Achieving Sustainable Urban Agriculture

This collection reviews key recent research on developing urban and peri-urban agriculture. Chapters first discuss ways of building urban agriculture, from planning and business models to building social networks to support local supply chains. Other chapters survey developments in key technologies for urban agriculture, including rooftop systems and vertical farming. The book also assesses challenges and improvements in irrigation, waste management, composting/soil nutrition and pest management. The final group of chapters provides a series of case studies on urban farming of particular commodities, including horticultural produce, livestock and forestry.

Professor Han Wiskerke is Professor of Rural Sociology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He was founding Editor of the journal Urban Agriculture and Regional Food Systems and guest editor of the special issue ‘City Region Foodscapes’ of the journal Sustainability. He has coordinated a series of major EU projects on urban and peri-urban agriculture and food provisioning such as ‘FOODLINKS’, ‘PUREFOOD’ and ‘SUPURBFOOD’. Since 2017 he has been coordinator of the EU-funded project ROBUST, which focuses on urban-rural relations and synergies. He has written widely on these topics and other aspects of food provisioning and rural development. Professor Han Wiskerke is Professor of Rural Sociology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He was founding Editor of the journal Urban Agriculture and Regional Food Systems and guest editor of the special issue ‘City Region Foodscapes’ of the journal Sustainability. He has coordinated a series of major EU projects on urban and peri-urban agriculture and food provisioning such as ‘FOODLINKS’, ‘PUREFOOD’ and ‘SUPURBFOOD’. Since 2017 he has been coordinator of the EU-funded project ROBUST, which focuses on urban-rural relations and synergies. He has written widely on these topics and other aspects of food provisioning and rural development. Beatrix Waechter Alsanius is an internationally leading researcher on sustainable food production in horticultural cropping systems, emphasizing on the use of microorganisms for environmentally-sound cropping systems, threats of human and plant pathogens in horticultural production chains and food safety of vegetables and fruit. Since 2009 her current position is chair professor in horticulture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Alnarp, Sweden. During 2010 to 2013 she acted also as an adjunct professor in phytology at Université Laval, Québec, Canada and headed from 2009-2014 the international postgraduate school "Microbial Horticulture (µHORT)", funded by the Swedish research council Formas.