Vegetating the city while thinking about the food of its inhabitants, it is the will displayed by the ecological municipality of Bordeaux, which presented its project this Tuesday in municipal council. But when it comes to agricultural land, we are still a little unsatisfied on the municipal perimeter since there are only 61 hectares of useful productive surface while it would take 829 hectares to meet the food needs (fruits and vegetables) of the inhabitants, according to a diagnosis. carried out by the city itself, in 2021.
In this context, it does not aim for food self-sufficiency but intends to take advantage of every plot or piece of garden available, while working on a larger scale with the metropolis, the department and the region on the subject of urban agriculture.
Urban vegetable gardens to multiply
“The idea is to multiply our production of fruit and vegetables by at least three times in the city of Bordeaux, explains Eve Demange, assistant in charge of food resilience at the city of Bordeaux. We started with the Haillan market garden (4 hectares), we also allowed the Aubiers food gardens to be maintained, which should have been razed”. To set an example, all public parks and gardens will become nurturing. The gardens of the town hall served as “test vegetable gardens” and the results concerning the presence of any residual pollutants allow us to say that they can be consumed without any problem.
The city is giving itself until the end of the mandate to create a shared garden by district. It will also launch a call for expressions of interest (AMI) this year to recruit a market gardener who will be in charge of two “taste districts”, i.e. productive spaces of 2,000 to 4,000 m2 in the Grand Parc and Benauge. A suspended urban farm is to be built on the roof of the submarine base.
Additional studies on the soils of La Jallère (14 hectares) are underway so that an agro-ecological project can take root there, this time on a fairly large area. To encourage Bordeaux residents who have gardens to put their hands in the ground, free workshops will be offered in the neighborhoods.
Bringing life back to the market gardening belt of the metropolis
To go further, the city is working hand in hand with the metropolis, to think about the installation of market gardening outside the city center, in municipalities better endowed with agricultural land. Today, there is still a market gardening activity in Eysines which has been much more flourishing. The question of agricultural vocation is also an issue in this context, and even though many farmers are going to retire in the coming years.
Without aiming for food autonomy, the city claims to take up the subject of food resilience, which consists of “going through shocks such as droughts, storms, wars, etc. by continuing to feed the population with healthy, quality food,” says Eve Demange. At the other end of the chain, the idea is to promote short circuits by using the market of national interest (MIN) in Brienne (wholesale market for operators in the agri-food sector) as the pivot of a reorganization. Currently 87% of Bordeaux residents do their shopping in supermarkets when only 20% buy frequently via short circuits.
“We have a huge margin for improvement when we know that some [producteurs locaux] put their productions in trucks that go up to Rungis for example, points out Eve Demange. We must reorganize our circuits so that this can benefit Bordeaux, but also the whole metropolis and the surrounding territories. »