References to agriculture in the city go back a long time in history. Literature references on agriculture in the city and on urban agriculture are more recent. Growing cities and populations are one of the big challenges of the future. The importance of urban agriculture in sustainable urban development is growing, and recognition grows.
This maiden issue of the UA Magazine has sought to give a broad picture of urban agriculture, both thematic and background of cases. Most of the articles further show the importance of urban agriculture, as a tradition, as a strategy of improving access to food, and/or as a response to crises. Subsequently, the need to incorporate urban agriculture in urban planning and policies is highlighted.
Future issues of the UA Magazine will focus on a specific theme.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
Growing cities and urban populations are some of the big challenges of the future. The importance of urban agriculture in sustainable urban development is growing. As recognition grows, more people are becoming involved in the issue. Many newsletters and magazines have devoted issues to the subject in recent years, including GATE, Urban Age, African Urban Quarterly, and the LEISA Newsletter, and there have been many workshops and conferences on the subject.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
This article is a part of a longer article by Luc Mougeot of IDRC from Growing Cities, Growing Food (Bakker et al., 2000). In this excerpt, the author takes the need for conceptual maturity of urban agriculture as a starting point to show the various dimensions of urban agriculture and to claim its firm position in the urban system.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
The authors discuss why people get involved in urban agriculture. The article is based on information extracted from 20 city case studies on urban agriculture worldwide and additionally draws from experiences of the Urban Vegetable Promotion Project in Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania). They argue that local authorities have to take their responsibilities in securing urban food security and to create an impact on urban poverty alleviation.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
Jac Smit of TUAN (The Urban Agriculture Network, based in the USA) argues that bringing back agriculture, forestry, aquaculture and livestock rearing to the human settlement is a key component in reducing the negative ecological footprint of cities that is 50 to 125 times the area of the city itself. He illustrates this with a number of interesting examples.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
The major objective of the International workshop in Havana, Cuba was: 'to move urban agriculture beyond the daily reality of urban farmers to the agenda of policy-makers'. In synthesising that conference, the authors review the variety of conditions that facilitate the growth of UA, and, secondly, discuss a range of policy options to selectively support the development of sustainable urban food production systems. This article is an abridged version of article you can find in Growing Cities, Growing Food (Bakker et al., 2000).
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
Government services concerned with livestock production for urban populations have given most attention to large-scale livestock rearing in the urban periphery. Small-scale rearing of animals by families living inside the cities is usually ignored and often forbidden. However, such urban livestock keeping is much more widespread than most city authorities would care to admit. Ann Waters-Bayer discusses the growth in urban livestock keeping in recent years, classifies various types of urban livestock systems, outlines functions of livestock, and indicates some of the problems caused by these systems.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
The importance of home gardens, the small areas of cultivated land immediately surrounding a home or a homestead, is often underestimated despite its vital contribution to meeting various household-needs, especially for the poor families in developing countries. The authors explore the importance of homegardens in the Philippines and give the findings of the programme, Users' Perspectives with Agricultural Research and Development (UPWARD).
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
Urban forestry programmes and projects need longer time to show results. Trees are long-term products and to make an urban forestry programme a success, the project partners need to keep a constant dialogue and a long-term commitment to make it happen. Liliana Marulanda illustrates this in a description of the Ahmedabad Green Partnership Project, which is an effort between the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and the Private Sector towards increasing the green cover and improving the environmental quality of Ahmedabad, India.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
The St. Petersburg Downtown Gardening Club is one of the six Eastern European organizations active in SWAPUA, SWAPUA stands for 'Soil and Water Management in Agricultural Production in Urban Areas in CEE/NIS Countries'. In this contribution, Oleg Moldakov from the St. Petersburg Downtown Gardening Club shows that the urban gardening movement in St. Petersburg has a long-standing history, both as a strategy to overcome shortcomings in food availability and for income improvement.
In: UA Magazine 1 - Maiden issue
Martin Bourque and Kristina Canizares from Food First, describe the impact of urban agriculture in Havana on availability and cost of fresh produce. The rise of urban agriculture was a clear response on the crisis of the early 1990s, and was stimulated by Government programmes and by the use of appropriate technologies.
The UA-Magazine is published by the Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture (RUAF), a Programme executed by ETC Netherlands and financed by DGIS, The Netherlands and IDRC, Canada. It is published 3 times a year. In the future the UA-Magazine will also be published in French and Spanish, and distributed through regional institutions.
This Issue has been compiled by Henk de Zeeuw (guest editor) and René van Veenhuizen (responsible editor).
Except for the article of Ahmedabad (photos by L. Marulanda), photos available at RUAF have been used, of the following sources: C. Schilter (Togo), B. Mbiba (Zimbabwe), T. Pinzas (Peru), P. Jacobi (Tanzania), F. Nunan (India), L.M. Sanchez (México), M. Amar-Klemesu (Ghana), PUVPP Project (Phillippines), Ciudad de Havana (Cuba).