FEW-Meter

Urban agriculture has attracted considerable enthusiasm as a sustainability strategy, but rigorous cross-site evidence about its actual performance — in terms of food production, energy use, water consumption, and carbon impact — has been scarce. FEW-Meter was designed to fill that gap. Bringing together research teams from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Poland, the project developed and applied a standardized accounting methodology to measure food, energy, and water flows across urban farms of varying types and scales.

The FEW-Meter tool enabled systematic, cross-site comparison at a level of rigor and geographic scope not previously achieved in urban agriculture research. Participating farms ranged from community gardens and rooftop systems to larger commercial and institutional operations, capturing the diversity of forms that urban food production takes in practice.

Key findings challenged both optimistic and pessimistic narratives about urban agriculture’s environmental value. A flagship study published in Nature Cities (2024) found that urban farms can have lower carbon footprints than conventional agriculture — but that this varies significantly by farm type, energy source, and what is being grown, and cannot be assumed. A companion analysis in Landscape and Urban Planning assessed the potential to scale up urban agriculture in the Global North, identifying where and under what conditions expansion could yield meaningful sustainability benefits. A Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists piece synthesized the broader evidence base on urban agriculture’s impacts on people, places, and the planet.

This work formed the empirical core of Jake’s doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan (2024). The outputs listed here represent Jake’s authored contributions; the full project produced many additional publications, datasets, and policy reports across its six-year lifespan.