Category — Latin America

The Tap Tap Garden is Haiti’s largest urban garden containing more than 500 brightly painted tire gardens

Bochika press release
Jan. 2012

The “Jaden Tap Tap” urban agroecology and youth empowerment program was inaugurated on January 22, 2012. Nearly 600 individuals and organizations joined in this celebration of possibility and progress in Cite Soleil, Haiti, sponsored by Bochika with special guest BelO.

PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI – Bochika is pleased to announce that the “Jaden Tap Tap” (Tap Tap Garden) urban community garden was proudly inaugurated on January 22, 2012 in Cite Soleil, Haiti. The Tap Tap Garden is Haiti’s largest urban garden containing more than 500 brightly painted tire gardens, flower garden, and a nursery of 1,000 trees. Nearly 600 community members, NGO’s, and government officials joined Bochika, SAKALA-Pax Christi Ayiti, and SOIL in celebrating the inauguration of the garden, as well as a new community Eco-San Toilet. The crowd was delighted to participate in the daylong event that featured a “farmers market”, agricultural demonstrations, musical and dance performances by local youth, and special appearance by internationally recognized Haitian recording artist, BelO.

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Elide Bartole uses her balcony to grow vegetables and herbs for her family and neighbors. Photo by PWRDF.

A Growing Balcony

By Simon Chambers
The Primate’s World Relief and Development Fund
Dec 23, 2011

Excerpt:

Elide Barthole is lucky to still be living in her home in Carrefour, Haiti. Over half the homes in her community were destroyed in the 2010 earthquake. Elide’s home looks somewhat unique, however, among those houses still standing in the area: it has no open land around it, but her balcony is surrounded by greenery.

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The first “organoponico” or urban market garden I saw was in Santa Clara, in the centre of Cuba. Three people work there and they sell all their produce from a stall in the front of the garden, which occupies a formerly vacant city lot. Photo by David Stott.

Watch Out Folks, Look What’s Coming Down the Street: Reflections on Cuba, the Global Food Situation and Victoria, BC

By David Stott
2011, Victoria, BC
David Stott is a community garden organizer and food security projects coordinator. Prior to working in this field he spent twenty years working in the international development and development education fields.

When most of us think of Cuba we tend to think of sun, sand, great music or Fidel Castro. However, when I spent a month in Cuba in January of this year, I had other ideas in mind. As a local organic farmer turned garden projects organizer for the last 20 years or so, I have a particular personal interest in Cuba and its role in sustainable agriculture, particularly in urban areas. What I learned there, and since I have returned, has caused me to open my eyes not only to food production in Cuba, but also to what is happening elsewhere on the planet and here at home. Where we are at now and where we could be going with global and local food production and availability, something that most Canadians have either taken for granted or left to “the experts”. After all, we’re an advanced country that will always be able to feed itself, right?

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Urban and peri-urban agriculture currently counts 400 ‘brigade members’

Caracas,Venezuela
AVN
19 Dec. 2011

8415 ‘agricultural production units’ have been established as part of an urban peri-urban agriculture project in the Greater Caracas area, according to figures released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAT).

The project of urban and peri-urban agriculture seek to take advantage of idle areas inside cities to produce small scale horticultural, fruit, medicinal and ornamental crops, so as to foster family and community self-supply and micro-economy.

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Link here to watch the video report.
El Centro de Agricultura Urbana La Romita promueve zonas de cultivo dentro de las ciudades. Fuente: Azteca Noticias. 06 de julio de 2011.

Haz tu propia ensalada

Jueves 31 De Marzo De 2011

Excerpt:

El próximo sábado 2 de abril, el grupo Sembradores Urbanos, en la Ciudad de México, inicia el taller Ensaladas Urbanas, una muy antojable propuesta inspirada, de acuerdo con sus organizadores, en los principios de la permacultura para cultivar y cosechar ensaladas orgánicas en espacios reducidos. A través de este taller, se pueden aprender sobre las variedades de cultivos comunes y gourmet para mezclas de ensaladas sabrosas, nutritivas y coloridas.

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Estimated harvest figures show over nine hundred pounds of tomatoes, 330 pounds cucumber, 250 pounds of sweet peppers, 120 okras and large amounts of cilantro and habanero pepper.

LoveFM Belize
July 08, 2011

Six months after the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries introduced the Urban Agriculture Program in South side Belize City, families have been able to literally reap the fruits of their labor. These backyard vegetable gardens have been the foundation for which over fifty five families, approximately three hundred residents have benefitted. An award ceremony that marked the completion of phase one of the productive cycle was held this afternoon at the Cumberbatch Field.

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Bogotá, Columbia

Familias de sectores populares de Bogotá intentan garantizar su seguridad alimentaria mientras proyectos milagro al interior de sus comunidades, los cuales consisten en el desarrollo de nuevos modelos urbanos de agricultura.

Picture image above. See video here.

