Published by City Farmer, Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture

Food Security, Urban Agriculture and Urban Management

Yves Cabannes
pgu@pgu-ecu.org
Marielle Dubbeling
marid@pgu-ecu.org
UMP-LAC/UNCHS-HABITAT/IPES New York- June 2001

Summary Of Presentation:

• Current challenges for municipal management

• Food security and municipal land use

• Reflections: land use policies, development policies and role of urban actors

Current Challenges For Municipal Management

Globalisation

• lengthening of distribution circuits mainly controlled by trans-nationals

• monetarization of local systems

• disappearance of subsistence agriculture (home consumption)

access to food for poorer populations reduced

Decentralisation

• municipalities are more and more dependent on their municipal territory as principal source of employment creation and wealth

municipal territory as basis for intervention and planning

Current Challenges For Municipal Management

New Paradigm

• food security is unequivocally linked to development of agricultural, animal and fish production, transformation and commercialisation at local level, that is to say the municipal territory.

Current Challenges For Municipal Management

Consequences For Urban Management

• the relationship between Urban Agriculture(UA) and Food Security (FS) should be better known: what is the real contribution of UA to FS?

• it is necessary to integrate FS and UA into municipal management: in both economic, social and environmental management as well as in physical planning

link with Campaign for Secure Land Tenure

• FS and UA should be integrated into normative, legal and operational instruments of cities: Strategic Plans, Zoning Plans, District Development Plans, etc.

• (strategic) investment for FS and UA should be considered (micro-credit, Strategic Investment Plans, participatory budgeting)

link with Campaign for Good Governance

Municipality And City Types And Their Urbanistion Patterns

• 100% urbanised: Manta, Ecuador

• Metropolitan Area: 40% urbanised: Quito, Ecuador

• 30% urbanised: Santo André, Brazil

Food Security And Land Use Management

Potential Areas Within The City

Santiago de los Cabelleros, Domin. Rep.

• Agricultural land use occupies 16% of the total urban (inner and peri-urban) area of Santiago

• is considered a potential land-use for another 20% of the (still vacant) area,

• and is thus the third important soil use after residential and vacant land use.

• Agricultural land use is "on the move" (relocation), but does not disappear with urban growth (PUCMM/CEUR, 1999)

Quito, Ecuador

• 35% of the urban area of Quito is non-built up area

• however quality and quantity of potential agricultural land is not known (Pers. Comm. D. Carrion, Dept. of Urban Planning)

  Potential Areas Within The City

• Non-built up areas that are not suitable for construction

  • electricity lines, river borders, wetlands, potential risk areas (steep slopes)
    
    

• Water and waste treatment areas

• Green spaces

  • parks, avenues, public squares

  • 1 million trees have been planted in Porto Alegre; 3.5 million are being planted in Quito, but generally these are not productive species
  
  

• Institutional private areas

  • hospitals, schools, churches, graveyards

  
  

• Private areas
  
  

  • gardens, back-yards, patios (the conventional UA areas)

  • rooftops, balconies, kitchens

  
  
  
  

• (Agricultural) land under urban pressure
  
  

  • community, private or public land

  • temporary vacant construction lots

  
  

• Ecological protection areas within urban territories
  
  

  • for example protection of water harvest areas

Type of land use

• temporary versus permanent land use

• uni- versus multi-functional land use

• Recycling, Production (food, non-food), Transfomation and Commercialisation

Cuenca

Reflections: Land Use Policies

Need to elaborate framework:

.

	Private	Public
Land not suitable for construction	.	.
Waste or water treatment areas	.	.
Green Spaces	x	.
Private instituional areas	.	.
Private areas	.	x
(Agricultural) areas under urban pressure	Tax exemption	Zoning - Symbolic rents
Ecological reserve areas	.	control land use

Policy:

• Change use (zoning plans)

• Protect use (control and norms)

• Stimulate use (symbolic rents; property tax discount or exemption)

• Intensify use

Type Of Land Use And Development Policies

• Environmental protection and tree-planting policies

• Waste(water) treatment programmes linked to UA

• Facilitating policies:

  • Fiscal policies

  • Micro-credit programmes

  • Access to research and technology

  • Input supply and product distribution
  
  

• Administrative reforms: municipal decentralisation, formation of municipal UA programmes

Type Of Land Use And Development Policies

Need to elaborate framework:

.	Recycling	Production	Transformation	Commercialisation
.	.	Agic-Anim-Fish	.	.
Social	.	.	.	Cons.-prod. linkages
Economic	.	Input supply	Credit	.
Environmental	Education	Waste-water	.	.

NB: Define role of municipality and other actors

Encouraging:

• The inclusion of Urban Agriculture within territorial planning processes as an element for the multiple-use of land and environmental protection.

• The development of credit and financial policies and instruments for Urban Agriculture, with special emphasis on the most vulnerable producers, to supplement technical assistance programs.

• Research, dissemination, awareness-raising and training in the alternative and efficient use of water; and regulations and agreements on the sanitary use of household waste water.

(Quito Declaration: 40 cities)

Texcoco

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