Knowledge, evaluation and impact management of urban garden soils, looking back on 30 years of research

Archive ouverte : Communication dans un congrès

Schwartz, Christophe | Douay, Francis | Marot, Franck

Edité par HAL CCSD

COM. International audience. Would you like to receive more information about applying for a grant once this becomes available?: No Content: (1) Vegetable gardens: between renewed interest and vigilance - With the increasing artificialisation of urban and peri-urban soils, the demand for nature in cities is regaining real vigour. This is almost unexpected for vegetable gardens. Indeed, three to four decades ago the cultivation of vegetable gardens at home or in collective gardens was obsolete, in particular due to access to fruit and vegetables facilitated by intensive agriculture. Today, if the economic interest of the vegetable garden continues, the reasons for this revival are more in the social bond, the practice of a physical activity or the will to eat healthy. However, the dynamics of this form of urban agriculture and in particular vegetable gardens can be translated into hasty projects for which certain elements of "common sense" would be neglected. Thus, the extension of the city over the city leads to changes in land use that can, for example, increase the exposure of populations to pollutants. The compatibility between the state of the environment and the uses must then be checked; this exercise is not always easy given the diversity of the situations encountered. (2) A range of projects and actors: from disciplinary case studies to multidisciplinary projects - An inventory is proposed, carried out on the one hand, on the basis of the main lessons learned from research projects and studies carried out and on the other hand, through the collection of information from various actors. For this, we supplemented our own knowledge with a bibliographic work carried out on the basis of almost 30 major research projects, more than 150 international publications and a collection of information from a dozen actors in the field via a targeted survey. After describing the garden ecosystem and the actors involved in it’s functioning, we present the historical evolution, since the 1990s, of the concepts and associated approaches. The different compartments of the ecosystem are then presented, before identifying the main scientific results obtained and their promotion in the form of approaches and tools for garden management. (3) Understanding garden soils to better manage them: main achievements and prospects - The research carried out has made it possible to acquire knowledge about vegetable gardens, the agronomic characteristics of their soils, their degree of fertility and contamination and that of vegetables, exposure to pollutants from populations associated with gardening and the management measures to be implemented if necessary. The results of this work demonstrated the complexity of the "garden" socio-ecosystem, the very high variability in the quality of soils and crops and the existence of transfers of certain pollutants within the food chain. Based on the knowledge limits identified, finalized research perspectives are then proposed with the aim of informing and training even more the multiple actors concerned by the challenges linked to vegetable gardens.

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