TOSustain: Toward sustainable urban and peri-urban agriculture for net-zero food systems

Urban and peri-urban agriculture are gaining tremendous popularity and momentum as key elements of sustainable food systems. In Canada, the potential to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) while increasing food production and access in dense and diverse population centers, strongly positions urban and peri-urban agriculture as pivotal in sustainable food systems now and into the future. Policy initiatives throughout Canadian cities support this assertion, but our understanding of how environmental, ecological, socio-economic, and policy factors determine the success or failure of urban and peri-urban agriculture across multiple sustainability indicators is remarkably limited. This research program aims to improve the management and expansion of sustainable urban and peri-urban systems, for the purposes of meeting GHG emissions mitigation and food production targets in the Canadian agriculture sector.

This project is led by Dr. Marney Isaac at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

The high level goals of this program are to…

  • 1

    Inventory the land areas under current and future urban and peri-urban agriculture in and around the Greater Toronto Area

  • 2

    Quantify GHG emissions on these lands

  • 3

    Determine best management practices to reduce GHG emissions and provide other ecosystem services

  • 4

    Integrate policy and regulatory factors that promote the expansion of urban and peri-urban agriculture

  • 5

    Build the first GHG emissions models specifically for urban and peri-urban agricultural systems.

The SRM Lab will mostly work under goals 2 and 4.

A large literature exists on quantifying GHG emission profiles in traditional farms in Canada and globally, supporting a deep knowledge of the biophysical processes and interactions that shape GHG on farms. However, remains debatable whether or not research from traditional agriculture applies to understanding or predicting GHG profiles in UPA We will quantify GHG profiles and food production across a diverse array of UPA systems with the SRM team focused on emissions related to compost and nutrient management.

A broad suite of models and life cycle assessment models has also been developed for traditional agricultural systems. They have been widely employed to quantify GHG emissions and related ecosystem functioning (i.e. crop yield) across multiple agricultural systems. Yet no one has calibrated such tools for the assessment of UPA’s contributions towards Canadian GHG targets and food production. We will build GHG accounting model(s) using data collected across other goals with partners in the Greater Toronto Area in a way that can be scaled to other cities.