Robert McGarvey is an Edmonton economist, a cofounder of Genuine Wealth Inc. and an Executive Committee Member of the Economic Research Council, London, England. He writes on and studies assets and the asset revolution that is informing the trends on monetary reform and pricing reform. He makes the case that we know the economic value of built urban structures (houses, condos, office towers). We don't have good economic valuation systems for local food and urban agriculture. The current economic structural measures, principally profit, misses key fundamentals that drive economic activity (e.g. health concerns: the closure of the USA border in 2003 to Canadian beef over BSE. This intangible had a dramatic impact on profit. In 2013, Alberta beef exports were $1billion less than in 2002). We do not have good tools for valuing food and the production and delivery systems that predominate. Local food and urban agriculture are consequently the principal causalities.
Robert McGarvey was interviewed by the Alberta Land-use Knowledge Network as part of their online course and discussion of Urban Agriculture and Local Food in the autumn of 2013. The course, Growing Insights can be viewed at http://growinginsights.ca/
