Urban Agriculture - Difficulties

Difficulties

• Space is at a premium in cities and is accordingly expensive and difficult to secure
• The use of waste water for irrigation without careful treatment and monitoring can result in the spread of diseases among the population.
• Cultivation on contaminated land also represents a health hazard for the consumers.
• The practice of cultivating along roadsides facilitates the distribution of products to local markets, but it is also a risky practice since it exposes food to motor vehicle emissions.
• Agriculture and urbanization are considered to be incompatible activities, competing for the access and use of limited land. In reality, in urban areas there is important available space for agriculture use such as public and private vacant lots, and areas not suited for built-up uses (steep slopes and flood plains).
• Legal restrictions and economic impediments to accessing land and resources (such as reasonably priced water) are among the most common problems confronted by urban agriculture.
• Lack of security of tenure also acts as a preventive for farming due to the uncertainty in the use length of the land.
• Urban agriculture has been criticized by those who believe that industrial farm production can produce food at larger volumes more efficiently.
• A major argument is whether urban farming alone—farming very intensively on small land areas—could replace land extensive production in rural areas which produce the bulk of our food products. Yet hunger persists in both urban and rural areas, despite a subsidized industrial agriculture. The degree to which urban agriculture can address these food needs systemically is undetermined, though there are indications in some communities that it is an important source of food.
• Other opponents argue that localized food production and the introduction of common resources and common lands into the urban areas would produce a tragedy of the commons, though many urban farms and community gardens are managed privately or through other civil society organizations.

Municipal greening policy goals can pose conflicts. For example, policies promoting urban tree canopy are not sympathetic to vegetable gardening because of the deep shade cast by trees. However, some municipalities like Portland, Oregon, and Davenport, Iowa are encouraging the implementation of fruit bearing trees (as street trees or as park orchards) to meet both greening and food production goals.