Jul 6, 2021
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) need no introduction.
Agreed upon in 2015, this universal plan aims for all countries to work together towards protecting the planet and ensuring prosperity for all humans and animals alike. These intertwined goals provide a global focus for the international community’s development efforts and a means to measure progress.
The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals; image sourced from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
The goal for 2030 is to have achieved these 17 SDGs globally in order to promote overall peace and harmony.
Unlike the formerly constructed eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), this holistic approach enables us to consider every single country, thus putting a greater focus on inclusion, specifically the systematic patterns of discrimination. It also puts a greater emphasis on the three dimensions of sustainability by incorporating targets to change both systems and lifestyles.
Whilst seemingly impossible to attain, cities and entrepreneurs are unknowingly using urban agriculture to work towards these various goals.
Zero Hunger (SDG #2) & Good Health And Well-Being (SDG #3)
As the world population continues to grow at an exponential rate and climate change limits the amount of available resources for food production, we need innovators and entrepreneurs to step up to the table to sustainably increase food production, bringing nutritious food to those who suffer from hunger and malnutrition, and to decrease food loss and waste throughout the global supply chain.
A key challenge here is the freshness of the food. We must not only bring sufficient access to food, we must bring people nutritious food. For this, we need food to be produced much closer to communities. Urban agriculture is enabling this closer-to-home production, teaching food consumers to be farmers.
As of recently, Atlanta has renovated a huge park into the country’s largest urban food forest. This forest’s produce is open for public consumption and thus feeds residents located in a food desert area.
Similarly, Farms Not Arms is a women-led collective tackling both the refugee and food crises in Lebanon by creating a regenerative farm, and training refugee participants on the skills required to build and run such farms. In this manner, we’re able to educate and employ the refugees, those also helping end poverty (SDG #1).
Decent Work & Economic Growth (SDG #8)
This goal revolves around providing youth with the best opportunity to transition to decent jobs post-graduation by training them with skills that match labor market demands.
Teens For Food Justice is an organization that is empowering the food-secure generation of today and tomorrow by not only feeding marginalized communities but also galvanizing a youth-led movement to bring good quality, affordable, fresh, and healthy food access to communities.
Teens in this organization are taught how to build and manage hydroponic farms, allowing them to grow thousands of pounds of fresh produce annually for their school’s cafeterias. TFFJ also works to create the next generation of food policy-makers, by giving students the ability to study the policies that have led to food apartheid, and to look at the kinds of advocacy skills and techniques that can help them to build a more just food system.
Similarly, the PHILLIPS Program is using CEA to help students with emotional and behavioral health needs. After incorporating an indoor hydroponic farm into the premises to expose students to the different forms of hydroponic growing and expand their skill sets, by working with Agritecture, PHILLIPS was able to incorporate Controlled Environment Agriculture into science classes and after school programs.
Sustainable Cities (SDG #11)
The primary purpose of this goal is to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.
Agritecture recently virtually hosted an international cohort of architects to do exactly this by working towards solving food access and quandaries globally. With the support of data from Agritecture Designer, the world’s first digital platform for planning urban farms, this cohort was able to design solutions that would help the world better adapt to climate change.
Future City Food Hub by Chris Jones & Brian McCarthy
To tackle the challenge area of a ‘Future City Food Hub’, Chris Jones and Brian McCarthy imagined the conversion of a multistory downtown carpark into a food hub, featuring an indoor vertical farm and rooftop greenhouse in the same building as food processing and retail space. With Designer, Jones was able to determine which crops would be most practical to grow in vertical farms versus greenhouses versus raised beds, producing a total annual yield of more than 100,000 pounds on-site.
Remote Northern Communities by Hala Al Amine
This concept by Hala Al Amine helps ‘Remote Northern Communities’ that suffer from harsh weather conditions and a short growing season. The igloo-inspired “Arctic Eye” is a geodesic dome creating a greenhouse at its periphery and a vertical farm in its center, growing produce that supports a healthy diet and tolerance to the cold. Designer estimated a substantial annual yield of more than 160,000 pounds per year.
Responsible Consumption & Production (SDG #12)
35% of household food waste is avoidable. In the UK, it is estimated that ~19% of all food is post-purchase waste, of which 12% is considered avoidable. Here, consumers need to be better educated about food loss and waste to reduce it within their own homes. As of recently, we’re seeing cities starting to include the reduction of food waste in their strategic objectives to overcome food insecurity and encourage responsible consumption.
However, the global food supply chain doesn’t only see food loss and waste, it also sees worthy resources not being fully utilized. In response to this, YASAI recycles nutrients from wastewater, recycles concrete to minimize grey energy, captures rainwater to supply irrigation systems, reuses bio-waste to generate electricity, and captures CO2 through their compressors to promote plant growth.
What This Means For Sustainable Development
SDG target 11.3 specifically aims to “enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries” by 2030. Bringing urban agriculture into communities helps us do exactly this and more.
Considering that 54% of the world’s population is currently located in cities, sustainable urban agriculture is a great pathway to achieving these Sustainable Development Goals. Through innovative methods of urban agriculture, this multidisciplinary approach strengthens community relationships, increases civic engagement in low-income communities, allows for greener streets, teaches us multiple new skills, builds citywide resilience to natural threats, and helps put an end to food insecurity.
Since food is such an integral part of society and our survival, we cannot hope to grow as a species sustainably if we don’t integrate urban agriculture into our daily lives. As a result, we need more entrepreneurs to join the playing field to innovate and cultivate, we need policies aimed at improving green infrastructure, and creating local job opportunities in urban agriculture, and we need communities to come together to tackle both the food and climate crises.
