Canadian Research to Explore Potential of Urban Agriculture

A major research project at the University of Toronto will investigate how urban agriculture could both improve food access and capture and store carbon dioxide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “Urban areas have so much food-growing potential, but our knowledge about how, where and what kind of crops can be grown in and around cities is limited,” says project leader Marney Isaac, a professor at University of Toronto Scarborough. A team of researchers and partners will create an inventory of current and potential land for agriculture in and around Toronto and will look at measuring the amount of greenhouse gas emissions urban agricultural land can potentially trap and store and identifying farm management practices that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will also include research looking at regulations and policies that either constrain or promote urban agriculture and develop the first-ever model to estimate greenhouse gas emissions from urban agriculture.
Related ATTRA topic area: Urban Agriculture