December 2013,

The main focus of this blog will be to explore interactions between people and the food that they eat in urban areas. With that in mind, I would like to start off the main discussion by examining what I believe to be one of the most interesting solutions to the problems of urban food sovereignty – aquaponics. I will soon be embarking on a nearly year long exploration of the world of urban aquaponics as part of an independent study here at UBC in order to learn more about their possible applications regarding not only food sovereignty, but sustainable fish farming and local market awareness as well.
While some may see cities as intrinsically unable to be self-sustainable, I believe that this is more a result of our societal values than it is the nature of cities themselves. Rapid population growth and poor planning have led to the rapid expansion of cities on their peripheries through urban sprawl. After World War two, owning your own home was seen to be extremely desirable and with an improved highway system and low-cost mortgages from he GI. Bill, affordable housing systems such as Levittown, Pennsylvania were very popular. At that time urban decay and redlining also served as push factors as cities rapidly increased and blurred their borders. Today, many people still make the decision to move to more affordable suburbs and commute rather than paying a high price for city living. The end result is that the farms that used to line the periphery of many cities have closed shop as skyrocketing land values give aging and indebted farmers an incentive to sell their land to property developers. This once vibrant source of local food has fallen to the wayside as neoliberal trade policies opt for greater food security at the cost of sovereignty.
Consumer demand is also a large part of the equation. While times may be changing now as shoppers seek lower food miles and more trustworthy supply chains, the fact remains that people have grown accustomed to cheap food available regardless of season. This has a huge variety of negative impacts on farmers, the environment, and public health, but in regards to local food sovereignty it primarily means that the majority are unwilling to pay for the cost of having reduced economics of scale and having to grow products in non-optimal climates with vastly higher labor expenses among other cost-increasing factors. Recently, as I mentioned, there has been an upsurge in demand for local, primarily organic, food that has allowed farmers to turn economic disadvantage into added value.
Without comprehensive policy reform and a reigning in on the market for land development, it is unlikely that enough farms on the urban edge will be able to make a significant contribution to the urban food supply unless they are able to find ways to increase the profitability of their product and have a larger stake in the industry. The two ways that I believe this would be most likely to occur are dependent on crop value and market demand – in addition to the possibility that the externalities being created by the industrial food system began to impact the price of industrial food (climate change, soil fertility, energy cost, etc) and lower their market advantage. However, there are the two more optimistic approaches to consider – by identifying markets for key items farmers can hope to stay competitive. There are many local, higher cost agricultural products that are able to remain competitive due to their higher quality (due either to production practices or high spoilage rate) such as berries and summer stone fruits (peaches, plums, etc). In addition to the product quality, it can have many other marketable traits to add value such as organic certification and consumer trust.
Aquaponics is another product that I believe could be competitive in an urban setting due to what it is and how it is being produced. As global wild fish stocks decline, farmed fish will most likely come to replace them. Wild fish have traditionally been a far less complex and expensive source of product, but decreasing availability and harsher restrictions will make farming more profitable comparatively (think along the lines of the oil sands – another previously unprofitable industry). As the industry develops, I believe that farmed fish will ultimately be more preferable to processing companies as they favor uniformity and steady supply. While small-scale aquaponic production may initially seem uncompetitive due again to its lower economy of scale and higher labor costs, there are also many added value techniques that could make it very competitive. Freshness, trustworthy practices, 3rd party environmental certification, novelty, and the local label could all make it profitable enough to compete with industrial suppliers. In this way, aquaponics could contribute to urban food stability and sovereignty.

I am really looking forward to examining these and other issues regarding the growing aquaponic industry in the coming year!

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