \u201cWe were not necessarily attempting to compare urban and rural food production,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, we chose to use the word conventional specifically because it pointed to the sort of \u2018conventional food supply chain,\u2019 which is often what urban agriculture producers are attempting to intervene in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only did taking the community gardens out of the picture change the emissions results, the researchers also found that 63 percent of carbon emissions at all of the sites came not from daily inputs or lack of crop efficiency but from infrastructure, such as building raised beds and trucking in soil. But using recycled materials for infrastructure cut those emissions so much, that if all the sites had done so, that would have been enough for them to close the gap and be competitive with conventional agriculture on greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat problem can of course be solved by upfront funding,\u201d said Goswami. \u201cThen, bingo, according to the authors, you have systems with very comparable climate metrics.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, Hawes said he did regret some of the ways media coverage framed the study\u2019s results but that he didn\u2019t feel the framing of the study itself was problematic. \u201cIn my opinion, the most important sustainability challenge of our time is climate change, and if we’re gonna talk about sustainability in the context of urban agriculture, we have to talk about carbon emissions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important sustainability challenge of our time is climate change, and if we’re gonna talk about sustainability in the context of urban agriculture, we have to talk about carbon emissions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

However, while climate scientists and sustainable agriculture advocates agree that addressing the food system\u2019s 22 percent contribution to global greenhouse emissions is critical to meeting climate goals, whether carrots are grown in gardens in Detroit<\/a> and Atlanta or only on huge commercial farms in the Salinas Valley (or both) won\u2019t likely be a deciding factor.<\/p>\n

At an event to kick off a new focus<\/a> on food and agriculture last week, Project Drawdown launched a new series that will focus on food system solutions to climate change. There, Executive Director Jonathan Foley pointed out that the vast majority of food system emissions come from a few big sources: meat and dairy production, deforestation and other land use change (a large portion of which is linked to animal agriculture), and food waste.<\/a><\/p>\n

As Goswami at UCS noted, that broader context is essential. \u201cThe authors . . . don’t at all zoom out to compare this to agriculture\u2019s broader footprint,\u201d she said, so even if there weren\u2019t clear climate benefits to urban farming\u2014which many say the study didn\u2019t clearly conclude\u2014prioritizing other benefits of growing things in cities might still make more sense. Especially given the climate resilience built into decentralizing and diversifying the food system.<\/a><\/p>\n

Land use is particularly interesting, Quigley at NSAC said, because city farmers and gardeners often reclaim spaces that might otherwise be paved over and developed, adding carbon-holding trees<\/a> and plants. \u201cFolks who are maintaining community gardens and green spaces<\/a> in cities to help with water run-off and urban heat island effect providing safe places for community gatherings . . . these are probably people that would be very concerned with their climate impact,\u201d she said. \u201cCan you imagine if they’re gonna be like, \u2018Oh my god, should I not be gardening?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

While NSAC did not sign on to the initial letter sent by the coalition of groups, Quigley is working with those farm groups and the members have since talked to Hawes. Disagreements on the study framing still abound, but they\u2019re now working together on policy briefs that will be available to lawmakers if the farm bill process ever picks up again and conversations around funding urban farms are once again on the (picnic) table.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, one of the motivations behind this study was the fact that urban agriculture is largely discussed as a really useful sustainability intervention, and this study does not take away from that conclusion,\u201d Hawes said. \u201cI also think that to the degree that this starts conversations about the availability of resources for urban agriculture and the support that is available to urban farmers and gardeners for creating low-carbon solutions\u2014I’m happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read More:
\n<\/em>Congress Puts Federal Support for Urban Farming on the Chopping Block<\/a>
\nUrban Farms Are Stepping Up Their Roles in Communities Nationwide<\/a>
\nThe IPCC\u2019s Latest Climate Report Is a Final Alarm for Food Systems, Too<\/a><\/p>\n

