Chiara

Tornaghi

How to set up your own urban agricultural project

with a socio-environmental justice perspective
A guide for citizens, community groups and third sector organisations

This research project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Grant
number RES-000-22-4418) and the University of Leeds.

1






















How to set up your own urban agricultural project with a socio-environmental justice
perspective. A guide for citizens, community groups and third sector organisations

Published in 2014 by the University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT
Chiara Tornaghi University of Leeds
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to
the author and copyright holder.

To cite this publication:

TORNAGHI Chiara (2014), How to set up your own urban agricultural project with a socio-environmental justice
perspective. A guide for citizens, community groups and third sector organisations, Leeds: The University of
Leeds

This publication presents outcomes of the ESRC funded research project: Urban agriculture,
social cohesion and environmental justice. An action-research project to inform responsive
policy making. The Urban Food Justice social platform on urban agriculture was established
as part of this project with the aim of supporting the consolidation of a local network of
growers (i.e. Feed Leeds), promoting dialogue between grassroots group and policy makers,
facilitating learning and informing policy.
A second booklet, specifically written for policy makers, is available on the project website,
titled How to support socially and environmentally just urban agriculture in your area.
A guide for policy makers in the Leeds city region.

2

Acknowledgements

This booklet is one of the outcomes of a research project entitled Urban agriculture, social
cohesion and environmental justice. An action-research project to inform responsive policy
making, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The project has seen the involvement of about 80 people as project leaders, food growers,
gardeners, people seeking land, allotment officers and various policy makers who have
answered my questions and about 90-100 people who took part in the events of the social
platform Urban food justice. I would like to thank them all, and in particular:

In Leeds: - Leopold Cohousing project
- Armley Mills Industrial Museum - Lilac Sustainable Affordable
Colour Community Garden Living
- Back to Front - Meanwood Valley Urban Farm
- Bardon Grange - Mina Said (Foraging walks)
- Bedford Fields Community Forest - Permaculture Association UK
Garden - Rocket Catering
- Bracken Edge Primary School - Skelton Grange Environment
gardening group New Shoots Centre
- Burley Mills Allotments - St Marys gardening group
- Church Lane Allotment Association - TCV Hollybush
- Edible Cities - Transition City Leeds - Food group
- Edible Public Space Landshare
- Faith Lodge In Scarborough:
- Federation of City Farms and - Yorkshire Charcoal
Community Gardens North East In Manchester:
officer - Kindling Trust
- Feel good factor - Manchester City Council Public
- Healthy Living Network (Armley) health (Food Futures)
- Hungry Fungi - Manchester Veg People
- Hyde Park Neighbourhood Food- In Birmingham:
Growing project - Edible Eastside
- Hyde Park Source - Federation of City Farms and
- Kirkstall Community Garden Community Gardens Midlands
- Leeds and District Allotment officer
Gardeners Federation In London/Greater London
- Leeds City Council Housing - Farm: Shop
- Leeds City Council Parks and - First UK Reclaim the Fields
Countryside services gathering
- Leeds City Council Public Health - Grow Heathrow
- Leeds City Council Sustainability - Sustain
Policy In Glasgow:
- Leeds City Council Urban design - Sow and grow everywhere (SAGE)
and forward planning - Urban Roots
- Leeds Permaculture Network - The concrete garden
- Leeds Urban Harvest - Woodlands community garden

3

In Newcastle: In Brighton:
- Ralph Erskine Society - Brighton and Hove Food
- Comfrey Project Partnership
- Newcastle city council - Allotment - Harvest
officer - Grow your neighbours own
- Newcastle city council Food - One Brighton rooftop garden
strategy officer - The Garden House
- Allotment Federation - Moulsecoomb Forest Garden
- Scottswood Community Forest - Muesli Hill Market
garden - The Mound
- Community Food Initiative - One Stop
In Middlesbrough: - Nourish
- Allotment Officer, Streetscene - London Road Station gardening
Services project
- Middlesbrough Environment City In Wakefield
In Bristol: - Street scene services
- Reclaim the fields south east In Stockport
gathering - Department of Communities,
- Sims Hill CSA Regeneration and Environment
- Walled garden In Bury:
- East Side Station Community - Park and Countryside Section
Garden


I would also like to thank the members of Feed Leeds with whom, and for whom, this work
has been made, and in particular: Andy Goldring, John Preston, Tom Bliss, Nigel Jones, Niels
Corfield, Sara-Jane Mason, Peter Tatham, Sonja Woodcock, Simon Holland, Emma Trickett,
Joanne Clough, Jon Andrews, Jenny Fisher, Roxana Summers, Emma Strachan, Hannah
Kemp, Cllr Roger Harington, Cllr Lisa Mulherin, Cllr Bill Urry, Cllr Mark Dobson, and all the
others that I cannot mention in full.

I would like to thank friends and colleagues in the Cities and Social Research Cluster, who
have helped throughout this project from the early stages, and my students Naomi Harriott
Brown, Jo Bridger, Luke Price and Rachel Levine who have contributed to this work in
various ways through job placements, data collection, discussions and literature reviews.

I would also like to thank my partner James Shaw, who is the first reader of everything I
write, without whom this work would never see the light of day.
And finally thanks to all the people in Leeds and beyond who have participated in this
project, and are believing that this is just the beginning of a long common work towards
food justice.

4

Table of content

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ 3
Table of content ............................................................................................................................. 5

1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 6
Gardening, food growing, urban agriculture ............................................................................................................... 6
The justice and injustice of urban agriculture ............................................................................................................. 7
Types of urban agricultural initiatives ......................................................................................................................... 9

2. Land access .............................................................................................................................. 17
Unavailable land or unsuitable land? ........................................................................................................................ 17
Gardening motivation and land need: guidance for self-assessment ....................................................................... 17
Size and location of the land ..................................................................................................................................... 21
Looking for land in your neighbourhood. Do you really need to set up a new food growing project? ..................... 21
Where to look for land/opportunities for growing food, and where to find support for land access ...................... 22
Types of land access .................................................................................................................................................. 25

3. Soil quality and urban metabolism .......................................................................................... 28
Soil pollutants, soil contamination and soil rehabilitation ........................................................................................ 29
Beyond soil constraints ............................................................................................................................................. 32

4. Edible landscape, food commons, food sovereignty ................................................................ 36
Food sovereignty and urban food commons ............................................................................................................ 36
Foraging and harvesting ............................................................................................................................................ 39

5. Promoting community health and cohesion through food growing ........................................ 41
The challenge of health and social service-led food growing projects ...................................................................... 41
Food growing volunteering platform exchange ........................................................................................................ 42

6. The economic viability of urban agriculture ............................................................................. 44
Definitions: what does economically viable mean? ................................................................................................ 44
Main obstacles to economic viability ........................................................................................................................ 45
Food hubs: short food chains reshaping the local food system and challenging food regimes ................................ 47

7. The ethical dimension of urban agriculture: building sustainable food systems and strategies
..................................................................................................................................................... 49
Food systems ............................................................................................................................................................. 49

8. Conclusions. From Urban Agriculture to Urban food justice .................................................... 53
Urban food justice ..................................................................................................................................................... 53
A range of (innovative) options ................................................................................................................................. 55

Suggested reading ....................................................................................................................... 56
Introductory readings ................................................................................................................................................ 56
Further reading: ........................................................................................................................................................ 56

5

1. Introduction
Gardening, food growing, urban agriculture
Growing food in cities is becoming more and more popular in cities of the Global North. Not
only are older generations of allotment holders still gardening happily, but also a new wave
of younger people are seeking land in and beyond allotments. Small, intensive urban farms,
food production on housing estates, land sharing, rooftop gardens and beehives, schoolyard
greenhouses, restaurant-supported salad gardens, public space food production, guerrilla
gardening, allotments, balcony and window sill vegetable growing and other initiatives
(Mougeot 2005, Redwood 2008, Nordahl 2009, Hou et.al. 2009) are just a few examples.
This wide range of initiatives is more and more often referred to as urban agriculture.
Urban agriculture (UA) is defined as the growing, processing and distribution of food and
other products obtained through plant cultivation and animal husbandry in and around
cities (CFSC 2003), generally with the aim of being sold locally (rather than exported).

In some cities urban agriculture has been recognised as important and is supported by local
councils with specific policies. For example, they have facilitated the access to land (for
example allowing the cultivation of food in public parks, urban greens or other unused land),
they have enabled the organisation of community composting facilities, they have
supported the commercialisation of locally produced food by changing procurement policies
(which has created demand for local producers and expanded their market) or have
designed sustainable food strategies that encourage a wider consumption of local food (i.e.
Bristol, Brighton, Manchester, among others).

Image 1 A DIY greenhouse in Glasgow

Source: Authors own

6

The justice and injustice of urban agriculture
Food growing in cities is generally regarded as positive for its potential to strengthen
community cohesion and enhance mental health. To a lesser extent, it is also appreciated
for its contribution to raising awareness of environmental issues, improving intake of fruit
and vegetables and contributing to resilience to the financial crisis, enabling people to (at
least partially) feed their families with healthy food that they can grow themselves.

However, urban food growing has also some potentially negative downsides, which are
especially prominent exactly because this is becoming an increasingly popular practice. In
some cases, for example, community gardens are part of beautification strategies of (once)
poor neighbourhoods, that leads towards increased land value, gentrification and
ultimately displacement of the most disadvantaged residents. New York, Detroit and London
(Hackney) are some examples of this process: gardening and urban greening more in
general, because they are so popular, are more and more used as tools for raising land
values and facilitating redevelopment. The middle and upper classes are attracted to live in
these more appealing neighbourhoods, and create the conditions for rent increases which
might be unaffordable to many old/longstanding residents. Once the land has raised its
value considerably and become suitable for redevelopment, those same community gardens
that contributed to this are often displaced, closed down. This is just one of the perverse
effects of urban agriculture.

Another potentially negative effect is the risk that common resources in this case public
land such as parks get appropriated and then privatised in the name of facilitating
community gardening. While in a time of austerity saving the costs of managing public land
is seen as crucial, and many local administrations are desperately looking for alternatives,
there has been little exploration around forms of co-management that do not alienate or
reduce common goods and which can still be enjoyed collectively.

Some food growing projects are also being used more as a way of getting a wage (because
grants for these projects are still relatively easy to find) while the community aspect, or the
extent to which these projects actually produce anything or effectively share the produce is
not monitored and assessed.

Nonetheless, urban agriculture, in its many forms, bears the potential to radically change
positively - the way we live. It can provide a substantial amount of our food (contributing to
food sovereignty), it can provide the opportunity to recycle more efficiently and live more
sustainably, it can even become a source of energy (i.e. community anaerobic digesters
where waste can be composted) or of income (if land is managed collectively as in the case
of community interest companies) from the production of local food.

In short, while this booklet will support you in the development of your agricultural
project with some practical tools, its main focus will be on highlighting ways of envisioning
radically new ways of living and to warn you about the risks of potentially negative effects
and offer you advice on how to avoid them.

