Enhancing urban agriculture through participants’ satisfaction: The case of Seoul,Korea

South Korea has been lending a variety of official support to promote the urban agriculture (UA), especially after enacting Act on Development and Support of Urban Agriculture (Act of UA) in 2011. Under this policy, which aims at spreading the UA effectively in dense cities, in particular, the government categorizes spaces used for the UA into five types in accordance with their characteristics and has extended customized support. But it has never been explored if the Korean version of the UA has satisfied the participants and there exist any differences in the satisfaction level among participants of each spatial type.With a goal to explore the policy effectiveness, therefore, this research carried out interviews and surveys involving 808 citizens who have taken part in UA activities in 68 farmlands in South Korea's capital city of Seoul and then analyzed them with the ANOVA and the hierarchical regression analysis methods The results revealed statistically significant differences among the different UA types in terms of the respondents’ overall satisfaction, the current status of the UA operation, and policy measures that affect the satisfaction level as well as their effects. Overall, however, the participation of female citizens, the supply of physical facilities by public entities, and the increase in the time respondents were involved in UA and their cultivating areas turned out to positively affect their satisfaction level.     

‘If I want safe food I have to grow it myself’: Patterns and motivations of urban agriculture in a small city in Vietnam’s northern borderlands

Urban agriculture literature regarding the Global South reveals important knowledge gaps concerning spatial variations of food gardens across cityscapes, gardener motivations, and tensions with urban planning regulations, especially in locales beyond sub-Saharan Africa. In Vietnam, urban agriculture is growing in popularity and gaining media attention but there is little research as to why urban agriculture is practiced in smaller Vietnamese cities, especially those close to rural hinterlands. In this paper we investigate small-scale urban agriculture – or food gardens – in Lào Cai, a small upland city located on the Sino-Vietnamese border. We find a complex diversity of garden sizes and land management arrangements where gardens are built, including on state institutional land, thanks to informal arrangements. Gardener motivations focus predominantly on food safety concerns, contrasting with key motivations found elsewhere in the Global South. Throughout the city, albeit more so in newly urbanising sectors, this urban practice remains precarious due to irregular land access and confusing city authority regulations. We thus examine how urban residents are working to access safe food and contribute to their city’s urban food system while state officials tend to focus their priorities elsewhere.     

Governing the transformation towards ‘nature-inclusive’ agriculture: insights from the Netherlands

It is becoming increasingly difficult to combine nature conservation by farmers with intensive and large-scale farming. The Dutch government recently adopted the new policy concept of ‘nature-inclusive’ farming, which aims at promoting more sustainable agricultural practices that minimizes negative ecological impacts, maximizes positive ones and at the same time benefits from natural processes. A transformation towards ‘nature-inclusive’ farming faces three key governance challenges that are elaborated upon in this paper. First, agri-environment schemes and other conservation arrangements need to become more effective. At the same time, nature conservation should be mainstreamed in agricultural policies and in agri-food chains. Second, we need shared meanings about nature-inclusive farming. Third, other forms of knowledge production for nature-inclusive farming are required that focus more on farmers’ knowledge needs.     

‘Paradigms of development: The East Asian debate’: A comment

Abstract

Sanjaya Lall's contribution to the debate on the role of industrial policy in economic development (Oxford Development Studies, 24, pp. 111–131,1996) is criticized. Part of the argument concerns the nature of development experience in Hong Kong, where deindustrialization is not regarded as a sign of lack of industrial policy, as argued by Lall. More generally, the article contends that selective intervention is not necessarily the key to capturing the benefits of dynamic comparative advantage, that intervention costs can be large, and that governments can have difficulty in devising and implementing plans for the development of technological capability.     

The future of Russia’s agriculture and food industry between global opportunities and technological restrictions

This paper reports on the result of a major foresight exercise commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation on the prospective developments of the agriculture and food industry up to the year 2030. The exercise identified economic, technological, social and ecological trends that will greatly influence both supply and demand in the industry. The findings provide a decision base for policy-makers to improve the technology base and to ease the reliance on technology imports. The country’s agricultural producers have been struggling with the introduction of new technologies, and customers are showing conservative demand patterns. Previous research showed that technology transfer into Russian agricultural enterprises suffers from a low knowledge level especially in receiving organizations. The country’s own S&T system requires support both for technology development and technology transfer, especially for breeding of best-suited plants and animals for local circumstances. Furthermore, consumer behaviour could be influenced towards higher demand, for example, organic food or ethical husbandry.     

