Are Urban Farms WORSE for the Environment?

I don't commonly post here, but this caught my eye and I have professional expertise.

It simple enough. Larger farms in ideal growing regions with established infrastructure are massively more efficient by an order of magnitude.

Gardening is 'probably'* carbon positive.

Its OK though. I still have my vege garden and so should you (or community garden).

It's fun. It builds resilence into your community and local supply chain. And most hobbies are carbon positive, this one comes with benefits too.

It depends on how you measure efficiency. In terms of labor input, yes. In terms of food produced per area of land, smaller farms are actually far more efficient. So it’s not quite that simple.
Not sure if you watched the video but it goes into this topic a bit so if not it could be informative.
But yes home gardens have lots of benefits that go beyond carbon emissions. And since we have direct control of them, it may be easier to reduce those emissions than those from some distant farm.
- This probably depends a lot on the gardening method. Like, your average gardener with no strategy is probably carbon positive. Ok, but what about biointensive gardening? What about permaculture gardening? What about guerilla gardening? What about aquaponics?
  If you're driving to the garden store to get fertilizer, then you're probably carbon positive. If you're composting yourself and building your soil, I don't know.
  Edit: looks like it's covered in the video. Will follow up later.
  Edit: watched the video. Yes, basically permaculture is way less carbon intensive. The carbon comes from infrastructure (raised beds, sheds, etc).
It also helps the local fauna like bees, birds etc, which are usually destroyed by large agricultural farms.
In my city, personal/community gardens are a haven for bees and insects. However, there is a lot to be gained with scale if done responsibly.

Pretty much any hobby is carbon positive. Gardening is almost certainly on the lower end of carbon positive hobbies.
In the agriculture domain, growing plants for the sake of direct consumption is not the primary source of emissions - that would be animal based agriculture by far.
Gardening promotes community resilience and health.

To add to your third point, helps people understand, respect and build a relation with our planet.
Like the kids thinking food just appears in the store or blindly trusting the weather report instead of measuring it yourself. Understanding has been taken away from us so we are easier to exploit by capitalism.

Wow, this video was superb, but then I started watching some of his other videos about his Edinicity concept, power generation within the city, and going through various types of batteries and their pro's and cons. All of them have been fantastic videos. His presentation style is very quick and entertaining (to me anyway, but I'm a bit of a nerd) while still being information dense.

Thanks for sharing, Liberty! Excellent stuff.

Glad you enjoyed it! I’ve long been interested in permaculture but never had the land needed to implement many of their ideas. I was very excited to see a channel that takes some of the same creativity and utopian vision and applies it to urban life. And they are well organized and researched as well. I hope more people become aware of these ideas and we can start implementing them.
My only critique is that I haven’t seen a clear roadmap for how we can actually start to move towards these types of cities but maybe I just haven’t found that video yet.

Is there an article version for the argument?

Not that I know of. He’s summarizing and critiquing some research that was done recently. Here’s an article about the research but the video does raise some caveats so take it with a grain of salt: https://theconversation.com/urban-agriculture-isnt-as-climate-friendly-as-it-seems-but-these-best-practices-can-transform-gardens-and-city-farms-221537
- Thank you
Raised beds, fertilizer, hoses, etc all have a larger carbon foot print compared to the amount of food grown on the home scale. I'm sure a quick search would find one, it was a fairly recent study.
I read the paper before seeing this video post. Maybe not what you're looking for but here's my TLDR takeaways from the publication:
Infrastructure is the largest driver of carbon emissions at low-tech Urban Agriculture (UA) sites (63% of impacts)
A raised bed built and used for five years will have approximately four times the environmental impact per serving as a raised bed used for 20 years. The issue is, with frequent moving and development in urban environments, much of the infrastructure is gone or redone in a short timespan.
Climate-friendly sites in the sample cut their emissions by more than 52% by upcycling refuse from the urban environment for raised beds, structures and other infrastructure—twice as much savings as high-carbon sites
Composing
Sites in the sample used 95% less synthetic nutrients than conventional farms
poorly managed composting can exacerbate GHGs. The carbon footprint of compost grows tenfold when methane-generating anaerobic conditions persist in compost piles.
We estimate that careful compost management could cut GHGs by 39.4% on sites that use small-scale composting.
rainwater
In this study, more than 50 (of ~75) sites practiced rainwater recovery, but only four derived most of their irrigation this way
sites primarily used potable municipal water sources or groundwater wells, consistent with the underutilization of rainwater seen across past research
Irrigation from these sources emits GHGs from pumping, water treatment and distribution, and this rose to as high as 83% of total emissions on one UA site
Non caloric benefits
UA practitioners overwhelmingly reported improved mental health, diets and social networks
Cost–benefit analysis of a collective garden in the UK estimated that social benefits, such as improved well-being and reduced hospital admissions, accounted for 99.4% of total economic value generated on-site
Because emissions allocation often follows economic value generation46, growing spaces that maximize social benefits can outcompete conventional agriculture when UA benefits are considered holistically.
Although UA may increase the carbon intensity of fruits and vegetables, these foods account for a small share of total dietary carbon impacts, which are driven mainly by meat and dairy. Studies have shown that UA practitioners often reduce their intake of animal products49. Future work should quantify this tradeoff between elevated carbon footprint in urban produce and shifting diets.

I find myself more surprised at this not being as well known as you put it. The information was presented in a rational manner and I will be looking it over again in the near future.

I didn't expect to see any rational articles about farming here. Well done.