Food and the City

Our rapidly urbanized world has become a much discussed subject in recent years: more than half of the world’s population today lives in cities. By 2050, 20 percent more will be added to the percentage. Urban populations typically increase in three ways: natural growth, migration, and reclassification of rural to urban area. The United Nations Population Fund has found that while natural growth in cities has become increasingly dominant, a large proportion of today’s urban growth continues to result from the migration from rural to urban areas.
The City and the Countryside
Economists observed this type of rural-urban dynamics several decades ago. In 1979, economist Sir Arthur Lewis famously described the rural-urban duality in his growth model. In the Lewis model, surplus labor from rural population, which is mostly agricultural, migrates to the urban areas where economic productivity is higher. Thus, while cities are indeed becoming ever more economically important and, as many scholars have argued, triumphantly beneficial to humankind, they must not be viewed and understood in isolation. The fates of the countryside and the city are intricately bound to each other.
As more people move towards the city, there are fewer people left in the rural area to sustain the agricultural activities. In an interview with HPR, Danielle Nierenberg, founder and CEO of Food Tank, a food-oriented think tank, points out that in many countries, especially among developing countries, there is a massive rural-to-urban population movement. This structural transformation in demographics, Nierenberg suggests, is tied to the belief that there is more economic opportunities in cities than in rural agriculture.
The consequences of this rural population flight are numerous, the first of which is the question of who will sustain the traditionally agricultural economy in the countryside.  As Nierenberg observes, most of today’s rural-to-urban migrants are under 30, leaving behind an increasingly aged rural population to sustain the agricultural activities. In United States, the average age of farmers has reached a high of 58, and in South Africa, 62. As rural populations continue to age and decrease in proportion, the future of the agricultural workforce becomes uncertain. While there is currently no labor shortage in the agricultural sector, one fact is certain: as more people move towards cities, cities require more food to sustain their populations.
Eating in the City
Yet, paradoxically, producing food seems to be precisely what cities are worst at today. On an average day in Hong Kong, where 89 percent of its gross domestic product comes from the service economy, 2290 tons of vegetables are consumed. Only 1.9 percent are produced locally the city. The rest is imported from China and other countries. Agricultural activities make up around 0.1 percent of the city’s GDP. A similar situation holds in Singapore where roughly 90 percent of what is consumed is produced in some other thirty-plus countries. Cities, quite simply put, are incapable of feeding themselves.
This, of course, is not without reason. Cities historically developed from towns based on trade and industrial activities, and increasingly, as scholars such as Richard Florida argue, function as hubs of creativity for today’s knowledge-based economy. Coupled with the high price and scarcity of land, it is reasonable that cities do not focus on agricultural activities which require vast plots of land.
Increasingly, however, this inability of cities to produce food for themselves has numerous consequences. Janice Leung, founder of Hong Kong Island East Farmers’ Market explains to the HPR, “People who live in cities today are increasingly detached from nature and their food source. They no longer know where what they eat come from and what is in season.” This detachment from the food source, Leung adds, results in the inability of cities to directly control food safety, thus creating a public health concern.
There are many more downsides associated with this distorted food system in cities, such as the carbon footprint attached to transporting food across long distances and excess food packaging. However, the assessment of risks and shortcomings is one, and only one, way of evaluating such a situation. Equally worthy of consideration is to think of it as an opportunity, a call for timely interventions in today’s city planning and urge for greater inclusiveness for agricultural activities.
Economic Viability
As mentioned earlier, land prices in cities are incomparably higher than in rural farmlands. Considering the many infrastructural challenges, including sunlight and the like, the possibility of an urban farm turning a profit seems slim. However, recent developments in urban agricultural technology are rapidly making this an achievable reality. In an email correspondence with HPR, Sky Greens, a commercially operating urban farm in Singapore describes urban farming as a commercially viable option due to the creation of farms with a much higher yield per square meter than normal. Enabled by new technological advances, urban farms are able to achieve yield that is six times greater than typical farmland.
From a social perspective, urban agriculture enables a wider range of economic activity to become possible within cities. Most jobs in cities are intensively knowledge-based with little opportunity for the rest. As Nierenberg observes, a large proportion of rural migrants in cities today often face challenges in securing employment due to a mismatch in skills they possess and skills the urban jobs require. The presence of urban agriculture, therefore, offers an alternative to the knowledge-oriented job market and enables a more diverse range of economic activities in cities.
To be sure, it is unlikely that urban farming will be able to substitute agricultural import entirely and sustain whole cities. The important message, again, is not about absolute security and independence but rather, an opportunity to build healthier, more resilient cities. Urbanization is not going away, but there is no excuse for urbanizing poorly. Our cities should not be exclusively industrial or commercial, and a more appreciative acceptance of urban agriculture is necessary in creating better cities for our future.