Jean-Pierre Duford
Growing fruit and vegetables on your own property or in a community garden is a fairly common pastime in many cities. But today, a certain craze for growing on balconies, building rooftops and vacant lots is spreading in Quebec and elsewhere. What are the reasons why city dwellers are making these efforts?
A text by Jean-Pierre Duford, Forestry and Agriculture Spokesperson.
There are many reasons why people who care about the environment of their city and their planet should get involved in urban agriculture. Here are just a few of them.
Food self-sufficiency is one of these factors. Vegetable prices tend to rise, and their availability is sometimes problematic - indeed, large areas of cities can be called food deserts, highlighting the lack of grocery stores and supermarkets selling fresh fruit and vegetables close to consumers. Growing your own food is a great way for many people to boost their intake of vegetables and fruit, especially as Canada's new Food Guide emphasizes this intake even more strongly.
Many community projects also encourage the socialization of citizens, through participation in the planting, maintenance and harvesting of crops. This is all the more important given that most people in urban areas live alone.
Farming projects on vacant lots, old parking lots and building rooftops also counteract heat islands, increase biodiversity, divert stormwater from sewers and beautify areas that would otherwise have little or no vegetation. What's more, many consumers prefer this local agriculture to reduce the ecological footprint of long-distance food transport, common in today's economy.
Another significant factor would be the catastrophic future increase in fruit and vegetable prices due to climate change and its effects on agriculture, especially in regions far from Quebec. We need only think of the droughts affecting parts of Mexico (source of 71% of fresh vegetables in Quebec) and California to imagine the already existing increase in prices for these staple foods. And these episodes of extreme weather are only set to become more pronounced as a result of climate change.
All this, and more, is encouraging many Quebecers to get involved in urban agriculture in one way or another. Innovative projects are already underway, such as the Lufa farms in Montreal, which grow vegetables on the roofs of apartment buildings, or the Rivière-des-Prairies - Pointe-aux-Trembles borough, in collaboration with the city center, which is launching the first urban agriculture policy in the metropolis. Under a green Quebec government, small-scale farmers would receive government subsidies and assistance to increase the attractiveness of local urban and rural agricultural production.
Bibliography
- October 25, 2019: "Quebec's food deserts are still with us"(Radio-Canada)
- October 31, 2019 : "Urban agriculture (Ministère de l'Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l'Alimentation du Québec)
- December 3, 2019: Elena Broch "RDP-PAT: 30 hectares for urban agriculture by 2030". (Metro)
- December 4, 2019: Aleksandra Sagan "Climate change to push food prices higher, report predicts up to 4 per cent hike in 2020"(CTV News)
- Fresh vegetable sector profile - MAPAQ.
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