Urban Agriculture and Food Security

ETC's work on Urban agriculture is focusing on:

• creating an enabling policy and enhancing the capacities of local public and private organisations to engage in multi-stakeholder action planning on urban agriculture
• the development of sustainable urban and peri-urban agricultural production systems (and related processing and marketing activities), and
• strengthening urban producer groups and micro-enterprises.

Background

The continuing urbanisation leads to the challenge to offer food security, work and sanitation and requires  innovative solutions (State of the World, 2007, WorldWatch). Migration to urban centres and between urban centres (nationally but also internationally) is a common part of survival strategies of the poor.

However, this rapid urbanisation process is leading to increasing urban poverty and urban food insecurity as well as increasing urban environmental problems. Most cities in the South are not able to create sufficient formal employment opportunities for the expanding population nor do they have the capacity to manage adequately the rapidly increasing amounts of urban wastes and waste water.

The somewhat classical "barrier" between rural and urban areas in combating poverty is becoming more permeable. It is increasingly recognised that urban and rural areas are linked, and that these links, when properly exploited, offer valuable chances for development in a particular region or in nation as a whole.

In the North there is a growing interest in urban agriculture, though from a different perspective than in the South. In the Netherlands, regarded as an urbanised country, multi-functional agriculture is developing rapidly. In larger cities in Southern and Eastern Europe we see an increasing interest for multistakeholder planning, multi-functional peri-urban agriculture, and “peri-urban/rural innovation”.

ETC and Urban Agriculture

ETC is playing a central role in the international arena of urban agriculture. The combination of experience on multi-functional agriculture in the North with experience on (peri-)urban agriculture in the South, is quite unique and leads to new opportunities.

To capitalise on this, ETC Advisory Group and ETC Urban Agriculture develop joint activities on multi-functional agriculture, multi-actorplanning, management of the peri-urban open spaces and rural- urban relations. In addition they build strategic partnerships with organisations in the North and South to be able to adequately reply to requests.

In the Year of Sustainable Sanitation (2008), ETC Urban Agriculture was involved in an international consortium (SUSANA) that promoted attention for urban (eco)sanitation, waste recycling and reuse of wastes in urban agriculture.

ETC is a member of the International Network of Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (the RUAF Foundation), and coordinated the RUAF programme Cities Farming for the Future. This programme built capacity in Multistakeholder Policy Formulation and Action Planning on urban agriculture in over 60 organisations (including municipal institutions, NGOs, universities and farmer organisations) in 20 cities.