Making cities sustainable with urban agriculture

To reduce the pressure on the world's productive land and to help assure long-term food security, writes Herbert Girardet, city people are well advised to revive urban or peri-urban agriculture. While large cities will always have to import some food, local food growing is a key component of sustainable urban living

We need to find efficient and environmentally enhancing ways of feeding ourselves. To this end we need to initiate new processes of 'ecological densification' - making good, well considered use of limited areas of land - to meet increased food demands by increasing numbers of people.

In many countries large minorities of people grow food in and around cities. In countries where rural-urban migration is prevalent, many people become urban and peri-urban food producers, on a full or part-time basis.

According to the UNDP, some 800 million people were engaged in urban agriculture worldwide in 1999. Of these, 200 million were thought to be market producers, with 150 million people employed full time.

Cities such as Havana, Accra, Dar-es-Salaam and Shanghai have been studied extensively. But in thousands of other cities people are also quietly getting on with producing food.

Urban agriculture in developing countries can greatly contribute to urban food security, improved nutrition, poverty alleviation and local economic development. In developed countries it can contribute to the reduction of 'food miles' - with local distribution via farmers' markets and specialised shops.

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