The integration of 18th and 19th century subsistence farming practices into the planning and x-zoning laws of the city and county of Baltimore

The Industrial Revolution divorced the majority of urban dwellers from the land in the United States. Today, people rely upon industrial food products from global food systems. These systems cause environmental pollution, land degradation, and loss of biodiversity. Additionally, there is unequal food distribution in these systems with poor farmers growing for production and not consumption. The rigid distribution system through grocery stores often leaves poor economic areas without access to fresh, healthy food. The solution to these problems is a return to local food systems, where people can grow or have access to fresh, local food. However, local food systems are not always legal in the planning and zoning codes for municipalities. The purpose of this study is to integrate 18th and 19th century subsistence farming practices into the planning and zoning codes, legalizing the expansion of the local food system. In addition, the study calculates the amount of land available for the food system and the best crops types for the study areas. The study areas are the City and County of Baltimore, MD. The results for subsistence farming practices originated from a literature review. All other generated results were from mathematical models using data from the USDA, USGS, NOAA, and nutritional almanacs. The study found six subsistence farming practices applicable for integration into the study areas’ planning and zoning laws. In the study areas, 108,700 acres are available for cultivation. This represents 40% of the 306,000 acres required to feed the populations. The climate and soil conditions allow a wide variety of crops for cultivation. The results do not represent the total cultivatable land within the study areas due to lack of data regarding open space available for all zoning types. The integration of the subsistence farming practices requires minor amendments to the zoning laws. However, a noncompeting local food system between the study areas requires new regional planning legislation. Through this research, the City and County of Baltimore have the basis for such legislation. Thus, combating the existing food deserts and gaining additional food security for the region

The potential of Bambara groundnut: An analysis for the People’s Republic of China

While China has transformed its economy over recent decades, challenges such as climate change and land degradation have continued to impact its agriculture. These effects along with changes in diets and growing food imports will force China to look for alternative cropping options. Despite the broad potential of Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea L. Verdc) as a resilient and nutritious underutilized crop, less is known about its potential in Asia. Here, we explore the potential of Bambara groundnut to become a mainstream crop in mainland China. A suitability analysis is presented for Bambara groundnut to examine the degree of seasonal adaptability of this crop against its climate and soil requirements across China. Results showed that the crop has yield potential in areas that can be too marginal for production of other mainstream crops such as soybean (Glycine max). If realized, the potential of Bambara groundnut could contribute to China's agriculture and reduce its reliance on vegetable protein imports. Using an average seasonal potential yield of 0.85 t/ha over a potential available area of between 55 and 112 million ha (based on 4 land availability scenarios) and modest price of 143 USD/t, yearly income between USD 6 and 13 billion can potentially be contributed by widespread cultivation of this crop. As well as food security, this drought-resistant nitrogen-fixing legume could also contribute to land rehabilitation, particularly in the areas where shift in planting dates and land degradation is noticeable. This study demonstrates the need for more investment and research into adoption of Bambara groundnut and other underutilized crops that have the potential to transform agriculture in populous Asian countries

City farming and sustainable urban development :a case study of Seoul, South Korea

PhD ThesisThe aims of the thesis are to find out the causal mechanism of city farming and to examine the hypothesis that city farming conforms to the conditions of sustainable urban development. As far as methodology is concerned, the thesis employs a realist approach. In the realist methodology, to understand what is as significant as to know why. Therefore, the thesis pays much attention to the conceptualisation of city farming and sustainable urban development. Vacant land in Seoul, the precondition of city farming, occurred basically through the natural process of urban expansion, but most importantly due to the growth-oriented land development policies. City farming is at the moment an opportunistic and illegal use of vacant land under the negligence of planning control. Led by a leading agent, the city farmers on each case site have colonised vacant land through the reality and practice learning. However, city farmers' egoistic action has an unintended consequence of making vacant land an unofficial open space. The thesis also identifies that city farming on the case sites conforms to the elements of sustainable urban development. The elements developed in the thesis are future, nature, participation, equity, and selfreliance. The thesis suggests three criteria for each element with which the hypothesis is examined. The thesis concludes that the modern planning system in South Korea has failed to take into consideration the socio-economic and environmental aspects of city farming. It, therefore, suggests that future planning system promote activities or projects which comply with the principles of sustainable urban development. Although the modern planning system in Seoul has failed to cope with the rapid land use change shown in the case studies, the thesis proposes that the planner's role has become more important than ever before in this age of environmental concerns

