Organic market gardening around the Paris agglomeration: agro-environmental performance and capacity to meet urban requirements

Abstract

Organic market gardening is often promoted by urban municipalities as a way to resource part of the food supply, creating new social links and protecting groundwater resources. The agronomical and environmental performance of six commercial organic market gardening farms supplying vegetables in Paris were evaluated and compared with other vegetable production systems. When expressed in terms of protein production, the yield of these systems appears rather low compared with the productive capacity of open-field organic cropping systems where vegetable production is inserted into rotation with other crops. Moreover, the requirement of producing infiltrated water meeting the drinking water standards seriously limits the allowable rate of fertilisation, thus limiting production. The data reported herein show that to supply the amount of vegetables required by the Paris agglomeration (12 million inhabitants) only by organic market gardening, 160,000-205,000 ha, i.e. 28-36 % of the agricultural area of the surrounding Ile-de-France region, would be required. We conclude that organic market gardening is only one of several other farming systems which can contribute to a re-localised supply of vegetables to large cities.

Reshaping the European agro-food system and closing its nitrogen cycle: The potential of combining dietary change, agroecology, and circularity

“…55 Here, we mostly deal with cropping systems on arable land, leaving apart permanent crops as well as market gardening systems, which function according to a rather different logic. In the scenario, for each country, the area of permanent grassland and permanent crops has been kept constant, and a small fraction of arable area has been devoted to market gardening to meet the domestic needs for vegetables defined according to the prescribed diet and the organic gardening productivity figures published by Anglade et al 56 What follows concerns the remaining part of cropland area, which is by far the largest part (60%) of the agricultural land.…”

The Fate of Nitrogen from Soil to Plants: Influence of Agricultural Practices in Modern Agriculture

“…If nitrate is absorbed without being reduced, it accumulates in plant cells [123]. Many factors influence this accumulation, such as the physical and chemical characteristics of soil [123,124], the plant species [123,[125][126][127][128], the fertilization regime [129,130], and the growing season and climatic conditions [131]. Since nitrate accumulates mainly in the leaves, leafy vegetables are considered the richest sources of nitrates among vegetables [132].…”