In Arizona, the urban agriculture phenomenon has grown for many reasons, each specific to the plot of land it covers. While most of the benefits seem to be local, when taken collectively, it’s another story.
A team funded by the National Science Foundation and led by Arizona State University and Google researchers has assessed the value of urban agriculture and quantified its benefits at a global scale. The researchers estimated the annual value of selected urban agriculture ecosystem benefits as approximately $33 billion.
“For the first time, we have a data-driven approach that quantifies the ecosystem benefits from urban agriculture,” said Matei Georgescu, a geographer at ASU and corresponding author of the paper. “Our estimates of ecosystem benefits show the potential for millions of tons of food production, thousands of tons of nitrogen sequestration, billions of kilowatt hours of energy savings, and billions of cubic meters of avoided storm runoff.”