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Question: Urban Agriculture: Definition, Presence, Potentials and Risks, and Policy Challenges

Answer: We must work harder to bring Urban Agriculture (UA) to its conceptual maturity; only with
greater internal coherence and external functionality will it turn into a distinctive and useful tool
for us to understand and intervene. Key features of current definitions of UA generally have
downplayed a critical trait that makes UA to be urban, different and complementary of rural
agriculture in local food systems: its integration into the local urban economic and ecological
system. Unless this dimension is enhanced and made operational, the concept will remain little
useful on the scientific, technology and policy fronts.
On the ground, UA is growing out of its ability to assist with resolving or coping with diverse
development challenges. It is spurred by a complex web of factors still little understood, not the
least of which are urban poverty and food insecurity. Little attention in particular has been paid to
the women who tend to predominate in UA, an activity which connects well not only with their
care-taking and house-holding roles, but also increasingly with their need for income. UA
practitioners can be categorized variously, based on a combination of tenure modality, time
allocation and product destination. Differences are further observed across regions of the world,
in terms of prevailing UA production systems and associated problems.
Official support to UA is age-old, has been diverse and can be organised into several types of
interventions, often combined in a single city. Access to resources, land in particular, is central;
access is more often an issue than availability per se. But UA production systems have
diversified and producers have adapted to cope with these and other urban constraints and
opportunities.
We must better understand how urban food systems work if we want to comprehensively assess
and promote UA's role and impact on the welfare of particular rural and urban communities. UA
tends to develop to complement rural and foreign sources of food supply to cities. It has been
promoted to effectively do so and is important to strengthening poor urban households' food
security in particular.
Despite limited support and heavy losses, UA is generating products valued in the tens of
millions of USD, year in and year out, in major LDC urban centers. UA is comparatively
affordable, a noteworthy source of income and savings and is more profitable than rural-based
production. The up and downstream effects of UA in the local economy are largely unknown and
could be considerable. Low-income UA effectively contributes in several ways to reduce food
insecurity by improving food intake of households and by raising children's nutritional status;
this relationship could be gender-mediated.
There is little literature overtly condemning UA under any form; opposition has tended to come
more from urban planning, public health and environmental circles than from agencies covering
employment, community services and agriculture. Governmental checks and balances exist and
have been applied to a limited extent. Regulations have remained largely ineffective and must be
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revised, priorised and implemented in an appropriate and participatory way; they need to be
enabling. Concern over agrochemical use in UA tends to be exaggerated; actual use and related
problems are limited by various factors, particularly in the case of intra-urban, home-based,
women-practiced, food self-provisioning. More information seems to exist on evidence and on
measures to curb public health risks posed to UA by ambient factors, as opposed to risks
introduced by UA into the urban environment. Still, the latter is a source of rising governmental
concern. In both cases problems are technically manageable; however, this depends on cities
making better use of prevention and mitigating measures, including trans-sectoral coordination
(waste management) and the use of UA to enhance environmental quality.
Several trends underway will buttress the growth of UA worldwide and in LDCs in particular.
Risks and benefits must be addressed through active policy-making and doing. So far, UA
development has been assisted largely by actors in urban politics and agricultural policy circles,
for poverty alleviation and food security. This measure of support now is insufficient to deal with
the growing risks and benefits posed by the expansion of UA in LDCs. A fuller integration of UA
into the urban eco-system requires that urban planners, public health and environmental
management actors join in with others committed so far. Areas of intervention at the community,
city, national and international levels are identified, where more efforts should concentrate
relative to recent progress. More needs to be done by actors on the national and internal planes
that will help communities and cities to capitalize on their collective experience and to integrate
UA into the city organism in a fairer, more viable and sustainable way.

(Source: , 23 Sep 2021)

Source Link: https://idl-bnc-idrc.dspacedirect.org/bitstream/handle/10625/26429/117785.pdf?sequence=12.%20