Olufunke Cofie ¹, Pay Drechsel ¹ and Henk de Zeeuw ²

¹ International Water Management Institute (IWMI), West Africa Sub-Regional Office, Accra, Ghana
² RUAF, ETC, Leusden, The Netherlands

Produced by Alexandra Heinegg, Patricia Maragos, Edmund Mason, Jane Rabinowicz, Gloria Straccini and Heather Walsh

This guide is written as a primer on soil contamination, as it relates to gardening in an urban setting. It seeks to provide individual gardeners or community groups with the necessary background information to address this issue. There are several important aspects of soil contamination which are addressed in this guide, including the dangers of gardening in contaminated soil, the potential sources of contamination, ways to evaluate the level of contamination present in the soil, and your options for addressing the problem. At the end of this document there are several appendices with information pertaining to the topics discussed here. Most of these are Montreal- and Canada–specific, but should provide some good starting points for similar resources in other cities and countries.

Gordon Prain

In: Cities Farming for the Future - Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities

The urban setting offers special advantages for food and animal production, but also presents particular challenges. Urban agriculture needs to be highly innovative in competing and adapting to new situations. Urban and peri-urban agricultural systems exhibit even higher levels of complexity than rural upland systems and call for a wider range of participatory methods. This chapter discusses participatory agricultural research and its relevancy for the urban setting. A sustainable urban livelihoods framework is discussed, which enables to better understand and define the multi-sectoral, institutional and policy aspects of urban agriculture in order to identify appropriate interventions. Specific participatory methods are discussed for urban horticulture and livestock to help urban producers adapt agriculture to urban realities.

René van Veenhuizen

In: Cities Farming for the Future - Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities

Attention to urban agriculture has increased markedly during the last couple of decades. The number of activities to promote urban agriculture at international, national and local level has grown, but urban farmers in many cities in the world still struggle to get their main survival strategy recognised by city authorities. The demand of policy makers and local practitioners for inspiring examples of successful policies and actions in cities is therefore growing. Urban agriculture contributes to a wide variety of urban issues and is increasingly being accepted and used as a tool in sustainable city development. Currently the challenge is its integration into city planning and facilitation of its multiple benefits for urban inhabitants. This book seeks to present the current state of affairs regarding urban agriculture and sustainable urban development.

Wednesday June 21, 13.30 - 15.30 hrs.
Room MR03
The session is organized by McGill University-Canada in cooperation with RUAF partner ETC Urban Agriculture and supported by IDRC.

This panel is based on the experiences gained in the Making the Edible Landscape project, jointly implemented by the above mentioned organisations and local partners in Kampala, Colombo and Rosario.

It will explore how land can be utilized by local authorities for (1) low-cost housing for the urban poor (2) inclusion in low cost housing projects of urban food production and empowerment of citizens through participatory processes, commercialization and income-generation (3) public-private partnership for sustainable development. Four mayors, horticulturists, housing experts and community representatives from the above mentioned cities as well as from Montreal will present urban upgrading and new construction projects that include food production and where the community plays an active part in both the decision-making and the maintenance of public lands.

Leo van den Berg, Nguyen Vinh Quang and Guo Zhongxing

In: UA Magazine No. 15 - Multiple Functions of Urban Agriculture

“Seeking Synergy� is fine, but it is hard to find it. This is what the ‘SEARUSYN’ (“Seeking East Asian Rural Urban Synergy�) project in Hanoi and Nanjing has experienced over the last 2 years.

Adequate Services for sustainable urban agriculture

Henk de Zeeuw (ETC-RUAF, Leusden, The Netherlands)

This paper was published in the Annotated Bibliography on Urban Agriculture, that was produced by ETC-RUAF and published by CTA, Wageningen, the Netherlands in 2001.

Extension, Marketing and Credit Services, introduced by: Henk de Zeeuw (ETC-RUAF, Leusden, The Netherlands)

In: Annotated Bibliography on Urban Agriculture