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Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M The COVID-19 pandemic unveiled the fragility of food sovereignty in cities and confirmed the close connection urban dwellers have with food. Although the pandemic was not responsible for a systemic failure, it suggested how citizens would accept and indeed support a transition toward more localized food production systems. As this attitudinal shift is aligned with the sustainability literature, this work aims to explore the tools and actions needed for a policy framework transformation that recognizes the multiple benefits of food systems, while considering local needs and circumstances. This perspective paper reviews the trends in production and consumption, and systematizes several impacts emerged across European food systems in response to the first wave of pandemic emergency, with the final aim of identifying challenges and future strategies for research and innovation toward the creation of resilient and sustainable city/region food systems. The proposal does not support a return to traditional small-scale economies that might not cope with the growing global population. It instead stands to reconstruct and upscale such connections using a "think globally act locally" mind-set, engaging local communities, and making existing and future citizen-led food system initiatives more sustainable. The work outlines a set of recommended actions for policy-makers: support innovative and localized food production, training and use of information and communication technology for food production and distribution; promote cross-pollination among city/region food systems; empower schools as agents of change in food provision and education about food systems; and support the development of assessment methodologies and the application of policy tools to ensure that the different sustainability dimensions of the food chain are considered.

Helicoverpa armigera is a polyphagous and globally distributed pest. In Italy, this species causes severe damage on processing tomato. We compared the efficacy of mating disruption with a standard integrated pest management strategy (IPM) in a two-year experiment carried out in Northern Italy. Mating disruption registered a very high suppression of male captures (&gt, 95%) in both growing seasons. Geostatistical analysis of trap catches was shown to be a useful tool to estimate the efficacy of the technique through representation of the spatial pattern of captures. Lower fruit damage was recorded in mating disruption than in the untreated control plots, with a variable efficacy depending on season and sampling date. Mating disruption showed a higher efficacy than standard IPM in controlling H. armigera infestation in the second season experiment. Mating disruption showed the potential to optimize the H. armigera control. Geostatistical maps were suitable to draw the pheromone drift out of the pheromone-treated area in order to evaluate the efficacy of the technique and to detect the weak points in a pheromone treated field. Mating disruption and standard IPM against H. armigera were demonstrated to be only partially effective in comparison with the untreated plots because both strategies were not able to fully avoid fruit damage.

Within agroecosystems, the presence along the year of ladybirds is a crucial factor for aphids biological control. In the urban environment, this becomes exacerbated due to stricter regulations against use of pesticides. The demonstrative garden of the agricultural faculty of Bologna University is located in the urban environment, and consists in about 0.3 ha composed by more than 400 plots. The garden hosts more than 350 plant species, including forage, industrial, and horticultural crops, herbs and cereals. In order to assess the presence and preferred hosts of aphidifagous ladybirds within the demonstrative garden, weekly visual samplings in each of the 400 plots were conducted between March and September 2015. This included monitoring of presence and abundance of Coccinella septempunctata (the most important native and wild lady beetle species in Italy). Adult ladybirds were observed in the garden across the whole season, and abundance was greater in Triticum spp., Brassica spp., Prunus persica and Asclepias syriaca. Accordingly, a possible set of plants with scalar flowering enabling to guarantee the year-round presence of ladybirds in the urban garden is presented.

Urban gardens are spreading in many cities across Europe, with community gardening being a fundamental form of urban agriculture. While the literature reveals the essential role that community gardens can play in terms of learning and education, no studies have investigated the training needs for participants in community gardens to ensure their successful development. The goal of this article is to evaluate the training requirements of urban community gardens to ensure their successful implementation and their contribution to sustainability in European cities. Two questionnaires of users&rsquo, needs analysis were designed and implemented in Berlin, Bologna, Budapest, and Cartagena. The results unveiled the need to re-enforce the training in the formation and community building phases of community gardens towards ensuring the creation of an engaged gardening community to maintain activity, particularly for top-down activities (e.g., research-related gardens). Users claimed their need for being trained on crop management skills (e.g., maintenance, bed preparation, organic practices) and on communication skills to further disseminate their activity, thereby increasing the potential for citizen engagement. Such requirements could be overcome with the creation of urban gardens networks, where experiences and knowledge are shared among practitioners. Policy recommendations are provided based on the outputs of this study.

none 10 In recent years, urban agriculture is asserting its relevance in a vibrant and diverse food system for its small scale, its focus on nutrition and community building, its contribution to food security, and its possibility for employment and social mobility. Urban agriculture may also be a tool to re-appropriate a range of abandoned or unused irregular spaces within the city, including flowerbeds, roundabouts, terraces, balconies or rooftops. Consistently, all spaces that present a lack of identity may be converted to urban agriculture and, more specifically, to urban horticulture as a way to strengthen resilience and sustainability. The goal of this paper is to analyse current practices in the requalification of vacant areas as urban gardens with the aim of building communities and improving landscape and life quality. To do so, the city of Bologna (Italy) was used as case study. Four types of vacant areas were identified as places for implementing urban gardens: flowerbeds along street and squares, balconies and rooftops, abandoned buildings and abandoned neighbourhoods. Six case studies representing this variety of vacant areas were identified and evaluated by collecting primary data (i.e. field work, participant observation and interviews) and performing a SWOT analysis. For most cases, urban horticulture improved the image and the quality of the areas as well as brought social benefits regarding life quality, food access and social interaction among participants. Strong differences in some aspects were found between top-down and bottom-up initiatives, being the later preferable regarding the engagement of citizens. Policy-making might focus on participatory and transparent planning, long-term actions, food safety and economic development. Gasperi, Daniela; Pennisi, Giuseppina; Rizzati, Niccolò; Magrefi, Francesca; Bazzocchi, Giovanni; Mezzacapo, Umberto; Stefani, Monique Centrone; Sanyé-Mengual, Esther; Orsini, Francesco; Gianquinto, Giorgio Gasperi, Daniela; Pennisi, Giuseppina; Rizzati, Niccolò; Magrefi, Francesca; Bazzocchi, Giovanni; Mezzacapo, Umberto; Stefani, Monique Centrone; Sanyé-Mengual, Esther; Orsini, Francesco; Gianquinto, Giorgio

In recent years, urban agriculture (UA) projects have bloomed throughout the world, finding large applications also in the developed economies of the so-called Global North. As compared to projects in developing countries, where research has mainly targeted the contribution to food security, UA in the Global North has a stronger multifunctional connotation, and results in multiple combinations of farming purposes and business models pursued. The present review paper explores the contribution and role that UA plays in cities from the Global North, defining its functionalities toward ecosystem services (ES) provisioning and analyzing the factors that hinders and promote its regional diffusion and uptake. The manuscript integrates a description of UA growing systems, as well opportunities for crop diversification in the urban environment, and a comprehensive classification of UA business models. The distinctive features in terms of business models, farming purposes and farm size are then applied over an inventory of 470 UA projects in the Global North, allowing for a characterization and comparative analysis of distribution frequency of the different project typologies.