The landscapes of professional farms in mid‐sized cities, France

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a spatial analysis of agriculture in three mid‐sized French cities, with a particular focus on professional farms. The existence of important agricultural spaces inside the cities is confirmed. We reveal the persistence of a field‐based, market‐oriented agriculture in French mid‐sized cities, often ignored in studies on urban agriculture, and usually made invisible. Our results highlight the farms' diversity, as well as a diversity of farmers' viewpoints on the relations between urban and agricultural places. We emphasise the importance of three main determinants in the observed dynamics: the cities' geographies; the impact on farmers of land speculation and urbanisation; and the implementation of resistance and adaptation processes by some farmers. These results are discussed in relation to the literature on urban and peri‐urban agriculture.

Agri-urban patterns in Mediterranean urban regions: the case study of Pisa

“…It is also surprising that cash crops such as sunflower and maize are still present in the more urban patterns (namely belt field and periurban fields), showing the permanence of professional farms even very close to the city and not only in rural areas. This is consistent with the recent paper from Scheromm and Soulard (2018) which confirmed the existence of important agricultural spaces inside the cities with a persistence of professional farming. Although there is evidence of abandoned lands in the more urban patterns, we still found an agricultural management in isolated fields even though this management is very extensive, as showed by the important rate of alfalfa in isolated fields.…”

“…In grey, the urban areas more dense or sprawled; in green the agricultural or green areas, more dispersed or continuous; in rose, the periurban areas characterized by a fragmentation of both urban and agricultural or natural land uses. Scheromm & Soulard, 2018;Tedesco et al, 2017). Moreover, the applied methodology in this study can help to identify new measures and actions suitable in order to strengthen the relationships between city and agriculture existing in urban regions.…”

“…Periurban areas have the potential for an enhanced agricultural production, both in terms of fresh produce and commodities. Filippini, Lardon, et al (2018) or Scheromm and Soulard (2018) have highlighted that both productions can coexist in these peri-urban areas, and adapt with them depending for instance, on land tenure, constraints in urban planning or even facilities for alternative food networks; 4) Rural agricultural lands: this pattern is found when the dominant land use is agriculture and urban areas are isolated, e.g. isolated houses or small villages) or in form of infrastructures, e.g.…”

Designing Urban Food Policies

“…While wine-growing had to that point been supported by the State, then the European Union, part of the industry then pivoted toward the production of quality wines, and other winegrowers that had been producing mass-market wines permanently grubbed up their vines. As a result of these changes in the periurban vineyard landscape, production diversified in response to the needs of farmers near Montpellier who switched to market gardening or grain crops and to a certain demand from urban consumers (Perrin et al 2013;Scheromm and Soulard 2018).…”

Quality Labels as Drivers of Peri-Urban Livestock Systems Resilience

“…Livestock dynamics in urban areas have been addressed by several scholars [20][21][22][23]; however, these case studies mostly focus on developing countries (see the recent review of Hatab et al, 2019 [24]) and very few of them concern Mediterranean areas [25][26][27][28]. Up to now, the interest of literature on the peri-urban livestock farming system in developed countries has been focused especially in analyzing its social functions, as in social and leisure farming, and less for its production capacity [23,[29][30][31].…”