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Sustainable Urban Farming

Two research projects at IVL, financed through Vinnova and FORMAS, will assess how urban farming can contribute to more sustainable and resilient food production in urban environments.

Urban environments offer many benefits for a range of new food production systems. In countries like Sweden, moving the production of certain foods (e.g. salad, herbs, cabbage, strawberries, etc.) indoors and coupled to current urban systems by symbiotic development with residual energy and material flows, offers many potential benefits for the system and urban food resilience.

The projects both aim to review and assess the development and proliferation of urban farming systems in Stockholm for identifying competitive, resilient, sustainable and robust food systems. The research will focus on urban farming case studies analyzing different indoor and outdoor urban farming methods and techniques, business models as well as the of sustainability and feasibility of the different approaches to review innovation and increased capacity building in the urban horticulture sector. A large share of the two projects are intended to increase the understanding and analyze the economic, environmental and social sustainability of these systems to identify their benefits and improvement possibilities.

IVL leads both projects, where the Vinnova project (financed through the ”Innovations for a Sustainable Society” program) will review urban farming from a more holistic perspective while the study financed through Formas ( in the “Increased mobility between academy and practice” program) will focus on a more detailed assessment of the vertical hydroponic system at Grönska Stadsodling in order to increase knowledge within the area and promote more sustainable food production systems in urban environments.

Urban farming for resilient and sustainable food production in urban areas

Period: 2020-2022

Budget: 4,3 million SEK

Partners: KTH, Grönska Stadsodling 365, och flera fallstudier med Stockholms baserade stadsodlings system (t.ex. SweGreen, Urban Oasis, Svegro, Volta Greentech och fler)

Financed by: Vinnova

Assessing and Improving the Sustainability of Urban Vertical farming Systems

Period: 2020-2021

Budget: 1 million SEK

Partners: Grönska Stadsodling 365

Financed by: Formas