With 75 percent of people in the industrialized world living in cities, they are the place where most food is consumed, and consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about how their food is produced. Food is connected with a wide range of municipal and regional policy areas: from land-use planning and agriculture to infrastructure and transport, environmental conservation, housing and economic development. Food, then, can be a vehicle to integrate the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability, as well as for addressing justice and health issues at different geographies and scales, including cities.
Cities are therefore a relevant research focus for FiBL. We integrate the urban (consumption) and the rural (production) perspectives to form a comprehensive food system approach that includes processes and decisions about production, processing, distribution, consumption, and food waste. Furthermore, we are interested in the currently increasing engagement of city people in the food system; be it as subscribers to box schemes, participants in community supported agriculture or community gardens, or as producers of food in private gardens.
Urban food production sites are an integral part of green spaces in cities. We therefore expand our focus to urban green spaces as a whole, which play an important role in the perception of the quality of life in modern cities. Garden departments manage their green spaces with high expectations of esthetics, diversity and robustness. However, there is currently a need and a desire to reshape these green spaces in a way that keeps their current quality but puts an emphasis on sustainability, energy savings and the promotion of natural diversity. Potential measures to addressing these needs include planning, production, maintenance, and education of city garden employees.
Together with partner organizations, FiBL provides and develops the scientific know-how for sustainable or organic production in urban green spaces – parks, flowerbed, graveyards, sports turf, community gardens, family gardens etc.; it performs practical experiments and translates the results into recommendations and guidelines for the city garden departments (including nurseries).