REDD+ and the agriculture frontier: Understanding colonists’ utilization of the land

Given the importance of the agricultural frontier as an engine of deforestation, this paper focuses on how colonists (from the Spanish word for “colonists” that is used to describe migrants to the agricultural frontier), who are important and largely overlooked stakeholders, perceive the new climate mitigation mechanism known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD+). We aimed (1) to document colonists’ land use, perceptions, needs, and aspirations and (2) to understand if and how they could be taken into account under REDD+ policies. The study, including multiple data collection techniques (e.g., focus group, interviews, and participatory activities), was conducted in eastern Panama. Three areas that were adjacent to the Province of Darien border were chosen because of their similar forested landscapes and varying accessibility to a main road. Our results suggest that land use preferences, culture, forest scarcity and dependency, inequalities (e.g., land use, amount of forest, and land area), and lack of technical capacities are key elements to be considered when developing a REDD+ strategy with colonist communities. We propose that halting deforestation without both considering local communities’ perceptions and giving effective alternatives could seriously undermine livelihoods.     

Defining and delivering ‘sustainable’ agriculture in the UK after Brexit: interdisciplinary lessons from experiences of agricultural reform

Defining and achieving sustainability in the context of complex, multi-scale, and constantly changing agricultural systems is a challenge for research and policy. In UK agriculture, the European Union and its Common Agricultural Policy has been a key source of funding for and approaches to sustainability in the agriculture and rural development sectors. The decision to leave the European Union represents a significant moment in UK agriculture and rural development policy, and both an opportunity and responsibility for the UK government to set out and commit towards achieving sustainability goals for the sector. In this study, a combination of ethnographic case study research, focusing on the case of upland farmers in the Yorkshire Dales, policy analysis and national agricultural sector data is referred to in describing experiences of agricultural policy reform over recent decades. From these experiences, lessons for the design and delivery of future agriculture and rural development are drawn out. It is argued that the integrated assessment of multiple sources of knowledge can provide a means to critically reflecting on evidence about sustainability in complex systems, better understanding trade-offs, and creating a more complete and inclusive knowledge base from which to define sustainable agriculture.     

Technology adoption,impact, and extension in developing countries’ agriculture: A review of the recent literature

Given the stagnant agricultural productivity and persistent food insecurity in low-income countries—notably in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)—there has been continued interest in the adoption of new technology and its impact on productivity in these regions. To increase crop yields and sustain yield gains, recent case studies of technology adoption unanimously recommend the adoption of integrated farm management systems, particularly in SSA. On the other hand, there have been increasing numbers of studies on social network or farmer-to-farmer technology extension. These studies explore more efficient extension systems than traditional public-sector extension approaches. This article reviews both recent case studies of technology adoption and its productivity impacts as well as studies on agricultural extension to identify common findings, shortcomings, and major remaining issues.     

A multi-spatial scale approach to urban sustainability – An illustration of the domestic and global hinterlands of the city of Beer-Sheva

Cities have always been dependent on ecological services from their local and regional hinterlands. In recent decades, however, urban population growth and rising material standards of living, in conjunction with technological development and globalization, have compelled cities to become reliant on global hinterlands. It follows that urban sustainability measures should target not only city and regional lands, but also the sustainability of global hinterlands. In this paper we disaggregate the urban hinterland into domestic and global hinterlands, using the city of Beer-Sheva, Israel as an example. We use a slightly revised ecological footprint analysis to separate the domestic and global hinterlands associated with various urban activities such as food, materials and water consumption, electricity use and transportation. We found that 94% of the Beer-Sheva footprint is ascribed to the global hinterland and only 6% to the domestic hinterland. We also found that the city's footprint is more than double that of a sustainable carrying capacity at the global scale and nine times more at the domestic level. After analyzing each component of the city's footprint, we identify some potential administrative measures at various scales – from local to global, which can help to minimize the size of the urban hinterland, reduce urban pressure on that hinterland, and thus promote urban sustainability.     

Behind the ‘creative destruction’ of human diets: An analysis of the structure and market dynamics of the ultra-processed food manufacturing industry and implications for public health

A global transition towards diets increasingly dominated by ultra-processed foods (UPFs) has occurred in recent decades to the detriment of public health and the environment. This study aimed to examine long-term trends in the structure and market dynamics of the global UPF manufacturing industry as part of broader efforts to understand the drivers of this transition. Using diverse methods, metrics and data sources, we examined several dimensions (e.g., industry concentration and profitability) according to an adapted structure–conduct–performance model. We found that the global UPF manufacturing industry has evolved to become a major component of global food systems, with its longstanding dominant corporations becoming some of the system's largest accumulators of profit and distributors of capital. It follows that reversing the global UPF dietary transition will require structural and regulatory changes to ensure that population diets, and food systems more broadly, are not subordinated to the interests of powerful for-profit business corporations.     