7

Box: a summary of potentially positive and negative effects of urban agriculture

Positive Negative
Education about seasonality of food, which
can lead to more sustainable consumption
habits
Soil rehabilitation bio- and myco- Misuse of commercially available chemicals as
remediation of polluted soils, increased soil fertilisers, insecticides, herbicides, whose traces
fertility and biodiversity in the environment endanger human health
Recycling of organic waste to keep nutrients Increased groundwater pollution and loss of soil
local nutrients from poorly managed soils
Increased community activity, physical Council encouragement to local food growing as
exercise justification for substantial cuts in welfare
services (public health budgets)
Re-education of the taste/palette: possibility Increased energy inputs (heated greenhouses)
of eating vegetables not usually available in to grow vegetables unsuitable for the local
the supermarkets (i.e. purple beans, heritage climate
varieties)
Improved mental health and relations with Poor management of community gardens,
the local community conflicting projects, unequal sharing of produce
Affordability of fresh, organic food all year Increased rent of allotments due to high
round demand (when food growing is considered
simply a leisure activity for the middle classes)
Reduced carbon footprints of food, when Increased carbon emissions for food production,
recycled materials are used, waste is when gardening involves the use of a number of
minimised and organic agriculture is carbon impacting things such as commercially
practiced produced compost, plastic netting bought
annually, slug pellets, plastic pots and labels for
seedlings that are not re-used, plastic sheets
and other consumables
Reconstruction of food commons (when Enclosure (or privatisation) of public land for
public land is managed collectively but not food growing, justified as saving council
appropriated), renormalizing the possibility management costs, which reduces public access
of foraging and gathering food, grow food and ownership of common resources
collectively
Increased consumption of sustainable locally Strengthening unjust ecological security policies
produced food (increased self-reliance) and (self-sufficiency aimed at maintaining neoliberal
building alternative food regimes, food regimes and unsustainable consumption
sovereignty patterns)
Snowball effect and greater reconnection of Uselessly long waiting lists for allotments, and
humans with nature little beneficial/productive use of allotment
land.
Alternative, visionary urbanism, which Gentrification of neighbourhoods and the
reconciles society and nature, and embeds consequent displacement of the less wealthy
food production in the urban realm. population
Source: author

8

Types of urban agricultural initiatives
Before we continue with the next sections, it might be worth exploring the type of urban
agricultural initiatives that we have encountered during this research. This will be useful to
understand the sections that will follow, when we encourage the reader to explore possible
alternative ways of growing food in the city.

Display gardens
Guerrilla gardens
Vermcal gardens
Healing gardens
Educamonal gardens
Enclosed community gardens
Publicly accessible community gardens
Public orchards
Community forest gardens

Types of
Roonop growing
Allotments

urban Landshare gardens

Indoor growing (idroponics, aquaponics)

agriculture Urban farms

Market gardens and commercial farms

Display gardens = they are usually small edible beds, former flower planters or community gardens
set up in public, openly accessible space (i.e. city centres, near stations, public parks or within
heritage buildings) that are planted with edible plants to inspire people to grow. They tend to be
managed by local authorities (i.e. park staff), and to be aesthetically pleasing, therefore the plants
are not usually harvested and/or people are not encouraged to pick the fruit and veg. Some display
gardens are the setting for gardening sessions run by volunteers and are open to the public.

Guerrilla gardens = Guerrilla gardening is a quite wide family of projects, linked together by the fact
that they are created by someone, on someone elses land, without asking permission. These can be
flower meadows on derelict land (planted using seed bombs), vegetable patches alongside streets
or in hidden corners of public parks, and various ornamental or edible patches on reclaimed land
scattered around the city. Guerrilla gardens tend to be temporary: people move on, land is
developed, park managers arrive with their grass mowers ...or the land is officially reclaimed and the
project gets permission. Then this becomes a community garden.

Vertical gardens = Vertical gardens are usually growing projects that extend vertically along a wall,
or a window, or occasionally the plants themselves constitute the wall, and grow in containers
attached to vertical cables. These projects tend to need a certain infrastructure (for example for
watering or for keeping the plants in place) but are very space efficient.

9

Image 2 A display garden in Brighton

Source: Authors own

Healing gardens = These are growing projects specifically dedicated to healing. They tend to grow
medicinal/aromatic plants, are designed in ways that please the senses, and are run to support
specific groups through gardening or creative activities around and in between the plants. They are
often managed by, or run in partnership with, health institutions.

Educational gardens = Educational gardens are food growing projects that have as their main goal
horticultural, environmental and/or food-related education (i.e. seasonality, cooking, etc.). Of
course, almost all the existing gardening projects especially community gardens - have an
educational element, so this category largely overlaps with many others in this list, however,
typically gardens in this category are directly run by educational institutions (i.e. schools, day
nurseries, colleges and universities, and are located in their grounds (i.e. schoolyards). This limits the
possibility of wider community engagement.

Enclosed community gardens = Many community gardens are not located on public land, but are
rather located on private land. Most of the time although not always this implies a restricted
definition of which community can potentially be involved. Examples could be hospital community
gardens, projects for young single mothers or female victims of violence, asylum seekers and
refugees, street drinker rehabilitation projects: services in support of these communities do often
offer gardening opportunities within protected and enclosed spaces (within the private garden of
their accommodation, a fenced allotment, a school or other institution). Occasionally volunteers can
be involved too, but their number is usually restricted.

Publicly accessible community gardens = This is probably the most known type of urban agricultural
initiative. These gardens are located in parks, street verges, urban greens, city squares or other
locations where they can be accessed by the larger public all the time (i.e. church yards, railway

10

stations, former brownfield sites, etc.). Plants are grown in containers, dedicated raised beds,
greenhouses, or straight into the soil. They have usually been granted permission, and the gardeners
are affiliated to an association but occasionally they can also be started through squatting or
guerrilla gardening (such as in the case of Incredible Edible Todmorden).

Images: a Graveyard garden and street growing site, both in Todmorden

Source: Courtesy of Incredible Edible Todmorden (IED)

Public orchards = A number of local councils are investing in the future and planting fruit and nut
trees on public land. The act of planting itself is sometimes done in partnership with local

11

community organisations or institutions, such as primary schools. Public orchards constitute the
basis for a bountiful public harvest in a few years time.

Community forest gardens = Forest gardens are usually woody areas planted (or interplanted in
between existing trees) with edible (perennial) species following permaculture principles. This
means that the gardens are designed to mimic the positive interaction between species that we
spontaneously find in nature, but maximising the number of edible species. While less common than
vegetable gardens, edible forest gardens are increasingly becoming a preferential choice of local
communities that have discovered the benefits of choosing perennial edible plants.

Images: Three pictures from community forest gardens in Newcastle and Brighton

Source: Authors own

12

Rooftop growing = Rooftop growing projects are another form of urban agriculture on the rise. Eye
catching cases such as in Chicago and New York had a very inspiring effect on a number of
organisations with no land but available roof space. Rooftops have quite a wide number of uses:
from the involvement of patients in a Toronto hospital to grow their own meals on the rooftop, to
the employment of supermarket staff on the roof to produce their own greengroceries. A number of
Chinese cities are looking into the commercial use of rooftop space for food growing, while Tokyo
has already developed individual rooftop plots for rent.


Image: a rooftop allotment in Brighton

Source: Authors own

Allotments = Allotment are probably the most widespread form of urban food growing. While most
forms of commercial and household food growing have progressively disappeared from the urban
fabric in the last century, allotments have been re-introduced or become regulated by public
authorities (when they were spontaneously emerging out of reclaimed land). In the UK it is a
statutory duty of local authorities to provide allotments when there is demand. Allotments plots are
usually of a standard size (originally 10x30 rods or yards, but now they tend to be smaller due to
high demand), and can be rented by individuals (a smaller number of plots can be rented by
community groups). Allotments sites are usually fenced and restrict access to members of the public.
Produce cannot be sold commercially, but can be sold when it is excess produce, with the purpose of
raising funds for their allotment association (some sites have a Sunday shop) or can be
exchanged/sold among members of the allotment association. Allotment shops, open to the public,
can provide up to 2000-3000 in revenue a year.

Landshare gardens = Landshare gardens are privately owned gardens (usually front or back gardens)
that property owners decide to share, or to let people (landless) who are willing to grow use for free.
Landshare provides a number of benefits: it encourages the exchange of skills, produce sharing,
community building and personal and emotional support to lone householders. There are a number
of national initiatives that facilitate matching landowners and land seekers. The best known is
www.landshare.net (see more details in the next chapter).

13

Urban farms = Urban farms are usually middle sized (2-3 acres) sites within the city, that combine
vegetable growing, animal husbandry, leisure and educational activities. Sometimes they run a caf
or small restaurant with the local produce, they have play areas and offer growing spaces for local
schools, community groups or families. In the UK they are usually co-funded by local councils and
other charities for the educational services that they provide.

Market gardens and commercial farms = These are profit oriented versions of the above. They also
tend to be middle-sized projects (2-3 acres), but are less likely to receive external funding. Some
have adapted to the growing demand for leisure and educational services, and combine vegetable
(and meat) production with recreational activities for family and children for example play-barns -
and offer some educational opportunities, in the form of short courses. Some of these, smaller in
size, specialise in the propagation of specialist plants for edible landscaping.

Photo of a weekly shop at Moorside Allotments, Newcastle upon Tyne

Source: Authors own

Indoor growing = Urban agriculture does not only occur outdoors. More and more projects are
looking into how to convert empty buildings into food growing projects, using natural or artificial
light, or for activities that do not need much light such as mushroom growing and fish farming.
Indoor growing requires a certain infrastructure, and is therefore undertaken in view of
commercialising the produce. For more details see aquaculture and hydroponics below.

14

Image - Facilities used by local schools in an educational forest garden in Brighton: a clay oven, a hut and a
woodworking area

Source: Authors own


Private gardens and other interstitial urban farming = Alongside all these types of urban agriculture
we also have to consider the wide range of interstitial practices that grow food within the fabric of
the city: balcony pots and window sill containers, front and back garden plant growing and animal
rearing, beekeeping and seed sprouting. Sometimes these micro-food growing projects are part of
spin farming projects (intensive cultivation of small plots from a range of gardens, that put together
produce as a farm-size plot of land), and their produce is commercialised in a network, in other cases
this is produced for family consumption.




15

Images: Aquaponics and hydroponics at the Farm:Shop, London

Source: courtesy of Farm: Shop, London

16

2. Land access

Unavailable land or unsuitable land?

Land access is generally the most problematic issue for urban food growers. While wherever
you look you will probably see some sort of unused land that might appeal to you, this is not
always available, or indeed suitable for the type of project you have in mind.
For example, there are more and more young people (often with children) with no
experience of food growing that try to rent an allotment. They are not aware of how
daunting this can be when family time is tight, children get bored easily, consistency over
the season is not guaranteed, weeds grow fast and lack of growing skills dont lead to much
yield. Many new allotment holders are evicted from their plots within six months or a year
because they fail to comply with the standards of maintenance required by the allotment
association. For them, a community garden with some expert gardeners would be a much
better starting point, while the allotment could be more viable after a couple of growing
seasons and some gardening experience.
On the other hand, there are sometimes community groups or individuals looking to invest
more substantially in land productivity, and maybe to plant orchards or produce vegetables
for the community. Their project requires land security (for example long term leases), to be
eligible for some type of funding, or some measures in place to protect their investments
(i.e. polytunnels) from vandalism or their trees from being stolen. For them an allotment is
not ideal: an orchard would probably provide shade to the neighbouring plots (this is usually
not allowed) and the lease might be subject to annual renewal, which is not always
guaranteed. An open park, on the other hand, might be too risky. While an open orchard
would be a desirable outcome when seen as a form of rebuilding the food commons (when
collective urban space becomes a source of food for the whole community), in practice this
can be difficult to achieve. Until the practice of planting edible landscapes is normalised
the existing exceptions sometimes become targets of vandalism, or the trees are stolen
overnight.
Identifying and accessing the most appropriate land for your project is not always
straightforward.
In this section of the booklet we want to guide you towards the choice of the most suitable
land. Your needs and skills will probably change over time, so you are advised to come back
to this section regularly for self-assessment.

Gardening motivation and land need: guidance for self-assessment
The first step to accessing land is therefore an accurate assessment of the short and long
term needs of food growers.
The reason why you are looking to grow food is important. Being aware of this will help you
to find the right project and avoid later disappointment or having to deal with unpleasant
situations. If, for example, you want to grow food to be able to afford to eat organic, then
volunteering in a school garden isnt the right choice: here the vegetables are likely to be
kept at school for educational purposes (i.e. cooking, chopping, to aid numeracy). Or
again, if you just want to try to grow to see how it goes, the allotment is not the right place:
here the rule is that you keep your plot in good state of cultivation, there are regular
inspections and eviction is likely if the allotment is not well maintained. So, dont waste

17

money and get angry: unless you have a fair amount of time it is better to start from a small
patch, and ideally with the help of someone else more skilled. Sharing someone elses land,
setting up a smallholding, starting a community garden, are all options that require some
basic initial conditions.
So, here below is an overview of different motivations for gardening, that are discussed
taking into account the initial required conditions that are crucial for a good start of your
food growing project.

