Urban Food Systems: Closing the Food Life Cycle

This presentation will address a suite of intersecting issues about urban food systems that includes barriers to urban food production, impacts of shifts in agricultural markets on urban food availability and affordability, factors that influence human decision-making on choices of foods, impacts on agricultural commodity markets of urban food production, financial models and economic viability of urban food production and distribution, the effects of scale on urban productivity, environmental factors that affect productivity across the urban landscape, material and energy requirements, waste generation, multifunctional models of urban productivity, the enhancement and tradeoffs associated with ecosystem services, policies that result in better human nutrition and health, and the effect of urban agriculture on social, behavior, and cultural values.