Why Attend?

The idea and movement behind producing food within our cities has been gaining widespread attention and was recently identified by futurists as being one of the ten most important horizon issues for the upcoming decade. Fueled by high visibility gardens at the White House and Buckingham Palace, Michael Pollan’s bestselling books, the increasing popularity of the “eat local” or “100-mile” diets and "slow food" movement, and a burgeoning agri-tourism industry associated with farmers’ markets, more and more urban dwellers are examining the sustenance possibilities offered by their neighbourhoods.

Urban agriculture is now on the cusp of evolving from its traditional and individualistic beginnings in the allotment and community garden movement (dealing with plants and soil) into becoming an emerging professional discipline of agricultural urbanism in which city planners, landscape urban designers, and public agencies focus on entire food systems (dealing with economic, social, security, developmental, and sustainability, in addition to exclusively botanical, concerns).   For example, a conference on this subject, sponsored by the Canadian Institute of Planners and the Manitoba Professional Planners Institute, was held in Winnipeg in 2008, and a document titled Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food Planning has recently been issued by the American Planning Association.