Supply Chain Impacts of the Key Bridge Collapse. <\/strong>One of the most iconic elements of Baltimore\u2019s harbor is the illuminated Domino Sugar sign, below which the sweet stuff can often be seen piled high on massive ships. Now, the sugar refinery is one of many food and agriculture companies that will likely be impacted<\/a> by last week\u2019s collapse of the Key Bridge, which shut down the shipping channel that leads to the city\u2019s busy port. The port also handles imports and exports<\/a> of commodity grains, coffee, and farm equipment. On Friday, representatives from the White House and USDA met with more than a dozen farm and food stakeholders including the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Sugar Alliance, and Perdue Farms to discuss impacts on the industry. On Sunday, officials announced<\/a> they are working on opening a temporary alternate shipping channel to get the port back open while the clean-up of the bridge and the stranded ship continues.<\/p>\n

Read More:
\n<\/em>Walmart\u2019s Pandemic Port Squeeze<\/a>
\nThe Last Front to Save the \u2018Most Important Fish\u2019 in the Atlantic<\/a><\/p>\n

Climate-Friendly Rice. <\/strong>\u201cMy dad taught me to continuously flood a rice field. If you saw dry ground in a rice field, you were in trouble,\u201d said fifth-generation Arkansas farmer Jim Whittaker at a USDA event<\/a> last week. Now, Whittaker practices a technique that alternates his rice fields between wet and dry<\/a>, a system he said has cut water use and methane emissions<\/a> in those fields by 50 percent. Whittaker is one of 30 farmers whose rice is now available in a two-pound bag sold by Great River Milling<\/a>. It\u2019s the first product to officially hit the market as a result of funding from the USDA\u2019s $3 billion Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities<\/a> project, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at the end, holding up one of those bags. And the debut comes at a time when some lawmakers and environmental groups are lobbing criticism<\/a> at the agency over its broadening definition of \u201cclimate-smart.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read More:
\n<\/em>Could Changing the Way We Farm Rice Be a Climate Solution?<\/a>
\nThe USDA Plan to Better Measure Agriculture\u2019s Impact on the Climate Crisis<\/a><\/p>\n

Slaughterhouse Rulemaking. <\/strong>More than 800 comments were submitted<\/a> before the comment period on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s (EPA) contentious proposal to increase the regulation of water pollution<\/a> from meat processing facilities closed last week. On one side of the issue, 45 environmental, community, and animal welfare organizations joined together to make a case<\/a> for the most restrictive set of regulations proposed, arguing that the weakest option, which EPA has said it prefers, is \u201cinconsistent with federal law.\u201d \u201cWe call on the EPA to rise above Big Ag\u2019s push to weaken this plan to reduce harms from the millions of gallons of pollution slaughterhouses and animal-rendering plants are spewing into our waterways,\u201d said Hannah Connor, deputy director of environmental health at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a press release. Meanwhile, farm and meat industry groups including the Iowa Farm Bureau and the Meat Institute filed multiple sets of comments asking for an extension of the comment period and arguing for additional flexibilities to even the least restrictive regulatory framework proposed.<\/p>\n

Read More:
\n<\/em>Should a Plan to Curb Meat Industry Pollution Consider the Business Costs?<\/a>
\nEPA to Revise Outdated Water Pollution Standards for Slaughterhouses<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this week\u2019s Field Report, controversial research on growing food in cities, the food and agriculture impacts of the Key Bridge collapse, and more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":740,"featured_media":55858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3256,4146,43375,3266],"tags":[],"coauthors":[4440],"class_list":["post-55849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-welfare","category-climate","category-the-field-report","category-urban-agriculture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUrban Farming Is not a Climate Villain, Despite Recent Headlines | Civil Eats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We unpack controversial coverage of research on growing food in cities, the food and agriculture impacts of the Key Bridge collapse, and more.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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Since 2015, she has reported on agriculture and the food system with an eye toward sustainability, equality, and health, and her stories have appeared in publications including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Mother Jones. In the past, she covered health and wellness and was an editor at Well+Good. She is based in Baltimore and has a master's degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism.","sameAs":["https:\/\/x.com\/lisaelaineh"],"url":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/author\/lheld\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/740"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55849"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55874,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55849\/revisions\/55874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55849"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/civileats.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=55849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}