2013 urban farming by Gennaro Postiglione

Milan [edible city]

Il lavoro di ricerca e il conseguente progetto deriva da uno studio sviluppato all’interno del Corso Integrato di Adaptive Re-Use del prof Gennaro Postiglione le cui ricerche si focalizzano prevalentemente su riuso e recupero di patrimoni minori e sul rapporto tra memoria collettivae identità culturale intese come azioni diffuse di museografia e allestimento del territorio. L’obiettivo è mettere le risorse dell’architettura al servizio dell’interesse pubblico attraverso un processo di progettazione che interpreta la disciplina degli Interni come un sistema in grado di sviluppare strategie di riattivazioni sostenibili facendo cooperare tra loro persone, ambienti e oggetti. Metodologicamente, ogni lavoro di tesi prende dunque le mosse dalla identificazione di un questione emergente o latente della nostra quotidianità, indagandone il valore strategico e le motivazioni che la rendono un tema meritorio di attenzione progettuale. Si prosegue con l’individuazione degli obiettivi prioritari da perseguire e la stesura di un metaprogetto e un programma funzionale da soddisfare. Da questo background nascono le risposte progettuali che si riferiscono a specifici contesti di lavoro. I lavori sono raccolti nel data base della Ricerca Azione sviluppata con le tesi: http://www. lablog.org.uk/category/diploma-works/ L’attività di Ricerca Azione connessa alla didattica trova riscontro anche nelle ricerche in corso: REcall-European Conflict Archaeological Landscape Reappropriation - possibili museografie per le eredità dei conflitti del Novecento in Europa (www.recall-project.polimi. it); MeLa-European Museums in an Age of Migrations – “l’europeizzazione” dell’Europa e l’ibridazione delle culture come agenda necessaria nella ridefinizione del Museum complex (www. melaproject.eu); Re-Cycling Italy (sul recupero il riuso e riciclo del patrimonio inutilizzato italiano).

Milan [edible city] Tesi di laurea magistrale in architettura Facoltà di architettura e società Politecnico di Milano Student: Luca Pavarin Supervisor: Prof. Gennaro Postiglione

CONTENTS 8

ABSTRACT

Introduction

The food supply in Milan

The consumption paradox

An analysis through the three different categories of the food chain Farming

Milan [edible city]

Distribution Consumer

106

Reflections

134

Case studies

208

DESIGN PROPOSAL

Can cities become self-reliant in food?

Sustainable campus Greenhouse Design Shots

296

Bibliography

301

Credits

How do we feed our city?

An investigation through the world of food by Luca Pavarin

Abstract1 As a living beings we depend on food. Our entire life is shaped by this essential need but considering cities, the place in which we live and work, a contradiction is becoming visible. The sustenance of the urban lifestyle depends even more from something we produce elsewhere, in something we usually call countryside. After industrialization, the birth of new networks and long-term conservation methods changed the way we provide food. Nowadays, what is really feeding us is a chain of corporations that are turning food into a product. We do not know anymore where and in which way food is produced. Food and agriculture produce one third of global greenhouse gas emissions and use seventy percent of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s freshwater. Italy, a region with a long tradition of agricultural production, is today a country in transition. Our territory loses everyday a considerable portion of its fertile agricultural lands. This soil is used to build new infrastructure, housing and industrial buildings that are becoming more and more abandoned and useless. This thesis wants to analyse this trend looking at the different phases that characterize the entire food chain: from farming to consumer, passing through the complex system of distribution. After a general analysis, Milan and its regional context will be the focus of this research. The reflections that will come out from this study will lead to a design proposal which wants to give an answer to possible emerging questions.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 7

1. Carolyn Steel, Hungry city: how food shapes our lives, Vintage, 2009

01 INTRODUCTION

hamburger 280 gr

The consumption paradox

1 cal = 10 cal oil 737 gr

every calorie of food takes ten to produce Today takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. When we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.

The end of food In the October 2008, The New York Times published an open letter to the president-elect called “Farmer in Chief”. The letter was written by the journalist Michael Pollon that in the last years wrote many books about food. The following excerpt is taken from that letter: “After cars, food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy - 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do - as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases.”2

In another article, the journalist and the author of “The end of food” Paul Roberts, described why food crisis is not a blip: “Consider how quickly food demand is accelerating. We’ve all heard how the developing world is rich enough to eat more meat. But the real story here isn’t that global meat consumption will more than double by 2050; it’s that each pound of extra meat will require, on average, at least 6 more pounds of livestock feed, meaning we’ll need to substantially boost our grain output. And that’s a problem, because even as demand soars, traditional methods for increasing supply are losing their punch. No longer can farmers boost grain output simply by plowing up more land: Most of the world’s readily farmable acres are already in crops, and what remains is performing other useful functions. In fact, the world is actively losing farmland — to erosion, overgrazing and development. Even in the USA, the inexorable spread of suburbs, malls and golf courses costs us nearly 2 acres of farmland for each birth or new immigrant.”3 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 2. Michael Pollan, Farmer in chief, The New York Times, 9th October 2008 3. Paul Roberts, Today’s food crisis isn’t a blip, USA Today, 22nd May 2008

todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s urban population: 3,307,905,000

6 billion by 2050

Global demand is soaring More than 50 per cent of the global population now lives in urban areas. This figure is expected to increase, as the world is rapidly urbanizing, particularly in Asia and Africa. Urbanization usually comes in tandem with increasing income, which turn leads to growing Ecological Footprints. According to forecasts, the global urban population will almost double to 6 billion by 2050 (UNFPA, 2007) and US$350 trillion will be spent globally on urban infrastructure and usage over the next three decades. The map shows the number of people living in cities in each country of the world in 2010, together with the percentage of the population in countries with large urban populations.4 RUSSIA 103.6 73%

SWEDEN 7.6 UK 54 90%

CANADA 26.3 80%

LONDON 12

US 246.2 81%

BEIJING 12.7

NETHERLANDS 13.3 81% BELGIUM 10.2 97%

POLAND 23.9 62%

GERMANY 62 75%

CZECH REPUBLIC 7.4

MEXICO 84.392 77%

MOROCCO 19.4 60%

ALGERIA 22

CAIRO 15.9

SYRIA 10.2 51%

EGYPT 33.1 43%

IVORY COAST 8.6 VENEZUELA 26 94%

GHANA 11.3 49%

CHILE 14.6 88%

BRAZIL 162.6 85%

RIO DE JANEIRO 12.2

IRAQ 20.3 67%

S KOREA 39 81%

SEOUL 23.2

PAKISTAN 59.3 36%

VIETNAM 23.3 27% MYANMAR 16.5 32%

KARACHI 14.8

BANGLADESH 38.2 26%

ETHIOPIA 13 16%

NEW DELHI 21.1

INDIA 329.3 29%

DHAKA 13.8

JAPAN 84.7 66%

OSAKA 16.6

PHILIPPINES 55 64%

THAILAND 21.5 33%

TOKYO 33.4

MANILA 15.4

MALAYSIA 18.1 69%

KOLKATA 15.5

INDONESIA 114.1 50%

MUMBAI 21.3

JACARTA 14.9

SAO PAULO 20.4

ARGENTINA 35.6 90% BUENOS AIRES 13.5

N KOREA 14.1 62%

CHINA 559.2 42%

S AFRICA 28.6 60%

AUSTRALIA 18.1 89%

Cities over 10 million people Predominantly urban 75% or over Predominantly urban 50%-74%

SUDAN 16.3 43%

KENYA CONGO, DR OF 7.6 20.2 33% TANZANIA CAMEROON 9.9 9.5 25% ANGOLA 9.3 MOZAMBIQUE

COLOMBIA 34.3 73%

PERU 21 73%

NIGERIA 68.6 50%

KAZAKHSTAN 8.6 UZBEKISTAN 10.1 37% AFGHANISTAN 7.8

IRAN 48.4 68%

SAUDI ARABIA 20.9 81%

LAGOS 10 MEXICO CITY 22.1

TEHERAN 12.1

TURKEY 51.1 68%

SPAIN 33.6 77%

TUNISIA

GUANDONG 7.3

ROMANIA 11.6 54% ISTANBUL 11.7

ITALY 39.6 68%

LOS ANGELES 17.9

SHANGHAI 17.3

UKRAINE 30.9 68%

FRANCE 46.9 77%

NEW YORK 21.8

MOSCOW 13.4

Urban 0%-49%

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 4. WWF Living Planet Report (2012)

Use of land The world population is continuing to grow at a rapid rate. It rose from 3.0 billion in 1960 to 6.5 billion in 2005 – and by 2030 there will be approx. 8.3 billion people living on our planet. Supplying these people with food constitutes a growing challenge throughout the world. To make things even more difficult, whilst the need for food is increasing, the amount of available farmland per capita is continually shrinking. In 2005, there was still 2,200 m² of farmland available to supply the needs of one human being. By 2030 there will only be 1,800 m².5

In one of his articles, the professor David Montgomery asserted:

“Today, it still takes 0.25 ha to feed each person [...] Yet by 2050 the amount of avaiable cropland is projected to drop to less than 0.1 ha per person due to continued population growth and loss of cropland.”6

Today we use 1/3 of the planet’s surface to produce

Hectares of cropland per person 0.50 0.45

By 2050, we will need twice as much food

0.40 0.35 0.30

deserts mountains, lakes, rivers and streams cities and highways national parks

The planet’s carrying capacity has reached!

