University of São Paulo Study Shows Urban Agriculture Enhances Food Security and Reduces Temperatures
Urban agriculture is the practice of growing food on a small scale in urban and peri-urban areas of cities. Because it is produced primarily for farmers’ own consumption, it differs from traditional agriculture in some aspects, such as the lack of knowledge on the part of producers, the impossibility of exclusive dedication to the activity, and the diversity of production. Another important factor that differentiates the two types of production is profit, since urban agriculture is aimed at personal use and can be sold when there is a surplus.
This type of agriculture, considered subsistence farming, can be a means of ensuring the population’s financial and food security. According to agricultural engineer José Walter Figueiredo Silva, “the impact of urban agriculture on the poorest groups in cities is enormous, because they can sell the surplus of what they produce, for example, to city governments. This food that is purchased by city governments can be used to produce school lunches for children.” According to Silva, this contact between children and healthy foods “will create the habit and teach them to eat vegetables from an early age.”
In addition to financial benefits, urban agriculture also has social impacts on the community. For biologist and professor Rodrigo Augusto Santinelo Pereira, from the Biology Department of the School of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters of Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP) at USP, growing vegetable gardens can promote the well-being of the population. “Growing these plants can be related to leisure and more playful activities, such as landscaping. They help to improve the aesthetics of the place where people live, in addition to promoting the exchange of cultivated plants, whether they are edible or not.”
Urban agriculture, in addition to being practiced for years, is also encouraged by the federal government, through the National Program for Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture, linked to the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Family Farming, which seeks to encourage agricultural activities and small-scale livestock farming in the available areas of cities. The program also aims to promote, develop and raise awareness about the impacts of agriculture in cities, addressing issues such as sustainable agriculture and combating food insecurity resulting from social inequalities.
However, according to Silva, the program is not yet solidified. He says that “it will be implemented gradually, because it has an impact from a financial point of view, but only a few municipalities have understood that it is important and have adopted the program.” The agricultural engineer also says that the plan could be more aggressive and mentions the Green and Blue Municipality Program of the Department of Environment, Infrastructure and Logistics of the State of São Paulo, “which already included among its tasks the development of vegetables and vegetable gardens within the municipality.” Created in 2007, the Green and Blue Municipality Program assists São Paulo City Halls in the preparation and implementation of their strategic public policies for the development of the State of São Paulo.
Environment
In addition to the food and economic benefits, urban agriculture also has an impact on the quality of air and water in cities and on reducing temperatures and heat islands. According to Professor Pereira, “plant transpiration contributes to increasing relative humidity, which results in greater thermal comfort in the environment.” Pereira also says that plants “can act as barriers to solid particles in the air, such as dust or larger contaminants, functioning as a type of filter.”
Another benefit, according to the professor, is that the plantations help reduce the runoff of rainwater, “which will reduce the amount of contaminants that would be carried to streams and rivers near cities, which are used to collect water for the population”.
Silva states, in turn, that urban agriculture facilitates local biodiversity, because it “allows the connectivity of insects and small animals in these areas of the urban perimeter of cities”. The agricultural engineer cites the example of bees and the microfauna of bacteria and fungi, which are associated with composting for fertilizing crops.
In this sense, Professor Pereira says that plantations can bring benefits that go unnoticed by the population, such as “the maintenance of insects that can act as pollinators or natural enemies that control agricultural pests. Organisms and microorganisms that have no direct benefit to us but perform an ecological function, such as earthworms and other invertebrates, will also be present in these plantations.”
Environmental education
Another point addressed by the experts is the issue of environmental education. For Pereira, “these planting activities provide greater knowledge of the environment, the importance of living beings and ecological interactions for people”. The professor also says that this environmental education “can be carried out in informal environments, in the production areas themselves, in community gardens and seedling nurseries. The people who work in these places will benefit greatly, but food education can also be carried out in a more formal way, involving schools and communities”.
In Ribeirão Preto, according to the Municipal Department of Education (SME), there are 29 urban gardens implemented in municipal schools and maintained with resources from the Department and the Parent-Teacher Associations (APM).
The Ribeirão Preto Water and Sewage Department (Saerp) has a partnership with the Terroá Institute Association, through a socio-environmental project, the Guandu Agroecological Educator Space , a community garden located on Rua João Delibo with Rua Ernesto Peterson, next to the Moacir Firmino Municipal Elementary School, in the Quintino Facci II neighborhood.