Farms in the City

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that sustainability refers to a practice of farming that depends primarily or completely on practices, such as proper planting and rotation of the land without applying materials trucked in from afar to remediate what should never have been damaged in the first place. The author points out that Smit believed that urban food security in the relatively near future could rest partly on locally grown and sold food, with production based on renewable local resources, such as composting in the backyard rather than on fossil fuels. The paper argues that sustainable urban agriculture may become a national defense because even under siege for a very long time, residents of cities would not starve to death.

Table of Contents
"Traditional" Agriculture
"Sustainable" Agriculture
What's Best for the Future?

From the Paper:

"Tilman et. al. suggest that sustainable agriculture must be accompanied by advances in energy use, transportation and so on. In short, they do not so much lobby for a scaled-down, friendly, homegrown sort of urban farming Smit outlined; rather, they seem to suggest that more attention should be paid to improving 'big ag.' Still, what they desire for big ag is not entirely without sustainability merit. They suggest multiple cropping systems with crop rotation and intercropping, with two crops grown side by side and simultaneously. That, they note, may improve pest control and water and nutrient efficiency."

More papers on Farms in the City:

• Descriptive Essay # 108787 : "Slavery in the North American Colonies"
• Essay # 65691 : "Early Transportation in the United States"
• Comparison Essay # 75782 : "The "Babe" Movies"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: