Although urban agriculture as a way to come to sustainable urban food systems can be questioned and we have to be aware not falling into a ‘local trap’ regarding its benefits (Born & Purcell, 2006), initiatives for urban agriculture emerge all over the world. Some of these primarily focus on achieving social and educational goals while others try to become an (high tech) alternative to existing food supply chains. Whichever the goals of urban agriculture, in practice many of these initiatives have difficulties in their (logistics) operations. Research on urban agriculture and local‐for‐local food supply chains mainly focuses on environmental and economic benefits, alternative production techniques, short food supply chains (logistics infrastructure) or socio‐economic benefits of urban agriculture. So far, the alignment of urban agriculture goals with the chosen logistics concept – which includes more aspects than only infrastructure – has not gained much attention. This paper tries to fill this gap through an exploration of urban agriculture projects – both low and high tech – from around the world by using the integrated logistics concept (Van Goor et al., 2003). The main question to be answered in this paper is: to what extend can the integrated logistics concept contribute to understanding logistics drivers and barriers of urban agriculture projects? To answer this question, different urban agriculture projects were studied through information on their websites and an internet based questionnaire with key players in these projects. Our exploration shows that the ILC is a useful tool for determining logistics drivers and barriers and that there is much potential in using this concept when planning for successful urban agriculture projects.
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Societal actors across scales and geographies increasingly demand visual applications of systems thinking – the process of understanding and changing the reality of a system by considering its whole set of interdependencies – to address complex problems affecting food and agriculture. Yet, despite the wide offer of systems mapping tools, there is still little guidance for managers, policy-makers, civil society and changemakers in food and agriculture on how to choose, combine and use these tools on the basis of a sufficiently deep understanding of socio-ecological systems. Unfortunately, actors seeking to address complex problems with inadequate understandings of systems often have limited influence on the socio-ecological systems they inhabit, and sometimes even generate unintended negative consequences. Hence, we first review, discuss and exemplify seven key features of systems that should be – but rarely have been – incorporated in strategic decisions in the agri-food sector: interdependency, level-multiplicity, dynamism, path dependency, self-organization, non-linearity and complex causality. Second, on the basis of these features, we propose a collective process to systems mapping that grounds on the notion that the configuration of problems (i.e., how multiple issues entangle with each other) and the configuration of actors (i.e., how multiple actors relate to each other and share resources) represent two sides of the same coin. Third, we provide implications for societal actors - including decision-makers, trainers and facilitators - using systems mapping to trigger or accelerate systems change in five purposive ways: targeting multiple goals; generating ripple effects; mitigating unintended consequences; tackling systemic constraints, and collaborating with unconventional partners.
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