0.25 0.20

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2008

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 5. FAO, SOLAW, 2011 6. David R. Montgomery, Is agriculture eroding civilization’s foundation?, GSA Today, October 2007

A resource called soil In 2008, during an interview the professor David Montgomery said:

“We really need three things to survive on this planet; clean air, fresh water and fertile, productive soil to build food. We can’t afford to build a society that doesn’t take care of all three over the long run. There’s lots of awareness of the very important role climate will play in the next century, a lot of people have an idea that fresh water is limited. It’s much less appreciated as to the fundamental importance of soil and the care of soil, soil stewardship. [...] We lose a millimeter to a couple of millimeters per year. Given that the average soil thickness is a half a meter and you’re losing a millimeter per year, in 500 years, you lose half of it. It’s on an order of magnitude to the time line you see for many civilizations. Is it coincidence or historical?”7

In addition we have to consider the amount of land we lost every year due to urbanization. Infrastructure and buildings are eating our fertile soil. Recently in his blog, professor Ugo Bardi, a chemist interested in resource depletion, climate and renewable energy, wrote:

“The results for the fraction of area covered with permanent structures range from about 0.5% (Schneider et al., 2009) to about 3% (Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project, 2004). Translated into areas, these values correspond to a minimum of 700,000 square km and to a maximum of about three million square km. To visualize these areas, think that the first one compares to France (550,000 square km) and the second to India (3.2 million square km). No matter which result we should consider as the most reliable, the data clearly show that building takes place mostly in flat and fertile areas. [...] Apparently, we are engaged in the task of destroying the land that supports our physical existence.”8

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 7. David R. Montgomery, Dishing dirt with David Montgomery, Interview for Celsias, February 2008 8. Ugo Bardi, Getting our land back, cassandralegacy.blogspot.it, 17th April 2012

We can’t eat concrete! “Every year in Europe, soils covering an area larger than the city of Berlin are lost to urban sprawl and transport infrastructure. [...] Between 1990 and 2000, at least 275 hectares of soil were lost per day in the EU, amounting to 1,000 km² per year, with half of this soil being sealed by layers of concrete and asphalt. This effectively means that every ten years an area the size of Cyprus is paved over. 4.1 %, 4.3 % and 4.4 % of the EU territory was classified as artificial surface in 1990, 2000 and 2006 respectively. This corresponds to a 8.8 % increase of artificial surface in the EU between 1990 and 2006. In the same period, population increased by only 5 %. In 2006 each EU citizen disposed of 389 m² of artificial surfaces, which is 3.8 % or 15 m² more compared to 1990.”10

World cement production [millions of metric tons] 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0

1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: USGS 10. European Commission, Overview of best practices for limiting soil sealing or mitigating its effects in EU-27

Land degradation on the rise â&#x20AC;&#x153;Defined as a long-term decline in ecosystem function and productivity, land degradation is increasing in severity and extent in many parts of the world, with more than 20 percent of all cultivated areas, 30 percent of forests and 10 percent of grasslands undergoing degradation. An estimated 1.5 billion people, or a quarter of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s population, depend directly on land that is being degraded. The consequences of land degradation include reduced productivity, migration, food insecurity, damage to basic resources and ecosystems, and loss of biodiversity through changes to habitats at both species and genetic levels. The data indicate that despite the stated determination of 193 countries that ratified the United Nations Conference to Combat Desertification in 1994, land degradation is worsening rather than improving.â&#x20AC;?9

28%

of the world soil degradation is due to agricultural practices

very degraded soil degraded soil stable soil without vegetation

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

9. www.fao.org (2008)

Source: ISRIC

agriculture produces 13,5% of the total greenhouse gas emissions

Modern agriculture Agriculture is responsible for 13.5 percent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions.

Waste and wastewater 2.8% Forestry 17.4%

Energy supply 25.9%

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994). Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:

31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer 19% for the operation of field machinery 16% for transportation

49Gt*

Agriculture 13.5%

13% for irrigation Transport 13.1%

Industry 19.4%

Buildings 7.9%

*49 gigatonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent per year

8% for raising livestock 5% for crop drying 5% for pesticide production 3% other

Agriculture has changed greatly in the past few decades: â&#x20AC;&#x153;In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture underwent a drastic transformation commonly referred to as the Green Revolution. The Green Revolution resulted in the industrialization of agriculture. Part of the advance resulted from new hybrid food plants, leading to more productive food crops. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution transformed agriculture around the globe, world grain production increased by 250%. That is a tremendous increase in the amount of food energy available for human consumption. This additional energy did not come from an increase in incipient sunlight, nor did it result from introducing agriculture to new vistas of land. The energy for the Green Revolution was provided by fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers (natural gas), pesticides (oil), and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation.â&#x20AC;?11

As we can see from the data that do not consider energy costs for packaging, refrigeration, transportation to retail outlets and household cooking, it is an agriculture reliant on oil in all its phases. Another trend to consider is the growing demand for chemicals in what we should call agriculture industry.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: Natasha Giilbert, Summit urged to clean up farming, Nature, November 2011 11. Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels, The Wilderness Publications, 2004

Source: David Pimentel, Mario Giampietro, Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Carrying Capacity Network, 1994 32

Chemical dependence According to several international agencies, the use of pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture has increased. Cool2012.com, an ensamble of several enviromental organizations, published an article that points out this trend:

Worldwide fertilizer consumption [million tons] 160

“Despite land degradation, agricultural yields continue to increase, in part thanks to synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that temporarily boost soil productivity. Fertilizer consumption has increased exponentially since the 1950s, so much so that 50% of all commercial fertilizer ever produced has been applied since 1984. According to the World Health Organization, some 3 million people a year suffer from severe pesticide poisoning. Pesticide exposure can lead to cancer, birth defects and damage to the nervous system. Drinking water contaminated by pesticide runoff is a main source of exposure. Excess fertilizer use and runoff causes eutrophication in waterways which threatens animal and plant health. The surplus nutrients stimulate excessive plant growth, such as algal blooms, which consume nearly all the available oxygen in the water and cause other plants and animals to suffocate. Surplus nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer runoff, animal manure, soil erosion and sewage have created a “dead zone” of more than 7000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico near the mouth of the Mississippi River.”12

120

1971

1976

1981

1986

1991

1996

2001

2007

U.S. fertilizer price [$ per ton] 2500

2000

1500

1000

500

1980

1990

2000

2010

2020

2030

2040

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: International Fertilizer Industry Association 12. http://www.cool2012.com/

Food turns into a product! In 2008, journalist Elisabeth Rosenthal wrote an article entitled “Putting pollution on grocery bills “ that was published in The New York Times. This is an excerpt of that article: “Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale. Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Spanish Citrus Coast as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of the peas in Europe are grown and packaged in Kenya. In the United States, FreshDirect.com proclaims kiwi season has expanded to “All year!” now that Italy has become the world’s leading supplier of the national fruit of New Zealand, taking over in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter. [...] Increasingly efficient global transport networks make it practical to bring food before it spoils from distant places where labor costs are lower. And the penetration of megamarkets in nations from China to Mexico with supply and distribution chains that gird the globe - like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco has accelerated the trend. But the movable feast comes at a cost: pollution, especially carbon dioxide, from transporting the food. [...] The European Union, the world’s leading food importer, has increased imports 20 percent in the last five years. The value of fresh fruit and vegetables imported by the United States, in second place, nearly doubled between 2000 and 2006. [...] “In the past few years there have been new plantations all over the center of Italy,” said Antonio Baglioni, export manager of Apofruit, a major Italian kiwi exporter. Kiwis from Sanifrutta, another Italian exporter, travel by sea in refrigerated containers: 18 days to the United States, 28 to South Africa and more than a month to reach New Zealand. Some studies have calculated that as little as 3 percent of emissions from the food sector are caused by transportation. But Watkiss, the Oxford economist, said the percentage was growing rapidly. Moreover, imported foods generate more emissions than generally acknowledged because they require layers of packaging and, in the case of perishable food, refrigeration. Britain, with its short growing season and powerful supermarket chains, imports 95 percent of its fruit and more than half of its vegetables. Food accounts for 25 percent of truck shipments in Britain, according to the British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. [...] Retailers today could not survive if they failed to offer such variety, said Moorehouse, the British food consultant. “Unfortunately,” he said, “we’ve educated our customers to expect cheap food, that they can go to the market to get whatever they want, whenever they want it. All year. 24/7.”13 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 13. Elisabeth Rosenthal, Putting pollution on grocery bills, The New York Times, 25th April 2008

Do you know where your dinner was last night? The UK total distance of conventional produce travels to come to you Lamb Pears Beef Asparagus Carrots Spring onions Canned tuna Bananas Sweet potatoes Apples Pineapples Tomatoes Potatoes Grapes Broccoli Strawberries 0 km

5,000 km

10,000 km

20,000 km

15,000 km

CO2 produced per kg of food 10

Strawberries

Broccoli

Sweet potato

Grapes

Tomatoes

Spring onion

Asparagus

Apples

Potatoes

Bananas

Carrots

Pineapples

Pears

Beef

Lamb

Air Sea

0 1

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 37

Source: nextgenerationfood.com

Miles and miles and miles14 How far has your basket of food travelled? This is the question that in 2003 leaded three journalists of The Guardian to track down twenty fresh foods from the major retailers of London. This is the result of that study:

Tomatoes From Saudi Arabia, a journey of 3,086 miles. About two-thirds of the tomatoes we eat are imported, according to the British Tomato Growers Association. That means more long-life varieties to withstand the transport and a loss of flavour and texture since the fruit needs to be picked early, to prevent it spoiling on its journey.

