Blog Assignment : Social Network Analytics could make Urban farming more sustainable?

With increasing urbanization, can urban framing create local and sustainable farming practices?

Objective: With the increasing trend of people shifting their home to the cities, how can urban farming help to meet the  food needs of an increasing urban population with the help of Social network analytics?

Urban farming and its increasing importance: By 2030, 6 in every 10 people would live in an urban area. With over seven billion mouths to feed, human farming exerts a tremendous toll on the plant, from drawing water to city pollution, and from energy use to habitat loss. At the same time, there is also a growing set of solutions, from organic agriculture to integrated pest management.

A large group of people around the world is taking a look at urban farming, which offers to make the food as local as possible. By growing food near where we live, we can decrease the "food miles" that comes long-distance transportation.

Thus by saving the transportation cost, we can also get fresh produce that money can buy.

Urban farming adds greenery to cities, makes the city cooler by providing shades and counters the unpleasant heat island effect. Garden plots help people to reconnect themselves with the Earth and help to gain a greater appreciation from the food originates. This also helps to reduce the plastic packaging and carbon footprint of the food that we consumers. 

Although urban planners have a long way to go to build urban farms, we can envision soaring vertical farms, which would eventually produce what we need from a close distance from home.  One of the classic examples of urban city farming is the InterContinental New York  Barclay Hotel, which includes an apiary. The Honeybees produce honey that is used in the hotel kitchen and the bees fly to pollinate plants that as far as 5 miles away. The better part of urban farming is that it can bring jobs to underserved and depressed urban areas.

Challenges

One of the challenges of Urban farming is space constraints, land in cities is quite expensive and gardens tend to contribute to rising rents. Urban soils can be loaded with lead, arsenic and other toxins requiring remediation or replacement before planting can be done safely. Cramped conditions can limit yields and getting enough water or sunlight can be a huge concern at times.

Due to these conditions, there could be a need for different urbanites to grow different crops in different parts of the cities. This would call the need for efficient farming techniques and also a collaborative network of exchanging farming products between urban dwellers. Many of them would find it challenging to grow certain vegetables due to the soil conditions and limitation of space. Therefore, they would like to buy products from neighboring city dwellers so that they can enjoy local product. 

There are several needs that one would want to have:

1) Urban dwellers or volunteers who can readily help to deliver the groceries within the city

2) A collaborative social network of what kinds of framing products are grown in the city for an efficient and sustainable urban farming.

Social Network Analysis helps to make important  decisions for the application of grocery delivery and collaborative farming in the city. These questions can be answered by the following questions.

   1. Whether collaborative network would lead to an increase in collaborative farming among the urban dwellers inorder to sustain the business?

    2.  Whether the grocery delivery model would be a viable model especially in a fast paced city like New York?

Since the urban farming model is yet to catch up in major cities, am going to consider certain hypothesis and the corresponding SNA measures.

Hypothesis 1: The connection of urban farmers within a city is well networked and shares the farm produce among each other

Social Network measure: Network density

Hypothesis 2 : Urban farmers are located close to each other and are easily available to sell their products. This would avoid long supply chain issues and save on time.

Social Network Measure: Closeness

Hypothesis 3:  Urban delivery dwellers do a good service that people network them to their neighbours.

Social Network Measure: Eigen Values

By applying the application of SNA techniques, one can conclude some of the following outcomes:

1) Having a very high network density helps the urban farmers to connect with each other. This would lead to greater collaboration of farmers along with their neighbours. Having a strong network results in more sustainable and larger farm produce for the city. This also helps business to grow faster as with a larger network density, there would be more people recommending products to each other.

2) A high degree of closeness means that they are well connected within the network and removing the urban delivery dwellers would cause significant communication as well as coordination problems. This also ensures that supplies can be delivered on time with much supply chain losses.

3)Eigenvector centralities tell how well is an individual connected to the parts of the network with the highest connectivity.This is especially important when we need to have a connection between the urban delivery dwellers and the urban farmers. A clear identification of Eigenvector values would help to ensure good starting points for the business model.

So what can be concluded?

As we foresee Urban farming, it would be equally important to create a strong ecosystem of collaborative urban farming and grocery delivery team who could help to ensure that Urban farming becomes a sustainable and successful model.The possibilities are endless and the system can turn out be efficient model. The outcome would be very positive, creating job opportunities among the urban population and making the cities a better place to live in.