Six exquisite miniature dioramas in the new exhibition Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture illuminate diverse methods of farming around the world—including in cities.
One of the dioramas features urban gardens in Belo Horizonte, located in southeastern Brazil and home to more than two million people. (The name of the city means “beautiful horizon.”) In the diorama below, a resident tends his plot in a community garden. The crops depicted include cabbage, spinach, aloe, and cucumber.
Growing food on vacant land has become common across Belo Horizonte. Other gardens are cultivated in backyards, on rooftops, and in schoolyards.
Locals in Belo Horizonte can eat at city-subsidized Restaurantes Populares (People’s Restaurants), which serve healthy meals for just 1 Brazilian real (less than one U.S. dollar). The restaurants are supplied by local farmers, often from a “greenbelt” around the city, where there are many small and mid-sized farms. Linking producers to consumers—and bypassing retailers—is one way the government has lowered the cost of food and improved farmers’ livelihoods.
To learn more about urban farming and to see the other miniature dioramas, set in Vietnam, France, Kenya, and more, visit Our Global Kitchen, now open.
The exclusive corporate sponsor for Our Global Kitchen is J.P. Morgan.
Additional support for Our Global Kitchen and its related educational and online resources has been provided by GRACE Communications Foundation.