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Urban agriculture
From Wikipedia, the freeencyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agricultureAn urban farm inChicago
Urban agriculture
is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing foodin, or around (
peri-urban
), avillage, town or city.
[1]
Urban farming is generally practiced for income-earning or food-producing activities though in somecommunities the main impetus is recreation and relaxation
[2]
. Urban agriculture contributes to food securityand food safetyin two ways: first, it increases the amount of food available to people living in cities, and, second, itallows fresh vegetables and fruits and meat products to be made available to urban consumers. A common andefficient form of urban agriculture is the biointensivemethod. Because urban agriculture promotes energy-saving local food production, urban and peri-urban agriculture are generally seen assustainable  practices. The recognition of environmental degradation within cities through the relocation of resources to serve urban populations
[3]
has inspired the implementation of different schemes of urban agriculture across the developedand developing world. From historic models such asMachu Picchu to designs for new productive urban farms, the idea of locating agriculture in the city takes on many characteristics. beberapa contoh pertanian kota 
An urban farm in ChicagoA vegetable garden in the square in front of the train station in Ezhou,China
History of urban agriculture
Community wastes were used in ancient Persiato feed urban farming.
[4]
InMachu Picchuwater was conservedand reused as part of the stepped architecture of the city and vegetable beds were designed to gather sun in order to prolong the growing season.
[5]
 Victory gardenssprouted during WWI, WWII and were fruit, vegetable, andherb gardens in US, Canada, and UK. This effort was undertaken by citizens to reduce pressure on food production that was to support the war effort.Community gardeningin most communities are open to the publicand provide space for citizens to cultivate plants for food or recreation. A community gardening program that iswell-established is Seattle's P-Patch.Allotment gardenscame up in Germany in the early 19th century as a response to poverty and food insecurity
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.
[edit
 
] Urban agricultural facts
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50% of the world’s population lives in cities.
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800 million people are involved in urban agriculture world-wide and contribute to feeding urbanresidents.
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Low income urban dwellers spend between 40% and 60% of their income on food each year.
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By 2015 about 26 cities in the world are expected to have a population of 10 million or more. To feed acity of this size – at least 6000 tonnes of food must be imported each day.
[10]
Perspectives on urban agriculture
Resource and economic
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has defined urban agriculture as:“ [A]n industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to the daily demand of consumers within a town, city, or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urbanarea, applying intensive production methods, using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes to yield adiversity of crops and livestock.”
[11]
The definition of urban agriculture as an industry that responds to the nutritional demands of a city, from withinthat city, with the use and reuse of that city’s resources while acknowledging economic and resource use doesnot reconcile aspects of regional health, food security, and application of grassroots organizations.
 
(This definition is based on the work of Luc Mougeot of theInternational Development Research Centre and used in technical and training publications by UN-HABITAT’s Urban Management Programme , FAO’sSpecial Programme for Food Security, and international agricultural research centres, such as CIRAD.)
[edit] Environmental
The Council on Agriculture, Science and Technology, (CAST) is an international consortium of scientific and professional societies based in Ames Iowa that compiles and communicates credible science-based informationto policy makers, media, private sector, and the public. CAST defines urban agriculture to include aspects of environmental health, remediation, and recreation,“Urban agriculture is a complex system encompassing a spectrum of interests, from a traditional core of activities associated with the production, processing, marketing, distribution, and consumption, to a multiplicityof other benefits and services that are less widely acknowledged and documented. These include recreation andleisure; economic vitality and business entrepreneurship, individual health and well-being; community healthand well being; landscape beautification; and environmental restoration and remediation.”
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Modern planning and design initiatives are more responsive to this model of urban agriculture because it fitswithin the current scope of sustainable design.The definition allows for a multitude of interpretations across cultures and time. Frequently it is tied to policy decisions to build sustainable cities.
[13]
[edit] Food security
Access to nutritious food is another perspective in the effort to locate food and livestock production in cities.With the tremendous influx of world population to urban areas, the need for fresh and safe food is increased.Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) definesfood securityas,“all persons in a community having access to culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate food through local,non-emergency sources at all times.” 
[14]
The emerging importance of urban agriculture
Economic
• UPA (urban and peri-urban agriculture) expands the economic base of the city through production, processing, packaging, and marketing of consumable products. This results in an increase in entrepreneurial activities andthe creation of job opportunities, as well as in food costs reduction and products of better quality.
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]
• UPA represents an important opportunity for women to be part of the informal economy of a city. Farmingand selling activities can be combined more easily with household tasks and child care.
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• UPA provides employment, income, and access to food for urban populations, which together contributes torelieve chronic and emergency food insecurity. Chronic food insecurity refers to less affordable food andgrowing urban poverty, while emergency food insecurity relates to breakdowns in the chain of food distribution.UPA plays an important role in making food more affordable and in providing emergency supplies of food.
[17]
Research into market values for produce grown in urban gardens has attributed to a community garden plot amedian yield value of between approximately $200 and $500 (US, adjusted for inflation).
[18]
In a communitygardening program as well-established as Seattle'sP-Patches, this can account for up to 1.25 million dollars of  produce cultivated annually.
Social
The needs of urban landscaping can be combined with those of suburban livestock farmers. (Kstovo,Russia)
Social benefits that have emerged from urban agricultural practices are; better health and nutrition, increasedincome, employment, food security within the household, and community social life. UPA can be seen as ameans of improving the livelihood of people living in and around cities. Taking part in such practices is seenmostly as informal activity, but in many cities where inadequate, unreliable, and irregular access to food is anoccurring problem, urban agriculture has been a positive response to tackling food concerns. Households andsmall communities take advantage of vacant land and contribute not only to their household food needs but alsothe needs of their resident city.
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The CFSC states that,“Community and residential gardening, as well as small-scale farming, save household food dollars. They promote nutrition and free cash for non-garden foods and other items”
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This allows families to generate larger incomes selling to local grocers or to local outdoor markets, whilesupplying their household with proper nutrition of fresh and nutritional produce.Some community urban farms can be quite efficient and help women find work, who in some cases aremarginalized from finding employment in the formal economy.
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 Studies have shown that participation fromwomen have a higher production rate, therefore producing the adequate amount for household consumptionwhile supplying more for market sale.
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Due to the fact that most UA activities are conducted on vacant municipal land, there have been rising concernsabout the allocation of land and property rights. The IDRC and the FAO have published the Guidelines for Municipal Policymaking on Urban Agriculture, and are working with municipal governments to createsuccessful policy measures that can be incorporated in urban planning.
[23]
Including UA in local plans and as
 
