Food Production and Consumption: City Regions between Localism, Agricultural Land Displacement, and Economic Competitiveness

Abstract

Abstract:In the wider debate on urban resilience and metabolism, food-related aspects have gained increasing importance. At the same time, urban agro-food systems in city regions are facing major challenges with regard to often limited domestic supplies, resource-intensive producer-consumer relationships, and the competition for low-price products via global food chains. In this sense, novel methods for coupling local and global processes are required to better understand the underlying mechanisms between the above factors. Exploring the relationship between food supply and demand, this study presents a set of suitable fact-finding tools that are introduced and applied in a comparative study of five European city regions. The methodological framework, by introducing and combining economic-based indexes, aims at overcoming limits and gaps identified by means of a literature review. The model will explicitly address the main features of the regional agro-food systems by managing information on the capacities and opportunities of local agriculture to adequately respond to food demand, as well as by providing insights on the interconnections among localism, global competitiveness of agricultural sectors, and land use change.

Grain Self-Sufficiency Capacity in China’s Metropolitan Areas under Rapid Urbanization: Trends and Regional Differences from 1990 to 2015

“…The grain supply has surpassed demand in the Greater Paris Region-based upon the French diet [76]. Grain supply surpassing demand has also been reported in other metropolitan areas such as Berlin and Milan [23].…”

“…In some countries in North America and Europe, optimizing local production around urban areas to maximize food self-sufficiency has already been integrated into policies as a potential way to reduce GHG emissions and to improve food autonomy [21,22]. A growing number of studies has conducted assessments of food supply-demand balance [23,24] or food self-sufficiency capacity [21,22,25,26] in metropolitan areas across broad food categories (grains, vegetables, fruit, meat, etc.). Another motive for research on food self-sufficiency is rooted in the concern for food supply in natural disasters or extreme weather events when distant food supply is impossible, and the research interest is specifically on nutritional self-sufficiency with a focus on fresh vegetables and fruit [27,28].…”

Towards Sustainable Agriculture—Agronomic and Economic Effects of Biostimulant Use in Common Bean Cultivation

“…The principles of sustainable development also refer to the entire agriculture industry as being strictly bound within the ecosystem that surrounds it. The use of such a system brings measurable benefits to the natural environment, thus contributing to improved quality of air and underground waters, increased soil fertility, reduced emission of greenhouse gases and consumption of energy from renewable resources, and to the increased biodiversity in agroecosystems and in the agricultural landscape [8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

Diversification in peri-urban agriculture: a case study in the Ruhr metropolitan region

“…For example, the increased demand for land and labor created by high population density generates high opportunity costs, due to higher wages and land prices outside agriculture, as well as increased public control due to a greater share of non-farming neighbors and their increasing awareness of the negative external effects (e.g. odor nuisance) of farming (Monaco et al,2017). Thus, diversification can be a key strategy of farms situated in urbanized areas to profit from the nearby city and to evade urban pressures on primary production (Wilson, 2008, Zasada, 2011.…”