Estimating food production in an urban landscape

Journal article


Grafius, Darren R., Edmondson, Jill L., Norton, Briony A., Clark, Rachel, Mears, Meghann, Leake, Jonathan R., Corstanje, Ron, Harris, Jim A. and Warren, Philip H. 2020. Estimating food production in an urban landscape. Scientific Reports. 10 (1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62126-4
AuthorsGrafius, Darren R., Edmondson, Jill L., Norton, Briony A., Clark, Rachel, Mears, Meghann, Leake, Jonathan R., Corstanje, Ron, Harris, Jim A. and Warren, Philip H.
Abstract

There is increasing interest in urban food production for reasons of food security, environmental sustainability, social and health benefits. In developed nations urban food growing is largely informal and localised, in gardens, allotments and public spaces, but we know little about the magnitude of this production. Here we couple own-grown crop yield data with garden and allotment areal surveys and urban fruit tree occurrence to provide one of the first estimates for current and potential food production in a UK urban setting. Current production is estimated to be sufficient to supply the urban population with fruit and vegetables for about 30 days per year, while the most optimistic model results suggest that existing land cultivated for food could supply over half of the annual demand. Our findings provide a baseline for current production whilst highlighting the potential for change under the scaling up of cultivation on existing land.

KeywordsMultidisciplinary; urban food production, food security, environmental sustainability
Year2020
JournalScientific Reports
Journal citation10 (1)
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC
ISSN2045-2322
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62126-4
Web address (URL)http://hdl.handle.net/10545/624658
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
hdl:10545/624658
Publication dates20 Mar 2020
Publication process dates
Deposited03 Apr 2020, 15:19
Accepted05 Mar 2020
Rights

Attribution 4.0 International

ContributorsUniversity of Sheffield and University of Derby
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