Urban agriculture never guarantees the saturation of big cities, but it can become the cheapest and most profitable agriculture, especially in terms of energy and transport. This is how the article “L’agriculture urbaine est en plein essor” published this September by Reporterre has begun. News from Arquitectura published in June “The largest urban garden in the world located on a rooftop”, counting how one hectare is formed by the orchards arranged on the flat roofs of two commercial buildings in central New York. Information on Urban farming or Urban agriculture can be found in search engines.

In this next year we have told the orchards that have emerged in the concrete cracks of the big cities because of the crisis. Sometimes it is an economic crisis, related to the scarcity of energy: the collapse of the Soviet system left Cuba to import food that it had used until then, without pieces for mechanized and oil-free agriculture, giving rise to the famous organo-nomic gardens in plazas and parks to satisfy passersby.

The scarcity caused by the war has caused a similar phenomenon, the Victory Gardens campaign in the United States, Digg for Victory in the United Kingdom... The economic crisis of 1929 also triggered similar phenomena. The phenomenon living in Basque cities with the proliferation of orchards has to do with it.

There is another current that makes the urban land become an orchard, linked to attempts to question the system or to build the bases of the alternative system. Healthier foods, fairer economic relationships, criticism of globalization -- that and more is what's in many consumer groups and popular orchards. Uribe Kosta de Bizkaia has an Agro-ecological Assembly, they have started planting orchards, the municipalities organize orchards to help the unemployed to breathe, there are many examples. Without forgetting those planted in balconies and windows, more and more numerous.

The city has always known orchards as chicken cooks and other stables. Perhaps the peculiarity today is that in the course of the twenty-first century they have begun to resurface in the metropolises in which they had lost their memory over the last decades, be it Paris, London or New York. And in addition, commercial projects have been created around the orchards, near the streets that demand fresh and healthy food, thinking that their growth can be profitable.

Among those who read in Spanish, recent references have been made to the book Agricultura urbana, edited by the architect Graciela Arosemena. “XIX. In the city of the 20th century, he points out, the main concern was the hygienization of the street, exporting all pollution to protect the citizens of the interior, without realizing that this export entailed a deterioration of the environment and the territory”.

On the contrary, in order to be sustainable from now on, the city will have to integrate food production, processing, distribution and consumption into its environmental and socio-economic environment. The cycles must be closed on the ground, reusing the organic waste of the population to pay for their orchards.

Transposition

The urban garden is important in poor countries. But also in the rich West it has gained more and more strength. There was no more than looking at America.

Anastasia Cole, founder of the company Brooklyn Grange, said: “The city will always need to feed the dwellings, but the orchards on the rooftops that are out of use offer great possibilities: they improve the quality of life of the city, create jobs, make healthy fresh vegetables available and educate the city’s lovers on environmental and growing issues.”

On this subject, there is a great movement in Canada. In Vancouver, in Toronto, and especially in Montreal. Antoine Boyet, from Le Journal International, writes: “Montreal, the future is on the rooftops.” The working group organized by the agricultural sector of the city collected 29,068 signatures in 2011, requesting that the City Council prioritize this activity.

Before that, in the 1970s, there were many orchards in the cities of Quebec because of the crisis. Subsequently, a university group promoted the "guerrilla gardening", the unauthorized planting of disused communal lands or seed bombing. They planted orchards on the terraces of the University and planted hives. In 1995, the Santropol Roulant Group was set up to combat social exclusion through food.

But the Montreal experience generated in 2011 a special puppy: a commercial greenhouse built on roofs. Lufa Farms is, in the words of Antonio Boyet, the first one built on the interior terrace of the city. Not the last, the founder of the company, Mohamed Hage, believes that over the buildings of Montreal there are enough terraces to feed the entire city.

It can be called a street culture without complexes. In 1995, Pierre Donadieu, an ecologist, agronomist and geographer, published Campagnes urbaines, an urban dwelling. Today he continues to give lectures. He recently explained in an interview: “The western city has just begun its laborist-nutritious function [cites agri-food and agriurbanisation], which goes against the intuition of the majority of the urbanists and the majority of the elects”.

Donadieu considers urban cultivation as the breeding activities of plants and livestock that take place in urbanized and metropolitan regions. It includes, on the one hand, professionals linked to the cultivation and those who work amateur. Those involved in town and country planning, architects, planners, sociologists, elected politicians, officials … will increasingly have to take account of the needs of these food producers. From testimonial support, for example, taking care of the soil for these activities.

The fallowing of the street creates many jobs.  But in addition new jobs are being created, some of them in the agri-ecology line, but also very technological options are being seen in greenhouses and others: a landless hydroponic system, an aquaponic with striped droppings ...

Put on the balcony the reader who likes the flavors of tomatoes grains or lettuce leaves, so he knows he is a member of a global stream.