Local Development and Sustainable Periurban Agriculture: New Models and Approaches for Agricultural Land Conservation

Periurban agricultural territories have had to confront many pressures over the last 70 years, ranging from land development pressures emanating from nearby large cities and metropolis to technological change, to the draw of the urban labour market on farmers’ families, to the consequences of climate change and variability. They are also increasingly expected to provide stable supplies of foodstuffs to the nearby urban markets as well as having the potential to respond to many other urban demands for other functions that these agricultural areas can support. Periurban agricultural areas can be considered as strategic components of urban and metropolitan regions. They have much more to offer to their regional economies and societies than simply food production because they are also support multiple functions, both market-based and non market function. Market-based functions include the production of foodstuffs for the urban market as well as functions related to both tourism and leisure activity. Non-market based functions include the conservation of landscape heritage, and water and biodiversity conservation; some of these can also be transformed into functions that generate supplementary income for the farming families. Some functions serve to strengthen the linkages between farming, farm families and nearby urban areas. For this strengthening to occur, it appears essential that: a) farmers and their families become involved in the development of their own multifunctional agriculture-based projects; and b) the significance of the non-agricultural functions must also be appropriated by non-agricultural actors, such as local government, nearby city governments, community and consumer organisations. These points are illustrated by examples drawn from several countries, including research-action projects involving the two authors neat Montréal. These latter projects, appropriated by the local farming communities, involve local development processes that can be modified to deal with periurban agricultural areas in any political and cultural context. These processes involve the development of new models of agricultural development and relatively new approaches to local and community development. These processes reinforce regional and national programs of agricultural land ‘protection’ which, it is argued, need such supportive local and community development processes in order to be effective.

ADAPTING TO ENVIRONMENTAL AND URBANISATION STRESSORS: FARMER AND LOCAL ACTOR INNOVATION IN URBAN AND PERIURBAN AREAS IN CANADA

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5International audienceUrban and periurban agricultural producers have faced many stressors – both negative ones and positive ones – particularly from the mid-20th century onwards. They have included urban development pressures, exurban development, the evolving markets for the products of these producers – food and other products, and environmental challenges stemming from farming's own technologies. More recently, these stressors have been compounded by climate change and variability. The importance of the decision processes at the local level (i.e. individual farmers and producers, local government, various community organisations, and citizens more generally) and how such decision makers adapt to the various stressors has been increasingly recognised. In relation to urban and periurban farm producers, more and more attention has been placed on the adaptive capacity of these decision makers to maintain and develop their own production systems. At the same time, there has been an increase in the environmental services that these areas are expected to perform mainly by the urban citizenry, thus reinforcing the multi-functionality of the areas concerned. In this paper, we argue that developing producers' adaptive capacity is one of the keys to contributing to alleviating food insecurity, but at the same time, the multi-functionality of these same areas provides a powerful tool with which to maintain and develop the strength of food production through having non farm actors and citizens appropriate the importance of conserving agricultural production – and therefore food production – in these same areas to contribute in a sustainable fashion to improving food security both regionally, domestically and internationally

L’autre agriculture urbaine en zone métropolitaine : une recherche-action sur les opportunités de mise en valeur et développement de l’agriculture périurbaine montréalaise

L’agriculture métropolitaine ne peut plus se laisser contenir dans des définitions ou classifications traditionnelles. Qu’elle soit urbaine ou périurbaine, il faut dorénavant porter notre attention sur les innombrables fonctions communes à tous les types d’agricultures et surtout, sur les actions et les acteurs qui les mettent en valeur. La question centrale de l’’article présenté est donc : est-il possible de contrer la pression, et l’étalement urbains sur le territoire agricole par un processus de co-construction inusité axé sur un développement multifonctionnel agricole ?Whether associated with urban or periurban settings, agriculture and farming activities in metropolitan areas have clearly evolved away from the classical or more traditionnal definitions of what agriculture is and can provide. The different levels of governement need to pay special attention to the many enriching possible interactions between residents, field agents and experts, types of collaborative project-oriented-action and multifunctionality of agriculture in these area