The potential of bio-intensive market gardening models for a transformative urban agriculture:: Adapting SPIN Farming to Brussels

This chapter provides insights from a reflexive research process about ideal visions, aspirations, choices and compromises made along the way in the establishment of the Brussels-based Cycle Farm. Action Co-Create gathers research centres, civil associations, cooperatives and others around a common goal: jointly producing knowledge through a process of successive cycles of questioning, reflecting on and acting to enhance the resilience of the Brussels Region. The business development and industrialisation of the organic food sector has led bio-intensive model’s representative Eliot Coleman to emphasise the ways in which small, local food producers need to develop competitive advantages to sustain their businesses. A series of workshops was initiated by the researchers, then collectively designed and carried out by the entire team. In SPIN Farming, production focuses on a few high-value crops.