Our population is concentrated in cities and most of us have become reliant on food grown from distant places and produced with industrialised farming methods, using synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. There is no doubt our food quality and supply is threatened. A small but growing percentage of our food is produced using organic farming methods, but is this enough? Even organically grown food can be transported 1000's of kilometers. Food grown locally using organic methods is the ideal. We ask the question, “Why grow food in cities”? Read on or enter into a conversation with others on this crucial question, at our Blog.

	Health		Community Development
	Environment		Money
	Food Quality		Motivation
	Food Supply

Health

Food and health - The ultimate personal motivation for growing food in cities is realizing that eating good food is vital to your health. Its very easy to be lazy on this realization.

Exercise - The act of gardening is mostly a physical activity and this exercises our bodies in a gentle way and gets us outside into fresh air and sunlight.

Healthy mind - Connecting to our feelings when working with the earth and the creative process of food gardening enlivens our thinking and well being. This benefits all other parts of our life.

Environment

Minimise climate change - Most food eaten in cities may have travelled long distances by road (average of 2300km's in Australia) and, other than organically produced food has been produced using energy hungry machines and petro-chemical pesticides. This all contributes to global warming. Growing food in an organic manner in cities eliminates these contributions to global warming and helps to absorb the large amount atmospheric carbon created in cities

Minimise pressure on degraded farm land - Industrialised farming, despite temporarily increasing farm yields, has led to: over use of water, poisoned waterways, loss of biodiversity, loss of seed varieties and reduced soil fertility. By growing food in cities using organic methods and reducing your consumption of produce from industrialised agriculture, you are using your power as a consumer to force change and contribute to healing degraded farm land.

Maximise use of available resources -Cities have easy access to all the main physical resources necessary to grow food. These are water (city roofs collect more water than you will need for a food garden whilst farmers in many parts of the world are struggling with water availability), soil which can be improved, material for making compost, (food waste and green matter) labour, seeds and seedlings.

Food quality

Food taste - There is a very noticeable improvement in the taste of organically grown food compared to growing with artificial pesticides and fertilisers

Food nutrition - Good flavour is a strong indicator of nutritional value. When food is grown in a healthy way and picked at the optimum time it will have a great flavour. The quantity you need to eat will decline with an increase in nutritional quality of the food.

Food freshness - Freshness of fruit and vegetables affects taste and nutritional value. The less time between picking and eating, the better the taste. A lot of “Fresh looking” fruit and vegetables sold in cities are not fresh at all, but have been transported long distances, picked before they are ripe, gassed or irradiated to save from spoiling. Food grown at home or close to home can be eaten very soon after it is picked.

Eating food in season - You can't avoid this if you are growing your own (unless you use a greenhouse). Most people in cities expect to eat all sorts of fruit and vegetables at any time of the year. This means they are consuming food that has either travelled a very long way or has been stored for a long time and, of course, this affects food quality.

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