Elsevier

Landscape and Urban Planning

Volume 143, November 2015, Pages 192-204
Landscape and Urban Planning

Linking food and land systems for sustainable peri-urban agriculture in Bangkok Metropolitan Region

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2015.07.008Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • A geographic approach helps in a holistic understanding of peri-urban food systems.

  • Food-related activities occurred at multiple spatial scales.

  • Wet markets served as a hub and spread across wider areas than supermarkets.

  • An increase in wet markets and supermarkets was associated with land use change.

  • Connection between local farmers and nearby wet markets was limited.

Abstract

We applied a geographic approach to the analysis of current food-related behaviors in peri-urban Bangkok, Thailand, to better understand potential for building a local food system for sustainable peri-urban agriculture during a period of rapid urbanization. We addressed three main working questions: (1) Do traditional wet markets keep functioning as an important hub for vegetable and fruit food systems under the influence of modern supermarkets? (2) How “local” are the current food-related behaviors of multiple actors? (3) How do the distributions of food-related actors and their environments change in this period of rapid urbanization in peri-urban areas? We combined field based interviews of multiple actors, including farming and non-farming households, wet market retailers, and food shop owners with a GIS analysis of food-related activities and land use changes. We found that the traditional food system played an important role as both a food source for households and a selling destination for farmers. Wet market, a hub in traditional food system, spread across peri-urban areas and kept increasing under urbanization. There was, however, little connection between farmers and nearby wet markets in the same district and it constricted positive feedbacks between producers and consumers in peri-urban areas. Promoting communication between farmers and nearby retailers will contribute to better governance of a local food system and subsequent long-term conservation of peri-urban farmlands.

Keywords

Food system
GIS
Land use planning
Peri-urban agriculture
Urbanization
Wet market

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