Urban agriculture can support cities’ wider goals and provide residents with self-grown, nutritious food if more governments start supporting – instead of criminalizing – the practice, Taubman College faculty member Lesli Hoey argues in a new book.

Hoey, associate professor and director of doctoral studies in urban and regional planning, contributed two chapters to Planning for Equitable Urban Agriculture in the United States (Springer, 2024).

For many urban growers in low- and middle-income countries, urban agriculture is a lifeline – a vital source of their family’s food and income security – in a way not often experienced in the United States, Hoey notes. However, urban planning scholars and practitioners in the U.S. can draw many lessons about the benefits of intentionally scaling up urban agriculture practices from cities such as Rosario, Argentina; Curitiba, Brazil; Havana, Cuba; Quito, Ecuador; and Seoul, South Korea. While some African cities are suppressing urban agriculture through fines, destruction of crops, and evictions, these five municipal governments actively support the practice with measures such as tax incentives, subsidies, and loans for urban farmers.

“Environmental planners could learn from numerous large-scale UA operations in the Global South that divert waste from landfills, use urban organic waste to improve soil, and preserve farmland greenbelts to conserve water, filter contaminants, and reduce flooding,” Hoey writes.

The open-access book was published in honor of the late Jerry Kaufman, food systems advocate and scholar at the University of Wisconsin. Hoey wrote one chapter (“The Urgent Role of Urban Agriculture and Food Systems Planning in the Global South”) and contributed to another (“The Intersection of Planning, Urban Agriculture, and Food Justice: A Review of the Literature”).