In a continuation of my little how-the-heck-is-what-I’m-studying-related-to-food-security series, through this through this blog post, I seek to answer the following question: How can non-production focused farms (i.e. agritourism-focused or educational farms) increase a city’s food security?

My short answer is the following:

Agritourism & educational farms and other local food organizations teach urban residents about environmental and social issues caused by traditional agricultural production/food systems –>

urban residents become educated on the nuanced benefits and drawbacks of local vs. non-local food  –>

they become more conscious food consumers –>

they support the development of more sustainable, production-focused, local food systems –>

those sustainable, production-focused, local food systems increase their city’s food security.

My long answer is the following:

In Singapore, my interviews with leaders of two prominent local farms—Bollywood Veggies and Citizen Farm—have reiterated to me the importance of local food systems in increasing people’s awareness about and education on local food systems, which, in the long run, can better ensuring a city’s food security. Manda Foo, the manager of Bollywood Veggies, explained to me the importance of Bollywood veggies educational activities in terms of the country’s food security, even if Bollywood Veggies is currently only accessible and appealing to a small portion of Singaporeans. Darren Tan, on the other hand, explained the importance of City Farm’s production-focused farming activities in making local farming in Singapore too prominent and relevant an activity to go unnoticed—by all types of Singaporeans.

Ivy Singh founded Bollywood Veggies in 2001 as an alternative retirement option. Bollywood Veggies soon gained renown as an educational farm and more broadly (internationally), as a pioneering social enterprise. Furthermore, with her newfound farmer status and heightened awareness of challenges facing Singapore farmers, Singh instigated monumental changes to Singapore agricultural policy. Since the country’s recent, rapid development, the Singapore government has prioritized industry over agriculture, and the country’s agricultural heritage has largely been lost to housing, economic, and industry developments. To help ensure present-day farmers’ livelihoods, Singh, Bollywood Veggies, and the Kranji Countryside Association (established by Singh) have helped Singapore farmers gain rights to build houses, workers quarters, educational centers, and restaurants on farms, among many other things. Manda Foo, manager of Bollywood Veggies described, “I think we’ve really pushed boundaries in terms of [Singaporeans’] perception of farmers. People often think of farmers as just farmers. Now, in the age of knowledge, farmers have a lot more to offer. They have innovative businesses, they act as service providers, educators, consultants…” Helping Singapore farmers gain access to provide alternative services and receive alternative forms of income helps secure their livelihoods in spite of other challenges and uncertainty (e.g. caused by unfavorable government policy, rising input prices, climate change, etc.) Furthermore, farmers’ initiatives to engage non-farmers in agriculture—whether that’s through offering educational programs or connecting with consumers through direct sales channels—helps sustain the farmers’ businesses and ensure reliable local food production.

Today, Bollywood Veggies’ produce sources its own restaurant and a weekly farmers’ market. Yet Bollywood Veggies’ function, as an agritourism and educational farm, is not something to be taken lightly within Singapore’s agricultural and food security context. Certainly, Bollywood Veggies caters to a select proportion of Singaporeans. Foo described how the establishment of Bollywood Veggies’ farmers’ market in 2010 provided the farm with much more “mass appeal,” but it’s still very difficult to engage with many Singaporeans.  There is no public transportation in the Kranji Countryside, and general patrons/learners at Bollywood Veggies consist of Singaporeans who are educated, interested in learning more about local food production, and have cars.

Regardless, Foo emphasized how important general awareness of agricultural activities in Singapore is to the country’s food security. Bollywood Veggies introduces many students, tourists, and locals Singaporeans to something they’ve never experienced firsthand—agriculture. And providing Singaporeans with an understanding of what a farm does and how it operates is essential to influencing their consumption behavior. Foo described how, at the end of the day, Bollywood Veggies might only sell its produce to middle- and upper-class Singaporeans. However, Singapore’s land constraints only allow it to produce enough food to support 10 to 20 percent of the population anyway. So, Manda asked, why not sell it to the people who understand and support Bollywood Veggies’ mission and who are able to pay the proper price for their food?

No matter Bollywood Veggies’ social/educational mission and serious political agenda, walking through the farm in the Kranji Countryside (as rural Singapore as you’re going to get) felt like walking through a wonderland. It makes sense why Bollywood Veggies is so insistent that Singaporeans (and foreigners) visit the farm, even if it’s inconvenient to get to: strolling around Bollywood Veggies drastically contrasted my explorations of other Singapore neighborhoods, parks, and even community gardens and rooftop farms. I imagine that for Singaporeans, a visit to Bollywood Veggies is likely to make a lasting impact in terms of how they conceive of agriculture and Singapore’s food sourcing practices.