Carrots From South Africa, 5,979 miles. It will have taken 68 calories of energy in the form of fuel to air freight each calorie of carrot energy. The organic movement was based on minimising the environmental impact of production, but demand has led to organic produce clocking up thousands of food miles too.

Apples From the USA, a journey of 10,133 miles. 76% of apples consumed in the UK are from overseas. A Friends of the Earth survey of supermarkets found that at the height of the British season, the majority of apples on sale were imported, many from outside the EU. Over 60% of the UK’s apple orchards have been destroyed in the last 30 years.

Strawberries From Spain, a journey of 958 miles. UK strawberries are losing out to imports even during the British strawberry season. Importing one kilogram of out-of-season strawberries from California is the equivalent of keeping a 100 watt light bulb on for eight days. Crops that travel well and have a long shelf-life are preferred by supermarkets. Just one variety, the Elsanta, now makes up 75% of strawberry sales, according to the National Summer Fruits organisation.

Asparagus From Peru, 6,312 miles. The English season is getting longer, thanks in part to what appears to be climate change. Nevertheless Latin American asparagus is available during our native season. 39

Spinach From Spain 958 miles. Leafy green vegetables are known to have high nutritive value but some of this goodness is lost through time spent in transit. Spinach can lose up to 90% of its vitamin C in the 24 hours after harvest, according to Sustain. The process of washing and bagging salads also appears to destroy some of their nutrients, although the argument is raging as to whether the modified gas which is used to fill the bags or the chlorine the leaves are washed in is responsible. Chlorine is an oxidising bleach.

Red peppers From Holland, 62miles (port to port). These ramiro peppers, despite their name which conjures up sunny Mediterranean climes, come from Holland, where they were developed for their flavour and colour in response to the loss of taste in the conventional red peppers intensively produced in the Netherlands.

Lettuce From Spain, a journey of 958 miles. It takes 127 calories of energy (in the form of aviation fuel) to import one calorie of lettuce across the Atlantic, according the research group Sustain, yet we import lettuce out of season from California or from southern Europe.

Potatoes From Israel, a journey of 2187 miles. The British Potato Council estimates that the UK imports about 350,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, including imports during the UK season. These are mostly the “baby” or “salad” potatoes varieties from the Middle East. Many of them will have been in store for over six months, with corresponding loss of nutrients.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 14. Robyn Lewis, Felicity Lawrence, Andy Jones, Miles and miles and miles, The Guardian, 10th May 2003

The result Over the past century the way we consider, produce and supply food has changed. All the supply chain has a strong relation with oil. From the agriculture industry to the packaging, every step uses a certain amount of oil to proceed. This trend can be clearly seen comparing the Food Price Index (FPI) controlled by FAO and the Oil price through the years. The result are two curves that actually can be turned into a single one that moves up and down according to the international trades around the world.

world food crisis

FPI

Oil

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 41

Source: FAO, EIA

At table Last but not least, we as consumers. Because even if we are at the end of the food chain, we do part of the bad job as well. As Jodie Humphries reported in one of his post:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is estimated that food wasted by the US and Europe could feed the world three times over. Food waste contributes to excess consumption of freshwater and fossil fuels which, along with methane and CO2 emissions from decomposing food, impacts global climate change. Every tonne of food waste prevented has the potential to save 4.2 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the CO2 impact would be the equivalent of taking one in four cars off the road.â&#x20AC;?15

The big food wasters Production 20%

Consumers 60%

Distribution 20%

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 15. Jodie Humphries, The impact of domestic food waste on climate change, nextgenerationfood.com, April 2010

Into the trash it goes A federal study found that 43,7 billion Kg of edible food was wasted by U.S. retailers, food service businesses and consumers in 1995 - about 0,45 Kg of waste per day for every adult and child in the nation at that time. For a family of four people, that amounted to about 55 Kg of food thrown out each month in grocery stores, restaurants, cafeterias and homes. Here is a depiction of that familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s monthly share, the sum of waste in eight different food groups as detailed in the study.

Fresh fruits and vegetables 10,9 Kg Processed fruit and vegetables 4,8 Kg

Grains 8,4 Kg

Fluid milk 10 Kg

Fats and oils 3,9 Kg Meat and fish 4,7 Kg

Other food (includes eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, dry beans, peas and lentils, dairy other than fluid milk) 5,8 Kg

Sweeteners 6,8 Kg /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 45

Source: United States Department of Agriculture

How much do the world eat?

+23%

of the world caloric intake compared to 1970

Caloric intake across the globe 3754 1606 no data /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 47

Source: United States Food and Drug Administration

02 THE FOOD SUPPLY IN MILAN

Abstract The second chapter focuses more on Milan and its regional context. It developes more in detail the food supply system in a local scale. Although our country has a strong tradition and capacity in terms of agriculture, something is happening. Several alarm bells have already started to ring. Especially in the case of Milan, this trend has become more visible probably due to his financial and industrial character. We and our territory lay in a sort of transition. At the moment, we are favouring other aspects than the things that are really feeding us. It is possible to notice a sort of exclusion and indifference to what we are doing and causing. A city that is expecting to reach 2 million inhabitants in the next few years, the question of food has to find an answer. To an increasing urbanization is corresponding a continuous loss of agricultural land. Farms are becoming bigger and even more specialized, preferring a monoculture practice instead of saving biodiversity. The retail area of supermarkets is increasing, spreading the idea that food is above all a product, wrapped up in a way that we cannot smell or touch anymore. Moreover our behaviour towards food and the meal is changing, especially among the young generation. To reach a more clear analysis and build a concrete strategy, the research has been divided according to the three main subjects of the food chain: farming, distribution and consumers. For each on them have been analyzed trends and previsions for the next future.

farming

distribution

consumer

Farming

Bibliography ERSAF, Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;uso del suolo in Lombardia negli ultimi 50 anni, Milano, 2011 European commission, Soil Atlas of Europe, 2005 VVAA, Dictionary of agriculture, London, 2006 Piero Bellini, Pier Luigi Ghisleni, Agronomia generale, Torino, 1987 Francesco Bonciarelli, Fondamenti di agronomia generale, Bologna, 1989 Francesca Natali, Appunti del corso di agronomia generale Anna Della Marta, Appunti del corso di tecniche agronomiche e culturali per la conservazione del territorio ARPA Lombardia, Rapporto sullo stato dellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ambiente in Lombardia, 2011 ISPRA, Rapporto nazionale sulla presenza di pesticidi nelle acque, 2010 VVAA, Le scienze della terra, Franco Lucisano editore, 2008 ISPRA, Monitoraggio nazionale dei pesticidi nelle acque 2007-2008, 133/2011 Provincia di Milano, Piano di settore agricolo, 2003 53

Agricultural soil Soil is the living, breathing skin of our planet and it is affected by, and is the result of, the many and varied interactions that occur between the atmosphere, as governed by climate and weather patterns, the biosphere, that is the local vegetation and animal activities including those of man, the geosphere, the rocks and sediments that form the upper few meters of the Earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s solid crust. Soil is the medium that enables us to grow our food, natural fibre and timber. Virtually all vegetation, including grasses, arable crops, shrubs and trees, need soil for the supply of water and nutrients and to fix their roots. It is not an understatement to say that soil is one of the key issues on which agriculture is based and, thus, fundamental to the existence of human society. What is soil made of? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Soil consists of a complex mixture of mineral and organic particles that represent the products of weathering and biochemical processes that break down the local rocks and sediments into individual grains of increasingly smaller sizes and also break down the dead vegetation and organisms that fall on or remain within it. When we handle the soil, the fact that it usually stains and moistens our fingers, shows that it also holds different amounts of water and chemicals and the amounts of these that can be held by the soil are determined by the size and origin of the mineral and organic particles present. The two other final components that make up the soil are the organisms, both plants and animals, that live (and die) within it and the air that enables them to live there. Agricultural soil is a precious and limited resource, whose value has frequently been built up by man during decades or even centuries. Irreversible degradation of soil implies not only ruining the main asset of the current generation of farmers but also reducing the farming opportunities of future generations. Therefore, there must be a sustainable use and management of agricultural soil, with a view to safeguarding the fertility and agronomic value of agricultural land.â&#x20AC;?1

active layer soil

inert layer subsoil

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 1. European commission, Soil atlas of europe, 2005

The ideal agricultural soil The ideal agricultural soil for cultivated plants is composed of: Limestone 1-5%

