Urban challenges and opportunities to promote sustainable food security through smart cities and the 4th industrial revolution (original) (raw)
Related papers
Urban Agriculture 5.0: An Exploratory Approach to the Food System in a Super Smart Society
International Journal of Mathematical, Engineering and Management Sciences
Society 5.0 aims to promote quality of life and well-being of citizens, reducing inequalities and promoting sustainability with the support of technologies 4.0. Therefore, redesigning value chains to bring social, economic, and environmental gains becomes of particular interest in alignment with a new model of a people-centric super-smart society. This paper aimed to outline a conceptual design of urban agriculture (UA) 5.0 by applying a three-phase methodology supported by data triangulation. A relationship between Industry 4.0, food system, and sustainable society was identified, encompassing many points of convergence between UA and Industry 4.0 (35) as well as Society 5.0 (43). As a result, this paper proposed UA 5.0 as a multifaceted concept that brings a new paradigm for systemic agriculture integrated in cities, considering six key dimensions for its development (spatial, social, technological, economic, sustainability, and systems integration). This exploratory study contrib...
Frediani Urban Agriculture a smart solution for feeding our cities
Oxford Farming Conference , 2015
This conference paper presents the argument that the time is right to innovate with new approaches to addressing the challenges of food production and supply in a time of global change . As more and more people engage in urban growing projects; taking control over what resources they can, reacting to a concern of the perceived lack of food security in a world increasingly reliant upon global trade to make consumers less vulnerable to local shortages and the higher prices caused by bad weather, disease or civil disorder. Unable to control the global they are compelled to act locally to realise a trust-based local trade as an antidote to global challenges, achieved through a range of growing actives from community gardens that use a Social and Therapeutic Horticultural approach (STH) to the resurgent interest in a new commercial market garden approach to commercial production where people are literally growing a more tangible resilient future they can see, touch and taste for themselves. The concept of Food Smart Cities is explored as a model to help make the transition from a globalised unsustainable food production and supply system into a more interconnected and sustainable model.
European Journal of Nutrition & Food Safety, 2023
Food security is a significant concern in urban areas (UAs). With the rapid increase in urbanization, addressing this issue has become increasingly important. Despite interventions to tackle food security issues, the world has achieved varying degrees of success in eradicating hunger, and food security in cities is critical. This study examined the unique challenges and opportunities associated with ensuring food security in urban areas. The study reviewed empirical literature and relevant reports in the last five years (2018-2023). This study identified several challenges in ensuring food security in urban regions, across the world, including rising food prices, limited water and land access for farming, and poor infrastructure and food supply systems. There are also opportunities to improve the situation, such as improving access to markets, investing in agricultural production, promoting urban agriculture, expanding and stocking food banks, and government food intervention programs to ensure socioeconomic parity in urban areas. Urban areas' food security opportunities and difficulties are complex and interconnected. However, by
Feeding Cities: Charting a Research and Practice Agenda Toward Food Security
Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, 2013
This commentary details an action agenda for practice and research contributed to by more than 70 experts and 450 attendees of the Feeding Cities: Food Security in a Rapidly Urbanizing World conference, held at the University of Pennsylvania in March 2013. They discussed such global issues as hunger, malnourishment, and obesity and called for policies to address them through a variety of food production, distribution, and marketing initiatives. They produced a six-point action-based agenda for future food security planning and identified best practice policies for each agenda item. Their objective is to offer a roadmap to produce and supply the world's growing urban population with healthy, affordable, and safe food in a sustainable manner and to avoid potential food security crises across the world.
In the opening chapter of the book, Johannes Wiskerke provides a comprehensive and clearlystructured elaboration on the conditions that shape our food systems, as well as guiding principles for designing resilient urban food systems. Wiskerke insightfully points out the neglect of food on the urban agenda, and calls for a better understanding of food as a critical urban issue. For example, food provisioning and consumption in cities can significantly affect the economic viability, environmental sustainability, public health, and quality of communities. The author devotes most of the chapter to the discussion of four major themes, which are also conditions shaping the food system: population growth, urbanization and changing diets; scarcity and depletion of resources; public health; and climate change. He then summarizes four guiding principles that will comprehensively address these conditions-adopting a city region perspective; connecting flows; creating synergies; and planning for resilient urban food systems.
Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Smart integration of technology can help create sustainable urban food ecosystems (UFEs) for the rapidly expanding urban population in the developing world. Technology, especially recent advances in digital-enabled devices based on internet connectivity, are essential for building UFEs at a time when food production is increasingly limited on a global scale by the availability of land, water, and energy. By 2050, two-thirds of the world will be urban-and most of the net world population growth will occur in urban regions in the developing world. A food crisis is looming, with the developing world ill-prepared to sustainably feed itself. We identify 12 innovative technology platforms to advance the UFEs of the developing world: (1) connectivity-information delivery and digital technology platforms; (2) uberized services; (3) precision agriculture (GPS, IoT-Internet of things, AI-artificial intelligence, sensing technology); (4) CEA-controlled environment agriculture, including vertical farms; (5) blockchain for greater transparency, food safety, and identification; (6) solar and wind power connected to microgrids; (7) high-quality, enhanced seeds for greater yield, nutrition, climate, and pest resistance; (8) advanced genetics, including gene editing, synthetic biology, and cloud biology; (9) biotechnology, including microbiome editing, soil biologicals, cultured meat, alternative proteins to meat and dairy; (10) nanotechnology and advanced materials; (11) 3-D printing/additive manufacturing; and (12) integration of new tech to scale-up underutilized, existing technologies. The new tech-enabled UFEs, linked to value-chains, will create entrepreneurial opportunities-and more efficiently use resources and people to connect the nexus of food, water, energy, and nutrition.