HOW FOOD SHAPES OUR CITIES AND LANDSCAPE

Every day, cities like London, Paris, Dubai, New York, Oslo or Bergen needs a large amount of food brought in to keep its inhabitants running. It is produced, transported, bought and sold, cooked, eaten and disposed of. This scenario has to happen in every city on earth, 365 days every year. In this process we change our surrounding (or some ones surrounding) landscape to large production fields. For growing grains f ex.
But as we move into cities, statistically we tend to eat more meat. And to produce meat, ten times as much grain is needed in the process to make enough for one person. Which again consumes an enormous amount of energy (oil) and produces waste and methane (green house gas) when produced.















One person on a vegetable diet can manage with approx 1350m2 of land to get 3000 kcal a day through the year. On potato diet280m2.













On a meat diet (cow) one needs approx 8200m2 of land to produce enough for one year.
To calculate approximately how much land one person “consume” one can use calculations in DIY (do it yourself) spirit for example calculate the number of calories (food energy) we require, and compare that value to the calories available from various food crops and the amount of land they need. You could refine the calculation further accounting for sources of essential nutrients: protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins, minerals.
An interesting article on agricultural land use takes this approach. It’s assumed that humans need 3,000 calories per day, (of course this is varying according to what you do for a living or how much work out after work). That figure is applied to a study of agricultural land used for all the food eaten in the Netherlands. For example, potato is the most efficient crop, and according to the study requires 0.2 square meters to produce 1kg, which contains 800 calories. It would therefore take 274m2 to produce enough calories for one person for one year. That’s an area less than 10m x 30m (about 33 x 100 ft). To get 3000 calories from vegetables other than potatoes requires 1314m2, eggs 2395m2, and at the high end, beef 8173.
(tinyfarmwiki.com)

Aerial view over the football stadium and surrounding football fields on Minde.
One footballfield cover about the same area needed for production of enough cow meat to support one person with 3000kcal pr day through the year, mixed with vegs this area can support a family of four.
Pink square indicates one footballfield= one persons food footprint on cow diet one year
Green square= footprint of one person on potato diet.

The calculations in this post is meant as a visual illustration of the impact the industrialization of agricultural business has on our landscape, together with the size of transportation logistics; moving all the food around for processing and retail on a global scale.
To illustrate the size, impact and variety this has google maps is a great tool.
Under follows 4 aerials in same scale 1:5000;


Fertile agricultural lanscape outside Detroit, strict and regular squares of crops.


Same sized area of Dubai. Desert and unproductive land.


Aerial over Malmø/Skaane region, most productive agricultural land in Sweeden. With its
850 000 hectars productive land this landscape can support 3,5 mill people within a hundred mile diet, the way it is run today. On a vegetarian diet the same area can support 17 mill people.
(http://www.mosaic-region.no/Produserendelandskap.html)


Bergen/Hordaland region in same scale. Working with a hundred mile diet perspective here we definitely need to think differently. Food production in spaces in between...