Humus 5-10%

AIR Carbon

Clay 5-10%

Silt 10-15%

Sand 50-70% Moreover it has to be soft to allow a good air and water circulation. The soil fertility depends on the presence of mineral salts, in particular: nitrogen, phosphorus and Potassium. The agricultural soil has to be ploughed, broken up and irrigated. It is rendered more fertile thanks to the fertilizer and several practices such as the green manure. There are different kind of cultures, and a good alternation, known as â&#x20AC;&#x153;crop rotationâ&#x20AC;?, can guarantee the fertility of the soil. The main kind are: - light feeder (corn, beetroot, potato, tomato, tobacco, sunflower, legume, ...) - heavy feeder (they exploit and impoverish the soil: wheat, barley, rice, rye, oats) - heavy giver (they increase the soil fertility: grasses, leguminous: alfalfa and trifolium) Element

Origin

Carbon (C)

Absorbed from the air as carbon dioxide through the leaves (photosynthesis)

Hydrogen (H) Oxygen (O)

Absorbed from the water in the soil through the roots

Nitrogen (N) Phosphorus (P) Potassium (K)

Primary macroelements*: added through fertilizer

Calcium (Ca) Magnesium (Mg) Sulphur (S)

Secondary microelements**: almost always present in the soil

Iron (Fe) Manganese (Mn) Copper (Cu) Zinc (Zn) Molybdenum (Mo) Boron (B) Cobalt (Co)

Microelements**: almost always present in the soil

FERTILIZER Nitrogen Phosphorus Potassium

ABOVE GROUND

BELOW GROUND

*Macroelements: elements that have to be introduce in significant quantities **Microelements: necessary elements in small quantities

WATER Hydrogen Oxygen

SOIL Calcium Magnesium Sulphur Iron Manganese Copper Zinc Molybdenum Boron Cobalt

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: VVAA, Le scienze della terra, Franco Lucisano editore, 2008

Annual loss of agricultural soil in Lombardy:

12 ha/year

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 61

Source: Corriere agricolo, 11 October 2011

SAU (superficie agricola utilizzata) SAU (superficie agricola utilizzata)

Percentage of soil consumption

The term SAU represents the utilized agricultural area. It considers two main categories:

50 25-50 10-25 10

sowable lands (cereals, legumes, industrial plants, vegetable, ornamental plants, fallow land)

woody crops (olives, citruses, fructiferous, farm, vegetable garden, meadow, grazing)

During the general census in 2000 the utilized agricultural area was 5,8% lower than 1990. Today, according to the last agricultural census, almost the same quantity of fertile land has been lost. Now in Lombardy there are 981.240,13 ha utilized in agriculture. SAU in Lombardy [m2] 1.800.000 1.600.000 1.400.000 1.200.000 1.000.000 ha 800.000 600.000 400.000 200.000 1950

1955 1960 1965

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: ARPA Lombardia

Source: ISTAT, ARPA Lombardia

Soil consumption in Milan From the following maps is clear an homogeneous decreasing of the agricultural lands between 1936 and 2007 due to the growth of the city. The urban explosion is a well-known phenomenon that takes part all over the world and it mainly corresponds to a costant urbanization process that in some case is over 50% of the total population. In our case, the province of Milan has a number of inhabitants which is very close to the dwellings in the beginning of the last century. The growth of urbanized surface, taken both by buildings and infrastructure, is one of the main pressure on our territory. The consequences are different: from the loss of fertile land, because the soil is no more permeable, to the fragmentation and pollution of the cultivation units. As it was written in a recent report by ERSAF:

1936 1.115.848 hab

“In 2007 is possible to notice how spread is the pulverization, the atomization of the regional surface is visible even in the previous years: the fragmentation of different land uses - on which the urban area is dominating - produces an harmonizing effect. The territory appears almost everywhere occupied by the dark color of the built enviroment and darkens like a veil the other land uses. Just the mountainous part seems almost immune, however in area far less extensive than in the past. Paradoxically, today’s land use in Lombardy is simpler than in the past, when the difference between urban and rural settlements, plain and mountain were far more marked and profound. The tangible and intangible urbanization, is the phenomenon that dominates everywhere, like a cloak that covers everything, making uniform landscapes and territories, people and behaviours.”2

1955

3.577,44 ha is the remaining amount of SAU in the municipality of Milan

2007 1.303.437 hab

-36% of land from 1955

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

2. ERSAF, L’uso del suolo in Lombardia negli ultimi 50 anni, Milano, 2011 Source: ISTAT, 5° Censimento generale dell’agricoltura, 2000

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: ERSAF, Centro studi PIM

Soil erosion is mainly due to the mechanization process in our farms

Soil erosion Erosion is the wearing away of soil or rock by rain, wind, sea, rivers or by the action of toxic substances. An accelerated erosion can be given by human activity.2

transportation detachment

deposition

soil

Since the first half of the 1900, we assisted the first soil disgregation process due to the expansion of the urban settlements. Today we are facing a slow process of soil erosion in part due to the mechanization processes in our farms. These actions led both to a semplification of the rural landscape and to a reduction of the variety in agriculture. In a recent report Legambiente listed the possible consequences of an erosion process:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Soil erosion is a phenomenon whis has to be controlled because it brings several negative aspects: - locally reduction of soil thickness that is the layer which contains organic substances, water, mineral salts and micro particles - gradual soil impoverishment - superficial erosion can prime phenomenon such as landslides that accelerate the erosion - usually the eroded material is rich in chemicals and fertilizers used in agriculture. This substances can reach rivers and watercourses producing pollution distributed in the whole territory .â&#x20AC;?2

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 1 VVAA, Dictionary of agriculture, London, 2006 2 Legambiente, Suolo bene comune, 2012

Use of pesticides

9,1 Kg/ha

Pesticides What is a pesticide? A pesticide is a substance that are able to kill or control/limitate an unwelcome organism. These substacens act blocking a metabolic process that is vital for that specific organism or interfering with its reproductive system. There are three main type of pesticides: INSECTICIDE: it kills insects

Since the data on soil pollution is very poor, a way to control the amount of chemicals used in agriculture is to analyze surface water and groundwater.

Areas in which the contamination level pass the limits contaminated area within limits no data

herbicide: it kills plants fungicide: it kills different kind of fungal spores

Sales of chemicals in Italy [tons] TOTAL FUNGICIDE INSECTICIDE HERBICIDE VARIOUS 100.000

50.000

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: ISPRA

Surface water Compromised ecologic quality of the surface water

BAD - Very bad ecological quality POOR - Poor ecological quality SUFFICIENT - Sufficient ecological quality GOOD - Good ecological quality HIGH

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

100%

18% is the percentage of surface water that has an ecological quality that is considered poor or bad

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: ARPA

Groundwater Class 4 - high groundwater contamination in Lombardy

CLASS 4 - High groundwater pollution CLASS 3 - Significant anthropic impact and compromised groundwater quality CLASS 2 - Good hydrochemical characteristics and reduced anthropic impact CLASS 1 - Anthropic pollution absent CLASS 0 NOT CLASSIFIED

100%

Varese

Sondrio

Pavia

Mantova

MILANO

Monza

Lodi

Lecco

Cremona

Como

Brescia

Bergamo

50%

48% is the amount of highly polluted groundwater in the Milanese province due to anthropic impact that includes agricultural activities

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: ARPA

NO3 Nitrates and plant protection products can be usually found in the portion of plain where the agricultural activities are concentrated. Nitrates are essential plant nutrients. However, if nitrogen fertilizers are overused and soil is managed inappropriately, excessive amounts of nitrates can enter waterbodies. Nitrates either enter the soil through the application of farmyard manure or mineral fertilizers or arise as a result of the breakdown of organic materials by bacteria. Nitrates are highly soluble in water. Often, because not all the nitrates present in the soil can be taken up by plants, a proportion is leached out by rainfall into groundwater. Nitrates may also indicate the presence of other contaminants, such as pesticides or residues of veterinary medicines in liquid manure. The nitrate content of uncontaminated groundwater is less than 10 mg/l. In intensively farmed areas, however, concentrations are markedly higher. Regions with a high proportion of cropland, in particular, show nitrate concentrations in groundwater of more than 25 mg/l or even 40 mg/l (the tolerance value specified for drinking water).

Mean concentration of NO3 in the Lombardy plain over 50,0 mg/l 40,1-50,0 mg/l 25,1 - 40,0 mg/l less than 25,0 mg/l

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: ARPA, www.bafu.admin.ch

Farms NUMBER OF FARMS In Italy the number of small farms (less than one hectar) has cut by half. The higher reductions can be seen between what can still be considered a small farm that is between 0 to 10 hectares. The number of big farms is slightly increasing.

the number of farms has decreased from 2.405.453 (2000) to 1.630.420 (2010)

1.000.000

FARM SIZE The last agricultural census shows that in ten years the number of farms has decreased but at the same time they have increased their size. Today the average farm has 18.4 hectares, that is 3.8 hectares more than ten years ago and more than double than twenty years ago.

500.000

2010 2000

14.6 ha

18.4 ha

1990

0 00 0. 10

99 50 .

-9

.9 30

29 20

19 0.0 10

9 .9

99 5. 0

9 2.

