Agriculture encompasses social aspects,
issues of space, of resources, of risks associated to it.
Let's go through every item one by one.
First, the social issue.
Extremely important in social terms:
it's a source of income that is not insignificant
for families that are, most of the time, the most vulnerable.
There is a question of empowerment behind this,
at least for some populations:
feeding oneselves,
even being able to sell some of their produce to make a bit of money.
It does have an impact to be considered on employment.
The issue of space is extremely important.
Why?
Because agriculture requires space.
Except for Cuba, where during the Special period
every flower pot was turned into a micro field planted with something
and every possibility to grow something in the city was seized,
the usual pattern is to use suburban lands.
Hence the question of space:
will I choose to build dense housing
or choose a more spread-out pattern
leaving room for agricultural production, meaning income generation?
This is one thing.
The second thing is that the denser a city,
the more pressure there is on land prices.
At some stage, prices are so high that it doesn't make any sense anymore
to grow a few vegetables, and it drives people even further.
The issues at stake here
is the opposition between spread-out cities and compact cities,
the issue of land use, land speculation,
but also simply of land markets, which, in most of the countries
and cities we are dealing with, are open markets,
meaning they fluctuate according to several factors,
but governments do not have the power
to regulate land prices, which poses a real problem
leading to pressure being put on urban agriculture.
Let's move now to the issue of resources.
Water is necessary.
Not only is there a need for a sufficient amount of water,
but this water needs to be good enough, too.
We'll see the potential health problems associated with urban agriculture.
The main health hazard
is that most of the time waste water is used.
Waste water are good in that they fertilize soils,
but there are also a certain number of germs which are pollutants
and will pass into the plants
and in turn into humans.