Transforming Germany’s cities into organic food gardens

With ever more people living in urban centers, food security and quality is becoming a pressing issue. In Germany, cities are increasingly taking the production of organic products to a hyperlocal level.

As part of Biostädte (‘organic cities’), now Nuremberg joins a network of municipalities across Germany -including Munich, Bremen and Karlsruhe- working to make food production healthier and more sustainable.

In other cities like Berlin, Cologne and Kiel, urban and community-supported agriculture is introduced, which includes the greening of new buildings and the transformation of uncontaminated industrial land into community gardens. Their plans also foresee car-free, solar-powered districts where edible plants grow on and around buildings.

Citizens are being encouraged to cultivate useful crops, using public green areas in their neighbourhoods to plant rows of potato plants or fruit trees. In doing so, they alleviate the municipal taxes, as this costs less than designing and maintaining the public green spaces.

According to an article by dw.com, these urban agricultural spaces are intended to become focal points where food is produced, processed and traded.