-4

9 1.9 1.0

1.0

8.74 ha

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Source: ISTAT

Loss of biodiversity

-95% of the wheat varieties

Farm production in Milan

Parco agricolo sud rice corn mixed soybean cereals other

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: Piano di settore agricolo, 2003

Distribution

Bibliography Saverio Pipitone, Shock shopping: la malattia che ci consuma, Bologna, 2009 Nomisma, La filiera agroalimentare tra successi, aspettative e nuove mitologie, Roma, 28 ottobre 2009 La mafia Ă¨ servita, Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Espresso, 28 maggio 2009 85

1957

The first supermarket in Milan

GDO (grande distribuzione organizzata)00 The term GDO (grande distribuzione organizzata or mass retail channel) represents the modern retail establishment through a network of supermarkets. It corresponds to the evolution of the traditional and single market. The GDO is constituted by different PDV (punti di vendita or selling points) which are classified according to their surface: Superette/minimarket Supermarket Ipermarket

200 - 400 m2 400 - 2500 m2 2500 m2

Superette/minimarket The first historical form of modern retail is the superette or minimarket. It is the evolution of the traditional grocerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shop outside house. Supermarket The supermatket is usually placed in a residential area or in a commercial center close to the city. The first italian supermatket was built in Milan in 1957 with the name â&#x20AC;&#x153;Supermarketâ&#x20AC;?. In these places the prices are lower then the traditional market and they are characterized by a large amount of different products. Ipermarket The ipermarket is a big retail area. The amount of products, both food and no-food, is much higher than the supermarket. It is placed in extra-urban areas with a wide opening time and aggressive price policies.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 1 Saverio Pipitone, Shock shopping: la malattia che ci consuma, Bologna, 2009

GDO in Milan

from 106 m2 (2000) to 147 m2 (2010) every 1000 inhabitants (+39%)

The first supermarket in Italy opened up in Milan in 1957:

“Per i milanesi, abituati alle piccole botteghe di quartiere, si tratta di un meccanismo bizzarro e in un primo momento il successo è poco evidente. In quegli anni, l’industria alimentare italiana non è pronta per la grande distribuzione: propone per la maggior parte prodotti sfusi, non confezionati, destinati al banco del piccolo commerciante e del venditore ambulante; ma la produzione industriale, l’occupazione e le spese per i consumi cresono rapidamente, sopratutto nel “triangolo industriale” Milano-Torino-Genova. [...]”2

From the first market a lot of years has passed. Today our main food system works through GDO and above all supermarkets. Looking at the retail area of ipermarkets and supermarkets in the last decade, it is possible to notice a continuous increasing in surface:

Retail area [m2] in the province of Milan 500.000 Total

Ipermarket

250.000

Supermarket

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: ASR Lombardia 2. Saverio Pipitone, Shock shopping: la malattia che ci consuma, Bologna, 2009

Markets in Milan Ipermarket and market

Ipermarket Supermarket

Minimarket, covered and not covered market

Market Covered market Not covered market

Worldwide import of fruit and vegetable

Import of fruit and vegetable

Total import of fruit and vegetables in Milan [q] Sicilia (1.001.280) Puglia (921.950) Emilia-Romagna (394.955) Campania (356.835) Lazio (352.095) Trentino Alto Adige (278.610) Umbria (260.030) Veneto (243.105) Lombardia (231.425) Piemonte (215.890) Abruzzo (149.090) Sardegna (92.975) Basilicata (54.950) Toscana (22.920) Marche (21.666) Liguria (18.160) Friuli Venezia Giulia (0) Valle Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aosta (0)

Spagna (698.830) Francia (119.520) Olanda (150.220) Germania (36.765) 97

Grecia (25.360)

Consumer

Bibliography Peter Menzel, Faith Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aluisio, Hungry planet: what the world eats, Napa - California, 2005 Elena Angela Peta, Consumi agro-alimentari in Italia e nuove tecnologie, Ministero dello sviluppo economico Garrone Paola, Melacini Marco, Perego Alessandro, Dar da mangiare agli affamati. Le eccedenze alimentari come opportunitĂ , Guerini e associati, 2012 99

100

The amount of trash food per week:

2,7 kg/family

What goes into the trash

600 € is the amount of money that a family throw away with food every year

In a recent study “Dar da mangiare agli affamati. Le eccedenze alimentari come opportunità“ done by Fondazione per la Sussidiarieta’ and Politecnico di Milano with the collaboration of Nielsen Italia comes out that every year a person through away 42 Kg of food. This amount of food can be divided in this way:

39% (fresh products: mozzarella, meat, yogurt, ...) 19% (bread) 17% (fruits and vegetables) 10% (sliced meat) 6% (packed products (salad) 3% (tinned food) 2% (frozen food)

The reasons for which a person throw away food are multiple. The following data show that the main reason for which people are so careless can be bring back to the distribution system or GDO. In fact the majority of us buy more food than what they really need and more frequently this is due to special offers that supermarkets organize to attract costumers.

39% (excess generic purchasing) 24% (expired or rotten products ) 21% (excess purchasing due to offers for sale) 9% (news not pleasant) 7% (not necessary products)

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: Adoc

104

03 REFLECTIONS

Can urban agriculture feed Milan? In a recent study published february 2012 in “Cities”, Sharanbir Grewal and Parwinder Grewal ask themselves if a city, in their case Cleveland, can become self-reliant in food. “Modern cities almost exclusively rely on the import of resources to meet their daily basic needs. Food and other essential materials and goods are transported from longdistances, often across continents, which results in the emission of harmful greenhouse gasses. As more people now live in cities than rural areas and all future population growth is expected to occur in cities, the potential for local self-reliance in food for a typical post-industrial North American city was determined.”

neighborhood, city, region, and even country. Self-reliance in terms of daily food needs requires the production of food within urbanized areas. Food production in the cities can take many forms, including home gardens, community gardens, market gardens, school gardens, rooftop gardens, windowsill gardens, aquaculture, and urban farms, among others.”1 And finally they prodposed a general formula, that has to be applied for each group of food, which defines the percentage of self reliance :

In the introduction they stated that globalization had a negative effect on local self-reliace: “Globalization has been one of the most enchanting experiences of human civilization. It has facilitated the exchange of information and ideas, advancing technology and progress to heights never even envisioned by generations past. [...] Yet, globalization has inflicted externalities on both local communities and the global environment. First, globalization undermines local economic resilience, creating an unnecessary and unhealthy dependence on foreign goods which communities could produce at home. Likewise, globalization undermines the autonomy of local communities. As multinational corporations increase their economic and political influence, communities lose control over their most basic necessities, such as food and energy. Corporations have no economic incentive to preserve the environment and the culture of global goods transportation results in tremendous greenhouse gas emissions. [...] As a result of globalization, the consumer has been separated from the producer and thereby no longer witnesses the detrimental effects of consumerism: depletion of finite resources, pollution of natural environments, and accumulation of waste.” Then they defined what is local self-reliace: Local self-reliance refers to the principle that localities should be able to obtain at least their basic necessities, if not more of their goods, from within their own physical footprints. Local self-reliance encourages communities to use their limited resources in the most efficient and sustainable manner, and grants localities both autonomy and economic resilience, counteracting the major negative externalities of globalization. Local self-reliance can be applied at different scales, including household, 107

With this formula, we are able to determine the potential for self-reliance in food for a specific city. To define the selfreliance in food for Milan we need to know which is the area that can be potentially cultivated. Contrary to what has been done in Detroit, Milan has never counted the total cultivable land or space. At the same time is difficult to define the quantity of products that a unit piece of land can produce. However using the number that David Montgomery defined as the minimum to feed a person for one year, it comes out that according to the number of inhabitants, in Milan we need a surface fifteen times higher than the actual size. This means that a perfect self-reliance is nearly impossible without changing the skyline of the city with systems such as vetrical farms that are able to concentrate in a small surface an high production, multypling by five the output that can be reached on a traditional agricultural land. What can be done is to reduce the dependence on the actual distribution system. In Milan and in many other cities around the world, the movement of urban agriculture has born in response to a several real needs. The production of food is just one of the goal that the urban farming movement and as Pierluigi Nicolin stated in a recent article: “The phenomenon could have repercussions on the visualconventions of the urban and suburban enviroment and even affect the bahevior and lifestyles of city dwellers should it develop on a larger scale. In fact the first effects of this phenomenon can already be seen in the way that some people living in cities are trying to recover the sense of the day/night cycle, of seasonal rhythms.”2

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 1. Sharanbir Grewal, Parwinder Grewal, Can cities become self-reliant in food?, Cities, February 2012 2. Pierluigi Nicolin, The beauty of Urban Agriculture, Lotus 149, May 2012

108

Urban agriculture in Milan A still ongoing study done by a group of research workers at the Politecnico di Milano focuses on the presence of the movement of urban farming in the city of Milan. In a recent article published in Territorio, Francesca Cognetti and Serena Conti stated:

Exhisting urban farms in Milan

â&#x20AC;&#x153;At a first sight, in Italy, the phenomenon seems to be reconstructed mainly through the composition of isolated facts related to the more established urban gardens. However, in recent years the spreading and above all the differentiation of urban agriculture practices are taking proportions that leave glimpse a potential passage from a small set of episodes to a more dense urban phenomenon with a relevant importance. In Milan, over the consolidated experiences, in the last years a lot of projects related to urban agriculture are born: neighbourhood gardens related to social association, didactic gardens cultivated in the schools by groups of parents and children, therapeutical garden, flowerbed and abandoned spaces transformed by groups of occasional gardeners, small gardens to self-produce in social spaces, and also vegetable gardens integrated in numerous urban parks. â&#x20AC;?1