‘Sustainable City’ requires ‘recognition’—The example of environmental education under pressure from the compact city

The compact city is advocated as a key strategy to establish sustainable cities. Compact city policy implies urban densification, sometimes with elimination of green space. Citizen’s valuable arguments in urban densification developments in green space are easily ignored, as is explored in a case study in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Place making decisions are more often legitimized with sustainability claims, and arguments from less convinced residents are denied or remain unexamined. About green space these also concern environmental qualities significant for long term sustainability of cities. This is illustrated by presenting empirical evidence about environmental education, an argument emerging from the explorative study. Environmental education should be seen as an important element in longterm sustainability, but the educational relevance of proximity of green space to schools had remained unknown. Empirical evidence of the negative effect of larger distances to green space on environmental education is presented in a geographical survey. The results suggest that close proximity to urban green space also reinforces fieldwork activities further away. As the validity of this argument was denied in the case study, this illustrates the need to establish frameworks that foster recognition and learning in open processes in urban densification.     

A model of the U.S. food system: What are the determinants of the state vulnerabilities to production shocks and supply chain disruptions?

We adapt a Ricardian general equilibrium model to the setting of U.S. domestic agri-food trade to assess states’ vulnerability to adverse production shocks and supply chain disruptions. To this end, we analyze how domestic crop supply chains depend on fundamental state-level comparative advantages—which reflect underlying differences in states’ cost-adjusted productivity levels—and thereby illustrate the capacity of states to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of such disruptions to the U.S. agricultural sector. Based on the theoretical framework and our estimates of the model's structural parameters obtained using data on U.S. production, consumption, and domestic trade in crops, we undertake simulations to characterize the welfare implications of counterfactual scenarios depicting disruptions to (1) states’ agricultural productive capacity, and (2) interstate supply linkages. Our results emphasize that the distributional impacts of domestic supply chain disruptions hinge on individual states’ agricultural productive capacities, and that the ability of states to mitigate the impacts of adverse production shocks through trade relies on the degree to which states are able to substitute local production shortfalls by sourcing crops from other states.     

The demise of swidden-fallow agriculture in an Atlantic Rainforest region: Implications for farmers’ livelihood and conservation

The Brazilian Atlantic Forest is widely recognized for its high levels of biodiversity and endemism. Its vast region concentrates also a large number of small farmers, who historically have been practicing swidden-fallow cultivation. Globally, there is contradictory evidence of the current fate of this traditional, integrated agricultural system, and the new land uses may have a strong impact on farmers’ livelihoods and ecosystem conservation. In this study, we assessed the land cover and land use change in a watershed where slash-and-burn cultivation was prevalent, aiming at understanding the drivers of change and discussing past and possible future impacts, including the perception of farmers on the drivers of land use change. We combined information gathered from interviews with 15 key informant farmers and from the analysis of remote sensing images for the years 1957, 1978 and 2011. Swidden-fallow cultivation has declined steadily since the 1950s. Part of the land was abandoned and forest succession was allowed to occur, increasing the total forest area; an apparently positive outcome. However, conversion to pastures and Eucalyptus plantations not only used much of the open land but also converted successional forests through deforestation, based on remote sensing. The willingness of farmers to grow more Eucalyptus and raise more cattle further increases concerns about the prospect for conservation. Our approach, combining remote sensing-based land change quantification and interviews, revealed to be complementary, allowing a better understanding of the past and possible future scenarios for the land use dynamics.     

‘Because of poverty,we had to come together’: collective action for improved food security in rural Kenya and Uganda

Agricultural productivity in East African smallholder systems is notoriously low and food production faces multiple challenges, including soil degradation, decreasing land availability, poor market integration, disease burdens and climate change impacts. However, recent evidence from an in-depth study from two sites in Kenya and Uganda shows signs of new social dynamics as a response to these multiple stressors. This paper focuses on the emergence of local social institutions for collective action, in which particularly women farmers organize themselves. Although previous research on collective action has largely focused on common-pool resource management, we argue that collective action is one potential pathway to livelihood and sustainability improvements also in a setting of private land ownership. Trust building, awareness raising and actions to improve livelihood security through risk sharing and pooling of labour and other limited assets have given people more time and resources available for diversification, preventative activities, experimentation and resource conservation. It thereby strengthens farmers’ capacity to cope with and adapt to change, as well as contributes to the agency at the local level.     

