We have just discussed the importance of better defining (and understanding) urban agriculture locally, amongst others as a basis for outlining strategies for its development (what types of urban agriculture to support where and how?). But what may be reasons to support urban agriculture at all? Is urban agriculture not just a relict from rural-urban migration that dwindles as cities and urban economies grow? Is urban agriculture at all an issue in local and global debates on urban development?

Urban agriculture has always been part of city life. Urban citizens develop many strategies to improve their livelihoods and urban agriculture is one of them.  However attention to urban agriculture has only been increasing since the past 10 years. Research undertaken in the past decade indicates that urban agriculture has multiple roles and functions and plays in important role in a.o:

• enhancing urban food security, nutrition and health,
• creating urban job opportunities and generation of income and providing a social safety net for especially the urban poor,
• contributing to increased recycling of nutrients (turning urban organic waste and wastewater into a productive resource),
• facilitating social inclusion of disadvantaged groups and community development; and
  urban greening and maintenance of green spaces. 

Until recently, urban agriculture was given little policy attention, other then restricting it or permitting it only as a temporal use of urban land until other urban functions (housing, industrial development etc.) took over its use. 

With the increasing urbanisation (for the first time in history over half of the population now lives in cities), as well as with the urbanisation of poverty, “sustainable development� has become a more serious concern. Since several years, urban agriculture has now been placed in the context of global and local debates on “the Millennium Development Goals�, “local food systems�, ‘the ecological footprint�, the “slow food movement�, “community food security� and “sustainable cities�. A growing number of cities and countries are now designing policies and programmes on urban agriculture as a result.