Urban agriculture as a creative response to the climate crisis

A study comparing solutions developed in São Paulo and Melbourne, Australia, highlights the huge potential for expansion in the Brazilian megacity.

By José Tadeu Arantes  |  Agência FAPESP – The idea of urban agriculture would have been dismissed as utopian only a few decades ago but is now being recognized as an urgent necessity and a way of multiplying green areas in cities while also producing healthy food for their inhabitants.

“More and more people are aware of the importance of local farming as a contribution to food insecurity, given the uncertainty fueled by the global climate crisis,” said Luís Fernando Amato-Lourenço, an environmental engineer with a PhD in Sciences from the University of São Paulo’s Medical School (FM-USP) in Brazil, and stints as a postdoctoral fellow at the university’s Institute of Advanced Studies (IEA-USP) and the Free University of Berlin in Germany.

Lourenço is first author of the article “Building knowledge in urban agriculture: the challenges of local food production in São Paulo and Melbourne”, published in the journal Environment, Development and Sustainability.

The article describes a study supported by FAPESP via a scholarship awarded to Lourenço and a research grant for a project conducted within the scope of the research mobility program SPRINT (São Paulo Researchers in International Collaboration) and led by Thais Mauad, formerly Lourenço’s thesis advisor and last author of the article.

“We compared urban agriculture in São Paulo, Brazil, and Melbourne, Australia. Its complexion in these two cities is very different. In Melbourne, it’s linked to public health strategies such as promoting exercise and other activities to control overweight and combat obesity. In São Paulo, it’s either socio-educational and run by volunteers along agri-ecological lines, as in the case of Horta das Corujas in Vila Madalena, or for income generation, mainly in outlying southern and eastern suburbs,” Lourenço said.

In Melbourne, he added, urban agriculture is conducted on both public or private land, and may be individual or communal in nature. In either case, it is regulated by policy guidelines defining the areas where community gardens, orchards, urban farms and so on can be established, and recommending precautions such as testing the soil for contamination. Users of shared spaces pay a monthly subscription fee. No such model exists in São Paulo.

“A conspicuous aspect of urban agriculture in São Paulo is that initiatives appear and disappear very quickly. Because they’re run by volunteers, they’re easier to begin than to continue. The exceptions involve a leader who’s deeply committed. An example is Neide Rigo, a nutritionist, food consultant and influencer who publishes a blog called ‘Come-se’ and cares for a highly successful community garden in City Lapa [a São Paulo neighborhood]. One of her contributions is the promotion of ‘non-conventional crops’, which are plants that can withstand adverse weather better than most and provide important nutritional options in a time of climate change,” Lourenço said. 

Creativity is a difference that gives São Paulo a boost, he added. Things are more organized in Melbourne, while innovative solutions predominate in São Paulo. “The Australian co-authors were excited by São Paulo’s organic agriculture initiatives,” he said.

More and more people who live in cities are undertaking urban agriculture. How many are involved in volunteering is hard to estimate, but income generation initiatives have been quantified. “We know that in 2017-18 São Paulo had 323 agricultural units totaling some 4,388 hectares. Most were less than 10 hectares and grew temporary crops, but 802 people worked directly on production, including proprietors, families and tenants,” Lourenço said.

Urban agriculture is found above all in the southern part of the city and conducted mainly as a family farming activity. “In this area, 64% of the people involved in the activity are owners, 78% live on the land they farm, and 65% of the properties have family labor only. They grow a wide variety of produce, from green vegetables and legumes to tubers, herbs and fruit,” he said.

Vertical farming on verandas and rooftops is another significant aspect of the trend. Barcelona is the world’s foremost instance, but the solution is also increasingly adopted in Berlin and São Paulo. For example, the Eldorado mall has a large rooftop kitchen garden that supplies employees and their families with pesticide-free vegetables and herbs.

“São Paulo has enormous rooftop farming potential. Growing crops on top of tall apartment and office buildings means food is produced close to the consumer. It also creates spaces for socialization and environmental education. Furthermore, these green areas mitigate the heat islands that make cities so overheated and fuel dangerous storms. We need lasting public policies that contribute to this trend,” Lourenço said.

The benefits of urban agriculture are myriad, according to Mauad. “In the context of climate change, producing food in the city is useful in many ways. It expands plant cover, improves soil permeability, raises atmospheric humidity, promotes biodiversity, enriches the soil with organic matter and via composting, and uses agri-ecological methods. All this undoubtedly mitigates the adverse local effects of climate change. Moreover, food production closer to consumers means lower carbon emissions due to motorized transportation. In extreme weather conditions, such as rainstorms that cause flooding, or when there are forest fires and other events that interrupt the flow of food to the city, urban farming offers an alternative possibility of guaranteeing food security,” she said.

The article “Building knowledge in urban agriculture: the challenges of local food production in São Paulo and Melbourne” is at: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-020-00636-x.