Modeling for Measuring City Food Footprint with Applied Empirical Analysis

Urban Farm DB summary

A study modeling city food footprint using supply-and-demand data, applied to Beijing over time. Beijing's food footprint grew from 11,800 km2 in 1993 to 29,400 km2 in 2010, about 1.8 times the city's territorial area, while per-capita food footprint stayed roughly stable at 0.127 hectares. The paper concludes that continuing population growth and shrinking arable land will force Beijing's food footprint further outward, and argues the city needs a different development strategy that strengthens local food supply through urban and peri-urban agriculture.