Graph: an overview of different motivations for communitys engagement in urban agriculture

Being acmve in the Meemng new

neighbourhood people Learning new skills

Eamng more
sustainably

Experimenmng
with something
new

MoQvaQon for Seeking mental

health and
food growing
wellbeing

Inspiring other
people to grow

Searching for new

employment
opportunimes
Contribumng to
Resilience to food feeding your
poverty
family

Source: authors elaboration

1. Being active in your neighbourhood/communitys life If you want to grow food
as a way to be more involved in the life of your neighbourhood, contribute to social
cohesion, support childrens education, promote environmental awareness, etc.
then you could join an existing community garden, or a school project, and when you
are ready, you could even think about setting up and leading a new project. The key
to success for a community garden is to be able to build and maintain a motivated
group of people with the commitment, and perseverance, to be engaged
consistently. You dont necessarily need funding. Many projects actually misjudge
this and postpone action in search of funding, while actually this simply impact on
their motivation (and while waiting for funding might loose momentum). The
majority of projects fail due to lack of commitment, rather than lack of funding. My

18

 advice is to join alone or with your group of friends an existing project before
deciding to set up a new project. This is a way to test your motivation and capacities:
a new project may be premature for your group if you have not done practical things
together before, or if you dont know the neighbourhood and its residents, for
example. Many failing projects may also have a negative effect on the overall
community, as they impact on the attitude of local government towards community
activism, especially when they negotiate the use of public land that is then left
neglected (see below for more details).
2. Meeting new people/finding new friends As above. An existing community
garden or a share in a private garden (see the LandShare website) could be a
possibility. If you go for land share, it is advisable to get to know the garden owner,
as this person might have other reasons for offering the garden to you (for example
expecting a certain amount of produce, or might only open the garden at fixed
times). You could also start more informally than LandShare, and offer to garden
your neighbours garden.
3. Learning new skills/Teaching your children how to grow Depending on the type
of skills that you want to build, there are various options available. Many community
gardens run training sessions open to all. You can join these freely (or for a small fee)
without having to commit to the project. If you want a place of your own, especially
if you have kids that might like to experiment with the vegetables (!) then you could
try to rent a small or half allotment plot. Some sites offer guidance or basic training
for new plot holders. It is worth considering that there are associations and charities
that offer training in various locations, so you dont need to be associated with any
particular site for in order to learn.
4. Eating more sustainably If you are committed to growing your own in order to
eat more sustainably you have probably envisioned a long term plan. Feeding
yourself and your family will require a decent size plot, and might include having
chickens or even bees. An allotment could be an optimal choice, which could be
scaled up to a smallholding managed collectively. Or you could join a local
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project, which is usually a farm that grows
on demand. You invest a certain amount depending on what you want to eat over
the year, and the farm will provide you with a weekly or fortnightly box. This can
include meat, eggs, veg, milk, etc. Some farms allow you to pay in kind (if not all, at
least a part), by working with them.
5. Experimenting with something new If you are just thinking of growing because
you have recently developed a curiosity, but you are not sure what to do in the
future, then you could try to grow in pots at home or at work (a well lit window sill
will do perfectly), or even try to grow something in your garden. Joining some
sessions in an existing community garden could also be a good opportunity to see
and taste different vegetables. You might be completely hooked by the amazing
flavours of vegetables that you will never be able to find in the shops!
6. Seeking mental health and wellbeing If your main motivation for gardening is
seeking wellbeing in a broad sense (from simple stress relief to copying with more
serious depression or other mental/physical health conditions), there are a wide
range of gardening projects that you may want to consider. If you have access to
your own garden, you mind find relief even just digging the soil and watching a
handful of seeds growing, or planting strongly scented herbs (have you ever tried

19

 growing thyme, oregano and lemon balm?). This is especially good if you enjoy silent
gardening sessions. Weeding a patch can actually equal the benefits of meditation
practices. Joining a community garden might reduce your freedom to dig around in a
garden as mich as you like (which is very cathartic), and the quietness associated
with this, but will add the pleasure of more sociable gatherings and, under the
guidance of an expert gardener, will increase the chances of having a successful,
productive garden if your skills are limited. This will also put you in touch with the
local community and offer you the chance to enlarge your social circles. Community
gardens often organise convivial social events.
7. Inspire other people to grow If you are an expert gardener, and are motivated to
inspire other people to grow for the range of benefits that gardening can bring, you
should probably try to set up a display garden in a visible area (i.e. a raised bed in
park or green or flower planter), or a community garden with a clear educational
purpose. Initiating a landshare project in your street, using front or back gardens is
also a viable choice.
8. Searching for new economic means/employment opportunities. If you are hoping
to go into food growing to become a professional grower you should probably also
join a lobbying group: one of the most crucial problems of professional agriculture
(especially organic) is the ability to secure a market for the produce. Some forward-
looking cities have started to develop policies to support their agricultural economy,
envisioning the potential increase in job opportunities, health benefits, and waste
reduction. Your most suitable choices are projects where you can build up
professional skills: starting from an allotment (which is 1/16th of an acre), scaling up
to larger plots (ideally in land-farm training projects, such as the one promoted by
Kindling Trust in Manchester), aiming to be able to run a 2-3 acres smallholding. It is
a difficult route at the moment, so better deal with this collectively and with a back-
up job.
9. Alternative ways to contribute to the family finances You might not find yourself
in extreme food poverty, but you might nonetheless be looking for ways to cope
with the current economic crisis, increased cost of food or sudden unexpected
financial difficulties. In this situation you might still want to be able to eat organic
food, or a specific variety of vegetables that might otherwise be quite expensive.
Whatever your reason, growing your own could although not always be a way to
save money on food. An option for you could be renting an allotment. Although you
should balance the cost of the rent (especially if you are not entitled to a discount
rate), the cost of buying tools and seeds if you dont already have them (although
there are sharing schemes and seed swapping opportunities that can save you a lot
of start up costs), and all the little props that go with gardening (boots, gloves, etc..).
A community garden with an individually allocated growing bed could also be a
viable choice: having an allocated small plot will allow you to know how much and
what you can actually grow and eat. Another possible choice is joining a Community
Supported Agriculture (CSA) where you could barter some work for a discounted
veggy box.
10. Resilience to food poverty You might find yourself struggling to afford fresh food.
If you have time and some skills, an allotment (even a half plot) can be very useful.
Allotments usually have reduced renting fees for people on benefits. There are also
specific food bank related community gardens, which combine the provision of initial

20

 land where to grow collectively, with the necessary training of basic gardening skills
to be able to become an independent grower.
Size and location of the land
Size and location are two important factors for the sustainability of the project. While size
can be transcended to a certain extent (i.e. too small plots can be grown vertically to gain
space, or companion planting can make efficient use of limited space), the proximity from
your main location to the land where to grow food is crucial. The closer the garden, the
easier it will be to look after the land when you have little time, or the weather is not
favourable. Proximity of the land to your house (or your workplace) will not only facilitate a
good use of small breaks for tedious works (like weeding), but will also facilitate the reuse of
organic waste to make your own compost, and the control of pests without chemicals (i.e.
picking slugs by hand in early morning or at dusk).

Land size (and its productivity) tends to be underestimated: it is quite common to see
people seeking more land (a full allotment plot before they have ever gardened a half plot,
for example), or quarrelling about a few centimetres of land supposedly taken over by their
neighbour, when actually a skilled gardener can easily meet the vegetable needs of a small
family with half allotment plot (approximately 10x15 sq metres).

When identifying or choosing a location for growing, you might also want to consider
whether or not this place is fenced, or fencible and indeed what is the significance of
fencing for you and for the community around you. Growing food reconnects you with
something instinctual, which is our survival instinct. Many growers are very attached to their
crops and need to think of them as secure, even when they have disposable income or
grow more than what they can possibly eat. This seems more like a need dictated by a
special form of place attachment (a sort of imagined place dependency for survival)
rather than an objective need. Of course fencing may also be required for protecting a
garden from destructive incursions, or for protecting tools from theft. In both the cases,
fencing is sometimes seen as the only solution, even when it is not. On the other hand, a
fence can also be detrimental to the local community. It encloses a space symbolically and
practically, and it therefore excludes. It can transmit a sense of distrust and reinforce the
claims of exclusive possession over natural resources. It reproduces subdivision, and
legitimises enclosure of common goods. It says keep away.

So, when looking for land, it is worth asking who is going to benefit from fencing your patch
of land, if these benefits are higher than the social distress it causes, and if there are other
alternative solutions (such as, for example, enlarging ownership).

Looking for land in your neighbourhood. Do you really need to set up a new food growing project?
Food growing has become quite popular, and there usually are several gardening projects in
each city. Many, if not most of them struggle to sustain themselves: they lack volunteers to
run the sessions when everyone is busy, they lack the time or the skills for fundraising (not
essential, but important for running related events and gaining visibility), or they have an
unsecured land tenure. These are just some of the most common constraints. If you are
interested in growing food, whatever your motivation (see self-assessment section above),
we recommend you consider joining an existing project at first. This will make the group

21

stronger and can revitalise a group that needs new energy and ideas. You could even
persuade them to develop together the particular idea that you had originally in mind, if you
wanted to develop a particular type of community garden.

This can give you the opportunity to learn new skills. If you have not grown food before,
you should remember there is a lot to learn. Joining an existing gardening project can also
be beneficial to your social and neighbourhood life. You will have the opportunity to get to
know new people, make friends and be more connected to your neighbourhood space.
Some community food growing projects take place on council land, or in public space: you
might feel more connected to the place where you live.
This will not stop you from becoming an independent grower: with experience you will be
able to handle an allotment all by yourself, or even run a smallholding. This just takes time
and practice.
If you have access to a bit of land where you live (i.e. you have a front or back garden), you
could also start from there, but if you have never done gardening before, we recommend
that you also join a gardening group.

Where to look for land/opportunities for growing food, and where to find support for land access

There are a number of institutions that can support you in your search for cultivable land.

The Federation of City Farms and Community gardens can support you in identifying and
accessing land for a variety of projects (including training for buying the land). They are also
the initiators of the Community Land Advisory Service which has published documents
online (http://www.communitylandadvice.org.uk/), runs workshops and provides specific
advice. Check out their website: http://www.farmgarden.org.uk/ .

Incredible Edible Todmorden has put online examples of land tenure agreements and
insurance licences: http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/resources/land-share-
and-using-public-land

LandShare has an online platform where you can offer land (i.e. your garden, to be shared
with someone willing to teach you how to grow, or just to grow and share the produce), or
where you can find available land to share with someone else: www.landshare.net/

Food growing project mapping. In many areas across the UK there are groups and
organisations mapping available land and food growing projects. Search the web with a
number of key words, like the name of your town or neighbourhood, and terms like food
growing, community gardens, gardening or urban agriculture. In Leeds you can look
on the Feed Leeds website (www.feedleeds.org); in Bristol there is an online Google map
(http://www.bristolfoodnetwork.org/local-food-map/); in Somerset there is the
sophisticated food mapper (http://www.foodmapper.org.uk ); in Brighton, you can contact
the Brighton and Hove food partnership (http://www.bhfood.org.uk/ ); in Sheffield
(http://sheffieldfoodnetwork.co.uk/); in London, Sustain through the Capital Growth
initiative - is mapping and monitoring over 2000 food growing projects
(http://www.capitalgrowth.org/spaces/).


22

Your local council will have a dedicated page for their allotment services (which is a
statutory duty of every council) and possibly other community food growing initiatives. In
some cities, local allotments are united in a federation that supports growers in a number of
ways. It is worth checking if in your area there is a similar organisation.

Local area magazines (i.e. North Leeds Life) may also list community food growing projects
in need of volunteers.

Explore your neighbourhood. Check for community spaces, or ask the local primary school
(or other educational and health institutions): they often run gardens and need volunteers
to help. You can also see if there is any empty space in your area that could become a food
growing space. You can then contact the planning department to find out which sector of
the council is responsible for that space and negotiate an agreement. The new planning law
(Neighbourhood Act) encourages citizens to take responsibility of common resources or
underused spaces via temporary leases or asset transfer schemes.


