Kois, neighborhood activist: ‘There is a movement in the US to have chickens in backyards’

Whether it is in a simple flowerpot, on a rooftop or in an entire neighborhood, the sociologist José Luis Fernández Casadevante, better known as Kois, believes that urban agriculture is about much more than tending a vegetable patch or growing crops. In his new book Huertopías, this 46-year-old neighborhood activist from Madrid, Spain compiles some of the most striking experiences in the world seeking to renaturalize cities, build links between neighbors and question the current food system.

Question. What is so special about the Todmorden case with regard to urban agriculture?

Answer. Located just outside Manchester, Todmorden is a small town where a very emblematic initiative called Incredible Edible emerged a few years ago. A few friends began to organize a large network of people to grow crops in underutilized public spaces, with a very particular philosophy: any person or tourist can freely pick the food that is grown there. They do not follow a productive criterion, but rather create links and generate changes in mentality and habits. They have also managed to get many local public services to install community gardens in significant places such as the police station, the fire station, schools, the health center...

Q. You claim that urban gardens are no longer an anecdote in Spain.

A. The leap in Spain occurred around 2010 with the financial crisis and the Indignados movement. From 16 municipalities with urban agriculture projects, the number rose to 460. A huge change occurred.

Q. Gardens tend to spread in cities during turbulent times.

A. It is a historical constant, since the emergence of the industrial revolution when agriculture was left somewhat on the margins of the city. It returns recurrently in contexts of socioeconomic crisis and world wars.

Q. Why does planting tomatoes help build cities?

A. Apart from food, gardens produce intangible crops that have to do with how personal ties are rebuilt at a local level, at a neighborhood scale. These spaces are much more inclusive than other associative experiences. Generally, the gardens are surrounded by a transparent fence, the neighbors see what is happening inside and it is easy for them to invite you in. Normally, people enter one by one and leave four by four. These places help to strengthen associative and neighborhood networks, to generate informal networks of mutual aid, solidarity and friendship. People begin to share conversations about plants and end up talking about their own lives.

Q. But you also advocate a professionalization of urban agriculture, don’t you?

A. One of the lines that is emerging on an international scale is the need to professionalize urban agriculture. At least, part of it, not the social, recreational, community-based kind, which already has its own development and is very consolidated. The idea is to maximize production and to orient it toward local sales. In Madrid we have the Barrios Productores project, still under construction, which is a municipal incubator for agricultural companies. The idea is to give up land, something like two hectares, for professional urban agriculture initiatives.

Q. Can you provide any examples of commercial initiatives that are already working?

A. I really like Sole Food Street Farms, one of the largest commercial urban farms in the world, located in the poorest neighborhood in Canada, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. By growing crops in 2,000 huge pots, they have managed to create 20 jobs, most of them filled on a rotating basis by people from the neighborhood. Apart from making a huge change in the landscape of a degraded area, this initiative produces 30 tons of high-quality, organic food every year. Some of the vegetables are marketed through a community-supported cooperative system, as well as through sale at farmers’ markets and local restaurants.

Q. You say that the more professional urban agricultural projects are clearly favoring vertical farms. What are these?

A. A vertical farm is the name given to growing food inside cities in closed spaces, using warehouses, basements, parking lots and so on. These are highly technological initiatives that replace soil, sun, and organic nutrients with closed artificial circuits of water, nutrients, and artificial light, using LEDs. In general, they are used to grow leafy foods that are sold as hyper-fresh. It is a method that has its advantages and is interesting for climates where there is practically no sun, with a certain set of difficulties. But it also involves other risks. A lettuce from a vertical farm uses a hundred times more energy than a traditional one.

Q. So you don’t agree with it?

A. A lot of investment is beginning to be made in this type of urban agriculture by venture capital funds and large technology companies, as well as by major supermarket chains such as Walmart. The risk lies in hyper-technologizing urban agriculture and depending on vegetables with enormous energy balances or on corporate patent systems. Urban agriculture emerged to propose a transformation and democratization of the food system, but that is not included in this model.

Q. You says that in China there are even urban buildings that are in fact large pig farms.

R. In the Chinese city of Ezhou there is a building that looks like residential housing and is in fact an urban macro pig farm.

Q. What are agro-neighborhoods?

A. The concept of agro-neighborhood was born in Detroit, a city that has experienced a socio-urban collapse. During the reconstruction process, an initiative was launched to regenerate a degraded urban area by means of an urban farm, professionalized but with strong community ties. From there, thousands of people are being fed and a small movement has gained traction throughout the United States that is beginning to understand the interest of agriculture as a strategy to regenerate degraded urban areas. It is no longer a matter of introducing gardens in isolation, but of conceiving comprehensive intervention strategies at the neighborhood scale.

Q. In this case it is not only about agriculture but also about livestock...

A. Yes, they have goats, they have pigs, and they need larger areas to meet animal welfare standards. These farms are more oriented towards environmental education, but they also use milk and eggs. In the U.S., there is a movement that calls for more flexible criteria for urban livestock farming, to make it easier for people to have chickens in their backyards.

Q. At the 2023 elections, Madrid regional premier Isabel Díaz Ayuso proposed that each balcony in Madrid should have a plant. What do you think about that?

A. I find the idea of having a plant on every balcony very interesting. Not as a grand measure to combat climate change, because from that perspective it’s ridiculous, it’s just not serious. But in terms of cultivating a new environmental awareness it’s interesting. If you start with one plant, you end up having more.

Q. What is airport honey?

A. It is honey from a network of airports that have their own beehives. In some cities, the conditions for keeping bees are very demanding, because they apply the same regulations as for industrial livestock farming, which is why airports are being used. One of the first initiatives arose in Hamburg and was later replicated in airports throughout Germany and around the world.

Q. Do you really think it is feasible to feed cities with these agricultural systems?

A. Even if there is a lot of farming in cities, it must be underscored that they will not be self-sufficient. The question is not how many people can be fed, but how many people are connected to the need to develop alternative food systems. Studies tell us that people who participate in urban agriculture eat more vegetables, are concerned about eating seasonally, eating locally, whether or not their food has been grown organically and about the working conditions of the people who grew it. Therefore, it would be a strategic ally to change the food system.

Q. What do you think about the fear that greening neighborhoods will contribute to their gentrification?

A. You have to take risks. Gentrification is a problem, and another problem is taking gentrification as a comprehensive category of problems in the city. Neighborhood movements cannot be placed between a rock and a hard place, thinking that any improvement we achieve for our neighborhoods might end up accelerating the dynamics of resident expulsion. In some American cities, there have been neighborhood protests against public transportation or against the construction of parks. We are reaching absurd dynamics.

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