What do we actually know about what urban agriculture does?

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A few years back, colleagues and I set out on the FEW-meter project — a multi-country effort to systematically measure what actually goes into and comes out of urban farms and gardens. Since wrapping up that data collection, the team has produced a steady stream of papers, and I’ve written about several of them here. This latest piece, led by Agnès Fargue-Lelièvre and co-authored with Benjamin Goldstein, Lidia Poniży, and Erica Dorr, is something of a synthesis: what does the full body of research — ours and others’ — actually tell us about urban agriculture’s impact on people, places, and the planet?

I’ll be honest that it’s an unusual venue. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is more commonly associated with nuclear non-proliferation and global catastrophic risk than with community gardens. But I think that framing is actually part of the point — urban agriculture is being offered, with increasing frequency, as a meaningful response to climate change, food insecurity, and urban inequality. The implicit claim is a big one. It deserves rigorous scrutiny.

So what does the evidence actually say?

On climate, the honest answer is that urban agriculture is not a magic solution — and may, in many cases, make things worse rather than better. We showed in the Nature Cities paper from earlier this year that the average urban farm has a substantially higher carbon footprint than conventional farming. That average, however, conceals a wide distribution, and the sites that do well share identifiable features — longevity, circular inputs, strategic crop choice. The climate case for urban agriculture is achievable; it’s just not the default.

On social outcomes, the evidence is considerably more consistent and encouraging. Community gardens and urban farms reliably generate social cohesion, improved mental health, and a sense of community belonging among participants. These are not trivial benefits — particularly in urban neighborhoods that are often underserved by other forms of green infrastructure. This is where urban agriculture’s record is probably strongest.

On food security, the picture is more complicated. Urban agriculture can produce meaningful quantities of food — particularly vegetables — but it rarely does so at a scale that makes a dent in city-level food supply. And the extent to which it reaches the most food-insecure people is often unclear. Access to urban farms and gardens tends to skew toward wealthier neighborhoods, even when the resources themselves are nominally public.

What I take from this synthesis is something I’ve been working toward for several years: the right frame for urban agriculture is not “does it work?” but “under what conditions does it work, and for what?” Urban agriculture that is thoughtfully sited, durably supported, and deliberately designed for equity can deliver real benefits — for communities, for the environment, and maybe even for the climate. The problem is that we’ve often reached for the simple version of the story when the complicated one is the one the evidence actually supports.

Fargue-Lelièvre, A., Hawes, J. K., Goldstein, B., Poniży, L., & Dorr, E. (2024). What do we really know about urban agriculture’s impact on people, places, and the planet? Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 80(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.2024.2339125

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