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HomeLondon Mayor launches 'Capital Growth' to boost locally grown foodMayor of London Boris Johnson and Rosie Boycott, Chair of London Food, launched an innovative scheme to turn 2,012 pieces of land into thriving green spaces to grow food by 2012. Capital Growth aims to identify suitable patches of land around London and offer financial and practical support to groups of enthusiastic gardeners or organisations who want to grow food for themselves and for the local community. It is expected that a range of organisations will open up land to the scheme including borough councils, schools, hospitals, housing estates, utilities companies and parks. Boosting the amount of locally grown food in London makes economic sense at a time of rising food prices, and it also has a range of health and environmental benefits, such as improving access to UA Magazine no. 20 - Water for Urban AgricultureThe latest issue of the re-designed Urban Agriculture Magazine, no 20 "Water for Urban Agriculture", is now published online. Networking event at the World Urban Forum in NanjingThe RUAF Foundation together with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Development Research Centre, Urban Harvest, the Chinese Urban Agriculture Association and the Nanjing Agriculture and Forestry Bureau will organise a session called "Urban and peri-urban agriculture for Resilient Cities (Green, Productive and Socially Inclusive)" during the World Urban Forum of UN Habitat from 3 to 7 November. Please click here for more information on this event and find out more about the speakers, the booth and the urban agriculture tour!
Call for ContributionsPlease find here the Call for Contributions for Urban Agriculture Magazine No. 21: Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development - A role for Urban Agriculture? Distance learning courses on urban agricultureIn response to an increasing demand for training in urban agriculture, ETC-Urban Agriculture, RUAF, the Ryerson University’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education and Centre for Studies in Food Security are developing a series of distance education courses on urban agriculture in partnership with. The courses are being offered in two modalities: Accredited and Free and self-paced. For more information click here. Wastewater use in urban agriculturePlease click here to access a recent global publication by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) on wastewater use in urban agriculture called "Drivers and characteristics of wastewater agriculture in developing countries – results from a global assessment". Policy briefs on peri-urban aquaculture and urban agriculture Please go to the RUAF publications section to access the following policy briefs:
RUAF Update #10 now onlinePlease check here the latest and previous versions of the RUAF Update. Urban agriculture initiative in Central AfricaA workshop on urban agriculture, participatory governance and social inclusion was held in Bukavu (DR Congo) from 24-28 September. The workshop was organized and supported by DIOBASS (DR Congo), RUAF, Institut de la Vie, DGCD, CECODEL and CGRI (Belgium) and counted with the participation of 7 city teams made up of 3 representatives from national (2 Provincial Ministers of Agriculture) and local government representatives (2 Mayors, a vice-Mayor and a Chef of the City plan) NGOs or Community-Based Organizations and Universities from Bukavu, Butembo, Goma, Kinshasa, Kisangani and Lubumbashi (Congo) and Ngozi (Burundi) as well as with representatives from international organizations (GlobalHort, Tanzania, the African Consortium on Urban Agriculture-Cameroun and IAGU-Dakar). Most workshop participants belong to the regional urban agriculture network established in 2003. Workshop participants underlined the specific contribution urban agriculture can make to food security and livelihood development in the region, and to respond to specific needs of several vulnerable groups (schoolchildren, HIV-AIDS affected families, poor urban producers). They also identified a number of closely related key factors that prevent urban agriculture to live up to its potential, including the generally low levels of productivity, the lack of working models and knowledge on sustainable intensification of urban agriculture, the limited capacities of support organizations in areas such as technology development, planning, monitoring and evaluation, and financial services for urban agricultural development, and the low level of priority given to urban agricultural development in policy, law making and planning. Please click here to access the full workshop report. Priorities for the development of regional programmes on urban agriculture in the region were identified as: (1) the development of school gardens, and (2) the strengthening of small urban and peri-urban producers in their production, processing and marketing strategies. A project formulation committee has been put in place and agreements were made to continue promoting urban agriculture development at city, national and regional level. A virtual newsletter, informing all workshop and network participants about progress made and new activities set up, is being disseminated every 3 months. For more information, please contact: Marielle Dubbeling m.dubbeling@etcnl.nl; Sylvain Mapatano (Mapatano_s@yahoo.fr) Initiative under Way to Create North American Urban and Periurban Agriculture AllianceClick here to learn more. Website surveyWe continously seek to improve the quality of our website and value your feedback on the site. We would appreciate it if you could answer the following questions: go to survey. UA-Magazine subscriptionIf you are a subscriber to the Urban Agriculture Magazine and would like to keep your subscription, renew your subscription here. If you are not yet subscribed to the Urban Agriculture Magazine but would like to become a subscriber, subscribe here. |
