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

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.

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

PRA Tools for studying Urban Agriculture and Gender. This document was prepared to facilitate the gender case studies to be undertaken by the Regional RUAF centres as a training exercise and an input to the gender expert consultation. Compiled by Henk de Zeeuw and Joanna Wilbers, Resource Center on Urban Agriculture and Forestry (RUAF), april 2004.

This discussion paper was prepared as a start up of the discussions in the RUAF advisory group on gender and urban agriculture as a first step in the preparation of the planned expert consultation and as an input for the RUAF-IDRC Workshop on Gender in Urban Agriculture, held in Johannesburg, South Africa in July 2003. Author: Joanna Wilbers