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Urban Agriculture & The Pandemic

For our first dissertation meeting we were tasked with writing an abstract and creating a mood board of our interests. My main interest is urban agriculture. As you can see from below I have included projects, that if you’re interested in nature in cities, you should take a look at: The Farmhouse and The Vertical Farm. I have included important quotes (written below) from the interviews and documentaries that I have watched that have inspired me to undertake this topic for my dissertation.

I had the assumption when researching for my dissertation project that I would want to write about climate change and sustainability only. I researched into urban agriculture and I realised that it is an essential method for us to begin to do to help climate change and the incoming global food crisis.

David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet

“Right now, we’re facing a manmade disaster of global scale.”

“So, what do we do? It’s quite straight forward. It’s been staring us in the face all along. To restore stability to our planet, we must restore it’s biodiversity.”

“If we take care of nature, nature will take care of us.”

“When it comes to the land, we must radically reduce the area we use to farm, so that we can make space for returning wilderness.”

– David Attenborough, natural historian.

True Garden

“I can control the environment, I control the water, I control the nutrients. I love this, I can control every aspect of growing my own food.”

– Troy Albright, CEO of True Garden

“The vegetables we saw growing at True Garden were just growing, right there. There was no soil, there was minimal water. It was really just their roots hanging in these hollow tubes, being saturated in nutirents and substances and growing to be the most beautiful vegetables.”

– Lauren Kelly Piergallini, reporter

The Plummery

“One of the most important steps that we’ve done is used the raised vegetables beds. When we are eating that much produce, it’s really important. So we can have clean soil that has been brought in. We also know that lead doesn’t generally transfer into fruits so this beautiful blood plum behind us is totally safe to eat from.”

“Much of the composting happens in situ just by chopping the branches and leaving them on the ground underneath the plant.”

“One of the things that’s so concerning about the state that we’re in at the moment is so many people are losing that connection to the land. So The Plummery has been an experiment in how can we regain that connection to food in the city.”

– Kat Lavers, permaculture designer and educator
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David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet

David Attenborough’s recent documentary on Netflix shows us how humans have been affecting the planet. The documentary showcases our beautiful planet and how we are destroying it through our greed for resources and thirst for expansion. Within this witness statement, he goes into depth about what the world can become if we don’t change our ways. 

With our growing population, which since 1937 has grown a staggering 5.5 billion people, it will be necessary to change our diet if we want to resolve the current issues. Farmland takes up half of the world’s fertile land. Humans demand space and demand growth and we simply take resources without caring for the consequences. Deforestation for resources and land has caused an increased amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Additionally, the amount of wildlife has decreased from 66% in 1937 to a mere 35% in 2020. 

The increasing heat of our planet was not noticeable when it was only affecting the coral in the sea. When the sea could no longer absorb the heat, the ice in the Antarctic began to melt. The polar caps had an important part to play with keeping our planet cool; they would reflect sunlight away from the Earth. As they have begun melting, they are reflecting less and less sunlight, thus the temperature of our planet increasing by four degrees. 

We should no longer cut down forests as we can utilise the land we have already cultivated. We can grow crops in cities and indoors with new technology. We need to allow nature and wildlife to breathe and recuperate. The only way to fix the damage we have caused is to nurture nature and live in harmony. Otherwise, we are consequently destroying ourselves.