Metro Agriculture and Urban Food Security: An Explicative Symposium with Global Innoversity

Date: 5 September 2013

Time: 9:00am to 4:30pm

Venue: Nanyang Executive Centre, NTU

Organised by: RSIS Centre for NTS Studies 

	An example of urban farming – It has been estimated that cities produce about 20 per cent of the world’s food despite physical and economic limitations of food production in urban areas.

It has been estimated that Asia’s urban population will grow by as much as 25 per cent over the next 25 years. Urbanisation throughout much of Asia will bring about growing incomes, which will in turn lead to a change in diets from those heavily reliant on staple crops to those comprising greater meat, vegetable and processed food content. With growing cities and a corresponding growth in demand for food, there is a need to explore new avenues to feed urban populations. Urban agriculture provides an increasingly promising avenue for this. As seen in the case studies of cities such as Hanoi, Beijing and Singapore, there are opportunities to expand urban/periurban agriculture (UPA*). UPA can serve as a complementary strategy to reduce urban poverty and food insecurity.

Against this backdrop, the symposium on ‘Metro Agriculture and Urban Food Security’ served as a forum for stakeholders in Singapore to share their interests in urban farming and food security and to identify potential collaboration with each other and other urban zones involved in the Global Innoversity** project.

In brief, the symposium aimed to:

1. Share information on the Global Innoversity Project and its current activities;
2. Facilitate information exchange on the diverse range of R&D, farming, food trade and food processing activities in Singapore;
3. Foster dialogue on potential collaboration with Global Innoversity members on R&D, technology sharing, MetroAg/MetroFood innovation and entrepreneurship; and
4. Discuss formation of a Singapore Community of Practice (COP) on MetroAg/MetroFood.

Click on the following links for additional documents related to the symposium:

• Agriculture and the City: A Sustained Interplay (Brochure)

  This is a brochure discussing the role of metropolitan agriculture as a source of sustainable innovations. With natural resources becoming increasingly scarce, it brings about the need to innovate and find ways of increasing production in a sustainable manner. This also discusses the creation of TransForum, a collective of knowledge industries, entrepreneurs, non-government organisations and governments.

• Concept Statement and Working Agreements for Global Innoversity

  This document presents the concept statement and working agreements made by the delegate body of Global Innoversity during its February 2013 Program Planning meeting in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

• Global Innoversity (Powerpoint presentation by Dr Chris Peterson)

  This PDF copy of the Powerpoint slides used by Dr Peterson during the Global Innoversity Symposium discusses the MetroFood/Metro Ag paradigm and the concept of Global Innoversity. It emphasises multi-stakeholder engagement as the driver for innovation in food systems.

• Global Innoversity: A Conceptual Business Plan for Local Action, Global Learning and Systemic Impact

  This document presents a conceptual business plan for Global Innoversity. It is ‘conceptual’ in that it outlines the necessary components of a business plan while the estimates and operating assumptions reflect our most current thinking on a novel and evolving operational approach. It is a ‘draft’ despite certain portions have been vetted with the delegates from the founding metropolitan regions.

• Licence to Grow: Innovating Sustainable Development by Connecting Values (Book)

  This book discusses extensively the experience of TransForum and how it was able to link Dutch agriculture to its metropolitan areas. It outlines the various steps and principles used in fostering collaboration among the stakeholders that resulted in innovations in the Dutch food system.

• Sustainable Agricultural Entrepreneurship: The Urban Area as Engine for New Economic Activity (Book)

  This book is based on the learning experiences gained from the 34 TransForum innovative projects conducted between 2004 and 2010. These projects brought together entrepreneurs and researchers, government agencies and representatives of societal organisations working on innovations in the agro-sector and in green space.

• TransForum: Innovating Agriculture through Co-Creation (Powerpoint presentation by Mr Sander Mager)

  This PDF copy of the powerpoint slides used by Mr Mager during the Global Innoversity Symposium contains the synopsis of the creation and implementation of the TransForum. The presentation includes the objectives behind its inception and implementation as well as the issues and projects it covered.

• TransForum Synopsis (Book)

  This is a more detailed version of Mr Mager’s powerpoint slides on the creation of TransForum and the processes it underwent in the past to assist several Dutch agricultural businesses.

• Triple P Business Development in the Dutch Agro-Food Sector (Book)

  This book contains the cases studied by the authors in the development of a theory in relation to the Triple P business development.

• Business Cases – Care Farming in the Netherlands, GreenCare, Greenport Shanghai, MyFarmer and Rondeel

  This zip file contains the various business cases and project description of those included in the TransForum.

*UPA pertains to the growing of plants and the raising of animals for food and other uses within and around cities and towns, and related activities such as the production and delivery of inputs, processing and marketing of products (UNESCAP, 2012).

** The Global Innoversity is an innovation accelerator through which the world’s metropolitan regions get inspired and supported to develop, co-create and share innovations in food, agriculture and integrated resource systems. The Global Innoversity is a self-sustaining global program for mutual action learning on metropolitan agriculture in, between and for the metropolitan regions of the world. Its goal is to successfully develop, share and implement a globally acknowledged ‘methodology’ for developing metropolitan agriculture in innovation clusters in metropolitan regions around the world.