Image: the interface of Capital Growth (London) for searching growing spaces in the city

Resources in Leeds (land and support)

As a first approach to food growing in Leeds, there is a list below of organisations promoting
some forms of community gardening. Some of them publicise their regular gardening days,
as they appear in the calendar shown at page 43.

23

There are also a number of parks where Leeds City Council (Parks and Countryside Services)
is happy to see community food growing projects established, on the condition that this is
not going to be fenced, and after having stipulated a written agreement.

Gardening groups in Leeds
There are a number of gardening groups and projects that offer opportunities for free
reskilling and that look for new members. This is a selection:

Feed Leeds, an umbrella organisation that this research projects has supported in its
establishment and development, should be the main reference point for all groups
seeking support: www.feedleeds.org
Allotments: there are 97 sites in Leeds, accommodating about 1000 food growers.
Some sites have spare allotments plots, or very short waiting lists. Most of them are
self-administered sites run by a local association. For more info: Leeds city council
allotments, http://www.leeds.gov.uk/leisure/Pages/Allotments.aspx or Leeds and
District Allotment Gardeners Federation, http://www.ldgf.org.uk/
Colour garden: Armley Mills Industrial Museum. This is community garden that
grows heritage and dyeing plants, that in the past were used to dye fabric. Contact:
Hannah Kemp, hannah.kemp@leeds.gov.uk
Front garden food growing: Back to Front (Harehills) and Hyde Park Neighbourhood
Food-Growing Project. Contacts: Roxana.Summers@leeds.gov.uk and Ellen
Robottom, Ellenrobottom@hotmail.com
Community support for front garden food growing: Back to Front community hubs,
Harehills (see Roxanas contact above)
Permaculture forest garden: Bedford Fields Forest Garden, Woodhouse. Contact:
Joanna Dornan, joannadornan@yahoo.co.uk

24

 Permaculture training community allotment: Codben Road, Wortley. Contact: Niels
Corfield, ediblecities@googlemail.com
Community-Students collaborative gardening: Bardon Grange Project, Weetwood
and University Campus. Contact: Caroline Scott, caroline.scott@live.com
Edible open gardens: Edible Public Space (Chapeltown), Pennington Street
Community Garden (Woodhouse), Kirkstall community garden (Burley and Kirkstall),
various In Bloom initiatives across the city, REAP edible beds (Oakwood/Roundhay),
Healthy Living Centres: Feel Good Factor (Chapeltown), Healthy Living Network
(Armley) and Zest (Richmond Hill)
Food Growing Project (Hyde Park). Contact: Green Action,
http://www.greenactionleeds.org.uk/
Primary school food growing projects, various schools across Leeds, involved in the
LESSN network, http://lessn.info/
Other community gardens (i.e. TCV Hollybush, Skelton Grange, Inkwell Arts, etc.), all
contacts available on the Feed Leeds website, www.feedleeds.org

Types of land access
Beyond the most traditional renting agreement, most commonly renting an allotment, there
are a number of alternative forms of access to land for food growing, each implying a
specific type of entitlement to the produce, or security of tenure:

LandShare is an informal agreement between a landowner (usually a garden owner with

no skills or time to cultivate their land) and one or more food growers (people without a
garden that are happy to share the land at no cost). Several organisations promote forms of
land share. The most known is the nationwide LandShare initiative established by Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall at River Cottage (www.landshare.net), which offers a matching
service. Transition Town initiatives have also published some guidelines with examples (see
the Transition Book Local food. How to make it happen, by Pinkerton and Hopkins,
published in Totnes in 2009). While agreements are generally informal, a discussion on the
aims, timescales, and growing styles among land sharers is suitable.

Guerrilla gardening Is the cultivation of a plot/portion of land, without permission, but
without appropriation /enclosure of the land. This is usually a temporary and unsecured way
of accessing land. While some of these guerrilla initiatives have been proved successful
(Todmorden, for example, started in this way), you must be aware that guerrilla approaches
dont secure you a harvest: you might find that your plants have been removed or cut down.

Squatting Means taking over someone elses land (usually abandoned) to grow food,
establishing some sort of infrastructure that aims to be permanent. There have been a few
examples in the UK, from squatting empty market garden greenhouses in London to building
raised beds on reclaimed land in the centre of Brighton. In Detroit squatting has occurred on
a large scale: local citizens have been fencing vacant lots of land (this is called blotting), to
start growing food to meet their food needs. Squatting is usually more long term than
guerrilla gardening, but to make it sustainable needs an energy (and financial) investment in
legal battles to claim your right to grow food on this land. If you want to follow the story of
one of the best known examples of an urban food growing project on squatted land you can
see: Grow Heathrow (www.transitionheathrow.com/grow-heathrow )

25


Meanwhile uses These are temporary leases for a space that would normally be used for
other activities (i.e. non-agricultural land, waiting to be developed, an empty building or an
empty shop). This can be ideal for container growing, as the soil might be concreted over or
not fit for agriculture, and structures (polytunnels, containers, etc.) that can easily be moved
elsewhere once the lease ends. For more information on this type of lease:
www.meanwhilespace.com and www.meanwhilespace.org.uk. For an example, see the
Cultivate London initiative (http://www.cultivatelondon.org ).

Temporary uses These are occupational leases, or growing licences, signed on a
temporary basis, which usually are renewed annually (i.e. edible beds around Todmorden,
Community Railways Partnerships, etc.). Many railways have established initiatives where
the local community can manage some of the spaces around disused station buildings.
Brighton and Bristol have both established thriving railways partnership. For more
information you can explore your local railway companys website, or contact the
Association of Community Railway partnerships: http://www.acorp.uk.com/.


Image: a community garden realised through a railway partnership, in Bristol

Source: Authors own

26


Ongoing lease: Farm Business Tenancy - This type of lease is especially designed for
farmers. The ongoing term is particularly suitable for new projects seeking start-up funds to
buy the infrastructure needed (i.e. large polytunnels, irrigation systems, machinery, etc.)

Community asset transfer: while, as I mentioned at the beginning of this booklet, there are
various insidious risks which come with urban agriculture, and the loss of local assets is one
of these, I will report here two types of asset transfer which can lead towards a
reconstruction of the commons provided the leases are open to all the residents of a
community, which is fluid over time, and not just tied to a specific social group.

1) Community-led public open space management: involves the shared management
of public land for food growing. For example at Wenlock barn estate, Hackney, London
(see info here:
http://www.neighbourhoodsgreen.org.uk/casestudy/display?casestudy=41).

2) Community Farm Land Trust. Here an asset transfer has been used to set up a land
trust which manages a wider portion of land. Stroud is quite exemplary. For more
details see Stroud Common Wealth: http://www.stroudcommonwealth.org.uk and
http://www.biodynamiclandtrust.org.uk/resources/press-research.

For more information on asset transfers you can consult the following:
http://www.atu.org.uk/Document.ashx?ID=295
http://www.transitionnetwork.org/ingredients/building/community-ownership-
assets
http://en.communitylandadvice.org.uk/case-studies
Localism Act Community right to bid and Assets of community value
http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/1987150.pdf

London: An example of meanwhile uses (Cultivate London, Brentford Lock polytunnels)

Source: http://www.cultivatelondon.org/#jp-carousel-369

27

3. Soil quality and urban metabolism

While often neglected, especially by new and unskilled growers, soil quality is very
important, possibly the most important element of urban agriculture. Soil is the medium in
which you grow plants (although professional, large scale growers who use greenhouses
dont often grow in soil, but rather in chemical enriched substrates). Soil can be rich in
nutrients or very poor, can be alive or dead, can be very alkaline or very acid, it can be clay-
rich or sandy, it can be polluted or not.
Growing food in cities, where the origins of topsoil or previous soil uses are unknown, and
where pollutants and polluting activities abound near to growing sites, brings a new range
of potential problems.
With the rising number of people growing food in urban areas, there is a pressing demand
for affordable and intelligible soil assessment, as well as for skills on how to improve soil
fertility and texture.
Reflections on how to assess and improve the soil, how to recycle water and (kitchen or
other) waste to produce compost, and ultimately how to convert urbanised areas back into
food producing space, go under the umbrella term of urban metabolism.

Image: A community garden created on a concreted area in Glasgow.

Source: Authors own

The metaphor of metabolism (the digestion, assimilation, transformation and excretion of
substances, such as food, in living organisms), when applied to a city, brings a new range of
thoughts to the fore. While until a few decades ago this concept was used to think about
cities mainly in terms of flows of energy and materials, more recently the metaphor has
been used to think about a new range of social activities and transformations. Growing food
in cities, shortening the food chain, waste recycling and rehabilitating soil fertility are all
activities through which we can impact on the local micro-climate, can challenge and change
the global food system, can close food loops (meaning that all our food waste can be

28

recycled to nurture the soil for food production, in a cycle that can regenerate itself), and
can radically change the way we eat - and live - in cities. These socio environmental
metabolic changes have a great revolutionary potential, but we are a long way away from
instigating and actually achieving this change.
In a few generations we have lost knowledge on how to grow food and how to nurture the
soil through our waste. We have got used to almost tasteless industrially produced fruit and
vegetables, we have changed our diets to heavy-carbon-footprint choices, and we are about
to forget how to cook. Growing food has been classified as leisure. Rearing animals requires
permission. Land for food growing in cities is scarce and expensive, and its tenure is not
time-secured. Most of the worlds population lives in cities, and more and more
communities are being evicted from their land to clear space for industrial agriculture that
feeds urban populations across the globe.
Despite these problematic changes, there is a growing movement towards urban
metabolism that is deeply rooted in the desire to (re)gain skills and knowledge about the
soil: how to get to know urban soil, how to assess the bioavailability of nutrients and
pollutants, how to rehabilitate the soil, how to keep it fertile, how to close the loops of food
and nurture the soil through our waste, and ultimately how to grow urban food more
sustainably.

Soil pollutants, soil contamination and soil rehabilitation
With regards to soil pollution or contamination, at the moment there is no specialist
support offered by local councils to test the soil, nor there are specific publications
addressing the non-specialist urban food growers needs (although the Alterra research
group at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands, is preparing one).
While we know that urban soil can contain arsenic, lead, cadmium, nickel, zinc, copper,
hydrocarbon, and other contaminants, it is not clear when/whether they can be absorbed
by plants, which plants tend to absorb them most (and which specific contaminants) and to
what extent they becomes dangerous for human health. Some contaminants, for example,
tend to stay in the leaves or in the skin of a fruit, while other tend to be stored in the roots,
or the flesh of a vegetable. As we tend to eat different parts in different plants (e.g. the
roots, in potatoes, but the fruits in tomatoes, it isnt clear if we might potentially end up
eating the most or the least contaminated part of a crop. We also dont know much about
or find difficult to predict - when soil pollutants become available to a plant, and enter the
food chain. Bio-availability of contaminants, in fact, depends on soil temperature and
moisture, external atmospheric conditions, and ultimately the type of plant that is grown in
the soil. Research is under way, but currently there is very little that can be disseminated to
non-specialists.
Some support on how to deal with contaminated soils is offered by the Federation of City
Farms and Allotment Gardens. You can access their guidelines here:
http://www.farmgarden.org.uk/publications/135-contaminated-land-guidelines.
Leeds City Council policy for soil testing is accessible here: Leeds City Council, Contaminated
land - Inspection strategy for Leeds (2001),
http://www.leeds.gov.uk/council/Pages/Contaminated-land--inspection-strategy.aspx. The
council holds information on previous soil uses and whether there was a history of soil
contamination. So, if you are not sure about the history of your site, do get in touch with the
council. For more information citizens can contact the Contaminated Land Officer (Stella
Keenan, 0113 2478154, email: stella.keenan@leeds.gov.uk)

29

For information concerning soil quality improvement, on the other hand, there is abundant,
almost excessive information available in various publications, and perhaps only little
practical support. Almost every gardening book will tell you how important it is to assess soil
acidity and alkalinity, to produce and use your own compost, and to nurture your plants
with Nitrogen, Phosphorous or Potassium (N-P-K) through the different stages of their
growth. Despite this, through this research it has become clear that - even among expert
gardeners - appropriate and efficient management of compost heaps is quite rare, and
composting knowledge is generally quite limited.
Wormeries, a method by which food waste is transformed into compost by worms, are
great as they can receive a much wider type of kitchen waste (including meat and cheese, as
opposed to normal composts), they work pretty quickly, and dont usually become a
breeding ground for slugs. Nonetheless, they are very little used among gardeners.
In order to increase the exchange of local knowledge around these issues, enable growers to
reduce their dependency on chemicals, and to control the quality of their soils, the Urban
Food Justice social platform (a learning and knowledge exchange device organised as part of
a research project, see page 2 for more details) has created the space for a number of
presentations and discussions around (among other themes) soil contamination,
rehabilitation, and compost making. Presentations (powerpoints) and audio files (podcasts)
of the presentations given at the events can be accessed from the project website:
www.urbanfoodjustice.org.
The speakers included:
- Stella Keenan (Contamination Unit, Leeds City Council): Soil contamination. The role and
policy of Leeds City Council
- Sarah-Jane Mason (Royal Horticultural Society, Yorkshire Regional Office): An overview
of composting techniques and a practical workshop: lets build a wormery
- Niels Corfield and Pete Tetham (Edible Cities and Leeds Permaculture network):
Bioremediation, mycoremediation and soil structure improvement. How plants and
mushrooms can help improve the soil.
- Andy Ross (University of Leeds): Biochar for fertility and greenhouse gas reduction
- David Hutchinson (Yorkshire Charcoal): low scale biochar production: a demonstration

Images: - A demonstration on DIY biochar making

Sources: Authors own

These workshops, which included practical activities around compost and bio-char making,
have been very well attended by local food growers. What has emerged from them is the
need to create a soil quality support network that can provide the circulation of specific
knowledge for environmentally sound soil management and improvement.

