We would like to receive your contributions or suggestions for the next issue of the UA Magazine:
NO. 25: RUAF 10 Years; Promoting Urban Agriculture (NOVEMBER 2010)
Please send us your contribution before: 15 August 2010
Ten years ago, ETC Foundation initiated a programme named: “Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture and Forestry” (RUAF). The RUAF project developed into an international network of 1 global and 7 regional Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security, which in 2004 obtained independent legal status as the RUAF Foundation. In addition to ongoing networking, documentation, awareness raising, and policy lobbying, the RUAF partners, with the start of the "Cities Farming for the Future" programme in 2005, focused on capacity development and support to multi-stakeholder policy development and action planning in urban agriculture in 20 cities, involving local authorities, NGO’s and urban producer organisations in 17 countries.
And since 2009 in the “From Seed to Table programme” this has been broadened with strengthening urban producers organisations and enhancing local capacity in the development of “From Seed to Table” projects with urban producer groups (participatory market analysis to identify consumer demand, group business planning, urban producer field schools, processing / packaging units, direct marketing to consumers interested in ecological products). This work has had important effects on local institutional capacities and enhanced political awareness and important policy change at city and national level.
International recognition of the potential and impacts of urban agriculture for urban food security and nutrition, poverty alleviation, recycling of urban wastes, adaptation to climate change has grown substantially in this decade.
An overview of main RUAF publications to date can be found at the RUAF website (www.ruaf.org) including a number of leading publications like “Growing Cities, Growing Food” (DSE, 2000), “Cities Farming for the Future” (IIRR, 2006), “Women Feeding Cities” (Practical Action, 2008), “Cities, Poverty and Food” (Practical Action, 2010) and 24 thematic issues of the Urban Agriculture Magazine (6 languages, 7000 subscribers).
RUAF will organise a number of activities in 2010, to celebrate this anniversary, including a special issue of the Urban Agriculture Magazine
We would welcome your contributions in the form of photos and short stories that show the development of urban agriculture in the past 10 years in a certain city or country and its impacts, or that analyse the role urban agriculture can play in answering major challenges in the near future (e.g. urban food security, climate change, productive reuse of wastewater and nutrients, etcetera).
The Urban Agriculture Magazine
The Urban Agriculture Magazine (UA Magazine) facilitates sharing of information on the impacts of urban agriculture, promotes analysis and debate on critical issues for development of the sector, and publishes "good" practices in urban agriculture. The UA Magazine is produced under the RUAF programme From Seed to Table (FStT), funded by DGIS (Netherlands) and IDRC (Canada).
The main aim of the RUAF-FStT programme is to contribute to urban poverty reduction, urban food security, improved urban environmental management, empowerment of urban producers and participatory city governance. It does this by developing capacities of local stakeholders and urban producers in urban agriculture, facilitating participatory and multi-stakeholder policy formulation and action planning on urban agriculture, and stimulating market chain development and organisation of urban producers.
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The UA Magazine is published two times a year on the RUAF website (www.ruaf.org) and in hardcopy version. This English version is translated into Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese and Portuguese.
The UA Magazine welcomes contributions on new initiatives at individual, neighbourhood, city and national levels. Attention is given to technical, socio-economic, institutional and policy aspects of sustainable urban food production, marketing, processing and distribution systems. Although articles on any related issue are welcome and considered for publication, each UA Magazine focuses on a selected theme (for previous issues, visit: www.ruaf.org).
All other suggestions and comments on UA Magazine are also welcome. Please take a moment to voice your opinion by sending an e-mail to the editor at ruaf@etcnl.nl, or write a letter to:
The Editor UA Magazine
RUAF, ETC Foundation
PO Box 64
3830 AB Leusden
The Netherlands
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