During my first week here, I’ve conducted interviews with organizers of community gardens, educational farms, and urban farm supply and consulting businesses. All members of these local food systems I’ve encountered have emphasized to me how little the average Singaporean knows about gardening or farming. Here are some things I’ve heard from my interviewees during the past week:

“In Singapore, an understanding of where food comes from is just not there.”

“We don’t have knowledge of where our food comes from.”

“My biggest worry is that people don’t know how to grow anything over here.”

“There’s nothing farming-related in our education system.”

“Surprisingly, not a lot of people know how to garden here. It’s just not even a thing.”

“Everybody has black thumbs in Singapore.”

“The lack of common knowledge here is crazy sometimes—in gardening.”

“At the end of the day, when the supermarket goes dry, we’re screwed.”

Singapore’s general lack of farming and gardening knowledge is why Darren Ho, Head Farmer at Citizen Farm, is insistent on “shoving farming in people’s faces.” Citizen Farm is one Edible Garden City’s main initiatives. (Edible Garden City is a front runner of Singapore’s local food movement, which runs a variety of agriculture/educational/social enterprises.) Citizen Farm was founded to become a sustainable model of urban farming, with an emphasis on agricultural production. Tan described how its founders “wanted to take a critical look into urban farming and the impacts it can generate.” Today, Citizen farms’ impacts include its role almost as a startup incubator for various urban farming products, an employer of people with disabilities and elderly people, and a producer of 20-100 kilograms of crops per day.

Ho’s strategy for increasing Singaporean’s awareness about agricultural production and the benefits of local food differs from Bollywood Veggies due to the farm’s location and production methods. Unlike Bollywood Veggies, Citizen Farm uses a variety of high-tech growing methods, such as hydroponics, aquaponics, and vertical gardens, to maximize its agricultural productivity within a small farm area. Yet Citizen Farm’s experimental production techniques by no means inhibit the farm’s ability to provide consumers with a direct relationship with their farmer, knowledge of how their food is grown (e.g. without pesticides), and an understanding of easy it is for anybody to grow their own food—what Ho believes are three key benefits of local food production.

Furthermore, like Foo, Ho sees education and awareness as a key step towards increasing Singapore’s food security. He believes that direct consumer support is critical to the sustainability, continued innovation, and significant agricultural productivity of Citizen Farm. Furthermore, production and agritourism/education-focused Singapore farms are both critical to educating Singaporeans about the importance of local food.

Foo pinpointed Bollywood Veggies’ key contribution to Singapore’s food security as its providing “awareness, education, and brand-building” to Singaporean consumers and other farms. Singapore’s local food movement is in its early stages, and Foo has found that many people want to support local food organizations but don’t know how to. Foo deemed Bollywood Veggies “the motherhood of all farms,” given its leadership role in making Singapore consumers and the government more receptive of and appreciative towards traditional forms of local agriculture. Bollywood Veggies stands apart from many other new, local farms/social enterprises in Singapore because it circulates the benefits of more traditional agricultural methods rather than high-tech urban farms. Beyond its organic production methods, Bollywood Veggies also is dedicated to growing and educating consumers on the significance of growing indigenous crops: they are more nutritious, better climate-adapted, and require less pesticides than other popular leafy vegetables.

Bollywood Veggies’ positive messages about locally grown food benefits farms and farmers throughout Singapore. After people visit Bollywood Veggies, they begin to look out for local produce in supermarkets. They now know it exists. Foo believes Bollywood Veggies’ greatest contributions to Singapore’s food security is how it drives demand.

Despite Citizen Farm and Bollywood Veggies’ differences, Ho and Foo both agree upon the importance of consumer awareness and education to support Singapore farms and therefore increase Singapore’s food security.

I just hit ‘command + f’ on my keyboard, and I found that ‘awareness’ and ‘education’ appear over thirty times on this page. I’m a bit concerned about that because at this point on my research trip, those words don’t mean much to me—they are universal buzzwords. ‘Awareness and education’ is a nice, general three words that will allow me to glaze over important topics at hand, if I’m not careful.

Two months ago, my skeptical self may have thought differently, but since then, I have observed how and now, I truly believe that people’s knowledge about where their food comes from is very important in ensuring a city’s food security.

Despite my inclination to write in Econ-speak, consumers are not just consumers, they are people. They are community members, family members, friends, activists, politicians, business owners, and so much more. This summer has made me so much for optimistic about the ideals and potential successes of conscious consumerism. And to have more conscious consumers in cities around the world, consumers in those cities need to be educated about what they are purchasing, where it comes from, and what the greater implications of their purchases are. Only then can they make decisions with the information to choose what is best for themselves, the farmers, and the natural environment.

