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Global urbanization and food production are in direct competition for land. This paper carries out a critical review of how displacing crop production from urban and peri-urban land to other areas – because of issues related to soil quality – will demand a substantially larger proportion of the Earth’s terrestrial land surface than the surface area lost to urban encroachment. Such relationships may trigger further distancing effects and unfair social-ecological teleconnections. It risks also setting in motion amplifying effects within the Earth System. In combination, such multiple stressors set the scene for food riots in cities of the Global South. Our review identifies viable leverage points on which to act in order to navigate urban expansion away from fertile croplands. We first elaborate on the political complexities in declaring urban and peri-urban lands with fertile soils as one global commons. We find that the combination of an advisory global policy aligned with regional policies enabling robust common properties rights for bottom-up actors and movements in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as multi-level leverage places to intervene. To substantiate the ability of aligning global advisory policy with regional planning, we review both past and contemporary examples where empowering local social-ecological UPA practices and circular economies have had a stimulating effect on urban resilience and helped preserve, restore, and maintain urban lands with healthy soils.

The author sets out to explain why Maya cities are so dispersed, with a ceremonial core surrounded by spacious neighbourhoods. Using the case study of Xuch, and the judicious application of phosphate analysis, he shows that these were clusters of farmsteads, growing food. Tackling the apparent confrontation of town and country in the same settlement he urges us to reconsider ‘urbanism’ as being too narrow a term in archaeology. Solutions that combine food production and ritual can be seen as increasingly diverse. The paper provides valuable reflections for archaeologists studying settlement evolution the world over.

Owing to poor preservation of organic remains in humid environments, direct evidence of early manioc (Manihot esculenta Crantz) cultivation is exceptionally rare in datable archaeological contexts. Recent research summarized here offers new insights into the spatio-temporal framework of the initial domestication and early spread of manioc in the Neotropics. Integrating evidence from comparative plant genetics and paleoethnobotanic starch analysis to contribute to the archaeology of manioc origins, this review finds that (1) the strongest candidate for the botanical origin of domesticated manioc—the wild progenitor of the root crop—is the species Manihot esculenta subspecies flabellifolia (Pohl) Ciferri; (2) the geographical origin of manioc—the biome in which the progenitor evolved—is most likely in the savannas, the Brazilian Cerrado, to the south of the Amazon rainforest; (3) the Cerrado is also, in our best estimate, the region of agricultural origin of initial cultivation; (4) domesticated manioc had spread from the agricultural origin by the early Holocene, possibly as early as 10,000 years ago, but certainly by 7000 B.C.; and (5) domesticated manioc was a readily available plant in most habitats of the Neotropics by the mid-Holocene, at least some 6500 years ago.