Thursday, July 12, 2007

Why is Urban Agriculture important?

http://www.ruaf.org/node/513
Why is Urban Agriculture important?

The rapid urbanization that is taking place goes together with a rapid increase in urban poverty and urban food insecurity. By 2020 the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America will be home to some 75% of all urban dwellers, and to eight of the anticipated nine mega-cities with populations in excess of 20 million. It is expected that by 2020, 85% of the poor in Latin America, and about 40-45% of the poor in Africa and Asia will be concentrated in towns and cities.
Most cities in developing countries have great difficulties to cope with this development and are unable to create sufficient formal employment opportunities for the poor. They also have increasing problems with the disposal of urban wastes and waste water and maintaining air and river water quality.

Urban agriculture provides a complementary strategy to reduce urban poverty and food insecurity and enhance urban environmental management. Urban agriculture plays an important role in enhancing urban food security since the costs of supplying and distributing food to urban areas based on rural production and imports continue to increase, and do not satisfy the demand, especially of the poorer sectors of the population. Next to food security, urban agriculture contributes to local economic development, poverty alleviation and social inclusion of the urban poor and women in particular, as well as to the greening of the city and the productive reuse of urban wastes (see below for further explanations and examples).
RUAF Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security

3 comments:

David Barrie said...

Urban agriculture is not just a useful strategy to the developing world.

In the developed world, especially towns and cities that are decommissioning/recommissioning their social and economic purpose, urban agriculture is a useful way of maximising land assets, enabling community cohesion and securing future food supply. It is also a useful counter to price inflation for staple products.

See

http://www.dott07.com/go/food/urban-farming

and

http://tinyurl.com/2ytcvf

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the links. Where is your blog?

David Barrie said...

http://davidbarrie.typepad.com/david_barrie

http://www.dott07.com then click on 'food'