Development Supported Agriculture
Development Supported Agriculture (DSA) is a nascent movement in real estate development that preserves and invests in agricultural land use. As farmland is lost due to the challenging economics of farming and the pressures of the real estate industry, DSA attempts to reconcile the need for development with the need to preserve agricultural land. The overall goal of DSA is to incubate small-scale organic farms that co-exist with residential land development, providing benefits to farmers, residents, the local community, and the environment.
A related term is agricultural urbanism, refers to agricultural operations located in proximity to and integrated with urban areas. The term of agricultural urbanism was coined by Mark Holland and Janine de la Salle, and is based on their book by the same name, published by Green Frigate Press in 2010 (De la Salle and Holland et al). The term and concept of Agricultural Urbanism was originally developed in British Columbia in 2008 during a planning process for a development project called Southlands in South Delta, Metro Vancouver and was introduced to planner, real estate developer, and founder of the New Urbanism movement, Andres Duany, as part of the preparation for a design charrette which Duany and his team were involved in.
Two academics who authored a chapter (Patrick Condon from UBC and Kent Mulnix from Kwantlen Polytechnic) posited the original idea of using development to support agriculture by using mechanisms such as transfering density rights from agricultural land onto adjacent areas and preserving the agricultural land through convenants while harvesting the development land value in the adjacent area that received the transferred development rights.
Andres Duany has been a significant proponent of the idea as well as the author of a similar stream of thought called Agrarain Urbanism. Duany’s adoption of the concept has given it a higher profile,
Read more about Development Supported Agriculture: Background, DSA and CSA, Five Points of DSA
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