30

Three initiatives have been established in Leeds in order to achieve this: a soil testing
support group, a participatory-research group on biochar (Leeds Biochar Initiative), and an
agroecology and urban metabolism research group.
Soil testing support
Participants in the social platform/our events (do you need to explain what this is?) have
clearly expressed an interest in having their soil tested. Feed Leeds has agreed to take this
demand forward and to identify and facilitate the stipulation/creation of a collective
contract to test the soil at a reasonable price, and to help with its interpretation. This is
currently being arranged with the support of the council.

Leeds Biochar Initiative

The Leeds Biochar Initiative is a participatory data collection project aimed at experimenting
around the benefits of biochar as soil improver. Biochar is a sort of charcoal made by
burning organic matter (i.e. wood and twigs) in a reduced oxygen environment, at a certain
temperature. The process is called pyrolysis. The Leeds Biochar Initiative has been
established by Dr Andy Ross (Engineering, University of Leeds) and Dr Chiara Tornaghi
(Geography, University of Leeds), with the support of Barney Thompson, thanks to a Seed
Corn Funding from the Leeds Social Science Institute. The initiative has built on the demands
raised by the participants of Social platform Workshop 3 (December 2012) who expressed
their interest in being part of a soil quality network. A subsequent workshop was organised
in June 2013 (Workshop 6) with a series of presentations (including Dr Andy Cross from the
UK Biochar Research Centre, Edinburgh,
http://www.biochar.org.uk/list_of_publications.php) and the distribution of a Biochar
toolkit. There are at the moment about 30 participants who have received a Biochar Toolkit
and that are collecting data with their soil and plants. To find out more about this initiative
or to be involved you can contact: leedsbiocharinitiative@gmail.com.
Images: two comparisons of crops grown in soil with, or without, biochar

Source: http://www.bigbiocharexperiment.co.uk/

Agroecology and urban metabolism research group
A third initiative, under the Agroecology and urban metabolism research group (currently
seeking funding) is the establishment of a Leeds-initiated participatory research project
looking into how to close food loops, recycling kitchen and garden waste and producing
compost where the type of nutrients is controlled (i.e. phosphorous rich compost, nitrogen
rich, potassium rich, etc.) so that the gardener can become self sufficient in controlling and

31

improving the soil depending on the type of crops they are growing and the stage of the
growing cycle.
More information on urban metabolism can be found here: COST UAE WG5 Urban
Agriculture Metabolism, http://www.urbanagricultureeurope.la.rwth-
aachen.de/action/working-groups/wg-5-urban-agriculture-metabolism.html
This is a working group within a European network comprising more than 120 researchers
on urban agriculture. The subgroup, co-chaired by Chiara Tornaghi (University of Leeds) and
Luke Beesley (The James Hutton Institute) look into knowledge sharing and knowledge gaps
with the aim of closing metabolic cycles in cities.

Image: closed food loops

Source: http://www.garick.com/Blog/tabid/105/catid/5/Environmental.aspx

Beyond soil constraints
While urban soil quality is surely a matter of concern, this should not be taken as an
absolute limiting factor. A range of alternative growing techniques or spaces are being used
and invented in urban agriculture. This is possibly one of the most creative elements of
urban food growing.
Growing in containers for example, is particularly useful when soil is polluted, or when no
land is available: for example when the growing space is a balcony, a concreted yard, a
rooftop, or when the land is given as meanwhile use, and therefore the site might have to
be vacated with short notice. Growing containers can be made with recycled materials (tins,
jars, boots, milk bottles, sinks, etc.), can be filled with layers of topsoil or gardening compost
(both available in garden centres), or (better) with kitchen waste, leaves and shredded
paper, that will eventually decompose.

32

Vertical gardens and hydroponics are used to maximise the use of vertical space.
Builders bags, reclaimed wood, plastic gutters, can also find a second and third life in food
growing projects.
There are a number of design manuals and toolkits that help with creative recycling and
design for urban food growing.
One of these is Back to Front Manual for growing food in front gardens, downloadable
here: http://www.backtofront.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/backtofrontmanual.pdf
The manual has been published in Leeds in connection with the Back to Front gardening
project, an initiative looking to promote food growing in small front yards. The booklet
contains a number of interesting ways to recycle home waste and to build growing
containers which are versatile and suitable for small yards.

Image: modular containers for growing in front gardens

Source: Back to Front Manual, Leeds

Another interesting source of inspiration for the design of growing containers is the project
Sow And Grow Everywhere (SAGE), in Glasgow. The project helped to develop a number of
community gardens in concreted areas where soil was not available or too polluted to be
used. The designers have developed a modular growing space which used wood pallets and
builders bags, and that could be converted into a greenhouse. The design and details can be
accessed in their Final report (see pages 58-60 in particular), which can be downloaded
here: http://transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/Glasgow-food-growing-report.pdf

Glasgow: Containers which can be turned into greenhouses, made of recycled materials

33


Source: SAGE Sow and Grow Everywhere (above) and Authors own (below), Glasgow

So, to summarise, here below is a table that can give you an overview of the issues you
might want to consider in your food-growing project, when dealing with soil quality.

Table: a summary of key tips for sustainable urban soil management
Pollution A physical barrier (a edge, a bush, flowers) of about 50 cm from a
road is usually advisable to protect the crops from car air pollution when
growing food in urban environments. Washing the produce carefully is
essential. If the soil has been next to factories, or used for polluting
activities that leaked into the soil (i.e. paints, chemicals, heavy metals) it
is advisable to cover it with half a meter of soil (and possibly put a
barrier between the old soil and the new growing soil, for example a
layer of wood or plastic).
Soil Ph Adding organic materials (compost, leaves, manure) on a regular basis
is usually enough to balance slightly acidic or slightly alkaline soils.
Extremely unbalanced soils are rare.
Fertility Nitrogen, Phosphorous and Potassium are three key elements for the
development of a plant. A compost made of kitchen waste, leaves, paper
or light cardboard, and possibly urine (diluted) is usually rich in all these
elements and should be added to your soil each year, in winter.
Fertility and Biochar, a fine type of charcoal, when mixed with the soil (about 10-15%
greenhouse in the first 10cm of soil) can improve soil fertility quite dramatically, it
gasses control retains soil moisture and reduces the need for fertilisers. It makes the
soil slightly alkaline, so acid-soil-loving plants will not benefit from it (i.e.
onions and garlic) unless you compensate with something slightly acid
(such as urine, for example). Adding biochar to compost reduces
greenhouse gas emissions.
Closed food Recycling food waste (egg shells, meat bones, peelings, leftover cooked
loops food, etc.), animal waste and human waste (also called humanure), as
well as grey water (i.e. water used for washing) and rain water, can
close food loops. This means that by composting this waste
appropriately we can produce a rich compost to go back to our soil, and
prevent soil depletion.

If you want to know more about composting human manure, which is an excellent way to
reuse something available and very nutrients-rich, here below you will find the details of a
couple of key books to get to know more:

34

 - Steinfield C. (2007), Liquid gold. The lore and logic of using urine to grow plants,
Totnes: Green Books
- Jenkins Joseph (2005), The humanure handbook, Grove City, PA: Joseph Jenkins Inc.

An finally, if you want to adopt a growing method that tries to minimise human labour,
maximize produce, learn form how plants species interact in nature and embed these into
the design of a productive garden in view of closing the loops of energy and resources, you
might want to explore principles of permaculture. The national British association of
Permaculture is based in Leeds, at Hollybush (they run Permaculture Design courses every
year), and their website is: https://www.permaculture.org.uk/ .


Images: an old bath reused to grow fruit bushes and flowers (left) and an allotment plot with containers for
disabled gardeners (Newcastle)

Source: authors own

35

4. Edible landscape, food commons, food sovereignty

Food sovereignty and urban food commons
Together with water, air and shelter, food is an essential element for the survival and
reproduction of human beings. While we are now accustomed to be deprived of land in
general, and especially for growing food, and to turn to shops and supermarkets for our
food provision, this is not the norm everywhere on the planet. In this chapter we explore
some of the ideas related to edible landscapes and the availability of free food in an urban
environment.
The recent spikes in food prices (2008, 2011) connected to climate change (draught and loss
of produce), biofuel production (fields formerly used for cereals converted to produce crops
for making fuel), and food commodities speculation in financial markets (complex systems
of investments in food that artificially raised food prices, similar to speculation in housing
markets), and which were crucial in the uprising of the Arab Spring, have brought the issue
of food security to the fore in many, if not all, countries. Many governments have started to
be concerned about food. Countries with an expanding population, (like China), or with arid
lands (like Egypt, or the United Arab Emirates) have started to buy land abroad (i.e. in
Africa) to ensure enough agricultural land for their populations.
It is not just governments and international agencies (i.e. FAO, the Food and Agriculture
Organisation of the United Nations) that are concerned about food insecurity: a number of
local and international grassroots movements have also intensified their claims around
food, but they frame it using the term food sovereignty, rather than food security.
Food sovereignty is defined as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate
food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to
define their own food and agriculture systems (Via Campesinas Nyeleni Declaration, 2007).
Rather than focussing merely on food availability and access (i.e. affordability, local
distribution), which doesnt say much about the operation of the multinational
organisations who control food production and trade, the concept of food sovereignty
includes ethical and justice dimensions (i.e. what type of food is available, how it was
grown, by who it was grown, and who has access to it).
Thinking about how we feed ourselves, and our right to grow food brings us back to the idea
of commons and makes it particularly relevant to discuss the idea of urban food
commons.
If commons are all those material and immaterial things that belong to everyone (i.e. air,
internet, heritage, etc.), food commons are all those things such as knowledge on how to
grow, existence and protection of pollinators, preservation of the genetic qualities of
species, availability of land and water to grow food, etc. that make it possible to produce
food sustainably and to share it equitably.
There are a wide range of projects that are relevant for the re-creation of urban food
commons: edible landscapes open to all, such as orchards in public parks; open space
community gardens where everyone can plant and everyone can harvest; private property
managed collectively to produce food for sharing, and in general projects where common
resources (i.e. land, water) are shared for producing food, which is recognised as a right
which should be accessible and potentially grown by everyone.
A number of communities, from Transition groups to squatters to community food growers,
have initiated food growing projects with the intention of re-imagining and practicing a

36

different city, reclaiming land from development, building an urban environment where
food is not a commodity, but rather a central and more normal element of the landscape,
and the basis for new urban food commons (i.e. Grow Heathrow, Edible Public Space).
These projects claim the social, cultural and political importance of creating growing space
outside/beyond monetised relationships (e.g. food growing spaces where food is not sold,
but shared), and to rethink the city as a space that is shared with other species, from bees to
edible plants.

