Britain can grow enough fresh fruits and vegetables to feed their local population, reveals a study by researchers at Lancaster University.
Being heavily reliant on imports to meet their domestic demand for fresh produce has its drawbacks. With more than a third of their requirement sourced from other countries, it can leave the nation exposed to disruptions in supply chains, such as those recently experienced with Brexit and the pandemic. Climate change presents another threat to these supplies with a significant part of the produce grown in drought-prone regions.
The study sought to find out if the country had sufficient green space in towns and cities to support an urban agricultural revolution that would help meet the dietary needs of a growing population, boost the nation's health and wellbeing, as well as reduce reliance on imports.
Private gardens and amenity space, such as landscaping and lawns, make up most of the available urban green space, followed by parks and other recreational areas such as sports fields. Currently only around 1% of urban green space is taken up by allotments dedicated for food production. Taking all urban green spaces into consideration as potentially suitable for agriculture, the research team used Ordnance Survey master maps to identify outdoor urban green spaces and calculated the productive potential of these areas using figures from existing domestic agriculture.
"Britain is a densely-populated country that is highly reliant on imported fresh fruit and vegetables, and meeting the dietary needs of a growing urban population in a sustainable manner is a significant challenge," said Professor Jess Davies, principal investigator of the study. "Finding ways in which Britain could increase food self-sufficiency is of increasing importance for securing our future food supply.
"Urban agriculture and more people 'growing their own' could play an important role in reducing our reliance on imports, and bolster resilience against disruptions in supply, without converting areas of nature to agriculture, or further intensifying farming. But it was not clear what the extent of that role could be at a national scale, until now."
The researchers found that Britain could boost their current fruit and vegetable production by eight times if all urban green spaces were converted to food production.
"These estimates are at the extreme upper limit for growing in British towns and cities," said Dr Lael Walsh, lead author for the study and researcher with the Rurban Revolution project at Lancaster University. "However, even if only a small percentage of this area is suitable and available for urban agriculture, it could still represent a significant contribution to national supplies of fresh fruit and veg.
"We found that urban green spaces are significantly under-used for food growing and that there is huge untapped capacity in our towns and cities for people to grow more if given support through targeted national policies. This could prove to be beneficial for improving access to healthier foods as well as boosting wellbeing through better connectedness to nature."
The findings were published in the paper 'Potential of urban green spaces for supporting horticultural production: a national scale analysis' by Environmental Research Letters.
Image: https://www.sunset.com/garden/fruits-veggies/veggies-up-front