The following investigation is a collection of several urban farms that following the above mentioned research can be divided in two following categories: - garden as device - personal garden The first one can be considered as something that has to do both with cultivation and social practices. In this case a group of people meet together and face the cultivation as a tool to collaborate and create a new way to socialize or solve other kind of problems. Personal gardens are run by privates and the cultivation is the predominant aspect of having a vegetable garden.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

109

1. Francesca Cognetti, Serena Conti, Milano, coltivazione urbana e percorsi di vita in comune. Note da una ricerca in corso , Territorio, March 2012

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: DiAP

110

Orti comunali del Parco Alessandrini

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: www.comune.milano.it

112

Orti di via Chiodi This is an extremely interesting case for Milan, with a brand new management model, where the private sector guarantee the public offering. From the design point of view, the gardens of Via Chiodi are an open air laboratory. The three different areas that make up the lot, incrementally realized, represent an evolution that took into account both positive and critical issues noted time after time. This has obviously resulted in a certain lack of homogeneity, which added to the presence of umbrellas, gazebos, furniture individually managed by the tenants, generates a sense of disorder. The most interesting feature of the gardens of Via Chiodi is the presence of different social groups, which alternate at different times of the day and mix during peak hours, and make the whole horticultural very lively.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: www.angoliditerra.org/

114

Orti comunali del Parco Nord The first 35 gardens in the park were built and regulated in the late â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;80s, according to a revitalization strategy of the bands of the park closer to the city for the elderly, with a specific design philosophy and management. Special regulations of the Gardens governs the allocation and management requests of the garden.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: www.parconord.milano.it/spazi-e-attrezzature/170

116

Piano Terra

118

I Giardini del Sole

120

Cascina Cuccagna

122

Ortinconca

124

Landgrab

126

Movimento italiano Guerrilla Gardening Guerrilla Gardening is a group open to everybody that has a passion for green which is able to positively interact with the urban space through small demonstrative acts that they call â&#x20AC;&#x153;green atacksâ&#x20AC;?. Guerrilla Gardening opposes urban decay acting against neglicence of green areas. The main activity of the group is to shape and beautify with plants and flowers the flwerbeds and the dismissed areas. The movement is born in 2006 thanks to a group of young Milanese people (founders of GuerrillaGardening.it) that is still following and suggesting independent groups strewn in Italy. The group is helped by the urban population that give them plants, materials and tools.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: www.guerrillagardening.it

128

Il Giardino degli aromi

130

Libero orto

132

04 CASE STUDIES

Lotus in the fields A recent number of Lotus International made a selection of the most recent projects and ideas in the field of urban and periurban agriculture. The following pages are a collection of the different typologies found in the above mentioned magazine, organized through files that want to analyze the devices used and a possible use in the Milanese context. On the first page of each typology there is a valutation that take into account several factors: size, production, social impact, self-organization, building integration, energy required and cost.

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

Then through a simplified calculation a sort of prevision was possible. The data can give the idea of the amount of people that the considered typology is able to feed. The calculation was made using this prerequisite:

â&#x20AC;&#x153;40 sqm are able to cover the amount of vegetables consumed by a family of 4 people during summer seasonâ&#x20AC;?

= 20,28 sqm/year

136

Front yard EXAMPLE: Edible Estates - A project by Fritz Haeg, USA, 2010 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

138

KEY DEVICE: Gardening tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Front yards

80.000 sqm 0,04% of the Milanese surface Population fed

3945 people 0,29% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Piazza Vigili del Fuoco LAT 45째 27' 55.6344" N LON 9째 11' 11.457" E Gardening tools rake, shovel,broom, ...

Compost bin

Earthbag

It produces fertilizer and soil amendment from organic waste

used to create the right soil for the plants Bucket

Watering can

used to collect the water that passes through the containers

used to give water to the plants Seeds used to grow plants 139

140

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Park EXAMPLE: Shelby Farms Park Master Plan, Memphis, 2008 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

144

KEY DEVICE: Farm tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Parks and green areas

13.035.558 sqm 7,17% of the Milanese surface Population fed

642.779 people 47,60% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Parco Sempione LAT 45째 28' 18.7212" N Thresher

LON 9째 10' 49.659" E

it separates grain from corn or other crops

Tractor used for hauling farm equipment such as plough

Farming tools rake, shovel, broom, ... Fertilizer used to increase soil fertility

Seeds used to grow plants

145

146

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Installation EXAMPLE: PF1, New York, 2008 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

150

KEY DEVICE: Installation unit

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Installations

0 sqm

0% of the Milanese surface Population fed

0 people 0% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Via Amperè Cardboard tube

LAT 45° 28' 47.761" N LON 9° 13' 35.472" E

to support the planting

Planter liner magna moist organic planter lining

MDF base perforated base to guarantee drainage

Irrigation tube divided in segments for localized watering

Organic fertilized soil used to increase soil fertility 151

152

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Infrastructure EXAMPLE: ETAR de Alc창ntara, Lisboa, 2005 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

156

KEY DEVICE: Farming tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Abandoned railway station

1.300.000 sqm 0,72% of the Milanese surface Population fed

64.103 people 4,75% of the Milanese population

Separation panels

EXAMPLE: Scalo Farini

used to define different sectors or fields

LAT 45째 29' 24.763" N LON 9째 10' 22.184" E

Farming tools rake, shovel, broom, ...

Compost bin it produces fertilizer and soil amendment from organic waste Seeds

Earthbag used to give the proper soil for the plants

used to grow plants Watering can used to give water to the plants Bucket used to collect rainwater

157

158

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Rooftop greenhouse EXAMPLE: Eli Zabar, New York, 1995 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

162

KEY DEVICE: Courtirey system

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Rooftop greenhouses

40.108 sqm 0,02% of the Milanese surface Population fed

1.978 people 0,15% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Via Alzaia Naviglio Grande LAT 45째 27' 5.803" N Structure

LON 9째 10' 24.509" E

It represents the containing structure of the system

Shelves Used to store tools, raw materials, ... Water tank Used to store rainwater Compost bin Used to produce fertilizer and soil amendment from organic waste Additional bins Used by necessity Cultivation tanks Containers to grow plants

163

164

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Greenhouse building EXAMPLE: The greenhouse building, Xi’an City, China, 2009-11 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

168

KEY DEVICE: Gardening tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Greenhouse buildings

860.350 sqm 0,47% of the Milanese surface Population fed

42.424 people 3,14% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Parco Nord LAT 45째 27' 5.803" N LON 9째 10' 24.509" E Gardening tools rake, shovel,broom, ...

Compost bin

Earthbag

It produces fertilizer and soil amendment from organic waste

used to create the right soil for the plants Bucket

Watering can

used to collect the water that passes through the containers

used to give water to the plants Seeds used to grow plants 169

170

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Vacant lot EXAMPLE: Place au Changement, Saint-Etienne, France, 2011 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

174

KEY DEVICE: Gardening tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP OPPORTUNITY MAP

Vacant lot

Vacant lot sqm 60.793

60.793 sqm

0,03% of the Milanese surface 0,03% of the Milanese surface

Population fed

2.998 people

0,22% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Porta Volta

LAT 45째 28' 53.919" N

LON 9째 11' 1.654" E

Pallet

Wooden box

used in small spaces to sustain the pots for a vertical garden

used in case of bigger spaces to contain the soil

Gardening tools rake, small shovel, ...

Bucket to collect rainwater

Watering can

Earthbag used to fill the containers and create the soil for the plants

used to give water to the plants Flowerpot used with the pallet to create a vertical garden 175

176

EXHISTING SITUATION Giardino temporaneo Porta Volta Atelier delle Verdure, Blulab/Building

Urban interstice EXAMPLE: Le 56 / Eco-interstice, Paris, France, 2006-09 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

180

KEY DEVICE: Gardening tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Urban interstices

16.789 sqm 0,009% of the Milanese surface Population fed

828 people 0,06% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Via Santa Maria alla Porta LAT 45째 27' 55.113" N LON 9째 10' 54.360" E Gardening tools rake, shovel,broom, ...

Compost bin

Earthbag

It produces fertilizer and soil amendment from organic waste

used to create the right soil for the plants Bucket

Watering can

used to collect the water that passes through the containers

used to give water to the plants Seeds used to grow plants 181

182

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Allotments EXAMPLE: The Fenway Victory Garden, Boston 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

186

KEY DEVICE: Gardening tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Allottment

252.677 sqm 0,14% of the Milanese surface Population fed

12.459 people 0,92% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Parco Alessandrini LAT 45째 26' 56.847" N LON 9째 13' 45.474" E Gardening tools rake, shovel,broom, ...

Compost bin

Earthbag

It produces fertilizer and soil amendment from organic waste

used to create the right soil for the plants Bucket

Watering can

used to collect the water that passes through the containers

used to give water to the plants Seeds used to grow plants 187

188

EXHISTING SITUATION Orti di Parco Alessandrini

Balcony EXAMPLE: Pasona urban farm, Tokyo, 2010 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED COST

192

KEY DEVICE: Gardening tools

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Balcony

1.750.000 sqm 0,96% of the Milanese surface Population fed

86.292 people 6,40% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Via Conca del Naviglio LAT 45째 27' 21.915" N LON 9째 10' 39.904" E

Pallet

Wooden box

used in small spaces to sustain the pots for a vertical garden

used in case of bigger spaces to contain the soil

Gardening tools rake, small shovel, ...

