This book establishes a new high-water mark in the quantitative sustainability sciences.

Measuring Food Sustainability may be purchased from on-line booksellers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or other on-line booksellers. The book may also be ordered through your local bookseller or campus bookstore. Click here to order.

Measuring Food Sustainability and the Benefits of Urban Agriculture, Dr. Z tackles the complex and often misunderstood topics of food sustainability, urban agriculture and agricultural sustainability. This work provides the data and analysis that were the foundation of his award-winning book Just One Backyard: One Man’s Search for Food Sustainability. This book is suitable to be used as a textbook for college courses on sustainability, sustainable agriculture, urban agriculture or sustainable cities. Students of such courses would find it to be a valuable resource to enhance course material. Its usefulness is not restricted to the academic world, as its clear presentation makes it also suitable as a handbook for community leaders, policymakers and practitioners of urban agriculture. The first chapters of this book provide a lucid review of urban agriculture, including its many forms and issues, and places urban agriculture within the context of environmental, economic and social sustainability. The book then progresses from theory to the applied sciences by presenting metrics that objectively measure the environmental, economic and social sustainability benefits of urban agricultural operations. The final chapters of the book demonstrate how one can apply these metrics to quantitatively measure food sustainability and the beneficial effects of urban agricultural operations by analyzing the results from a landmark 5-year urban food growing study. This book is an important contribution to the quantitative sustainability sciences and should be on the bookshelf of every small-scale agricultural practitioner, community leader, governmental sustainability office and sustainability instructor.

Below you will find the Table of Contents from the book. You may view the raw data collected during the residential food growing case study by clicking here or by accessing the “Research” tab above.