Throughout this summer, I’ve struggled with the following question:

How can local food production spaces (e.g. urban/peri-urban farms, community farms/gardens*, and people’s home gardens) that don’t produce significant amounts of food (for individual households or through other retail channels) increase a city’s food security? Can they?

Through this blog post, I’ll focus on how/why/if community farms and people’s home gardens can increase a city’s food security. (In my next blog post, I’ll focus on how/why/if non-production focused farms can increase a city’s food security.)

In a prior blog post, I touched upon one critical experience I had in Budapest, which made me question a major component of my summer research–studying community gardens. A key leader in the development of many Budapest community gardens blatantly stated to me during his interview–my first interview in Budapest–that community gardens are not part of the city’s “food system.” (So what was I doing studying community gardens if my research is focused on local food systems?)

Now, I’ll copy and paste some of my own pre-determined research definitions to justify how all sorts of organizations, businesses, and individual activities I’m studying this summer are central to answering my research question…

• Food system: “an interconnected web of activities, resources, and people that extends across all domains involved in providing human nourishment and sustaining health, including production, processing, packaging, distribution, marketing, consumption and disposal of food. The organization of food systems reflects and responds to social, cultural, political, economic, health and environmental conditions and can be identified at multiple scales, from a household kitchen to a city, county, state or nation” (Grubinger et al. 2010).

• Food supply chain: “A series of food-related activities including production, processing, packaging, transport, distribution, consumption, and disposal (DiDominica, 2014).

• Local food system (LFS): Local food systems are complex socio-ecological systems encompass food production, processing, and sales within a defined geographical area (Balász 2012). However, given the vastly different characteristics of the cities in question, the exact radius around each city center within which agricultural production is considered “local” will vary greatly. Often, LFS can be best defined by what they are not, or characterized in contrast to complex, long food supply chains that span within and across countries. They are also often “oriented towards a sustainability that is multidimensional: economic, environmental, and social” (Corrado 2014).

But back to what I’ve done in the cities I’ve visited this summer. As their name hints at, most community gardens in Budapest are founded upon the ideals of community development rather than food production. My research on urban, citizen farming in Tokyo—which largely takes place on business-run, citizen farms on commercial rooftops—reiterated to me how non-farmers’ farming activities in cities produce a relatively small amount of food at a relatively high personal cost. Before that, in Kampala, I was repeatedly reminded—often in a condensing tone—how urban agriculture comprises less than 5 percent of the city’s food supply.

Nonetheless, up to this point, I’ve recognized many reasons why urban residents growing even a small amount of food can help ensure their food security, in both the short- and long-term. Growing one’s own food in a city can provide urban residents with highly nutritious foods that they might otherwise not have access to (Kampala). It can be a key avenue through which parents teach their children about the importance of taste, freshness, health, and safety of the foods they choose to eat (Budapest and Tokyo). Urban farmers may also gain greater regard and respect for “professional” farmers with sustainable production practices, such as local, organic farmers (Tokyo). Those urban residents then might be more willing to pay a premium to support those sustainable farmers (e.g. buy local, organic food), which helps build and ensure a sustainable, secure food system that provides enough affordable, accessible, healthy, and safe food to urban residents. More generally, farming can be very therapeutic and a key means through which urban residents maintain their health and happiness: by connecting with the land and with other people.

Ultimately, however, community gardens alone are not sufficient to ensure a city’s food security in the face of drastic political, economic, environmental, or health disasters.

I discussed this matter with Darren Tan, of Singapore’s pioneering rooftop farm Comcrop. Comcrop is one of Singapore’s few, active, successful rooftop farms. It was the first rooftop farm to receive its official farming license, and its employees have worked closely with multiple government bodies to shift Singapore’s farming policies to be more conducive to the creation of other rooftop farms.

In regard to community farms’/gardens’ potential to ensure a city’s food security, Tan described to me quite eloquently what I’ve been trying to type up for the past few weeks now. So, I’ll let his words shine here rather than my own confuddled brain thoughts I can’t seem to articulate as well as he did.

Tan explained to me that, of course, as a farm, Comcrop’s most basic goal is to produce food. He described how first, Comcrop seeks to provide nutritious food for its adjacent community members and second, Comcrop aims to be a place where people come together. In fact, that second goal of Comcrop’s is rooted in its beginnings as a community farm. I asked Darren why Comcrop transitioned from a community farm to a commercial farm, and he explained the following:

“It was clear that as a community farm, we were never going to be able to provide for the community—based on donations, based on goodwill, based on a few people coming in to help every day. It was not a sustainable means of food production. And ultimately [transitioning to become a commercial farm] tied in with our ultimate goal, which is to produce food. I that the logical transition was to become a commercial farm. And of course, we still tried to embody all the values that we had as a community farm.”

