Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
cascades through a number of environmental compartments until it is fi-
nally denitrified back to the atmosphere, causing multiple harmful effects,
is nowadays among the most severe environmental threats (Galloway et al.,
2002; Sutton et al., 2011). Any attempt to eliminate or reduce the source of
the nitrogen cascade should take into account the urban food supply issue.
There is presently a lively debate on the possibility of local sourcing
of the urban food supply. Food-Miles, i.e. the total transport distance cov-
ered by foodstuffs from their production to their consumption sites, have
been proposed as an indicator of sustainability of the human food system
(Paxton, 1994; Smith et al., 2005). However, in an analysis of the US food
supply chain, Weber and Matthews (2008) showed that foodstuff transpor-
tation is only a minor term in its total carbon imprint and that changes in
agricultural practices or in the composition of human diet would have a
much more pronounced effect on greenhouse gas emission than reduction
of the food transport distance. They conclude that the issue of localisation
of the food supply is not a question of climate impact optimisation but is
conditioned by the political will to support local agricultural communities
and to restore the link between cities and their rural hinterland. The latter
concern is revealed by the recent and quite rapid development in the West-
ern world of citizen organisations aiming to reconnect food production
and urban consumption, as well as directly controlling the quality of prod-
ucts and the environmental impact of their production, through direct con-
tracts between farmers and groups of concerned consumers (Community
Supported Agriculture in North America and the UK, www.localharvest.
org; AMAP in France, www.reseau-amap.org; Gruppi di Acquisto Solidali
in Italy, www.retegas.org; Teikei in Japan, etc.) (www.urgenci.net) (Watts
et al., 2005).
As water is also a food, drinking water provision is another important
aspect of the food supply. Because of their intensive use of fertilisers and
pesticides, modern agricultural practices often lead to severe degradation
of the quality of water produced by rural territories. A confl ict therefore
exists in the allocation of land areas for either drinking water or food pro-
duction. Some large cities, such as New York in the US, made the choice
of reserving certain nearby lands for clean drinking water production, ex-
cluding agricultural activities (Swaney et al., 2012). Others, such as Ath-
ens in Greece (Stergiouli et al., 2012) and Barcelona in Spain (Tello et al.,
