Introduction
Once governmental authorities and support institutions (public, non-profit, private) better understand the current state of urban agriculture found in their city (see Modules 10 and 11), as well as the contributions it can make to some of their policy goals (Modules 5 and 6), they often seek to facilitate the development of urban agriculture by means of pro-active policies and intervention strategies that enhance the socio-economic and nutritional benefits of urban agriculture, while reducing its associated health and environmental risks. Policies and interventions to support urban agriculture may be oriented at poverty alleviation, improving food security, local economic development, community building, environmental management or seek to develop a specific combination or succession of them (with different target groups or zones of the city in mind). For example, a local government concerned about growing food insecurity or the exclusion of certain groups of citizens will probably focus on the food security and social dimension of urban agriculture. Cities that are emphasising local economic development will focus on the economic dimension of urban agriculture or seek to stimulate subsistence farmers to move into the market sector. Local authorities concerned about the living climate, growing waste management problems or the negative environmental or health effects of some types of urban agriculture may concentrate on the environmental dimension of urban agriculture, or seek to promote a (policy) shift from high-input commercial agricultural production to sustainable and multi-functional agriculture.
This module starts by presenting some of the results generally found in situation analysis on urban agriculture as to lay a basis for identification of types of intervention strategies and courses of action for further development of urban agriculture. In doing so, it will illustrate some of the policy instruments that can be used to enhance urban agriculture development (legal, economic, educational and urban planning tools). It will then present a series of important issues to be considered in formulating policies and intervention strategies related to urban agriculture. Where possible, these strategies will be illustrated with concrete examples. Students will be asked to reflect on the possible application of the illustrated policy instruments and support measures for specific groups of urban farmers in their city.
Learning objectives
After completing this module, you will be able to:
Situation analysis on urban agriculture, implemented in a variety of city around the world, identified a series of common constraints to the development of safe and sustainable urban agriculture, including:
Prohibitive urban policies and regulations
Although activities such as home-gardening and urban livestock-keeping may be well known by policymakers and planners, in many cases this knowledge does not result automatically in the recognition of urban agriculture as an important element of the city economy and land-use system. Often, urban agriculture tends to be seen as merely a ‘left-over’ of rural habits, as only temporary until the people accustom themselves to urban life, as a marginal activity with little economic importance, as a health risk and source of pollution that has to be removed, etc. Cities are often perceived as solidly built up with no area to spare. Agriculture and urbanization are viewed typically as conflicting activities that should be separated. Fear of contamination by urban agriculture and use of unclean water for food production has, over time, become institutionalized in law, and led to reluctance by many local governments and to contemplate the potential benefits of urban agriculture. In many cities, agriculture still has an “illegalâ€? status, although it may be tolerated in practice. This however creates opportunities for local officials and policemen to levy “informal taxesâ€?, unpredictable changes in the degree of tolerance and frequent harassment of urban farmers (many of them women). Such biases, sustained by the limited exposure of policymakers and planners to scientific information on urban agriculture and on ecological and participatory city development in general, have led to important legal restrictions on urban agriculture. Often such restrictions are among the major constraints to urban agriculture. They also prevent the integration of agriculture into urban planning as a competitive form of land use and constrain the creation of adequate support services. Creating a conducive policy environment for urban agriculture and its formal acceptance as an urban land use is one of the key issues for further development of urban agriculture. Â
Limited access to productive resources and insecure land tenure
Urban agriculture is - to a large extent - being done on land that is not owned by the user: roadsides, riverbanks, along railroads, idle public lands, parks, community, institutional or public land etc. The use of such areas is, in principle, transitional and user rights are minimal. However, various systems of informal rent, lease and inheritance exist. The quality of the lands to which urban farmers do have access is often very marginal to start with. In combination with the poverty of the majority of the urban farmers and the insecure land-tenure situation, this leads to low investments in the land, low productivity and further deterioration of the soil. Fear of eviction leads people to plant quick-yielding seasonal crops and to avoid investments in soil quality, tree and shrub components, erosion prevention, water-harvesting measures, etc.
Next to land, the access to water (especially water of good quality) and nutrients (especially manure and compost of good quality) is crucial to urban farmers, and both are difficult to obtain (although more widely available then in many rural areas). Use of water sources is often informal (e.g. tapping off wastewater disposal pipes and canals). Measures to enhance access to and security of land (and water) are crucial for urban agriculture development.