Image: inside one of the reclaimed abandoned greenhouses, Grow Heathrow, Sipson (Greater London)

Source:

Alongside this hands-on approach to food growing and accessing the land, there are
planners circles (i.e. PNUK) that are promoting a public debate on land reform, looking into
changes in land tenure that are progressive, interventionist, redistributive, and seeks to
secure social and environmental justice (Onthecommons.org):

Land is a form of commonssomething we all share the same as we do air, water,
scientific knowledge, and the Internet. People can use these commons for their own
livelihood, but cannot diminish them for future generations. When the interests of the
earth and the community are prioritized, private property can be treated as
a commons.

Public orchards and community gardens
With a different range of motivations, there are also a number of local councils that while
less explicitly radical are engaged with forms of re-creation of the commons, for example
planting public orchards and edible plants on public land.

37

Middlesbrough has invested considerably in planting fruit trees in public parks. While this
will not produce large amounts of fruit in the short term, it surely represents an investment
for the future, and an inspiration for the present.

Image: A public orchard in Middlesbrough

Source: Authors own

A similar approach is the one adopted by many community gardens which are unfenced:
they encourage people to learn about food, to see edible plants, to touch and to harvest the
produce, whether or not they have been involved in planting and looking after the plants.
They see this as form of education: letting people see food growing in the urban
environment is not only a way to share the beauty of nature, but also a way to inspire, to
educate and to normalise food growing in publicly accessible open space.

Images: The Edible Public Space garden in the making, Leeds. A completely accessible community garden (left);
A (right) and an orchard in the Childens Garden in Glasgow (right)

Source: Authors own

Alongside community gardens, a number of other initiatives are aimed at increasing the
resources we share. LandShare, the initiative that we have mentioned above, helps people
with no land to find a landowner/garden-owner willing to share land, is helping hundreds of

38

people to be part of embryonic forms of rebuilding the commons. These are opportunities
for sharing skills, sharing land and sharing produce.
More sophisticated (and more extensive) forms of re-building land commons are land trusts,
such as the Biodynamic Land Trust in the UK, and the Terre de Lien in France.
For more info and discussions on land reform and food commons and land as a common
resource, you can visit:
Planners network UK: Manifesto for land reform in Britain. Environmental
reorientation of planning, seek to secure social and environmental justice. Increase
role of planning in agriculture promote food security:
http://pnuk.wikispaces.com/file/view/20121027pnukmanifesto.pdf
Biodynamic Land Trust Land as a common
http://www.biodynamiclandtrust.org.uk/blog/7-reasons-why-land-essential-
commons
The Food Commons project:
http://www.onthecommons.org/sites/default/files/The%20Food%20Commons-
2010.pdf

Foraging and harvesting
The existence of food that is freely available in the city brings us to reflect on skills and
behaviours when harvesting and foraging.
Community gardens that encourage people to pick the produce sometimes face the
problem of plants being snapped, damaged or uprooted. Sometimes fruit and veg can be
picked when they are not ready, or there are none left for seed saving at the end of the
year. Overpicking is also the main cause of unsustainable foraging, and it can result in unjust
excessive appropriation of shared resources, as well as the loss of biodiversity.

To explore some of these issues, which are sometimes associated with the decision
(especially on behalf of local authorities) to avoid planting edible species in the first place,
we invited two speakers to the social platform to discuss their experience with us. Siham
Bortcosh presented the results of her research, which explores the attitude and approaches
of a group of landscape managers to the inclusion of edible plants in public landscapes in
greater London, including the associated benefits, challenges and practical considerations;
Mina Said, forager and foraging educator, presented her work and demonstrated the variety
of edible plants already available in the city.

We then discussed 5 key questions with the participants at the event. While the result of
this workshop will be presented in more detail in the second published booklet (Policy Brief
and Implementation guide), here I am reporting some of the outcomes, which will be
relevant to urban food growers willing to think more broadly about the general meaning of
accessible urban food, and some associated issues of behaviour and justice.

1. Food growing in public space is not necessarily a matter of contention. Stealing is not
usually an issue, but if it is, the best way to combat it is to normalise the existence of
food in public space, by multiplying growing spaces.
2. Freely accessible food can be found in parks and urban greens, but it could also be
planted on street verges, car parks, new development, roundabouts, roofs of public
institutions, and undeveloped lots.

39

 3. Changes to planning regulations (Localism act) could be advantageously turned to
embed food growing spaces in neighbourhood planning. While these changes would be
led by local communities, the council can develop steering documents (as in the case of
Brighton), especially in relation to the planning of new developments.
4. More education is needed to grow safely, harvest sustainably, recognise edible plants
and know when is the right moment to harvest them. Tweet and tell could be used to
educate and encourage picking at the right time. Society needs to re-learn how to
share, so more needs to be done to promote the idea of community ownership.
5. If edible spaces were mainstream and foraging was very popular, we would need to
plan wild and untouched spaces, but we would also have a society with a greater
awareness of growing food and better resilience to food insecurity due to peak oil and
climate change.
6. Foraging alone would not impact on the local economy, but if it was associated with
extensive urban agriculture (for example in the form of Community Interest Companies)
it could impact on the job profile of the city, boost the green economy, change
consumer choices and improve work-life balance and happiness.

Image: Mina Said (right) and Leeds Urban Harvest members, foraging

Source: courtesy Leeds Urban Harvest (top left), forager Mina Said websites www.msitu.co.uk (top right and
bottom left) and www.onethecommons.org (bottom right)

40

5. Promoting community health and cohesion through food
growing

The challenge of health and social service-led food growing projects

A number of community gardens are run (or hosted) by organisations that seek to promote
social cohesion - such as better community relations and collaboration between neighbours
- and health, such as mental health and healthy eating.
Healthy Living Networks, young offenders probation services, hospitals, protected homes
for single mothers, street drinker rehabilitation services, mental health support centres,
food banks, faith based organisations, refugee and asylum seeker food growing projects, are
just a few examples of the type of organisations that have established healing gardens and
food growing projects of some sort.

Images: a self built greenhouse and exotic vegetables in a community gardens for asylum seekers and refugees

Source: authors own

These organisations have turned to food growing for a number of reasons: growing food has
been proved to be beneficial because brings the opportunity for a deeper contact with
nature, its colour, smells, and enchanting power, which has healing effects (to know more,
see the Ecominds project: http://www.mind.org.uk/ecominds ).
Growing food also requires some skills, and their acquisition can improve self-esteem and
even be a motivation for acquiring further skills. Some individuals who have been out of
work (for part or all of their life) can find this work bearable and indeed enjoyable. These
projects also offer the opportunity for people with similar problems, to share time while
doing something that is not talking or thinking about their problems, but indeed a convivial
and playful activity. When these gardening groups are not closed, but actually open to the
whole community, they also offer the opportunity for mingling, re-building relations
between individuals who have been isolated for some time and long term local residents.
These projects, however, face a number of problems. The first and foremost is their
isolation. Gardening sessions are often run by paid staff, people attending the sessions are
often transient individuals in need of care, the gardens are located within the walls of the
institutions (enclosed gardens, rooftops), and even when they are not so (i.e. allotment

41

plots), or when they are openly accessible to everyone, in reality they are not often very
integrated into the community and life of the neighbourhood. So, the main challenge here,
alongside the need to ensure a continuity for paid staff to run the gardening sessions, is how
to match the needs of these organisations to run initiatives that create opportunities for
social cohesion, mingling, networking which can provide an important new net of support
for vulnerable individuals - and the interests of food growers, people seeking to volunteer in
community gardening, or of projects that look for more gardeners to keep them going.
Is there a way to avoid social service-led food growing projects remaining isolated?

Image: a rooftop community garden enclosed in a housing estate

Source: authors own

Food growing volunteering platform exchange
A possible solution is the organisation of a volunteering platform exchange: matching
community gardens that are seeking volunteers and health services running (or looking for)
gardening projects. This would identify those community gardens that are in need of more
volunteers and social services looking for ways to integrate their users into the broader
community while doing gardening.
This would involve a slight change to the ways these two entities currently work:
1) the social services, which often struggle to find a suitable place to bring their users (i.e.
probation services looking for gardening projects), or that lack funding for paying a trained
gardener to run the sessions, instead of limiting their sessions to small enclosed spaces,
would have a range of existing community gardens scattered around the city, where to bring
the users on an occasional or regular basis. This would provide excellent opportunities for
building stronger relations with local activist groups and local residents. The accompanying
staff wouldnt need to have gardening skills, but would have to look after the needs of the
people they are bringing along (whether they are people with learning disabilities,
behavioural problems, mental health issues, and so on, it is essential that they are
supported throughout the gardening session.

42

2) The community gardening group, from their point of view, rather than relying on the
energy of the usual one or two gardening enthusiasts, would enjoy the benefits of regular
(likely unskilled) gardeners, for which some guidance will be needed.

Image: two gardens of the Hyde Park neighbourhood food-growing project

Source: Authors own

The platform could have sophisticated matching devices (for example ways to match service
users to gardens in a specific area, in specific environmental settings, or just simply based on
a share calendar, updated at the beginning of a growing season.
The one below is an example of a very basic calendar of gardening parties that happened on
a weekly basis during the growing season in 2013.

It was developed during the food justice workshop 5, and it came with an annexed list of
gardening projects which did not have a specific gardening day, but that were open to
volunteers: for example: Green Action co-op; Edible cities; Edible schools project; Kirkstall
Community garden; Pulse-Pudsey Queens Park.

43

6. The economic viability of urban agriculture

Urban agriculture in the UK is mostly a grassroots phenomenon. Allotments, schoolyard
gardens, community gardens: these are all excellent learning devices for re-skilling,
community building and the promotion of healthy behaviours, run by volunteers or
individuals that garden in their spare time. Sometimes they are partially funded by grants or
subsidies for the social benefits that they bring to some of the users. However, these are not
usually economically independent, nor do they have a substantial impact on the food that is
eaten in the city. Nonetheless, urban gardens, and urban agriculture more in general, has
the potential to be an economically viable activity, and to produce a large amount of food
consumed in a city. The case of Cuba is well known for having been able to produce 70% of
Cubans food, with little use of mechanic and chemical support.
More and more urban agriculturalists are looking to establish self-sustaining projects. In this
chapter we look at some of the motivations of these urban growers, some of their problems
and a few pathways towards establishing successful projects.

Definitions: what does economically viable mean?
An urban agricultural project can be defined as economically viable when:
- it can remunerate (fairly) the time (all or part of it) that people spend working on the
project;
- It can maintain the infrastructure necessary for running the project (rent, machinery,
etc.)
Different projects might have different expectations and more precise definitions of
viability, which might include long-term costs: for example, some projects start with a
promotional land lease, given at a discounted rate for the first three or five years. Taking
into account the full cost of the land would of course change the total figures and the
extent to which a project is currently viable or not.
Not all urban agricultural projects are trying to be economically viable. Many people, for
example, are happy to grow food as a leisure activity and dont look for economic
remuneration of any sort. They grow food in their allotment or in a community garden, and
they can afford to pay the cost of tools, seeds and rent.
However, for some other projects, the ability to raise funds is crucial and the lack of
economic independence is a problem.
Some projects, for example, aspire to grow in size and impact (or are already growing).
Some urban harvest initiatives are so successful that they cannot meet the demand of
gardens owners to go to pick their unwanted fruit. Some smallholdings are trying to expand,
cultivate more land and produce more food. They would like to pay for some or all the work
of their volunteers, as well as the facilities they use, and create local green jobs. Sometimes
they might need to secure the skills (and the people) that keeps them running, and would
like to offer a remunerated post in order to do this. In other cases they may need to replace
expensive infrastructures that they have been able to rent with a small or short-term grant.
This is the case, for example, with many projects that tried to set up veg box schemes, fresh
fruit and veg mobile selling points or food waste collection. Today the large majority of
existing urban food growing relies exclusively on volunteers, self-exploitation or grants. This
is a problem in particular in three cases.