Video report

January 27, 2011

CNN’s Richard Quest reports on Mexico City’s example of growing your own food in small city space.

See video here.

From The Earth To The Pot from The Paradigm Shift Project on Vimeo.

Video is 20 minutes long. Go to Vimeo to watch it in a larger format, which will make the subtitles easier to read.

From The Earth To The Pot

by The Paradigm Shift Project
Highly recommended. Mike

Among many of Lima’s slum neighborhoods, urban agriculture projects have increasingly become a strategy to improve food security and make communities safer and greener. Community gardening programs throughout Lima are generating greater access to fresh nutritious food, thereby helping to break cycles of poverty and hunger. For this film The Paradigm Shift Project interviewed non-profit organizations; several community garden members and urban farmers; researchers from local nutritional and agricultural institutes; as well as local municipal authorities.

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Compromiso Social: Huertas Comunitarias

Complete paper in Spanish.
Licenciatura en Administración Agropecuaria y Agronegocios
Orientación en Gestión de Agronegocios. Sede: Rosario.
Alumnos:
Campodimontti, Marcos.
Carrasco, Danisa.
Del Greco, Damián.
Sarjanovich, Juan Pablo.
Junio de 2007

El presente trabajo, uno de nuestros últimos pasos en nuestra formación profesional, surge de la necesidad de conocer un poco mas nuestro entorno. Concientes ya de que lo que vemos y percibimos no es todo lo que nos rodea. Necesitados de un panorama mas amplio de visión, es que hoy nos encontramos desarrollando una pequeña investigación sobre las Huertas de la Ciudad de Rosario.

Este trabajo no pretender dar cuenta de todo lo que el Programa de AU (agricultura urbana) significa, ni entrar en los detalles de sus actividades teóricas o practicas.

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Link to Sembradores Urbanos.

Mexico City is one of the biggest urban centers in the world

By Pablo Torres-Lima, Alfonso Chávez-Muñoz, Gerardo Ávila-Jiménez and Sergio Contreras-Prado
The Journal of Feild Actions
Field Actions Sceince Reports
Special Issue 1, 2010, Urban Agriculture

Abstract

Planning land use processes are indispensable for designing policies and activities in peri-urban areas, above all because of the impact of the conversion of agricultural land for urban purposes and the possibility of reducing poverty and assuring the food supply. In Latin America, there are a limited number of studies which discuss institutional involvement and proposals for participative and multi-sector planning with the aim of generating viable conditions for urban agriculture in megacities, within the framework of sustainable development. This article analyzes the principal components of a planning process which promotes the development of agricultural production zones in Xochimilco-Tlahuac, Mexico City.

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Lettuce Entertain You, Chicago Botanic Garden Style. Photo By Gary Slack.

‘The Potential for Greater Urban Agricultural Collaboration Between the North and South and the many Benefits this Could Yield’

By J.MacPhee
A Dissertation submitted for
MSc in Urban Design
University of Edinburgh
School of Architecture
Edinburgh College of Art
2010

Question:
“How does the socio?economic impact of Urban Agriculture viewed through its implementation and management compare in a developed and developing
urban centre: Chicago and Sao Paulo?”

Abstract:
This research uses the case study methodology to compare the feasibility, implementation and development of Urban Agriculture in the developing South (Sao Paulo) and the developed North (Chicago). A literature review examines the existing knowledge as a basis for the ensuing case studies and evaluations. Areas explored include political receptivity, land usage trends, community empowerment and food security to name a few.

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A Technical Advisory Committee concluded its 3-day sitting and short-listed 45 submissions from the 387 received from 90 countries

Zawya.com
04 November 2010

An independent jury of international experts has announced the 12 winners of the Dubai International Award for Best Practices to Improve the Living Environment (DIABP) at its eighth cycle. Dubai will host a special ceremony to distribute prizes at the end of this year.

This came at a news conference held by the Municipality on Thursday, attended by Eng. Hussain Nasser Lootah, Director General of Dubai Municipality, Mr. Obaid Salem Al Shamsi, Assistant Director General for International Affairs and Partnership Sector and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of DIABP, Dr. Diana Lee-Smith, Chairperson of the International Jury of the award and Ms. Wandia Seaforth, Chief of Best Practices Programme, UN-HABITAT.

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Learning to Garden in Haiti. Photo by walkingwithward2009.

13,000 Haitian families currently work with 23 agronomists in the “ti jaden òganik” (Creole for “small organic garden”)

By Jane Regan and Marcela Valente
IPS
Oct. 22, 2010

Excerpt:

BUENOS AIRES/PORT AU PRINCE, Oct 22, 2010 (IPS) – Neither hurricanes nor floods, nor the devastating January earthquake or Haiti’s chronic political instability managed to wipe out the organic gardening initiative underway in that country since 2005. The seed was planted in Argentina twenty years ago.

Some 13,000 Haitian families (90,000 people in all) currently work with 23 agronomists in the “ti jaden òganik” (Creole for “small organic garden”) project, growing their own food. The goal is to engage one million people in this form of production.

