Urban agriculture and environmental imagination

While we are currently experiencing a renaissance in philosophical work on agriculture and food ( Barnhill, Budolfson, & Doggett 2016 ; Thompson 2015 ; Kaplan 2012 ), these topics were common sources of discussion throughout the three-thousand-year history of Western thought. For example, the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (2014 ) explored connections between fulfi lling human promise and systems of agriculture ( Thompson & Noll 2015 ) and Hippocrates (1923 ) stressed the importance of cultivating agricultural products provided by nature ( Zwart 2000 ). In order to live a truly human life, Hippocrates argued, one must not passively consume crude food products, as such brutish living leads to terrible suffering. Later, both the Hebrew Bible and Christian Gospels provided clear ethical mandates concerning agricultural practices and the consumption of food. These mandates or ethics needed to be observed regardless of context ( Zwart 2000 ). More recently, Thomas Jefferson added to this literature, as he engaged in agricultural production at his Monticello plantation and wrote extensively on how farming is intimately connected to the political system of democracy ( Thompson & Noll 2015 ). This refl ection on food and agriculture continued into the 20th century, albeit not in the discipline of philosophy. Scientists and agricultural leaders, such as Henry Wallace and Liberty Hyde Bailey, provided important critiques of agricultural practices contemporary to their time. Interestingly, 19thand 20th-century philosophers largely placed food practices and agricultural production outside of the philosophical sphere. According to Thompson and Noll, “the last generation of philosophers to discuss agriculture as a philosophical topic is the one that included John Stuart Mill, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Karl Marx. Each of these three wrote extensively on agriculture” (2015: 36). Some food scholars have argued that this topic was neglected because food is too physical or transient to warrant consideration ( Kaplan 2012 ; Telfer 1996 ). Others have postulated that, as food preparation and production was historically regarded as “women’s work,” it was seen as an unworthy topic in the largely male-dominated fi eld of philosophy ( Heldke 1992 ). A third explanation focuses on how activities associated with food (especially eating and drinking) were typically associated with base instincts and desires, and thus were too primal to be philosophically analyzed ( Kaplan 2012 ; Korsmeyer 2002 ). However, with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, the ethical evaluation of food systems once again surged into prominence in the fi eld. While Carson was not a philosopher, per se, her 33 URBAN AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMAGINATION