Technology Development for Urban Agriculture

Agricultural Technology Development

Why has agricultural research been so little concerned with urban agriculture.
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T

The answer is related to the sectoral separation of "urban" and "rural", a separation that has its roots in the Industrial Revolution and its subsequent transfer through colonial expansion to the developing world.


In northern Europe, the industrial revolution came to be seen as an urban revolution, associated with cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham in the north and midlands of England. The workers who were employed in the new factories came from agricultural communities.


Cities became part of what was seen as a movement away from an agrarian society towards industrialisation and the creation of wealth through capital investment. Rapid urban growth occurred around manufacturing and service industries and included dense, low-cost residential housing for the new industrial workforce � the future inner city slums � together with elite suburban settlements, occupied by the "captains of industry" and the professional classes who supported them. Yet this division was more ideological than real.


Because transport systems failed to keep pace with urban growth, food supply to cities remained a problem. In England and other European countries, municipal authorities were obliged to "allot" small plots to workers' families for food production. These allotment gardens have been reduced in size or have changed location, but they never left the cities in Europe.


The colonial expansion of northern European economies, driven by the search for new sources of raw materials as well as for new consumer markets, exported the sectoral divide between "rural" and "urban" to the developing world, with efforts made to keep "rural" agricultural local populations out of the colonial urban centres, except for the provision of services to the colonists.


This divide has come also to characterise the investment by public sector agencies in technology generation. Agricultural technology development has been almost exclusively oriented towards rural needs, whereas research on manufacturing processes, product transformation, infrastructure and sanitation has been focused mainly on urban needs.