Food production, city-countryside relationship and energy resilient urban systems

Food is the primary energetic need for mankind. It provides energy and nutrients, but its acquisition requires energy expenditure. This fact is particularly important, when considering the urban environment, since human communities organized within cities almost exclusively rely on the import of resources to meet their daily basic needs. Field-to-fork chain and its energetic cost depends on the organization of the food production and transformation processes, which, in turn, can be influenced by the city-countryside relationship idea and the organization of both the urbanization process and the agricultural production. A solution might come from the urban agriculture development and management. A short review of the state-of-the-art about urban agriculture, energy and urban resilience is given, together with an historical overview of the of the city-countryside relationship idea development, which still influences the evolution of urban agriculture. Some conclusions are drawn on the basis of the given findings.