Jennifer Cockrall-King, author of Food and the City, introduces the topic of urban agriculture and the coming revolution away from long range, tasteless food. She starts by inventorying the results of large-scale intensive agriculture and big box retailing. From her perspective, industrial food is a recombination of salt, fat and sugar managed by food chemists not food nutritionists. She then takes us on a journey of urban agriculture in Europe, the USA and Cuba (where urban agriculture is not a fad but core to Cuba's food self sufficiency). She reviews what is emergent in Canada and some of our contributions to urban agriculture (e.g. SPIN farming (Small Plot Intensive farming), Saskatoon). Her point: this is beyond hobby gardening; it is how a new generation is approaching food and health.
Jennifer Cockrall-King is a freelance journalist and author. Her blog is http://www.foodgirl.ca Her presentation was part of the Alberta Institute of Agrologists' Banff Conference, March 27, 2013.
