Growing Jobs in Urban Agriculture - A Playbook
Created by Edible Cities Network, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research
and innovation prgramme under gran agreement No. 776665
Food production in urban areas is a major step towards more sustainable, liveable and healthy cities. A multitude of initiatives around the world, however fragmented, are prospering, forming a global movement of Edible Cities. Their products, activities and services – which can be defined as Edible City Solutions – empower local communities to overcome social problems by their inclusive and participatory dynamics and create new green businesses and jobs, thereby generating both local economic growth and social cohesion (Säumel et al., 2019).
In this book, we refer to all projects, businesses, programs, or initiatives that aim to make urban food systems more sustainable as Edible City Solutions (ECS). In order to maintain impact, ECS need to make sure their operation models include plans for economic sustainability. Many ECS must contend with challenges that rural farmers typically don’t face. Economies of scale is the most prevailing economically sustainable model in rural food production for profitability. On the contrary, scalability is not usually possible for ECS due to limited access to land, lack of infrastructure, and high rental costs. As such, ECS have adjusted to the urban setting through different strategies.
Currently, product differentiation and product diversification are the most widespread models for financial sustainability along other emerging economically sustainable models (Pölling et al. 2015; van der Schans et al. 2015). As a result, ECS must figure out their own path to economic sustainability which should be tailored for their community’s needs and the consumer market while maintaining their core environmental and social values.