Suburban Agriculture: Fulfilling Spaces, Creating Places

Keywords: Suburban Agriculture, Urban Agriculture, Local Food Systems, Wisconsin
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 38

Abstract

Over the last two decades, urban agriculture has become an important feature of research on local food systems, supply, sustainability, and sovereignty. Thousands of articles have been published on the practice, place, and wide-spread social and environmental benefits of home, community, and market gardens in urban settings around the world. Curiously, however, almost no attention has been given to explicitly ‘suburban’ agriculture, despite the prominence of suburbia across North America. Our case study of a small, Midwestern city (Eau Claire, WI) begins to address that void by looking at the overlooked and underappreciated agro-food potential of suburban lawns and yards. Using Google Earth Pro, standard GIS software, publicly available city assessor data, ground investigations, and actual home and community vegetable gardening practices, we estimated the agricultural potential of 132 household lots sampled from eight neighborhoods. Our findings demonstrate that suburbia is a repository of significant amounts of arable land and, consequently, agriculturally productive potential. Furthermore, sustainably developing suburban agricultural resources has the potential to address an array of local social, health, economic, environmental, and community needs. Our analysis demonstrates the significance of suburbs in the discourse on urban agriculture and makes a case for highlighting ‘suburban agriculture’ in future studies.