Local policy makers typically do not have useful, quantitative metrics to compare environmental costs and benefits of urban vegetable production versus the large-scale commercial production in the typical grocery store supply chain. While urban agriculture has been championed as a way to address social issues such as food access and nutrition, we know relatively little about net environmental benefits, if any. The study combines a comparative life cycle assessment of vegetables with effects of direct and indirect land use change resulting from the urban vegetable production. This paper presents a methodology and selected results of scenarios of land use change due to urban vegetable production address resource use, greenhouse gas emissions, employment, and soil organic carbon. Surprisingly, urban vegetable production is not categorically favorable for each metric; several key parameters can shift the balance in favor or out of favor for either growing format, and these parameters are distinctly bottom-up.