Comparing the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban expansion in Guangzhou and Shenzhen from 1975 to 2015: A case study of pioneer cities in China’s rapid urbanization

The distinct urbanization process of China has attracted worldwide attention because of its impressive speed, massive scale, and policy intervention. However, the interrelationship between urban expansion and government policies is still not well understood. The Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration of China is the first national pioneering urbanization area since the implementation of the policy “Reform and Opening-up” in the late 1970s. Here we compared the spatial and temporal patterns of urbanization in two leading cities of the Pearl River Delta (i.e., Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the provincial capital and the first Special Economic Zone of China, respectively) from 1975 to 2015, using Landsat data integrated with urban growth and landscape metrics analysis, and examined possible footprints of major economic and urbanization policies. Our results illustrated that urban land areas in both Guangzhou and Shenzhen have experienced magnificent annual growth rates at 8.1% and 11%, respectively between 1975 and 2015. On average, Shenzhen witnessed substantially higher urban growth rate than Guangzhou during the past four decades, particularly in the initial period (1978–1990) when the Reform and Opening-up policy was launched and Shenzhen was designated as the first Special Economic Zone in China in the late 1970s. However, the speed of urban expansion in Shenzhen became considerably lower than Guangzhou from 2005 to 2015, subject to physical conditions and a series of urban land use policies. Both cities showed a generally similar dynamics of urban growth forms with leapfrogging as the predominant type of urban growth at first and then edge-expansion while the contribution of infilling in Shenzhen was higher than that in Guangzhou, especially since 2005. The urbanization processes characterized by landscape and urban growth metrics revealed that a diffusion-coalescence-diffusion-coalescence process was identified for Guangzhou, while Shenzhen was generally consistent with the diffusion-coalescence urban growth hypothesis.     

The relevance of the ecosystem services framework for developed countries’ environmental policies: A comparative case study of the US and EU

The ecosystem services (ES) framework reveals ecosystems’ benefits to society and presents a fundamental natural resource management approach. In the last several decades, it has gained increasing attention from the research community, and it recently reached the political agenda. However, does the concept have the capacity to cause institutional change in environmental policy? To answer this question, we developed certain criteria for an “ideal” ES-driven policy. Based on these criteria, we analyzed the main water and biodiversity acts, current policy developments, and future trends within the US and the EU. Our analysis shows that most acts cannot be explicitly characterized as ES-driven policies, but parts of the concept are already included. The ES framework, increasingly a driver in several policy fields, can be assumed to be a major future influence for shaping existing environmental policies in the coming decades. We discussed the results based on its strengths for existing environmental policy conceptually, e.g., cross-sector cooperation and ES win-win and trade-off considerations, and its weaknesses operationally, such as measurability and governance changes.     

Exploring the ‘layeredness’ of recurring natural resource conflicts: The role of Loita Maasai leadership in the Naimina Enkiyio Forest conflicts in Kenya

This article examines two successive conflicts over the same forest in Kenya, which, when analysed separately, have led to interpretations that do not hold when the conflicts are studied in relation to each other. Inspired by political ecology, it employs a processual view of natural resource conflict, which recognizes that such conflicts may be ‘layered’ and composed of various struggles − or layers − at once, and that some of these struggles may not be discernible at first sight or when resource conflicts are studied in isolation. The conflicts presented in this article occurred between 1993 and 2005 and revolved around the Naimina Enkiyio Forest in south Kenya. They were initially triggered when a local authority, Narok County Council, and later the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), intended to implement plans and projects that would affect the way the forest was being used by the Loita Maasai. Rather than viewing the conflicts as being between a local community and powerful outsiders, I argue that they are best seen as different crystallizations of coalitions between local and outside actors running along a longstanding cleavage in the Loita’s leadership. This article examines how opposing Loita leadership groups forged outside alliances and mobilized support and resistance in Loita and elsewhere. In doing so, it will demonstrate that a particular layer was overlooked or minimized in the various interpretations that have been posited for the separate conflicts, namely a longstanding struggle within the leadership of the Loita Maasai. In fact, this struggle has proved to be crucial for providing a valid and consistent explanation that holds for the two conflicts when they are considered together.