UK: City allotments (community gardens) are just as productive as farms

A citizen science project was able to harvest 1 kg of insect-pollinated fruit from a one-meter urban garden.

By Mihai Andrei
Science
May 4, 2023

Excerpt:

“In a world of increasing urbanization in both the developing and developed worlds, producing food in and around cities has the potential to improve both nutritional and health outcomes, alleviate poverty and simultaneously provide habitat for wildlife and create sustainable cities,” said Beth Nicholls a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, at the University of Sussex.

Nichols presented the study results at the Ecology Across Borders conference and, although the findings have not been peer-reviewed yet, they could be significant for many urban areas around the world.

The researchers analyzed the performance of urban gardens in the British city of Brighton over a two-year period. They recorded the pollinator visits to this garden (over 2,000 pollinating visits, with bees accounting for almost half of the pollinators visits). The researchers noted that surprisingly, flies accounted for 34% of the pollinator visits.

Overall, the urban farms produced around 70 kg over a season, with an average of 1 kg of insect-pollinated fruit and vegetables per one meter square, within the range of specialized farms. The yields were achieved with limited pesticide use, indicating low environmental damage in addition to the food itself and benefits to diversity such as habitat creation.

Read the complete article here.