44

 1. When there is a personal aspiration to take gardening beyond being just a hobby,
recognise the importance of food production for the community and the environment,
and be paid for the time dedicated to this work: in short, when the project wants to
become a sustainable economic activity.
2. When the fluctuation in the number of volunteers (or in the market) endangers the
stability of the project. Lack of volunteers to harvest, or lack of market demand for the
produce creates food waste and discontinuity in services (i.e. distribution, food
processing, etc.) and endangers the long-term life of the project, as it encounters the
risk of being labelled as unreliable.
3. When the project aims to become a viable and reliable alternative for the production
of local food. Local food produced by smallholdings has been (and still is) feeding the
world, and despite the West being accustomed to depending on large-scale industrial
agriculture, an exponentially growing number of projects are challenging this model,
looking at pathways to re-design short food supply chains.

Image - Sims Hill Shared Harvest. A Community Supported Agriculture project in Bristol

Source: http://simshillsharedharvest.wordpress.com/2011/06/

Main obstacles to economic viability
There are various types of constraints to achieving economic viability. Some of these can be
addressed within the project, through self-education, while others need community
support.
1) Lack of time or capacity to raise funding or to develop a market/business to develop
the project further. This is especially the case with small and un-experienced
community groups or projects that used to be well funded and are now hit by
austerity cuts.

45

 2) Too little market demand for local, seasonal, organic food. This is experienced mostly
by Community Supported Agriculture projects (CSAs) and small businesses aiming to
expand the market.
3) High costs for the maintenance and running of infrastructure, for example for
heating/lighting systems indoors or in greenhouses, or refrigeration for storage of
crops.
4) Consumers used to artificially low food prices. The prices for veg that we are
normally used to, are low because they dont pay for the environmental costs (of
carbon emissions, for example), because they are kept low through subsidies to
farmers, because they are grown far away where labour costs are lower (and
national insurance minimal or non-existent) or because they dont properly pay the
growers. Customers are rarely aware of this, so the market is driven by a demand for
low price crops, and this makes food production uneconomical for local small
producers, especially organic, that aim to pay a fair wage.

Making local food work was a project funded by the Plunkett Foundation
(http://www.plunkett.co.uk/) and the Lottery Fund, precisely with the aim of supporting the
start up and viability of local food projects not necessarily just food growing, but also
shops, bakeries, land acquisitions, etc. Various documents are available on their website
(http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk/index.cfm), as well as a range of case studies. This
is a good way to start exploring possible business models and learn about dos and donts.
With particular regard to businesses, they offer four types of support:
Face to face advice on business planning and marketing for social enterprises
Skillshare mentoring: one-to-one visits and structured mentoring from people with
experience
Skillshare study visits: a subsidised and facilitated visit to successful community food
enterprises.
Workshops and a helpline to set up governance and legal structures to ensure the
sustainability of the projects
Help can be requested from the Enterprise Officer, Richard Snow, by emailing
richard.snow@plunkett.co.uk or calling 01993 814388.
Projects that are solely about food growing are notoriously the hardest to maintain.
Growing Communities, in London, which is probably the most famous food growing project
in the UK, took 13 years to became economically viable. So, there is hope, but we need to
be aware that some structural problems need to be overcome, and above all to understand
that the food we find on the shelves of shops and supermarkets is the outcome of
exploitation or unsustainable, energy intensive and polluting food growing and trading
practices. Until this is rectified it will be always difficult to compete with supermarket food
and to establish local food chains.
Two strategies are most commonly used to achieve economic viability: integrate food
growing with more remunerative activities, such as leisure or educational services, and the
creation of food hubs as a way of increasing the impact of locally-produced food on the
community. The first entails a well known range of activities: running horticultural and
woodland management sessions (grafting, pruning, coppicing, propagating, tending, etc.),
cooking sessions, permaculture design, introductory sessions for beginners or for schools,
setting up play barns, etc. I will therefore not go into details here. I will instead expand on

46

the emergence of food hubs as strategies for achieving greater financial sustainability of
urban agriculture and its impact on the food system.


Image: the site of a small plant nursery in an urban area in Leeds

Source: Authors own

Food hubs: short food chains reshaping the local food system and challenging food regimes
It is not possible to give an exact and unique definition of what a food hub is. There are
different types of initiatives that go under this name: veg box schemes, community
supported agriculture (CSAs), community shop networks, food cooperatives, food growing
project partnerships. These initiatives have in common the fact that they are usually bottom
up, spontaneous, civil society-led attempts to encourage the offer and demand for local
food.
Generally food hubs can be considered as sort of intermediaries, agents that pool
together producers, distributors, sellers and consumers, and that by doing so add value to
the exchange of goods and promote the local supply chain (Sustain and University of
Glamorgan). This value can be a sense of cohesion (small businesses getting together and
collaborating with each other), can be an increased number of local jobs, can mean keeping
economic exchanges local, can be experimenting with new, fairer, economic models,
improving the ecosystem, reducing the carbon footprint of the city, and increasing
community resilience to financial and climatic turbulences.
Food hubs can operate on four levels:
1) They bring together food producers (generally small, but not always) to coordinate
food production. This means sharing resources, from land to transport, and make
them more able to offer local food on a continued basis (when some of them might
fail to produce a crop, for example) and be more competitive with larger businesses.

47

 2) Target food sellers (greengrocers, restaurants) and persuading them to buy local.
Pushing strategies are based on a range of motivations, from freshness and taste of
crops to ethical dimensions. In some cases these sellers become part of a
cooperative system with the producers.
3) Sensitize consumers to buy, and to demand, local food. Consumers can become
parts of these businesses in a range of ways: from buying veg in advance (i.e. in
community supported agriculture), exchanging labour in the farms for discounted
prices for veg boxes or dairy and meat, or simply as investors and share holders.
4) Lobby for the establishment of city councils food procurement policies that support
local food, therefore expanding the market for local growers and sustaining the local
economy.
While most of the food hubs existing in the UK at the moment are relatively small scale, the
number of city councils engaging in food policies is increasing. Bristol is an exemplary case
of city that started to explore where food comes from and how to support a local food hub.
For more info on Bristol, its food charter, food strategy, food assessment and food policy
council, see the following links:
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/environment/food-policy-bristol-and-food-charter
http://bristolfoodpolicycouncil.org/
Community food growing has the potential to go quite far and become an important
element of more healthy, sustainable and ethical food systems. If your project wants to go
in this direction, then you should definitely explore further some of the issues and support
agencies mentioned in this chapter.

Image: a graphic representation of a food hub

Source: http://www.gourmetgorilla.com/?p=1221

48

7. The ethical dimension of urban agriculture: building sustainable
food systems and strategies

In the last chapter we started to discuss urban food growing in a much broader perspective
than simply looking at the relations that occur in the small context of a garden and its
growers. We have seen that food hubs are becoming ways of coordinating growers, sellers
and buyers, and changing the food system. Before concluding this booklet, I would like to
spend a little time expanding this perspective and discussing a bit further the ethical
dimensions of urban agriculture. I will start by giving a small introduction to what is called a
food system and explain what a sustainable food strategy is and what could be the benefits
of developing one.

Food systems
A food system is a way of looking at food more broadly: taking into account not only who
has (and who has not) access to food, but also what type of food is available in different
areas of the city, where this food is produced, how it reflects the cultural and social needs of
the local community, and whether its production has been beneficial or detrimental for the
environment.

Image: Benefits and components of an urban food system

Source: Bohn and Viljoen

49

Current UK urban food systems are known to be unsustainable for various reasons. These
includes large carbon footprints generated in shipping food from distant production sites,
energy intensive production technologies, unfair distribution of food across neighbourhoods
(for example areas where it is not possible to buy fresh food within a mile or more, known
as food deserts), excessive offer of poor quality food (i.e. fast food and take away shops)
leading to health problems including obesity, diabetes and more, and exploitative pays for
urban food producers/workers.
Urban agriculture and local food sourcing, combined with other sustainability-focused
procurement and buying policies (for example reducing consumption of meat and buying
organic), have the potential to form core elements for delivering a sustainable and just food
system, while offering secondary health, ecological and social benefits associated with
enhanced and more productive urban green spaces.
A number of British cities have started to look at their food systems, developing food
charters (maps of principles and aims) or food strategies (lists of actions needed to achieve
their aims). Newcastle, Manchester, Birmingham, Plymouth, Brighton, Bristol and London
have all engaged with these in partnership with third sector and business organisations. In
most of these cases, the leadership of this process is given to a reliable third sector
organisation which, in partnership with representatives of the council, lead in the process.
Food charters are usually short documents, on 1 or 2 pages, with key guiding principles, that
are agreed by a number of key players in a city. Food strategies are much longer documents
that look at all the processes related to food growing (the land where it is grown,
distribution, packaging, waste collection) and the sphere of life that relate to it (who is
producing, who is consuming and who is not, its role in the economic system, its cultural
appropriateness, etc.).

Image: an extract from the Bristol Food Charter

Source: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/environment/greener_living/food/The-
Bristol-good-food-charter.pdf

While for a long time local and national western governments (and most of their citizens)
have taken food availability for granted. The recent food shortages, forecasts about climate

50

change and food insecurity, as well as the exponential number of people in food poverty,
have put food back on the agenda.
When you start to reflect on food a number of crucial issues emerge:
At the current level of consumption, a city has on average 3 days of food autonomy,
after which it runs out of food.
Many people have completely lost cooking skills. So, growing food can be of little
interest or help if this is to become an important element in their diet.
Food transport and waste account for a large part of carbon emissions. Cutting down
on carbon footprints requires changing the way to get the food to our tables.
One in 3 people on the planet have no access to clean water, sanitation and
adequate food but nonetheless we keep importing food from developing countries,
of which between 30% to 50% gets wasted on the way here, in supermarkets or in
our kitchens.
These are just some of the many issues that need to be addressed.
With more than half of the global population living in cities, urban agriculture has a great
potential to tackle some of these issues but it needs to be embedded into the broader
spectrum of policies that govern our cities.

With this aim, a number of cities in the last 10 years have developed food strategies or food
policy councils. In some cities these strategies have had little impact on the day to day life of
people, but in others they are being monitored for impact and achievement of goals and
revised on a regular basis.
The first wave of strategies were developed around 2006 and 2007. These are now being
revised with more sophisticated studies, for example with an analysis of the specific
reduction in carbon emissions that local food production could bring (as in Manchester) or
with more detailed indicators and a wider number of partners from the business sector that
commit to its implementation.
A key element for the successful impact of these strategies is the achievement of a wide
commitment from part of all the different sectors of society, from single individuals (willing
to minimise waste, or to re-use and recycle, for example) to public authorities, the voluntary
and business sectors.
If you want to take inspiration and to read two excellent examples of food strategies, you
can access the ones developed in Manchester and in Brighton and Hove, which are known
to be the first developed in the UK. They can be accessed here:

Manchester Food Strategy: Food futures (2007), available here:
http://www.foodfutures.info/www/
Brighton and Hove Food Partnership: http://www.bhfood.org.uk/ and Food
Strategies (2006 and 2012): http://www.bhfood.org.uk/food-strategy

In Leeds, which had a food strategy for a while, we have recently held two workshops,
organised by the Urban Food Justice social platform in collaboration with Feed Leeds, to
discuss with local citizens their interests in reviving the strategy (abandoned in 2010) and
rethinking the Leeds food system more broadly.
Below is the outcome of the workshops, which is intended to be some initial ideas and
principles shared by the participants rather than the final principles of a new city wide
strategy.

