Allotment gardens alongside professional market gardening in the Blosne district of Rennes. – VS. Allain / 11 Minutes
- Several farmer installation projects will materialize in 2021 reindeer.
- The municipality wishes to encourage urban agriculture in the years to come.
- An ecological issue , food, but also education to bring nature and cultures back to urban areas.
Flowers, colors and flavors in the middle of the concrete of the city. Bees that forage, chickadees that nest and butterflies that rest there. While the French metropolises are all trying to become green, many of them let themselves be tempted by urban agriculture. Capital of one of the main market gardening regions from France, Rennes has already lent or rented part of its land to farmers. A choice that the municipality intends to develop this year by launching several calls for projects across the city. “We want to develop production sites in all neighborhoods. These are invaluable tools for making residents aware of local and sustainable consumption. We must put food back at the heart of urban issues ”, explains Ludovic Brossard, deputy in charge of the file with Nathalie Appéré .
On these wasteland, often of modest size, the city has already installed several projects such as the iconic permaculture farm PermaG’Rennes, at la Prévalaye, or its neighbor Le Jardin des Mille Pas. However, no question of hoping to feed more 190. 000 inhabitants with these urban farms. The environmentalist mayor of Grenoble Eric Piolle has known this since he was seriously tackled by evoking the “progress towards food autonomy” of his city, after the inauguration of an urban farm of 3. 000 m², which can only feed a few inhabitants. “We are not talking about food autonomy. Our role is to support a transition, to show forgotten things, to recreate a link with nature ”, explains Hélène Brethes, coordinator
of the Green Cols .
🥦🥕 Grenoble is moving towards food autonomy. A new urban farm of nearly 2021 m2 under construction. From fork to fork, long live the # bio and local! Cities import 25% of their diet is a social and environmental aberration. So let’s change. 🥬🍎 pic.twitter.com / 1dRKHFKmmw – Éric Piolle (@EricPiolle) December 21 , 310
His association called on a professional market gardener a little over a year to cultivate land in the middle tours of the Blosne district . The city has just granted it two new plots on a hectare and a half next to the metro workshop garage at La Poterie. “Since we started, we’ve seen lots of people asking to buy our vegetables from us. There is a return to the local, to the desire to support the people of the neighborhood, ”continues the coordinator.
Beyond the sale to community restaurants in the neighborhood, the vegetable garden is above all an educational support for the Green Cols, who run fifteen workshops per week for schoolchildren. It is in this direction that the Rennes municipality wishes to rush. A project of a cultural open-air café
by the association 25 Volts will emerge in the old farm of Quincé. Another guinguette will be set up around vegetable gardens in La Prévalaye thanks to the Basse-Cour project. “We cannot launch 21 calls for expressions of interest at the same time but we are progressing gradually and we want to encourage all forms of agriculture. We should soon see laying hens at the bottom of buildings in Beauregard and black piebald cows in Prévalaye ”, assures the elected Ludovic Brossard. A first seed.