Urban ag supply8/3/2023 Environmental justice advocates argue that high-income countries such as Spain currently achieve urban food security by unequally shifting the social and ecological costs of primary production to low-income producer countries. There is also an argument that urban food self-sufficiency can offer some forms of resilience to cities themselves, such as mitigating rising temperatures and increasing biodiversity and green spaces (for a more comprehensive review see this study ) as well as increasing access to healthy food, building social cohesion, and improving educational opportunities (for a more comprehensive review see this study ).Īnother argument made to support increasing urban food self-sufficiency has a social justice bent. Food system scholars such as Jennifer Clapp have argued that achieving food security requires finding a balance between diverse scales of food production. First, there has been a growing concern regarding the resilience of food systems as recent crises have exposed the vulnerabilities and precariousness associated with an over-reliance on concentrated international markets (i.e., Russia and Ukraine with wheat) for urban food security. Two main arguments are made in favour of attempting to increase urban food self-sufficiency. To this end, one main strategy to increase a territory’s food self-sufficiency is urban agriculture: the cultivation of agriculture in and around cities. The Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (henceforth AMB) is a microcosm of the current international movement towards increasing urban food self-sufficiency, understood here as the extent to which a given city can fulfil its food demand from domestic production. Since the signing of the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact in 2015, food has been placed at the core of urban agendas across many countries, particularly improving urban food self-sufficiency. Her research interests focus on the intersection between urban food systems, social justice, and environmental sustainability. She will soon start a PhD at the University of Surrey focusing on local food systems. ![]() Haley Parzonko has just finished a master’s degree in Political Ecology, Degrowth Economics, and Environmental Justice at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.
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