51

Table: summary of discussions on a Leeds Sustainable Food Strategy
Principles - What we want
1 Sustainability - Food in Leeds will be sustainably produced and sourced within 50 miles of Leeds and food
waste will be minimised and surplus food put to beneficial usage (e.g. charitable donations, energy
production)
2 Health and education - Healthy (and sustainable) eating will be encouraged by having and using a
consistent message (food messages right for stage of life) to improve health
3 Economic resilience - Growing proportion of food will be produced in Leeds (local food)
4 Justice - Decommodification of food to enable good quality food at right prices
5 Ownership by the public
Aims Actions
Facilitate access to land. Identify council-owned land suitable for
Increase environmental commercial (or community) food growing and make it available
sustainability and local food Enable community composting to supply food growers with organic
growing compost
Because it is crucial to reduce Encourage food foraging and food swaps (stalls at farmers markets)
food footprints and carbon Encourage the reduction of food waste throughout the supply chain
emissions and increase in Leeds
resilience Influence Neighbourhood Design Statements and make sure they
drive actions
Support local economic Assess capacity for growing already and link/support through the
development through the Leeds Food Hub (look for outlets for existing growers)
promotion of local food Encourage new food businesses alongside food growing
consumption and production Use waste heat to help growing spaces i.e. polytunnels by
Because it creates jobs and crematorium
promotes food security (and Street food, pop up shops
because short supply chains Encourage retailers headquartered in our region to further develop
produce less waste and are their local food policies, and to source food locally
more environmentally Change procurement policies (supply to schools and hospitals)
sustainable)
Promote healthy eating consistently (limit take-aways)
Promote food education and
Liaise with former ALMOs to deliver estate growing/cooking classes
public awareness around
Promote food growing, seasonality and cooking in all Leeds schools
food quality and food
Training new farmers, links to local agricultural colleges and farm
growing
start project
Because it is integral to all the
aims and because it is the Offer cheap compost bins to Leeds residents
foundation for good health Promote local food celebrations (via Education Leeds, Schools Network,
Red Hall)
Research needed: 1) Where is food produced and sold. 2) What is consumed. 3) What could be produced
locally. 4) What campaigns/education are successfully driving behavioural (consumption) change
Source: Authors own elaboration based on minutes and flipcharts


Details of the old Leeds Food Strategy and Action Plan (2006), are available here:
http://www.leedsinitiative.org/healthy/page.aspx?id=4344

There is currently a working group in the making, willing to hold further public discussions. If
you want to be involved, please email chiara.tornaghi@gmail.com.

52

8. Conclusions. From Urban Agriculture to Urban food justice

In this booklet we have presented some of the main issues that citizens and community
groups face when they want to start growing food in urban areas.
These issues, each discussed in an individual chapter, are interrelated with issues of social
and environmental justice:
1. Land access. Access urban land that is appropriate for the specific type of food
growing project (location, quality, accessibility, tenure).
2. Ability to exercise control on soil quality, both in terms of affording to test and
understanding the quality of soil and having access to means/skills to improve it.
3. Existence and viability of edible landscapes where to forage. Sustainable approaches
to foraging. Food sovereignty and the creation of urban food commons.
4. Support in publicising gardening initiatives and maintaining a sufficient number of
volunteers to sustain the projects. Importance of social inclusion and growing together
as an element of social cohesion.
5. Economic viability of small entrepreneurial food growing projects. Tackling food
regimes without falling into the trap of ecological security.
6. Ability to influence sustainable food policies. Lobbying for food justice.
It is time now to summarise what we have come to understand, during this research, as
urban food justice.

Urban food justice
A more punctual definition of urban food justice takes into account the wide range of
ethical dimensions involved in peoples approach to food growing and eating, and goes
beyond the simplistic view that food justice is about food access for all.

Economic JusQce:
Social JusQce: Right to fair pay (ability to
Access to quality food overcome voluntarism and
Food choice self-exploitanon in UA)
Fair produce share Right to build alternanves to
the current food regime

CapabiliQes JusQce:
Skills to access key Procedural jusQce:
resources (i.e. land) Right of civil society to
Skills to understand soil take ininanve to change
tesnng urban agriculture and
food sustainability policy

Environmental
JusQce: Urban Food sovereignty:

Food
Land access Right to culturally
Soil and water appropriate food
quality Right to ethical

Jusmce
Right to grow consumpnon
Right to forage

Image: Definition of Urban Food Justice Source: Authors own elaboration

53

Environmental justice
Imagine if tomorrow the government asked you to pay a fee for the air you breathe. You
would probably find it ridiculous. Imagine though if this fee is to pay for an air filter for your
house because urban air has become too polluted. You might start to find this acceptable.
This resembles the story of water privatisation. Although water access is still available in
various parts of western cities, citizens have started to accept that water isnt anymore a
public good. The story of land alienation, and the loss of the right to forage or to land for
food growing is older and more complicated. Nonetheless, we now live in a society where
we no longer have the right to food autonomy. It is now completely normal to sell our time
in a waged job in order to buy food and pay water bills (alongside other items for
consumption). However common this might seem to us, it isnt like this everywhere on
Earth. There are still societies where the planet and its resources are considered a common
good that cannot be appropriated, and land is managed to grow food and raise animals, to
forage and to go hunting. The first component of a contemporary, renewed look at urban
food justice is therefore environmental justice, where we acknowledge that citizens in
cities of the global North live in societies where land, as a primary source of food, has been
appropriated and access to the natural environment is unevenly distributed among the
population, and this constitutes a matter of concern.

Capability justice
While some land is now being made available to local communities to grow food, not all
entitled citizens have the knowledge and skills to access the relevant information to apply
for it. People also have a limited ability to understand soil testing, which is sometimes
necessary in order to grow food safely in an urban environment. Capacities and knowledge
are therefore crucial to access resources that can enable healthy food growing. Some
segments of the population have also lost almost completely cooking skills, which are
necessary to transform most of the fresh produce into food. This lack of capabilities is
crucial even among committed and expert growers and needs to be addressed.

Procedural justice
While food production, food transport and food waste management are impacting on
climate change and on the environment more broadly (for example through the high carbon
footprints of shipping food from Africa, or the greenhouse gas emissions from wasted food),
and while it is recognised that an increasing portion of urban populations are concerned
with these issues, there is still very little space for these groups to influence public policies
(i.e. food procurement) related to food. Given that food demand is inelastic, and the food
market is strangling food producers, the food system works as a food regime, a system that
is very difficult to change. Procedural justice claims the right of citizens to shape food
policies.
Social justice
This is the sphere where food justice, in the current literature, tends to be mostly
advocated. In these contributions, food justice tends to be discussed as mostly a question of
access (who has access to what food) and food choice (i.e. the right to fresh food, rather
than just the right to any food to feed yourself). Here, we recognise that different classes
and ethnic groups have different degrees of access to quality food due to education,
income, availability in the neighbourhood, access to private or public transport, physical

54

disabilities, etc. We therefore claim the importance of focussing more broadly on the social
issues that impact on food choices.
Economic justice
As mentioned in the introduction, urban food justice also looks at justice for workers in the
food-growing sector. Many food-growing projects are based on exploitative pay, self-
exploitation and volunteerism, because the market (defined as the sum of both large
distributors and consumers expectations) is imposing artificially low prices, based on a
generalised exploitation of the sector across countries. Urban food justice cannot ignore
considerations of the actual social, productive and environmental costs of food.

Food sovereignty
There are a number of definitions of food sovereignty. Here I essentially refer to sovereignty
as the right of individuals to eat food that is appropriate to their cultural and ethical needs.
This might overlap with some of the issues mentioned above, but not completely. I want to
point out that food, as a fundamental component of our reproductive capacity, crucially
constitutes what we are. It is our flesh and our mind. It nurtures our body, it is our source of
energy and strength, happiness and health. It activates our sensors. It is part of our identity.
It is so embedded in our body that the ethical dimensions of food are particularly crucial. It
is estimated that 70% of child labour exploitation happens in the agriculture sector. Can we
really enjoy food that we know was produced by children of school age? Can we stuff
ourselves with food produced on fields stolen from starving populations? Can we deny the
need to control the source of our food? Can we rightly be denied the right to grow our own?

A range of (innovative) options
I want to conclude this booklet by listing 4 basic principles for the construction of a more
just urban food system: 1) share the land, either private or public, rebuild the commons; 2)
plant and grow food. This is good for your mental health, community food footprints and for
the planet; 3) enjoy your produce, eat it, share it. Conviviality, which is enjoying food
collectively, is an amazing experience. It can also help to re-learn how to cook; 4) compost
your waste properly. All your waste. Including your human manure. If we close the circle of
nutrients we dont deplete the environment. Actually making soil is a very powerful act, that
brings you closer to the mystery, and the beauty, of life.

1. share 2. plant
land food

3. enjoy
4. compost
your
your waste
produce

55

Suggested reading
Introductory readings
Crouch D. and Ward C. 1988: The allotment. Its landscape and culture. Nottingham: Five
Leaves Publications.
Cockrall-king J. 2012: Food and the city. New York: Prometheus Books.
Nordahl D. 2009: Public produce. The new urban agriculture. Washington: Island Press.
Steel C. 2008: Hungry City. How Food Shapes Our Lives. London: Vintage.
Reynolds R. 2008: On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening without Boundaries.
London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
Gottlieb R. and Joshi A. 2010: Food Justice. Cambridge (MA) and London (England): MIT.
Lyson T. A. 2004: Civic Agriculture. Reconnecting Farm, Food and Community. Medford MA:
Tufts University Press.
Patel R. 2013: Stuffed and Starved: From Farm to Fork, The Hidden Battle for the World Food
System, London: Portobello Books

Further reading:
Atkinson A. 2013: Readjusting to reality. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory,
policy, action 17, 85-96.
Dooling S. 2009: Ecological gentrification: a research agenda exploring justice in the city.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33, 621-639.
Garnett T. 2000: Urban agriculture in London: rethinking our food economy. In Bakker et al.
editors, Growing Cities, Growing Food: Urban Agriculture on the Policy Agenda, DSE,
2000, on-line at: http://www.ruaf.org/sites/default/files/London.PDF [last accessed:
March 2013].
Girardet H. 2006: Creating sustainable cities. Schumacher Briefings. Totnes: Green Books.
Gliessman S. 2012: Agroecology: Growing the Roots of Resistance. Agroecology and
sustainable food systems, 37, 19-31.
Holt-Gimnez E., editor, 2011: Food Movements Unite!, Oakland, CA: Food First Books
Kaufman J. 2010: The food bubble. How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it.
Harpers Magazine, July 2010. Available online:
http://frederickkaufman.typepad.com/files/the-food-bubble-pdf.pdf [Last accessed
March 2013].
Kaufman J. and Bailkey M. 2000: Farming inside cities: entrepreneurial urban agriculture in
the US. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, on-line Working paper.
Lawson L. J. 2005: City bountiful: A century of community gardening in America. University
of California Press.
McClintock N. 2013: Radical, reformist, and garden-variety neoliberal: coming to terms with
urban agricultures contradictions. Local Environment: The International Journal of
Justice and Sustainability , published online, 1-25.
Morgan K. 2009: Feeding the City: The Challenge of Urban Food Planning. International
Planning Studies, 14(4), pp. 341-348

56

Pinkerton T. and Hopkins R. 2009: Local Food. How to make it happen in your community.
Totnes: Green Books.
Richardson T. and Kingsbury N. editors, 2005: Vista. The culture and politics of gardens.
London: Frances Lincoln.
Saed 2012: Urban Farming: The Right to What Sort of City? Capitalism Nature Socialism 23,
1-9.
Tornaghi C. 2014: Critical geography of urban agriculture, in Progress in Human Geography,
published online 5 February 2014 DOI: 10.1177/0309132513512542. The online
version of this article can be found at:
http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/04/0309132513512542
Urban Agriculture Committee of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) 2003: Urban
Agriculture and Community Food Security in the United States: Farming from the City
Center to the Urban Fringe. Online at:
http://www.foodsecurity.org/PrimerCFSCUAC.pdf [Last accessed March 2013].
Viljoen A. and Wiskerke J.S.C. editors, 2012: Sustainable food planning. Evolving theory and
practice. Wageningen: Wageningen Academic Publishers.
Viljoen A. editor, 2005: Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban
Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, Burlington MA and Oxford: Architectural Press.
Whitehead M. 2013: Neoliberal urban environmentalism and the adaptive city. Urban
Studies 50, 1348-67
Wittman H., Desmarais A.A., Wiebe N. (eds.), 2010, Food sovereignty. Reconnecting food,
nature & community, Oakland, CA: Food First Books

57