Lack of support services and appropriate technologies
Because policymakers, planners and support organization generally have little understanding of the potential of urban agriculture, urban farmers are seldom viewed as a target group for support services such as training and extension, veterinary services, technical assistance and credit services, or for supporting infrastructure such as water points and market facilities. Urban farmers especially highlight the lack of access to credit. The technologies applied by urban farmers (especially so in Africa) are normally very basic: hand labor and simple tools. Crop choices and production technologies are often not well adapted to the conditions of the production site (e.g. intensive backyard farming requires other technologies than roadside farming or production on riverbanks).
Projects oriented at technology development in urban agriculture are very scarce. There is a great need for easy-to-operate and low-cost technologies for recycling of urban biological wastes for productive use and to improve delivery of adequate support services to enhance the productivity and economic viability of urban agriculture.
Even if such support services exist, they are often oriented at larger-scale and (peri-urban) commercial farmers. The participation of often non-organised and more vulnerable groups of farmers, the urban poor, women and youth or recent migrants, in urban agriculture programme, planning and policies will need specific attention. Gender equity and social inclusion should thus be promoted.Â
Potential health and environmental risks associated with urban agriculture
Urban agriculture, notwithstanding its potential for improving the environment (by using organic wastes and wastewater as a productive resource and closing the nutrient loop, by reducing the urban ecological footprint and keeping ecologically valuable areas free from construction and maintaining biodiversity in urban areas – See Module 5 &6), may also have negative health and environmental impacts. Soil erosion may occur and groundwater may be polluted if high amounts of if high amounts of fertilizers and pesticides are used in urban agriculture. If contaminated wastewater (untreated or insufficiently treated) is used for irrigation of food crops (especially green leafy vegetables) or when fresh organic wastes (not composted or not properly composted) are used as fertilizer, or hygiene is lacking in the production, processing and marketing of food (e.g. in street vending) food may become contaminated and the health of agricultural workers may be negatively affected. Cultivated areas in cities may attract or provide breeding grounds for rodents and flies and thus can contribute to the spread of diseases they carry. Certain diseases can also be transmitted to humans by livestock kept in close proximity to them, if proper precautions are not taken.
Development of safe and sustainable forms of urban agriculture should thus be promoted by taking measures to reduce the health and environmental risks associated with urban agriculture.
Before showing you how various cities have responded to these constraints, we first want to briefly discuss the various policy instruments they have available in doing so.
Many believe that cities (and national governments) only have legal policy instruments available that can be applied to support urban agriculture development. However, legislation is just one of the available policy instruments. Other instruments include: economic, communicative / educative and urban planning & design instruments. Each instrument is based on a specific hypothesis regarding how behaviour of actors in society can be influenced.
The logic underlying legal instruments is that actors (such as citizens or industries) can be forced to adopt a certain desired behaviour through legal norms and regulations (like norms, laws, bye-laws, ordinances, etc.) and that it is possible to control whether these actors adhere to the given rules and norms. Actors who do not adhere to the rules will be sanctioned. The most common problems with the application of legal instrument are the following:
The logic behind the application of economic instruments is the assumption that social actors will adopt a certain desired behaviour if this gives them some economic gains (or losses if they continue with the undesired behaviour). Local governments for example may grant tax incentives or subsidies if actors adopt the desired behaviour or levy special taxes for undesired behaviour (similar to the levy on cigarettes or alcohol). Such economic instruments also need a legal basis (see above), but the essential element here is not the law itself but the economic incentive or loss that orients (or is supposed to orient) a certain behaviour. Several municipalities already grant tax exemptions to land owners who allow poor urban farmers use of vacant private land (see for example the municipality of Governador Valadares exempting -as per the law Nº 5.265- private land owners from progressive property taxation if their lands are put to productive use). Others have reduced the tariffs for irrigation water or provide incentives for composting and reuse of household wastes. Economic support can also be given through supply of irrigation water, tools, seeds and compost to (poor) urban farmers.
The assumption behind the use of communicative/educative instruments is that people will adopt a certain desired behaviour if they are well informed about the positive effects of the desired behaviour as well as the negative effects of the undesired behaviour. Accordingly, information, education and persuasion tools (media programmes, extension visits, training courses, leaflets, websites, etc.) will be applied to make people understand the importance of the desired change and to assist them in the change process. Well-known examples include media-campaigns to refrain from smoking or to promote use of preservatives when having sex. Related to urban agriculture: a municipality may provide technical training to urban farmers for example or education on healthy food, food growing and food preparation to school kids. Communicative/educative instruments are often used complementary to the other policy instruments mentioned, since the lack of an adequate communication and education strategy may strongly reduce the effectiveness of the other policy instruments used. In this context, the importance of designing and implementing a strategy to communicate municipal urban agriculture policies and policy instruments to the target group should also be underlined.