Bucket to collect rainwater

Watering can

Earthbag used to fill the containers and create the soil for the plants

used to give water to the plants Flowerpot used with the pallet to create a vertical garden 193

194

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Farming tower EXAMPLE: The Living Tower, Paris, France 0

LOW

MEDIUM

HIGH

SIZE PRODUCTION SOCIAL IMPACT SELF-ORGANIZATION BUILDING INTEGRATION ENERGY REQUIRED

198

KEY DEVICE: Hydroponic system

OPPORTUNITY MAP

Urban skeletons

163.968 sqm 0,09% of the Milanese surface Population fed

8085 people 0,60% of the Milanese population

EXAMPLE: Via Don B. Grazioli LAT 45째 30' 32.3418" N LON 9째 10' 20.913" E

Artificial lights used to replace the sunlight

Container Nutrients they give the right sustenance to the plants

Filled with expanded clay that acts as soil for the plants

Water tank used to collect clean water filled with the right amount of nutrients Water pump

Fishes often used to clean the water in a natural way

It pumps the water through the system Water tank

199

used to collect the water that passes through the containers

200

CURRENT SITUATION

FUTURE VISION

Summary 01. Front yard Private gardens

04. Infrastructure

80.000 sqm

Parks

13.035.558 sqm

Installations

Abandoned railway station

0,04% of the Milanese surface

7,17% of the Milanese surface

0% of the Milanese surface

0,72% of the Milanese surface

Population fed

0 sqm

1.300.000 sqm

3945 people

642.779 people

0 people

64.103 people

0,29% of the Milanese population

47,60% of the Milanese population

0% of the Milanese population

4,75% of the Milanese population

05. Rooftop greenhouse

06. Greenhouse building

07. Vacant lot

08. Urban interstice

Rooftop greenhouses

Greenhouse buildiings

860.350 sqm

60.793 sqm

16.789 sqm

0,02% of the Milanese surface

0,47% of the Milanese surface

0,03% of the Milanese surface

0,009% of the Milanese surface

Population fed

40.108 sqm

Vacant lot

Urban interstices

1.978 people

42.424 people

2.998 people

828 people

0,15% of the Milanese population

3,14% of the Milanese population

0,22% of the Milanese population

0,06% of the Milanese population

09. Allottment

10. Balcony

11. Farming tower Urban skeletons

Allottment

Balcony

1.750.000 sqm

163.968 sqm

0,14% of the Milanese surface

0,96% of the Milanese surface

0,09% of the Milanese surface

Population fed

252.677 sqm

203

03. Installation

02. Park

12.459 people

86.292 people

8.085 people

0,92% of the Milanese population

6,40% of the Milanese population

0,60% of the Milanese population

204

Conclusion Through a quick look at the summary is immediately possible to recognize three main categories:

From the sum of all the typologies is possible to find the total amount of people feed by urban farming:

1,00 % Typologies that are able to feed less than 1 % of the total Milanese population: - front yards - installations - rooftop greenhouses - vacant lots - urban interstices - allottments - farming towers

63,13% of the Milanese population 7,00 %

(Milan: 1.350.267 inhabitants)

Typologies that are able to feed less than 7 % of the total Milanese population: - infrastructures - greenhouse buildings - balconies

47,60 % Percentage of Milanese population that parks are able to sustain

The huge difference between the last category and the previous ones is mainly due to the amount of surface that the category “park” has in Milan. Some of the listed typologies, such as allottments and balconies, have already found space in Milan while several are burdensome mainly because of the costs.

205

The result coming out of the summing up is of course a theoretical number. Not all the surface can be continuously produced and in some cases certain typologies are subject to weather conditions and many other factors that can reduce production and yield performance. At the same time some typologies are not intended just for consumption but they have a more profound meaning: influencing and teaching people that food is an important matter and it has not to be underestimate. The social impact that a vegetable garden in a small bacony can have, even with its small surface, can be extremely important and can change the way we see food. Furthemore we have to consider that around the Milanese municipality there is a periurban context that is characterized by a few agricultural realities. This means that the percentage given by urban faming should be sum up to that production. In coclusion is possible to state that is not necessary to exploit the entire resources required by each typology of urban agriculture because the exhisting context can provide a certain level of sustainability. In my opinion a real challenge can be provide directly by the institutions, such as schools and universities, that have the goal to set up and at the same time shape our future. This conclusion will influence the next chapter of this thesis because the design proposal will be part of a recent project called “sustainable campus”. A project, directed by several universities in the world, in which the Politecnico di Milano has an important role.

206

05 DESIGN PROPOSAL

Sustainable campus

209

210

Sustainable campus CittĂ Studi Campus Sostenibile is a project promoted by Politecnico di Milano and UniversitĂ di Milano. The project aims at transforming the whole campus neighborhood into an urban area being exemplar in Milan with respect to life quality and environmental sustainability. The project is open to the participation and support of researchers, students and all campus citizens. Goals of the project: - Experiment innovation developed by scientific research; - Life style transformation and more livable spaces; - Rethinking lifestyles and building more comfortable enviroments; - Become a good example for the whole city; - Cope with the international network of sustainable campuses;

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: http://www.eugeniomorello.eu/campus.html

212

Polimi campus Daily average consumption per person:

1.748 Employees

(9% of the entire campus community)

vegetables

236 gr/day

(53%)

fruits

213 gr/day

(47%)

17.484 Students

(91% of the entire campus community)

According to a recent reserch conducted by The Sapienza University of Rome, 8,3 % is the percentage of students that use the canteen provided by the university. This means that for the Polimi campus the total amount of students to feed everyday for at least one meal is:

Amount of food that need to be produced to feed the entire Polimi community:

Tot. 1.451 People

Tot. 651 Kg/day (237.615 Kg/year)

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

213

Source: Vivibilità, sostenibilità e identità per il progetto Città Studi Campus Sostenibilie, Alessandro Balducci e Manuela Grecchi

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: Istat

214

Greenhouse

215

216

Shawâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Garden, 1915

A possible solution

Function principle

Shortwave radiation

Reflection

“During sun radiation the inner temperature of the greenhouse is increasing rapidly and significant, compared to air and ground temperature outside the greenhouse. The reason for that is some kind of heat congestion. The energy of the sun-radiation is heating up the ground, the plants and parts of the greenhouse, however the heat generated from the plants and the ground (infrared) is kept inside because of the impermeable roofing system. Hovewer during a standard sunny day, the inside temperature can climb up to plant harming 35°C and even higher. Therefore is vital to ventilate the greenhouses. To diversify the greenhouses depending on inside temperature:

Absorption

Reflection Longwave radiation

Cold-houses for temperature below 12°C Tempered-houses for temperatures between 12°C 18°C Hot-houses for temperature over 18°C”

Plants heat up and emit long-wave radiation

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 219

Source: Food in Basel II, ETH Studio Basel

220

The machine AIR VENTILATION

Air ventilation

Energy production

During strong sun radiation in summertime or strong heating power the temperature can climb rapidly up to more than 35Â°C. Such or even higher temperature are hampering the growth of many plants within shirt time. Higher temperatures are coming together with high humidity, which contributes to fungal attack of the plants. The topic ventilation is often neglected but also important. Even in our climate the ventilation is certainly required.

accordingly in order to keep the temperature during wintertime constant to a fixed level. LIGHTING SYSTEMS The lighting system is an important component for plantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; growth. In greenhouses is used to stimulate the growth even during winter season to maintain the production.

ENERGY PRODUCTION To make a greenhouse more indipendent is necessary to use photovoltaic panels, which produce electricity for the heating system, lighting system, ... SHADOW SYSTEMS Shadows systems are preventing strong sun radiation entering the greenhouse and turning into heat. Interior shading

Rainwater harvesting

RAINWATER HARVESTING Water is a fundamental part of the system. For this reason it has to be collected in special tanks, in order to reduce water consumption. HEATING SYSTEMS As soon as the greenhouse shall be utilized throughout the year a heating system is required. Depending on the utilization of the greenhouse the performance of the heating system needs to be

Heating system 221

Lighting system

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Source: Food in Basel II, ETH Studio Basel

222

Farming methods

Without soil

223

On soil

224

ion [%] ump t Con s

hou t

il h so Wit

Size

Wit

men t plac e Air re

soil

] ity [ % ativ e hu mid

Rel

ture

ran g

e [째

nes s Tem per a

ntal brig ht Env irom e

Pedoclimatic characteristics

CUCUMBER Cucumis sativus L.

18-20

78-84

2,11

TOMATO Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.

+++

20-21

65-80

+++

25,18

POTATO Solanum tuberosum L.

+++

7-10

ZUCCHINI Cucurbita pepo L.

+++

25-35

65-80

12,5

LETTUCE Lactuca sativa L.

14-18

60-80

3,7

BEAN Phaseolus vulgaris L.

16-20

60-75

0,35

CHARD Beta vulgaris L.

18-22

60-70

3,34

PEA Pisum sativum L.

16-20

65-75

1,32

EGGPLANT Solanum melongena L.

+++

22-27

50-60

+++

6,34

PEPPER Capsicum annuum L.

