Is Urban Horticulture a Solution?

Is Urban Horticulture a Solution?

By Dr Arvind Kumar

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and many other international and local institutions are disseminating the message - that micro-gardening and other forms of urban horticulture can go a long way to boosting city dwellers' food security and improving living conditions. This message has come from an international symposium in Dakar organized by FAO and the Senegalese government at Dakar from 6 to 9 December 2010. About 200 people from 39 countries participated to talk about building an international network to promote and implement urban horticulture, incorporating the practice into urban planning, and developing alternatives to pesticides. Urban and peri-urban horticulture is the cultivation of a wide range of crops - including fruits, vegetables, roots, tubers and ornamental plants - in cities and towns and the surrounding areas. FAO says an estimated 130 million urban residents in Africa and 230 million in Latin America engage in agriculture, mainly horticulture, to provide food for their families and/or earn an income.

About half the world population lives in urban areas, according to the UN Population Fund; the number is expected to reach some five billion by 2030. According to FAO, "While the urban poor, particularly those arriving from rural areas, have long practised horticulture as a livelihood and survival strategy, in many countries the sector is still largely informal, usually precarious, and sometimes illegal." Urban farming should be advocated as a strategy to combat malnutrition, disease and poverty, and urban infrastructure should favour the development of horticulture, for example, through land-use planning and better irrigation and drainage systems.