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  • Essay / Urban agriculture: organic and sustainable crop production

    Urban agriculture includes the production, distribution and marketing of food and other products within metropolitan areas. Examples include community, school, backyard and rooftop gardens whose purpose extends beyond household consumption and education, urban market gardens, innovative food production methods that maximize small area production, community supported agriculture based in urban areas and family farms located. in metropolitan green belts. According to Dickinson Despommier, professor emeritus at Columbia University, half of the world's population resides in cities. He estimates that the land area needed to feed these populations would be half that of South America. The amount of land accumulated to feed the entire world would be the size of South America (10%), and that's just cropland. About 17-23% of land used is for livestock, which is equivalent to the size of Africa. The world's population is expected to reach 9 billion in the next 40 years, which means we will need to use more land. Unfortunately, more than 50% of the planet's land is uninhabitable and around 3% has been developed into urban areas. We will eventually face food and land issues that will require multiple streams of support solutions. Urban agriculture would be an exceptional partner in increasing population and decreasing land. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayUrban farming, also known as urban gardening or urban farming, is often confused with community gardening, family farming or subsistence farming. (Greensgrow, 1) Urban agriculture is generally chosen to produce products for sale rather than to be grown for personal consumption or sharing. An integral part of urban agriculture is the ability to start and operate a farm on a plot of land and produce sustainable amounts of food. Food can be sold at farmers markets or restaurants or donated to local soup kitchens or churches. There is an agricultural organization in Chicago, City Farm, led by Ken Dunn, which implements urban agriculture on vacant land. With Ken's system, they seal the lots first to try to avoid all the contaminated soil previously polluted by the industrial city. City Farm collects food waste from local restaurants and stores the compost in their soil to produce richer crops. Reusing food waste could provide many benefits, such as reducing gas emissions into the atmosphere, not contributing to crowded landfills, and protecting your wallet by saving money on waste collection costs . City Farm is the perfect example of an organization trying to bring back the local food system that America has forgotten. Today, food production is an important activity that could have significant impacts if localized. Using urban farming, people can find employment on local farms and produce fresh food for the community, whereas large food companies will take days to deliver food that is not as fresh. 90% of commercial farms in the United States produce “commodity” crops that are processed into food.