Edible landscapes within the urban area of Beijing, China

In recent years, edible landscape within the urban area (ELWUA) has become a topic of intense study in the field of landscape research worldwide. Urban agriculture could contribute to the sustainability of cities in various ways: socially, economically and environmentally. Therefore, facing the two global challenges of urbanization and food security, the integration of urban agriculture is suggested to be used as a strategy for sustainable and resilient urban development and providing a productive green infrastructure for the future cities. Especially at the present, agriculture is being rediscovered for use in modern urban space and becoming more and more popular in cities all over the world. During the last twenty or so years, the number of related concepts, research projects, conferences and teaching practices has greatly increased, especially in western countries. However, compared with the tremendous upsurge of research on ELWUA in western countries, the research on edible landscapes in China so far has mainly evolved around the issue of integrating agriculture in the suburbs and rural area, but only a few mentioned cases within the urban area. Therefore, there is an urgent need to fill in the research gap in the field of the edible landscape within the urban area (ELWUA) in China, thereby to contribute to the understanding of the essence and significance of the contemporary ELWUA in China in the 21st century. First, this dissertation reviewed the relative definitions, history and services of growing food within urban area, and the types of urban agriculture in Europe as the knowledge foundation of understanding the contemporary ELWUA. Then, taking Beijing as the research area, the research used an empirical research approach (by means of field surveys) with the aim of finding out the ELWUA’s physical characteristics (including spatial characteristics, type of edible plants, evolution process, materials and technology), social characteristics (including the information of the participants, organizational forms and motivations), ELWUA types, ELWUA services and people’s perceptions towards ELWUA. During the process of carrying out the field surveys, 38 sites were selected as the research cases and semi-structured interviews to six groups of people who are related to ELWUA were completed. After that, the characteristics of the ELWUA in Beijing were found through the comparison with European ELWUA cases. Finally, recommendations on how to use edible landscapes as a strategy to serve the sustainable development of Beijing and other metropolitan cities in China were proposed. The main contents and conclusions of the empirical research include: 1. The edible landscapes which exist within the urban area of Beijing are mainly a phenomenon that emerged along with the modern urbanization process of China. They could be classified into three main levels and nine types, which are: 1) the urban food gardening level, which includes family gardens, guerrilla gardens, community gardens, renting farming garden (called “Happy Farm”), educational/demonstration gardens and Danwei kitchen gardens; 2) the urban greening and landscaping level, which includes edible greening and landscaping with fruit trees and edible greening and landscaping with crops or vegetables; 3) the urban farming level, which includes agrotourists’ picking farms and experimental farms. In which, the edible landscapes cultivated by the public mainly emerged during the rapid urbanization process since the Chinese economic reform was carried out in 1978. It is a response of the urban dwellers that are living away from the rural landscape and nature who wish to pursue a healthy life (including leisure, health, food supplement and healthier food) and a pastoral life, rather than only simply an initiative for food production. Growing food within the urban area in Beijing mainly consists of urban residents’ spontaneous activities and it is inseparable from the daily life demands of the Chinese urban dwellers. Because it is an expression of the “people’s will”, it is a natural phenomenon and a cultural product embedded in the Chinese cultivation culture and rooted in the Chinese rapid urbanization process. The ELWUA in Beijing can supply multiple services for urban citizens, including 1) provision services, 2) environmental services, 3) social services, 4) health services, 5) economic services, 6) recreational services, 7) educational services and 8) cultural services. 2. The comparison of the ELWUA in Beijing and European cities indicated that to date the development of ELWUA in China is still in its infancy and has its own characteristics, which could be reflected in: 1) family gardens and informal guerrilla gardens, which are usually built by individuals, account for the majority of the total ELWUA in Beijing, 2) most of the ELWUA in Beijing is located in private space or semi-public space, 3) most of the ELWUA is bottom-up spontaneous activities of the urban dwellers, only a few were built under formal organization, in which, most of them were built only for public greening but not for people’s cultivation, 4) there is a large proportion of aged retirees in the spontaneous “urban hobby farmers”, 5) there is a high demand for growing food within the urban area from the urban residents, but there is a disparity of the perception and attitudes towards ELWUA between the public and the government or other administrations of urban landscape, 6) a lot of potential ELWUA services which could contribute to the urban healthy development and the well-being of people are still waiting to be recognized, explored and applied. 3. The development of ELWUA in China is currently facing a lot of challenges, which mainly include: 1) ELWUA is neglected even excluded from the urban landscape planning by urban authorities, 2) perception of agriculture being inappropriate in a city and lack of vision, 3) lack of space and land tenure uncertainties for ELWUA, 4) lack of organization, management and maintenance, 5) lack of knowledge and technical guide, and 6) the challenge of combining the aesthetic value of ELWUA into urban landscape. Based on the findings of this research, recommendations on how to use edible landscapes to promote the healthy and sustainable development of Chinese cities in the 21st century were proposed: 1) ELWUA should be supported as an ordinary urban practice and integrated as one component of the urban landscape, 2) more potential urban space should be excavated for ELWUA, 3) a systematic looped guide, which includes a) planning, b) building, c) maintenance and management, and d) monitoring and evaluation, should be formulated to support the implementation of ELWUA, 4) a publicly available environmental monitoring and information system on health security should be set up