 proper land use will continue to help impoverished communities gain a better well-being while fighting urban poverty.Localized food production in urban and peri-urban areas contributes to local economies by creating jobs and producing valuable products. Some researchers indicate thatunemployed  populations in large citiesand suburbantowns would decrease if put to work by local food movements. Schools have foreseen the asset of local food production and are beginning to incorporate agricultural sections in their curricula and present it as acareer opportunity. Urban agricultural projects are beginning to open a newlabor market in areas that have been negatively affected by industrialoutsourcingof jobs.
[edit] Energy efficiency
The currentindustrial agriculturesystem is accountable for high energy costs for thetransportationof  foodstuffs. The average conventional produce item travels 1,500 miles
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,using, if shipped by tractor-trailer,one gallon of fossil fuel per hundred pounds
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. The energy used to transport food is decreased when urbanagriculture can provide cities with locally-grown food.
[edit] Quality of food
Although the taste of locally grown food is subjective, many participants in the urban agriculture movementreport that they prefer the taste of local agricultural products, or  organic food, to that of industrial food  production.
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citation needed 
 
]
Also, urban agriculture supports a more sustainable production of the food that tries todecrease the use of harmful pesticides that result in agricultural runoff . Urban and local farmers also eliminate the need for  preservatives, as their products do not need to travel long distances.
[edit] Economy of scale
Using high-density urban farming, as for instance with vertical farmsor stacked greenhouses, many environmental benefits can be achieved on a city-wide scale that would be impossible otherwise. These systemsdo not only provide food, but also produce potable water from waste water, and can recycle organic waste back to energy and nutrients
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. At the same time, they can reduce food-related transportation to a minimum while providing fresh food for large communities in almost any climate.
[edit
 
] Implementation of urban agriculture
[edit] Community-based infrastructure
This section includes alist of referencesor external links, but
its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations.
Please improvethis article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate.
(August 2008)
Creating a community-based infrastructure for urban agriculture means establishing local systems to grow and process food and transfer it from farmer ( producer ) toconsumer . To facilitate food production, cities have established community-based farming projects. Some projects havecollectively-tended community farms oncommon land, much like that of eighteenth-centuryBoston Common. One such community farm is theCollingwood Children's FarminMelbourne,Australia. Other community garden projects use theallotment garden model, in which gardeners care for individual plots in a larger  gardening area, often sharing a tool shed and other amenities. Seattle's P-Patchgardens use this model, as did theSouth Central Farm in Los Angeles. Independent urban gardeners also grow food in individual yards and on roofs.Roof gardensallow for urban dwellers to maintain green spaces in the city without having to set aside atract of undeveloped land. There are a growing number of projects worldwide that seek to enable cities to become 'continuous productive landscapes' through the networked cultivation of vacant urban land andtemporary or permanent 'kitchen gardens'.Food processingon a community level has been accommodated by centralizing resources in community toolsheds and processing facilities for farmers to share. The Garden Resource Program Collaborative based inDetroit has cluster tool banks. Different areas of the city have toolbanks where resources like tools, compost,mulch, tomato stakes, seeds, and education can be shared and distributed with the gardeners in that cluster.Detroit's Garden Resource Program Collaborative also strengthens their gardening community by providing totheir members transplants; education on gardening, policy, and food issues; and by building connectivity between gardeners through workgroups, potlucks, tours, field trips, and cluster workdays.Farmers' markets, such as thefarmers' market in Los Angeles, provide a common land where farmers can sell their product to consumers. Large cities tend to open their farmers markets on the weekends and one day in themiddle of the week. For example, the farmers' market of Boulevard Richard-Lenoir inParis,France, is open on Sundays and Thursdays. However, to create a consumer dependency on urban agriculture and to introduce localfood production as a sustainable career for farmers, markets would have to be open regularly. For example, theLos Angeles Farmers' Market is open seven days a week and has linked several local grocers together to providedifferent food products. The market’s central location in downtown Los Angeles provides the perfect interactionfor a diverse group of sellers to access their consumers.
[edit] Cairo, Egypt
In the meantime in Egypt, population explosion and the tendency to build on agricultural land have acted tolimit the resources of city families and their access to healthy products. With a little effort and money, rooftopscan contribute in improving the families quality of life and provide them with healthy food and raise their income, this is besides the environmental and aesthetic role it plays. While it is not new, the notion of planting
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