Long-Term Development of Urban Agriculture: Resilience and Sustainability of Farmers Facing the Covid-19 Pandemic in Japan

Shingo Yoshida and Hironori Yagi
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Shingo Yoshida: Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Tokyo 100-0013, Japan
Hironori Yagi: Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Graduate School of Agricultural Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-23

Abstract: The coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has forced global food systems to face unprecedented uncertain shocks even in terms of human health. Urban agriculture is expected to be more resilient because of its short supply chain for urban people and diversified farming activities. However, the short-and long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on urban farms remain unclear. This study aims to reveal the conditions for farm resilience to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and the relationship between short-term farm resilience and long-term farm development using data from a survey of 74 farms located in Tokyo. The results are as follows. First, more than half of the sample farms increased their farm sales during this period. This resilience can be called the “persistence” approach. Second, short-term farm resilience and other sustainable farm activities contributed to improving farmers’ intentions for long-term farm development and farmland preservation. Third, the most important resilience attributes were the direct marketing, entrepreneurship, and social networks of farmers. We discussed the necessity of building farmers’ transformative capabilities for a more resilient urban farming system. These results imply that support to enhance the short-term resilience of urban farms is worth more than the short-term profit of the farms.

Keywords: resilience; sustainability; urban agriculture; long-term development; regression analysis; direct marketing; entrepreneurship; social network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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