Darren continued, “It’s nice to say that you want to get everybody to grow their own food. But coming from a farmer’s perspective… firstly, that’s not going to go down well with all people. Secondly, I know the time they will spend trying to grow their own food could be better spent with a few people really trying to grow intensively. So, I’m not against growing food for yourself. But I don’t think that how society is going to evolve into one where everybody grows their own food. As space becomes a luxury, then it’s going to be quite difficult for the different farms [the commercial farms] to increase their productivity to cater to Singaporeans.”

As an urban farmer in Singapore, Darren has experienced and responded directly to challenges caused by Singapore’s limited, conventional agricultural land, the government’s intransigent agricultural policies, and the country’s high rate of imports. While Darren’s perspective may influenced by Singapore’s extreme context, it’s one that I share very closely. As a researcher, I have tried my best to remain neutral on the subjects I ask my interviews about. Yet honestly, because of that, it was especially refreshing to hear what Darren described as Comcrop’s greatest challenge.

“I think our greatest challenge is awareness,” he said. “So, there is some movement about growing your own food. There will be of course awareness about the need for sustainability, but the nuances of those are usually not explored in detail. So, for example, when you say a local farm, there are many small groups saying that they are local farms. But then when you look at it, what are they producing, what are they producing for, how much are they producing? And I mean, does it make economic sense—are they able to sustain themselves in the long run? I mean, those are questions which people don’t often ask. I won’t disagree that just being aware of local farms is good. But I think as the understand of the need for these things evolve, we should also start thinking about what constitutes the farms that we want to support. I don’t believe anyone ever sets up to not be productive, but the way they go about it could be quite different. So I think it’s quite important that people don’t just say, ‘For health reasons, I should buy organic.’ Or say, ‘I should just support local because I’m patriotic.’ It’s not just that. It’s something bigger. I mean, a lot of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, is because of our needs as a country… also as responsible people, and those are things I think it’s good to see. Really, it’s nice to say that you want to get everyone to grow your own food, but coming from a farmer’s perspective, I know that firstly, that’s not going to go down well with all people…”

As I begin to write my final report, I’ve struggled to figure out how to best analyze people’s opinions in a proper researcher-like manner. It’s been hard for me to determine where my opinions fit, where what I think are opinions are actually valid, objective statements, and if I can just transcribe all my interviews and publish them like that?…

Back to my initial question:

How can community gardens and people’s home gardens, which don’t produce significant amounts of food, increase a city’s food security? Can they?

And a recap/answer in the form of a table:

And since this is my blog, not my research report, here’s my opinion:

Community farms are cool. It is difficult for them to stay financially and politically viable if there are no paid employees and/or they are not recognized by the government. “Community” farms where people have to pay ~$1000 membership fees per year are less cool (AKA less accessible), yet they are more likely to survive.

It’s also cool when people have kitchen/balcony/backyard farms. Home gardens can provide most of the same benefits that community gardening can, but it can also have similar drawbacks. For example, people often put more time/energy/financial resources into their gardens then they get out of them. Sometimes, that’s alright, because gardening provides individuals, households, and communities with far more benefits than the agricultural yields. Yet community and home gardening can also both have cost barriers to entry and knowledge barriers to successful farming.

Beyond providing certain, vulnerable communities with direct access to specific nutrients or organic food they may otherwise not have access to, I think the greatest potential for community and home gardens to increase a city’s food security is by how they can increase consumers’ agricultural education and awareness of relevant social, environmental, and political issues. Ultimately, however, consumers’ awareness is only the beginning of a chain of steps that must occur to help foster the growth of local food systems that can increase a city’s food security. Beyond community or home gardens, city governments, businesses, and social organizations must provide residents with the appropriate knowledge base and resources so consumers can use their dollars, time, and voices to promote the development of financially viable, agriculturally productive, environmentally friendly, and socially just local food systems.

Here’s what I’m hinting at:

Non-farmer, urban residents join a community garden or begin farming at home –>

they learn how to farm, they become interested in where their other food comes from –>

they gain awareness about environmental and social issues caused by traditional agricultural production/food systems –>

they become educated on the nuanced benefits and drawbacks of local vs. non-local food  –>

they become more conscious food consumers –>

they foster the development of more sustainable, production-focused, local food systems –>

they increase their city’s food security.

But still, the question remains: Do local food organizations with high agricultural yields (i.e. production-focused urban and peri-urban farms) increase a city’s food security?

For the sake of ending this blog post, I’ll save that one for later.

____

• *I will use the terms ‘farm’ and ‘garden’ interchangeably throughout this post. Where I write ‘garden,’ I mean a garden where the majority of the crops are edible.