Urban Dreams and Agrarian Renovations: Examining the Politics and Practices of Peri-urban Land Conversion in Hanoi, Vietnam

In Mễ Trì village on the Western peri-urban edge of Hanoi, Vietnam, landless rice farmers no longer tend to rice paddy fields. Instead, many have converted 40 square meters of their residential space into a small factory for producing an artisanal rice product called cốm (young rice). This small village-based industry has garnered national demand for the product, drawing the attention of central policymakers who want to preserve the craft as a cultural relic of Hanoi. But without land to cultivate the rice inputs, young rice production is largely driven by the outsourcing of grains, the use of inventive new machinery, and most notably, widespread sentiments of pride and passion in the village craft. Based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mễ Trì village between July 2017 and December 2018, this dissertation examines the assemblages of rural-urban spaces that emerge out of the convergence of mega-city master plans, foreign investment, heritage preservation, and the everyday livelihood practices of those living and working in the changing urban fringe. It attends to competing discourses on Vietnam’s rural spaces as well as the dialogic practices between state actors and local cốm producers, which have allowed agrarian traditions to re-emerge amidst urban development. In this dissertation, I argue that Mễ Trì’s practices of adaptation through craft production demonstrate a politics of resilience, which has both material and symbolic implications. Craft production not only provides people with a transitional livelihood in their post-agrarian landscape, but it has also served as an important cultural tool and resource that villagers use in finding and cultivating meaningful identities amidst society’s contemporary urban-oriented shifts. Stories about Mễ Trì’s acts of resilience through cốm production narrate the lived experiences of land use and social transformation of a village that lies, both empirically as well as conceptually, at the tenuous intersection between a capital mega-city’s dual projects of urban civilization (văn minh đô thị) and “heritage” protection. In doing so, it provides an ethnographic insight into the shifting but continually significant place of agrarian-based cultures and livelihoods in shaping the broader processes of urban-oriented economic and land use change in Hanoi, with implications for other Asian contexts

The Struggle for Food Sovereignty

The world's food system is broken, and today's peasant societies are at a crossroads. This collection explores the multiplicity of problems faced by global family agricultures in the current neoliberal era. The contributors, including include Samir Amin, Joao Pedro Stedile and Utsa Patnaik, argue that an understanding of the revival of peasant struggles for their social emancipation and legitimate right of access to land is essential. Financialisation is undermining their work, and must be resisted if they are to construct a new, socially just food system. This is a response to the confusion surrounding how these urgent problems are understood, with the authors offering solutions as to how they should be resolved. They express the importance of the co-operation and cohesion of the various struggles taking place across Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe, and how they must share a common vision for the future

