from 6 Feb 2021
From tackling the climate crisis to social justice, UA can be hailed as a wonderful solution for people in cities (which is most of us, after all). I’m eager to support UA as a justice movement the most! That said, we must be cautioned against overstating the scale of UA’s tangible impacts.
I find it very exciting, and frankly quite poetic, that resistance against corporate power and oppression can be found in the gentle act of tending to plants. While urban farmers, especially non-commercial ones, are unlikely to achieve complete self-sufficiency, UA remains a way for people to resist the conventional food system. Quantitative studies have also found that urban farming is associated with dietary diversity, which is closely related to caloric adequacy and positive physical outcomes, especially in the global south (Zezzo and Tasciotti 2010). This is especially significant given that conventional food systems are often not sustainable or regenerative, both in biophysical and social ways (Rhodes 2017).
Beyond the physical, UA has strong social elements to it. UA can also support marginalized communities strengthen community bonds and resist cultural oppression, as Reynolds and Cohen (2016) put it. For example, UA can be a way to assert agency and refute the image of victimization for marginalized communities (Reynolds and Cohen 2016).
Meanwhile, we witness the political outcomes of UA in spaces like New York City. There, the UA movement has come to represent ‘self-determination and political agency – the ability to effect political change in one’s community – especially in the face of “racial and economic apartheid (Reynolds and Cohen 2016).”
I find these ideas very appealing partly because of the potential I see in the Singaporean context. There is ideological alignment because UA fits very well into the government’s 30-by-30 plans. Beyond that, Singapore is a dense city with a very high rate of income inequality. In this social context, it would be quite cool for UA and community gardens to be a way to empower communities and support food justice (although we might have to frame it differently to suit the local context).
Additionally, UA can close the distance between Singapore’s diet and the source of our food. Merely recognizing how much effort goes into growing a single vegetable could perhaps shift perspectives about the conventional food system and promote a greater consciousness about the structural transformations we need to promote climate justice.
That said, I acknowledge that these visions are idealistic, and far more difficult to materialize.
Furthermore, I am not as eager to support the entrepreneurial urban farmers whose main motive is profit. I fear that it may undermine the grassroots and community-based spirit of UA which I appreciate the most. After all, it no longer becomes resistance if it reproduces the capitalist system associated with the very things some UA movements set out to resist. That said, my hesitation is tempered when these farmers come from marginalised identities – after all, the success of historically oppressed people is a good and necessary step towards social justice. In addition, I believe that localization is generally a good thing (for food security + minimizing carbon footprint from transportation). Scalable, entrepreneurial urban farms may be the way to go about that in cities or countries like Singapore.
In all, I’ve been learning much about UA across various contexts and look forward to continue doing so!
farm time 