Parsons Lagos Studio

Food Infrastructure

As the population of Lagos grows, it is hindered by infrastructure that is already strained. Food security is of particular importance. More than half of food consumed by Lagosians is imported. To consider that the population will reach 24 million by 2025, the current model is simply not sustainable.

Recent government initiatives look to reinforce the countries agricultural sector. Many localities are turning to urban agriculture. Aside from ensuring the food supply for an exploding urban population, Urban/Peri-urban Agriculture (UPA) is a livelihood strategy. It contributes to poverty reduction and improves living conditions of impoverished communities. Further, UPA compliments rural agriculture and increases the efficiency of the national food system. It can provide products rural agriculture cannot easily supply, and it releases the rural lands for production of export commodities.

CHALLENGES:
Smallholder farming households are still faced with infrastructural challenges such as poor roads, which inhibit transportation of harvest to marketplace, lack of storage and processing facilities, further encouraging spoilage, and insufficient access to water sources of irrigation during the dry season.

To accommodate foreseen urbanization this project situates itself in Lekki Peninsula, about an hour away from the city center. The project capitalizes upon and develops the public transit system by using it for the distribution and exchange of goods throughout a network of satellite market stations. This allows farmers direct access to consumers as well as shared storage and processing facilities at the main terminal. Consumers benefit as well from increased access to local food.

The main bus terminal also functions as a central marketplace, further reinforcing the local food system and community. This is also the heart of the agri-tech vocational school which has a holistic, hands-on engagement with the urban food systems. The program addresses the full cycle from growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, marketing and consuming to disposing and recycling. All the while, students are at the center making it happen.