The logic behind urban design instruments is that actors will adopt a certain desired behaviour if their physical environment has been designed in such a way that they are more or less automatically prompted to act a certain way: for example if public dustbins are widely available, generally people will throw less waste on the street. Examples related to urban agriculture are zoning (setting aside and protecting certain areas of the city for agriculture) , combining or separating certain land uses depending on the degree of conflict/synergy, inclusion of space for home or community gardening in social housing projects, etc. Several cities have included land designated for urban agriculture in their urban land use plan, housing or in slum upgrading projects (Wilbers and de Zeeuw, 2006).
We will illustrate several examples of the use of legal, economic, educative and design instruments in city policies and programmes on urban agriculture in the following section and Module.
Please Reflect Do you know of any policy instruments for urban agriculture applied in your city? Do current laws and bye-laws allow for, restrict or prohibit urban agriculture in the city? Are special areas of land set aside for urban agriculture production? Is the local government providing financial support for urban agriculture? Or is urban agriculture restricted because of fear for health risks and environmental pollution? For a more in-depth analysis of various city policies on urban agriculture (What type of policy instrument do they use? Are they of a restrictive or supportive nature? Do they apply them effectively? To what extent do they benefit poor urban farmers or other vulnerable groups?), we invite you to participate in course CVFN 412 on “Urban agriculture policy-making�. |
In the foregoing sections we have discussed some of the main constraints found for urban agriculture development and have illustrated some of the policy instruments available to cities and other stakeholders. In the following section we will illustrate in a series of case studies some of the main key issues for effective policy making on urban agriculture. Â
Remember that when we look back at the constraints identified for urban agriculture development (earlier in this module), we listed the need for the following support measures:
The first two of these issues will be discussed in more detail below. The latter three issues will be discussed in Module 13.
Formal acceptance of urban agriculture as a legitimate use of urban land is a crucial first step towards effective regulation and facilitation of the development of urban agriculture. Existing policies and bye-laws regarding urban agriculture, as well as sector policies that include norms and regulations on issues related to health, the environment, etc. will need to be reviewed in order to identify and subsequently remove (unsubstantiated) legal restrictions that may exist. A second important step is the creation of an institutional home for urban agriculture. Conventionally, sector policies have been defined under the assumption that agriculture refers to the rural sphere and will be attended to by institutions other than the urban ones. However, most agricultural organisations do not operate in the urban sphere. As a consequence, urban agriculture still receives little policy and planning attention and development support or it suffers from conflicting jurisdictions.
Please read below a Case study on Kampala, Uganda, where bye-laws and regulations on urban agriculture were recently revised in order to replace colonial bye-laws that were seen as unenforceable or inappropriate to local conditions.
Case study: Reviewing urban agriculture bye-laws in Kampala, Uganda For decades, residents of Kampala have relied on urban agriculture for food, employment, and income. Farming activities have spread throughout the Ugandan capital, taking over all manner of available space—from abandoned fields to grounds along roads and waterways. Unfortunately, many policy makers viewed these agricultural activities as a nuisance. Roaming livestock raised frequent road-safety concerns, while other farming practices were considered harmful to public health and the environment. “Our bylaws were outdated,� admits Winnie Makumba, former Kampala City Minister of Social Improvement, Community Development and Antiquities, in the following video-clip. “They failed to recognize that many residents derived their livelihoods from urban farming. We realized it was up to us as political leaders to initiate the policy changes that would support urban farming practices.� In 2001, Kampala city government thus set out to revise existing legislation related to urban farming. Two years later, the Kampala City Council District Extension Office, in collaboration with the Kampala Urban Food Security, Agriculture and Livestock Coordination Committee (KUFSALCC), spearheaded a consultative process to re-examine draft bills for five city ordinances. Resistance to change, however, ran deep in Kampala, partly because urban agriculture challenges prevailing attitudes. Influenced by colonial bylaws, these attitudes hold that urban farming is inappropriate in cities.However, abundant urban agriculture research and advocacy—supported by international organizations such as IDRC, the UK Department for International Development and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research—helped illuminate food security as a key issue, and successfully eclipse outdated fears in Kampala. Perhaps most compelling was the city’s inclusive consultative process, which helped ensure grassroots support for change. “The best way to make laws is to involve the people who are going to be affected by them,� says George Nasinyama, KUFSALCC Team Leader. With this in mind, KUFSALCC and the Kampala District Extension Office conducted a series of workshops to engage a range of stakeholders—especially urban farmers. Recommendations generated at these workshops were readily adopted by Kampala city council with only minor amendments. “Input from community members was strong because they knew what they wanted,� says Kampala City District Extension Coordinator Semwanga Margaret Azuba. “The ideas they brought on board only needed to be polished in legal language.� As a result, five ordinances were created to regulate all forms of urban agriculture. The ordinances are currently being piloted to enable an impact assessment. Source: IDRC, 2006. Growing better cities: Building an edible landscape. Prepared for the World Urban Forum 2006. International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. See for further information on Kampala the optional reading: K. Conway, 2006. From the ground up: urban agriculture reforms take root. Case study No 2. Growing Better Cities. IDRC, Canada. Click Here |
Land is a very important resource for urban agriculture and its availability, accessibility and suitability for agriculture should be of particular concern to those who want to promote urban farming as a strategy for social inclusion, enhanced food security, poverty reduction and local economic development. City governments can facilitate access of urban farmers to available urban open spaces in a variety of ways, by temporary leasing of vacant municipal land, by promoting the use of private lands for urban agriculture, by demarcating zones for urban agriculture, by integrating urban agriculture in new housing plans and by promoting multifunctional use of public land. Please find one example described below, featuring the city of Rosario, Argentina.
