“COLTIVARE LA CITTÀ”: urban agricolture

By Alessio Sciurpa

The development of urban agriculture, the spread of roof gardens and vertical gardens among others, are some of the symptoms that underlie the need inherent in the inhabitants of large urban areas to retrieve a contact with nature, agriculture and the food genuineness that is linked to them. As already noted Lester Brown in his Plan B 3.0, so Andrea Calori in his “Coltivare la città, giro del mondo in dieci progetti di filiera corta” (Growing the city, around the world in ten projects of short chain) by heading to this trend, gathering for the first time in a single volume experiences of urban agriculture from various parts of the world, some recent, other outstanding for years. What do a Bronx immigrant, a woman from a suburb of Osaka, a farmer from Senegal, a baker of Monaco and a Venezuelan driver?
Each of these people is the protagonist of stories related to food. Each belongs to groups and communities, more or less formalized, we are organized to sell or buy food which is consumed near the place of production.

The book recounts experiences that arise in different contexts with different modes of development linked by a single thread. How long has required the its preparation and from where did the idea?
The drafting of the book itself was very fast, but this was possible because we have on our shoulder some fifteen years of work on the relationship between city and country, through activities rooted in university research at the “Politecnico of Milan” (Italy) and related to the participation the world of movements and social networks. In particular since 2000, we initiated research on a city or institutional initiatives with strong spin part in the environmental, social and economic development and capable of producing practical policies for local development self-sustainable. From these, we have improved the experiences of agro-food chains short-involving local and give new impetus to urban agriculture. Altreconomia, who knows our work, we proposed to write a text, since the topic does not exist publications. The drafting of the book itself took three months working full time, during which we first selected the projects most important to us, and then rebuild them as much as possible in detail, even interviewing players directly. Finally we tried to tell the selected projects through real stories, with the intention of making them accessible to everyone, even those who do not deal with the issue of short chain in terms of academic qualifications.

Why talk about it today?
First, to restore the right proportion: the global market has made us believe that the whole world is nourished through a model of intensive monoculture production which is very distant-in time, space and trade-from the moment of consumption, but the data FAO tell a different story. The work of small family farms and methods associated with those of short chain feeds are third world population, with peaks that reach 90% in the African population case. Secondly, because we are particularly interested in the reality of Milan, who thanks to the presence of a suburban agricultural park, it offers in terms of short-chain, unexpected opportunities.