CAREER: Mapping pathways to food security and sustainable development

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

America's most productive farmland lies in the direct path of urban expansion, competing economically with housing markets. The U.S. population is predicted to grow by 50% before 2050, adding nearly 140 million people. Accommodating such growth requires an understanding of urban form and both its influence on and its response to surrounding land-uses. Metropolitan areas contain only 20% of the total U.S. farmland and 80% of the population. Yet, metropolitan-area farms account for the majority of fruit, nut, berry, vegetable, milk and egg production. It is this array of fresh food that is needed to battle the upsurge of unhealthy eating and associated diet-related diseases, such as obesity and diabetes. Encouraged by growing consumer preferences and willingness to pay more for local foods, many metropolitan farms are increasingly turning to direct marketing through you-pick operations, farm stands, farmers' markets, and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) as a way to stay economically competitive against the housing market. This project explores how social networks formed through local food marketing influence land-use regulations, agricultural economics, and urban development patterns. To inform a "science of cities," this research tests a novel explanatory theory. Ecologists have identified structural complexity as an important indicator for total system growth and resilience. Structural complexity fosters niches. The presence of niches allows for a diversity of uses. Such diversity fosters resilience in the face of natural disasters, disease or extinction of one species. Structural complexity can be estimated. For example, carefully laying a flexible chain over the surface of a coral reef provides a simple indicator of surface roughness, termed rugosity. Rugosity measurements correlate with the availability of habitat niches and related coral biodiversity, total reef species, reef growth and resilience to stressors. Drawing from ecology, this research translates the metric of rugosity -- an interface measurement that indicates niches, rich social networks, and potential resilience to shocks -- to urban and agricultural studies. This research will measure the structural complexity of urban areas as critical to urban and agricultural growth (land values, population growth, production), shared metabolism (supply chains, resource use), and resilience (response to economic and natural disaster). Satellite imagery provided by the National Agricultural Statistics Service now allows high-fidelity spatially explicit data for multivariate regression analysis on farmland loss, crop diversity, and urban development. Collection of novel data on marketing channels allows social network analysis on the mediating effects formed through the food system on land-use. In sum, this research tests the hypothesis that farms that are more intertwined physically with urban lands will also be more intertwined socially through direct and local marketing, thereby changing diet-related health, job diversity, farm tenure, and land-use patterns for urban and agricultural communities alike. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.