Mapping and Assessing Urban Agriculture in Rome

Abstract

Abstract The paper focus on the concept of food and agriculture as an infrastructure – which is both spatial and relational -, within the context of the urban Mediterranean phenomenon, where, with all its political, cultural, economical, social and environmental differences, there is a common relationship with food and food production in an urban setting. The aim of this paper is to explore the agricultural context of Rome, focusing on its relationships with development in the metropolitan area, within the framework of sustainable food planning. Starting from the relationship between food and city, we have mapped the foodscape, identifying a number of representative conditions - typologies - in the metropolitan area of Rome. Through a of criteria - relationships with the urban fabric, production patterns, flows, services, infrastructures, environmental characters, social behaviour linked with the production - the study tries to summarise Roman agriculture. We focus on a set of recurring elements, involving both criticalities and opportunities, that bring together city and food production. Rome has what we could call a compact structure compared to the dispersed urban model and this has encouraged the development of local agricultural systems, where both flows and landscapes involve the city. While production is organised into wedge-shaped areas, the places where exchanges occur are mainly within the municipal area of Rome, with the exception of farms involved in direct sales. Despite a strong urbanization pressure caused a reduction of 42% of the utilised agricultural area (UAA) between 1990 and 2000, this trend was reverted back between 2000 and 2010, with an increase of the UAA of 14%. The analysis of land use (CLC, 2006) reveals a system of wedge-shaped agricultural areas, where short supply chain models can be used efficiently to manage and promote the use of land and landscape. In synthesis, in terms of their production systems, there is a high number of short supply chain farms in Rome (over 40%), mostly with mixed production systems linked to multifunctional farming. The role played by the local food network in Rome is remarkable, particularly in case of farmers’ market, SPG’ and those linked to box schemes experiences have seen significant success. The increasing importance of Alternative and Local Food Networks is showed in the data: the 60% of Rome municipalities farms sell directly (Istat, 2010) it was registered an increase of + 57% Farmers’ market at municipality level and of + 64% in Rome's province (2010/13) ( Marino et al., 2013 ). The local food network behind agriculture in the city, within a number of integrated social agrarian cooperative, who represented an alternative food production system and landmark for many initiatives carried out by the civil society, associations, cooperatives, volunteer and school sectors, community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives. This account of short supply chains in Rome is inevitably the account of an urban phenomenon. It is indeed the city that determines its special characteristics for both physical and relational aspects. The mapped farms are mostly located near the main routes that radiate from the city to the countryside, underlining the centrality of the flow of exchanges that take place with the city. The processes of transformation affecting the primary sector in urban and suburban environments reflect an agriculture that forms (and produces) new landscape and functions, typically reconnected to the historical value of agriculture in and around the Mediterranean cities. Food, because of its cultural and historical place in Mediterranean tradition, has a significant role in configuring the areas where exchanges takes place, which are, therefore, specific places for meeting and forming relationships within the public spaces of a city. The system identified by the paper configures the set of all the different forms of agriculture and food in Rome as a device of resilience for the city, made up of places where flows, relationships and processes become increasingly more sustainable, and where both physical and intangible spaces act as an infrastructure in their exchange with the city.