Achieving sustainable urban agriculture

"Prof Wiskerke has drawn together a group of leading authors on urban agriculture in the global north to contribute to what promises to be a leading text on sustainable urban agriculture. Its balance of chapters on governance, technical aspects and case studies will provide a comprehensive source for researchers and policy makers."
Dr Jane Battersby, University of Cape Town, South Africa

This collection reviews key recent research on developing urban and peri-urban agriculture. Parts 1 and 2 review current research on ways of building urban agriculture, from planning and business models to building social networks to support local supply chains. The third part of the book surveys developments in key technologies for urban agriculture, including rooftop systems and vertical farming. Chapters also assess challenges and improvements in irrigation, waste management, composting/soil nutrition and pest management. The final group of chapters provides a series of case studies on urban farming of particular commodities, including horticultural produce, livestock, aquaculture and forestry.

With its distinguished editor and range of expert authors, this will be a standard reference on building and supporting urban agricultural networks.

Professor Han Wiskerke is Professor of Rural Sociology at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. He was founding Editor of the journal Urban Agriculture and Regional Food Systems and guest editor of the special issue 'City Region Foodscapes' of the journal Sustainability. He has coordinated a series of major EU projects on urban and peri-urban agriculture and food provisioning such as 'FOODLINKS', 'PUREFOOD' and 'SUPURBFOOD'. Since 2017 he has been coordinator of the EU-funded project ROBUST, which focuses on urban-rural relations and synergies. He has written widely on these topics and other aspects of food provisioning and rural development.