AGRARIA: An agrarian vision

This thesis is concerned with reconnecting people to the land. It has been developed as a reaction to the current environmental crises concerning peak oil, urban sprawl, and the ongoing opposition between humans and the natural world. This thesis posits that the most direct way to reconnect people to the land is through the practice of agriculture. The thesis is written as a manifesto. The intent is to clearly declare the role that an agrarian development can play in our society. As a manifesto, it is written with the understanding that current political and economical considerations be suspended from the context of the thesis. It is a suggestion for the re-evaluation of contemporary agriculture, a new approach to development, and a new style for living. The thesis is broken into three sections. The first is an empirical introduction to the issues surrounding the thesis. Following this, a synopsis of readings concerning the work of a number of agricultural innovators is discussed. Large scale, rural based utopian precedents were studied more for their theory than for their architectural implications. The second section is the written Manifesto. The third is the design proposition of the thesis that follows the precepts outlined in the Manifesto. This design, which is a proposition for a new large-scale, hybrid urban/rural form of settlement, is named AGRARIA. This thesis is not meant to be a ‘back-to-the-land’ regressive social movement, but rather it suggests that current development of our arable land could be more in tune with its environment and still remain productive land after development. It is a proposition for the localization of production, and direct involvement in our food system. Following the precepts of the design proposal, a new alternative to urban sprawl can be discussed. This new typology will change the pattern of suburban development from consumptive elements into productive ones, and from isolationist environments into integrative ones. It is envisioned that this trend in development and lifestyle shall enable the spread of an agrarian ideology throughout rural areas and into urban centres

The Struggle for Food Sovereignty

The world's food system is broken, and today's peasant societies are at a crossroads. This collection explores the multiplicity of problems faced by global family agricultures in the current neoliberal era. The contributors, including include Samir Amin, Joao Pedro Stedile and Utsa Patnaik, argue that an understanding of the revival of peasant struggles for their social emancipation and legitimate right of access to land is essential. Financialisation is undermining their work, and must be resisted if they are to construct a new, socially just food system. This is a response to the confusion surrounding how these urgent problems are understood, with the authors offering solutions as to how they should be resolved. They express the importance of the co-operation and cohesion of the various struggles taking place across Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania and Europe, and how they must share a common vision for the future

Land tenure and productivity: evidence from rural China

For the 640 million farmers (i.e. 47% of the total population) living in rural China as of 2012, land is a resource of significant value. China has experimented with different forms of land tenure arrangements, which have been widely recognised as being vital to the productivity of agriculture which in turn is critical to poverty alleviation. The changes in land tenure arrangements over the past half a century have included a shift from privately owned to collectively owned land, from the offer of 15-year use rights to perpetual use rights to the land under cultivation, from the issue of informal land certificates to the currently (i.e. as of 2014) ongoing formal land certification program (RLRC). All these changes have the potential to affect farm productivity and thus impact rural poverty. This thesis aims to examine how the changing land tenure arrangements have affected productivity at the level of individual farms, and the policy lessons on how to improve productivity and household income. To answer the aforementioned questions, two levels of research were conducted. Firstly, data at the level of the 31 provinces over a 60-year period was analysed to investigate the link between grain productivity and land tenure arrangements. The findings show that land tenure dummies that stand for land use rights and the right to transfer rights to use the land have had positive effects on grain productivity. Secondly, farm-level data was collected via a purpose-designed survey. This data was analysed using regression and matching methods on certified and uncertified plots. The quantitative estimates on the impact of land certification on farm-level productivity and income shows that use rights secured through certification induces farmers to: (i) invest more in land; (ii) transfer land to more productive farmers, thereby increasing land productivity; and, (iii) participate in the land rental markets which contributes to household income and improves allocative efficiency. In summary, the thesis is that land tenure reform is critical to growth in productivity and income for small holders. These findings lend support to the ongoing land reforms throughout China

Urbanization, Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services: Challenges and Opportunities

Urbanization is a global phenomenon and the book emphasizes that this is not just a social-technological process. It is also a social-ecological process where cities are places for nature, and where cities also are dependent on, and have impacts on, the biosphere at different scales from local to global. The book is a global assessment and delivers four main conclusions: Urban areas are expanding faster than urban populations. Half the increase in urban land across the world over the next 20 years will occur in Asia, with the most extensive change expected to take place in India and China Urban areas modify their local and regional climate through the urban heat island effect and by altering precipitation patterns, which together will have significant impacts on net primary production, ecosystem health, and biodiversity Urban expansion will heavily draw on natural resources, including water, on a global scale, and will often consume prime agricultural land, with knock-on effects on biodiversity and ecosystem services elsewhere Future urban expansion will often occur in areas where the capacity for formal governance is restricted, which will constrain the protection of biodiversity and management of ecosystem service