Abstract
Urban agriculture is sprouting throughout the world nowadays. New forms of urban agriculture are observed such as rooftop farming. In the case of low-tech rooftop farming projects, based on recycled urban waste, one of the key issues is the type of substrate used, as it determines the functions and ecosystem services delivered by the green roof. Using a five year experimental trial, we quantified the food production potential of Technosols created only with urban wastes (green waste compost, crushed wood, spent mushroom), as well as the soil fertility and the potential contamination of food products. Regarding food production, our cropping system showed promising results across the five years, in relation with the high fertility of the Technosols. This fertility was maintained, as well as the nutrients stocks after five cropping years. Most of the edible crops had trace metals contents below existing norms for toxic trace metals with nevertheless a concern regarding certain some trace metals such as Zn and Cu. There was no trace metal accumulation in the Technosols over time except for Zn. This study confirmed that constructing Technosols only from urban wastes is a suitable and efficient solution to design rooftops for edible production.
Highlights
In the last decade, urban agriculture has been a growing topic for urban stakeholder’s worldwide.Urban agriculture is perceived as one way to counter some of the negative impacts of urban growth and development
Weidner et al [6] showed that a wide range of methodologies are used to estimate productive surface areas, yields and other production parameters in urban agriculture, which results in a great variability of estimates
Developing rooftop farming requires to design specific growing systems fitted to the constraints of this environment: weight constraints, specific meteorological conditions with potential higher rates of evaporation and dealing with potentially small surface areas that force to maximize the use of space and adapt the cropping system
Summary
Urban agriculture has been a growing topic for urban stakeholder’s worldwide. Urban agriculture is perceived as one way to counter some of the negative impacts of urban growth and development. Urban agriculture has potentially important and diverse functions, such as improving social cohesion [1], food production [2,3,4], urban waste valorization [3], improved nutrient cycling etc. The multi-functionality of urban agriculture could help to tackle several societal challenges of urbanization [5]. Whether urban agriculture can significantly contribute to feeding urban citizens has raised debate and promoted a number of empirical studies. From 1.87% to 150% of vegetables and fruit demands could be met by urban agriculture in different cities depending on the type of space considered as being available for urban agriculture, the growing system used (low and/or high tech system) and on the type of
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