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Image by Melissa Garcia Lamarca

Urban farmers provide the only source of organic produce in the region

By Melissa Garcia Lamarca
The Polis Blog
Sept. 15, 2010

Excerpt:

Rosario, located in the province of Santa Fe about 300 kilometres northeast of Buenos Aires, was a city that suffered greatly during Argentina’s 2001 economic crisis, with poverty levels reaching almost 20% by 2003. One of the responses of the city’s Socialist government was the creation of an Urban Agriculture Office, in the Solidarity Economy Department, initiating an extensive programme across the city that enabled people to grow their own food. Slowly the programme expanded and improved, with the Office serving as a meeting place for people to come and ask for a plot of land in their neighbourhood to grow food, receive seeds as well as the infrastructural, technical and social support they needed to set up or join a garden plot.

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Abalimi Bezekhaya – Harvest of the Hope. Cape Town (South Africa), the business “Harvest of Hope” is selling 170-200 boxes of mixed vegetables a week. Urban Producer Field Schools emphasize the identified weaknesses of production planning, quality control, and pack shed management. This project won the Impumelelo Sustainability Award for 2010

RUAF Update 15 – July 2010

Excerpt:

RUAF from Seed to Table programme

In the past months, the producers who participate in the urban agricultural businesses that are supported by RUAF in 17 cities, have started to harvest and market their first products. Please find some of the experiences described below. All groups have analysed the results from the first production cycle(s) and identified on the improvements to be made in the second production and marketing cycle, which lessons are included in the second round of Urban Producer Field School sessions. New sessions will give for example more attention to Integrated Pest Management, post-harvest technologies and negotiations with buyers.

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Edible Landscape Tools

Minimum Cost Housing Greoup
McGill University, 2005
The project team was formed by the following McGill staff: Prof. Vikram Bhatt, Rune Kongshaug, Prof. Jeanne Wolfe, Francois Emond, Clara Murgueitio, and McGill students: Jingfeng Cai, Lorena Rodriguez, Amal Jamal, Faiza Moatasim, Felipe Ochoa, Shannon Pirie, Li Ran, Yalda Rastegar, Guy Villemure and Nicholas Vreeland.

Making the Edible Landscape is a three-city project with the core objective of integrating Urban Agriculture as a permanent element in low-cost housing settlements. These three participating cities are: Columbo, Sri Lanka; Kampala, Uganda; and Rosario, Argentina. From existing settlements upgrading to the new urban developments in the partner cities, the project intends on applying UA as a subsistence resource for personal consumption and income generation.

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Growing fruit and vegetables in and around cities increases the supply of fresh, nutritious produce and improves the urban poor’s economic access to food

FAO urban projects in: Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burundi, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Namibia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Senegal, Venezuela. Details here.

Excerpt:

Fruit and vegetables are the richest natural sources of micronutrients. But in developing countries, daily fruit and vegetable consumption is just 20-50 percent of FAO/World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations. Urban meals rich in low-cost fats and sugars are also responsible for rising levels of obesity and overweight. In India, diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes, are a growing health problem, and mainly in urban areas.

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University of Miami student Camille Kremer, right, and Florida International University student Ann Marie Warmenhoven are honored by Clinton. “You really do have the power to change the world, and you don’t have to be wealthy to do it,” Clinton told an audience of more than 5,200 people, most of them students, who had gathered at the arena for the opening plenary address of his Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) meeting.

Rasin Lavil Bay Lavi (Urban Roots Give Life) Haiti

Clinton used the Commitment to Action to honour two students to inspire the audience. Urban Roots Give Life, a project of Camille Kremer and Ann Marie Warmenhoven, will establish sustainable urban gardens in Shada, Cap-Hatien, providing a source of local, homegrown food for a nation that imports half of the food it consumes despite having fertile soil.

Their project is especially important to Cap-Hatien, Clinton said, because the region has experienced a massive influx of internal refugees who fled Port-au-Prince in search of better living conditions after the quake destroyed much of the capital’s infrastructure.

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Brazilian Estevao Silva da Conceicao jokes with his daughter at the garden of his house at Paraisopolis favela in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Photo by Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images

Opinion: Let’s hear it for urban agriculture

By Sara Franklin
GlobalPost
March 29, 2010

Excerpt:

In the sprawling megalopolis of Sao Paulo, Brazil, I recently witnessed how a humble NGO is quietly transforming an entire region of the city by building micro-enterprises out of organic farms and gardens.

Sao Paulo is the world’s third largest metropolitan area, trailing only Tokyo and Mexico City in size. In recent decades, Sao Paulo has grown at an alarming rate. As big agribusinesses buy up land that has historically been used for subsistence agriculture, rural Brazilians — particularly those in the northeast — are displaced from their homes and forced to migrate toward cities, particularly those in the more prosperous southern part of the country.

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