Food and the City
Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution
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- USD 20.99
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- USD 20.99
Descripción editorial
A global movement to take back our food is growing. The future of farming is in our hands-and in our cities.
This book examines alternative food systems in cities around the globe that are shortening their food chains, growing food within their city limits, and taking their "food security" into their own hands. The author, an award-winning food journalist, sought out leaders in the urban-agriculture movement and visited cities successfully dealing with "food deserts." What she found was not just a niche concern of activists but a global movement that cuts across the private and public spheres, economic classes, and cultures.
She describes a global movement happening from London and Paris to Vancouver and New York to establish alternatives to the monolithic globally integrated supermarket model. A cadre of forward-looking, innovative people has created growing spaces in cities: on rooftops, backyards, vacant lots, along roadways, and even in "vertical farms." Whether it's a community public orchard supplying the needs of local residents or an urban farm that has reclaimed a derelict inner city lot to grow and sell premium market veggies to restaurant chefs, the urban food revolution is clearly underway and working.
This book is an exciting, fascinating chronicle of a game-changing movement, a rebellion against the industrial food behemoth, and a reclaiming of communities to grow, distribute, and eat locally.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With this incisive study of the urban farming movement, Canadian food writer Cockrall-King identifies weak links in complex global food chains supplying supersized retailers (e.g., narrowing biodiversity, just-in-time delivery, "global summertime" mentality) that, she says, will result in urban food deserts in the face of natural disasters, terrorism, contamination scares, lack of fuel, and inflation. Despite the appearance of unlimited, cheap food, Cockrall-King contends, the era of low prices has peaked as food products are diverted to agro and biofuel production, and Third World suppliers grapple with ecological devastation. In case studies of urban farmers and beekeepers stretching from London and Paris to Canada and the U.S., she reports on the growth of green markets and gardens and vineyards on rooftops, by roadsides, and in abandoned lots and community plots. Of particular note is her chapter on Cuba, which became a food desert in the 1990s after it lost financial backing from the U.S.S.R. and is now a model for urban agriculture. Despite her dire predictions for health and food security, Cockrall-King provides ample proof of city dwellers who have taken steps toward self-sufficiency by growing their food close to home.