State of the Art Review RUAF Publications Urban Agriculture Magazine Bibliographic Database

The roles and functions of urban agriculture within local policies are manifold and relate a.o to poverty alleviation, environmental and waste management, local economic development, social and community development. In order to develop its full potential and to contribute to a sustainable urban development, it is important that this potential is also recognised by the urban administration. This recognition should be reflected in relevant political programmes and plans, involving a wide range of often disconnected actors or stakeholders (such as urban producers and their organisations, NGOs and researchers, private organisations and different levels and departments of governments) in processes of effective planning, implementation, policy making and monitoring.

Efforts to first establish policies before initiating action planning/implementation one often end up with policies that do not work due to lack of political will, lack of resources or severe distortions during translation into actions later on in the process. Actions that are not translated into adequate guiding/facilitating policies tend to stay rather localised with few or less sustained impacts on the livelihoods of larger segments of the population.

Review and adaptation of existing municipal bylaws, norms and regulations is necessary in order to remove unnecessary restrictions on UA and to develop specific incentives, regulations and norms facilitating access to land, water, training and services for UA , while managing and regulating potential health risks (for example by promotion of safe use of wastewater for agricultural purposes or promotion of ecological farming).

To further ensure the sustainability and consolidation of the UA program beyond a given political administration and should facilitate a change in the program’s scale, UA should furthermore be included into national, city or neighbourhood strategic and development plans, as well as into sectoral urban development agendas (for example related to children’s and youth programmes, environmental or social welfare programmes and housing and urban development programmes), but should also be strengthened through the creation of a municipal UA department or programme and incorporating it into institutional and municipal budgets.

• For a more extensive introduction and review of literature on this subject please go to State of the Art.
• Go to RUAF publications for an overview of RUAF publications on this topic (most of which are available online). You may also view the articles in the Urban Agriculture Magazine on this topic.
• Search the Bibliographic Database for other literature references, abstracts and online documents on this subject.