Environmental awareness is growing among urbanized consumers who want to know what they eat. In developed countries have a strong trend to develop urban farming, which offers many environmental, and social benefits. We present a concept of sustainable urban farming and circular food systems, which are recommended and supported by global and European policies and programs for sustainable development. The aim of this paper is to present the method of managing a circular food system in sustainable urban farming that was created as part of a project carried out at Turku University Campus (Finland), called “Less Waste, More Recycling” (“LeRe”). In the “LeRe” - project had two objectives. The first, reduce food waste at one of the biggest campus restaurants Macciavelli (about 1200 customers per day) by campaigns and communications between restaurant and students. The second, which support circular economy and the local recycling of nutrients i.e. composting food waste generated in the pilot restaurant Macciavelli and recycling the nutrients by urban farming. The group of students of Turku University organized themselves urban farming association. The compost was used in a community garden of the young urban farmers. The urban farming became very popular among the students. The development of urban farming skills by student cooperation was impressive.159 | P a g e
By taking care of vegetables and fruits, the work became concrete and the appreciation of food increased substantially among these young farmers. The project had shown that urban farming is a way of increasing the sense of value of food, which is one key part of reducing food waste—both through growing one’s own vegetables, as well reducing daily food waste. Urban farming is popular nowadays, and in Finland we have lot of people who are interested in it. Our concept could use also for local nutrient recycling, and that way we could rise the degree of self-sufficiency and security of supply in food production. Above all urban farming could increase the appreciation of food, and could decrease food waste also in a bigger scale, and promote more sustainable food system.