20-25

50-60

+++

7,66

CELERY Apium graveolens L.

18-25

65-80

0,18

SPINACH Spinacia oleracea L.

15-18

60-80

1,32

The main goal of greenhouses is both to obtain high-yeld production and high quality products even in not favorable enviromental conditions. The inner enviroment of a greenhouse should ensure the proper conditions for plants growth. Climatization regulates concentration of carbon dioxide, oxygen, temperature, humidity and brightness together with other factors that have to be present in a balanced way. On the opposite page is represented a selection of the vegetables that have the major rate of consumption among students. Each type of veggie has optimal conditions in which it can live TEMPERATURE Temperature acts on the vital functions of the plants and it is generally critical below 0째C or above 70째C. Over these limits the plant will die or hibernate. HUMIDITY Humidity of the air inside a greenhouse is essential for plant life. Intervenes on growth, transpiration, flowers fertilization and in the development of several diseases when it is excessive. If humidity is too high it makes evporation more difficult and it can be corrected with ventilation and increasing temperature. If it is too low, it increases transpiration preventing photosyntesis process and can be prevented with irrigation.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 225

Source: http://www.solerpalau.it/

226

Design

227

228

Program

95% Farming 5%

Other (Canteen, market, education)

229

230

Rule

Farming module AREA SELECTION Selection of the roof with a surface higher than 100 sqm and with an adequate substructure to install the greenhouse.

LOW IMPACT To reduce impact visibility, the perimeter of the greenhouse has been reduced.

MODULAR GRID The size of the grid is determined by the farming module 3 x 3 m and by the length of the polycarbonate wall boards.

500

500 + 500 700

500 700

3000 mm THE RESULT To maintain the previous aspect of the building the structure of the greenhouse will inherit the same roof configuration.

231

232

Construction system

Solar panels made with cylindrical modules incorporating a thin film

Polycarbonate panels

Gutter for rainwater harvesting

Secondary steel structure

Primary steel structure

Secondary steel structure to support external panels

Polycarbonate panels

Curtain walls to allow air change

Fans to allow air ventilation

10 Raised floor 5

11 Steel space frame 6

12 Technical plants (water, electricity ...) 13 Ventilated roof fot the exhisting structure 8

12 11

233

234

Distribution

VEGETABLE SPECIES CUCUMBER 24 modules

The selection process of the rooftops has identified a certain amount of roofs to be turned into greenhouses. Then the program defines the number of modules to be used as farming, market, university canteen and educational space. The farming units are then grouped according to the consumption percentage of the vegetable species. The result of this project satisfies the annual demand of vegetables used by the Polimi canteen which is 1.451 meals per day.

TOMATO 286 modules POTATO 409 modules ZUCCHINI 137 modules LETTUCE 42 modules BEAN 4 modules CHARD 38 modules PEA 15 modules PROGRAM SUBDIVISION OTHER 28 modules FARMING 1425 modules

EGGPLANT 72 modules PEPPER 77 modules CELERY 2 modules SPINACH 15 modules

Amount of meals that the Polimi campus will be able to satisfy:

Tot. 2.018 meals a day* 235

*Considering that the amount of greenhouse surface to feed a person in a year is around 10 sqm.

236

Scale 1:2000

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 239

Services

Scale 1:500 LEGEND Canteen Exposition Market 241

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 243

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 245

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 247

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 249

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 251

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 253

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 255

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 257

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 259

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 261

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 263

Services

Scale 1:500

LEGEND Circulation Production 265

Services

Scale 1:200

267

268

Scale 1:200

269

270

271

272

Scale 1:200

273

274

Scale 1:200

275

276

Scale 1:200

277

278

Detail 01 1

Cylindrical modules incorporating a thin film, th. 50 mm

Polycarbonate panels, th. 30 mm

Squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Squared steel beam, 100 x 100 x 5 mm

Squared steel column, 100 x 100 x 5 mm

Squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Polycarbonte panels with aluminium frames, th. 30 mm

280

Detail 02 1

Squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Squared steel column, 100 x 100 x 5 mm

Squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Polycarbonte panels with aluminium frames, th. 30 mm

282

Detail 03 1

Squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Aluminium profile, h. 55 mm

Floor tiles, th. 50 mm

Supporting modules, h. 150 mm

Space frame with squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Steel tie-rot, th. 8 mm

Polycarbonte panels with aluminium frames, th. 30 mm

Squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Squared steel column, 100 x 100 x 5 mm

2 3

284

Detail 04

Floor tiles, th. 50 mm

Supporting modules, h. 150 mm

Space frame with squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 3 mm

Folded aluminium sheet, th. 3 mm

Squared steel tube, 50 x 50 x 2 mm

286

Shots

287

288

06 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books & Documents - Carolyn Steel, Hungry city: how food shapes our lives, Vintage, London, 2009

- VVAA, Dictionary of agriculture, London, 2006

- Carlo Petrini, Terra Madre, Giunti Editore, Milano, 2009

- Piero Bellini, Pier Luigi Ghisleni, Agronomia generale, Torino, 1987

- Michael Pollan, In defense of food: an eater’s manifesto, Penguin press, London , 2008

- Francesco Bonciarelli, Fondamenti di agronomia generale, Bologna, 1989

- Michael Pollan, The omnivore’s dilemma, Penguin press, London, 2006

- Francesca Natali, Appunti del corso di agronomia generale

- Michael Pollan, Farmer in chief, The New York Times, 9th October 2008

- Anna Della Marta, Appunti del corso di tecniche agronomiche e culturali per la conservazione del territorio

- Paul Roberts, The end of food, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2008

- VVAA, Le scienze della terra, Franco Lucisano editore, 2008

- Paul Roberts, Today’s food crisis isn’t a blip, USA Today, 22nd May 2008

- Saverio Pipitone, Shock shopping: la malattia che ci consuma, Bologna, 2009

- WWF Living planet report, 2012

- Nomisma, La filiera agroalimentare tra successi, aspettative e nuove mitologie, Roma, 28 ottobre 2009

- FAO, The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture, 2011

- Paolo Biondani, La mafia è servita, L’Espresso, 28 maggio 2009

- European commission, Overview of best practices for limiting soil sealing or mitigating its effects in EU-27, 2011

- Peter Menzel, Faith D’Aluisio, Hungry planet: what the world eats, Napa - California, 2005

- Steve Odland, Why are prices of food so high?, Forbes, March 2012

- Garrone Paola, Melacini Marco, Perego Alessandro, Dar da mangiare agli affamati. Le eccedenze alimentari come opportunità, Guerini e associati, 2012

- David R. Montgomery, Is agriculture eroding civilization’s foundation?, GSA Today, October 2007 - Alessandra Mangiarotti, Nuovi risparmi, vecchi sprechi, Corriere della sera, 13th July 2008 - Leslie Beerliant, Dishing Dirt with David Montgomery, Celsias, February 2008 - Stefano Boeri, Biomilano, glossario di idee per una metropoli della biodiversità, Corraini edizioni, 2011 - Larry Gallagher, The joy of dirt, Odewire, March 2010 - Dickson Despommier, The vertical farm, feeding the world in the 21st century, Picador, 2011 - Natasha Gilbert, Summit urged to clean up farming, Nature, November 2011 - VVAA, Nature design, Lars Muller publisher, 2007 - Ugo Bardi, Getting our land back, cassandralegacy.blogspot.it, 17th April 2012 - Massimo Acanfora, Coltiviamo la città, Altreconomia edizioni, 2012 - Jason Bradford, Oil and food prices, energybulletin.net, January 2011 - VVAA, On farming, Actar, 2010 - Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels, The Wilderness Publications, 2004 - VVAA, Il piacere dell’orto, Slow Food editore, 2010 - David Pimentel, Mario Giampietro, Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, Carrying Capacity Network, 1994 - GBI Research, Agricultural chemicals market to 2015, May 2011 - Elisabeth Rosenthal, Putting pollution on grocery bills, The New York Times, 25th April 2008 - Robyn Lewis, Felicity Lawrence, Andy Jones, Miles and miles and miles, The Guardian, 10th May 2003 - Jodie Humphries, The impact of domestic food waste on climate change, nextgenerationfood.com, April 2010 - ERSAF, L’uso del suolo in Lombardia negli ultimi 50 anni, Milano, 2011 - European commission, Soil Atlas of Europe, 2005 297

298

Web references - www.wwf.org

- www.campus-sostenibile.polimi.it

- www.fao.org

- www.eugeniomorello.eu

- www.usgs.gov

- www.studio-basel.com

- www.isric.org

- www.solerpalau.it

- www.cool2012.com - www.nextgenerationfood.com - www.eia.gov - www.usda.gov - www.fda.gov - www.corriereagricolo.it - www.istat.it - www.arpalombardia.it - www.ersaf.lombardia.it - www.pim.mi.it - www.legambiente.it - www.isprambiente.gov.it - www.bafu.admin.ch - www.provincia.mi.it - www.adocnazionale.it - www.dastu.polimi.it - www.comune.milano.it - www.angoliditerra.org - www.parconord.milano.it - www.guerrillagardening.it - www.editorialelotus.it 299

300

CREDITS

thanks to: Elisa Prof. Gennaro Postiglione My family and all the people involved in this work. 301

302

Workyourfingers

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