Cities Farming for the Future, Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities

This book integrates the results of recent research on the potential, risks, dynamics, policies and action programmes of urban agriculture in the world. It came out of the collaboration of the partners in the International Network of Resources Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF), including seven regional centres, one international resource centre and several other organizations with which RUAF is cooperating.

The volume provides examples and insight, aimed at senior and mid-level officers in municipal departments, governmental organizations, NGOs, farmer- and community-based organizations, and generally for all those who influence policies and programmes of urban agriculture development. Each of the 14 chapters compares three to four cities’ experiences. Topics range from multi-stakeholder policy-making and action planning approaches to more empirical lessons learned by researchers and practitioners in the past years. In general, the main factors addressed are local capacity development, facilitation of multi-stakeholder policy development and action planning, knowledge management and networking, establishment of monitoring systems on urban agriculture, and gender mainstreaming (or the integration of this variable in urban agriculture policies).

The authors discuss urban planning, and traditional and new approaches and tools, to enhance access by urban producers to land and other resources, especially credit and investment. They also deal with the various social, economic and ecological dimensions of urban agriculture. While the main production systems are also analyzed, authors reflect on how these can be made safer and more sustainable. Each chapter presents a complete bibliography and a compilation of relevant websites and other useful sources. Some general recommendations on urban agriculture are given that include the need to:

• extend capacity development towards a larger number of cities and countries;
• broaden the support from governments to local initiatives;
• give more attention to the monitoring of benefits and risks;
• get better differentiation among producers (especially regarding scale and location in the city);
• strengthen urban agriculture farmers’ organizations;
• develop more participatory training and action research with urban farmers groups;
• give more support to microenterprise development; and
• develop more creative ways to improve farmers’ access to idle land and enhance their security of usufruct.