ADAPTING TO ENVIRONMENTAL AND URBANISATION STRESSORS: FARMER AND LOCAL ACTOR INNOVATION IN URBAN AND PERIURBAN AREAS IN CANADA

N° ISBN - 978-2-7380-1284-5 ; International audience ; Urban and periurban agricultural producers have faced many stressors – both negative ones and positive ones – particularly from the mid-20th century onwards. They have included urban development pressures, exurban development, the evolving markets for the products of these producers – food and other products, and environmental challenges stemming from farming's own technologies. More recently, these stressors have been compounded by climate change and variability. The importance of the decision processes at the local level (i.e. individual farmers and producers, local government, various community organisations, and citizens more generally) and how such decision makers adapt to the various stressors has been increasingly recognised. In relation to urban and periurban farm producers, more and more attention has been placed on the adaptive capacity of these decision makers to maintain and develop their own production systems. At the same time, there has been an increase in the environmental services that these areas are expected to perform mainly by the urban citizenry, thus reinforcing the multi-functionality of the areas concerned. In this paper, we argue that developing producers' adaptive capacity is one of the keys to contributing to alleviating food insecurity, but at the same time, the multi-functionality of these same areas provides a powerful tool with which to maintain and develop the strength of food production through having non farm actors and citizens appropriate the importance of conserving agricultural production – and therefore food production – in these same areas to contribute in a sustainable fashion to improving food security both regionally, domestically and internationally.