Case study: Integrating urban agriculture into land use planning and park management in Rosario, Argentina At the height of Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis, the country had defaulted on its debt, gross domestic product was shrinking, the unemployment rate had reached 25 percent, the Argentine peso had lost 75 percent of its value, and the rate of inflation was climbing to an unprecedented high. The people of Rosario, the country’s third-largest city, were hit particularly hard by the crisis: more than 800 000 people, or some 60 percent of the city’s entire population, were thrust into poverty. With their country’s economy in shambles, the citizens of Rosario had to adapt to survive. Many began cultivating available plots of land throughout the city to ensure a steady supply of food for themselves and their families. Recognizing the value of this novel practice to alleviate suffering and ensure food security, local authorities started to make public lands available for farming. The city also provided many fledgling urban farmers with tools, seeds, and other essential supplies. To support this nascent activity, the city created the Programa de Agricultura Urbana (PAU). A cooperative venture that unites urban farmers, municipal officials, agricultural experts, and representatives of nongovernmental organizations, PAU quickly helped urban farmers secure and protect agricultural spaces, take advantage of value-added agricultural products, and establish new markets and market systems. Soon, seven farmers’ markets and more than 800 community gardens—supporting some 10 000 farmers and their families—had sprouted up throughout the city. “Urban farmers were grateful for the support that the program was able to provide,� says Raul Terille of the Centre for Agro-Ecological Production Studies. “After months of crisis and uncertainty, the program not only helped urban farmers feed themselves, their families, and their neighbours, but it also created some stability and brought renewed hope to their lives.� Although the economic crisis has passed, challenges remain for Rosario and its urban farmers. Many government officials remain unaware of the permanent value of urban agriculture. New urban farmers, especially those arriving in the city from rural areas, must be integrated more efficiently into existing urban agriculture initiatives. But perhaps most importantly, urban agriculture must become a permanent land use and activity in ongoing municipal planning processes. As shown on the following video-clip. One of the recent landmark accomplishments of Rosario’s Programa de Agricultura Urbana is Molino Blanco, a local housing project for low-income families. What separates Molino Blanco from other residential areas is how urban agriculture has been used to improve the community. Of note, the community recently participated in the design and construction of a multi-functional large garden park. The garden provides not only food, employment, and income for many residents, but also recreational paths and soccer fields that have been incorporated into its development. Source: IDRC, 2006. Growing better cities: From crisis to prosperity. Prepared for the World Urban Forum 2006. International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada. See for further information on Rosario the optional reading: L. Guenette, 2006. A city hooked on urban farming. Case study No 6. Growing Better Cities. IDRC, Canada Click Here |
Beyond these two case studies, many other cities have implemented possible courses of action to also create a conducive policy environment for urban agriculture, to set up a municipal programme or department on urban agriculture, to facilitate farmers’ access to vacant municipal or private land, as well as promote multifunctional land use for example. Please read more about them in the required reading.
Required readings
de Zeeuw, H., M. Dubbeling, R. van Veenhuizen and J. Wilbers, 2007. Key issues and courses of action for municipal policy making on urban agriculture -Part 1. Adapted from an earlier article published under this title in: “Urban Agriculture Magazine 16: Formulating effective policies on urban agriculture�. RUAF Foundation. Leusden, the Netherlands.
Optional readings