Category — Latin America

Urban agriculture in central Caracas. Photo by Leo Ramírez.

In the Puerta Verde neighborhood, residents created a garden where retirees and volunteers care for flowers and vegetables.

By Teresa García Alcaraz
Polis
April 9, 2013

Excerpt:

San Agustín, a parish in Caracas, Venezuela, is known for open plots of land where the hillside is too steep for habitation. A group of activists led by artist Natalya Critchley and Rogue Architecture has been working there with school children on urban development projects. Based on a study of local terrain, they’ve started building garden plots for fresh produce to help reduce the burden of an extremely high cost of living.

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Brazilian home has wall of food growing in pop bottles

By Christopher
This is Colossal
February 20, 2013

Excerpt

As part of an innovative partnership called Home Sweet Home (Lar Doce Lar) between multidisciplinary design firm Rosenbaum and TV producer Luciano Huck, the teams went through dozens of Brazilian homes doing dramatic makeovers of interior and exterior spaces. On their 48th home Rosenbaum designed a pretty amazing vertical garden that was suspended in a narrow walkway just outside the house. Reponse to the garden was so huge the firm quickly released design schematics (in Portugese) detailing how to build one. A huge thanks to the team at Rosenbaum for sharing these photos with Colossal!

Link here.

Brazilian children at city farm. Photo by Marcos Victorino. Click image for larger size.

Agricultura Urbana y Periurbana como herramienta para la seguridad alimentaria y el desarrollo municipal

E-learning course on Urban Agriculture at the Municipal Level held, since 2009, at the virtual platform of the FAO – Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean. Note: Contents are in Spanish.

120 horas / 12 semanas. El participante debe dedicar al curso entre 8 y 10 horas de trabajo semanal.

El curso aporta toda la experiencia acumulada en la FAO para la formación de capacidades al interior de las instituciones públicas para la formulación y ejecución de programas integrales de agricultura urbana y periurbana y seguridad alimentaria y nutricional en los municipios de la región.

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Video is in French but there are English subtitles. Go to YouTube by clicking on the YouTube icon in the right corner above. Then click on the ‘CC’ in the menu bar beneath the video and select ‘English’.

Agriculture Urbaine – ProDAs — Urban agriculture – Agricultura urbana

By Jordi Hubert, Benoît Allard, Gaëtan Allard
The Ekidina organization
January, 2013

Découvrez dans ce documentaire, filmé en Bolivie, les conséquences de l’extension urbaine sur l’environnement et l’alimentation et une des solutions pour y remédier : l’agriculture urbaine. Embarquez dans un voyage inédit et suivez les acteurs d’une agriculture hors du commun.

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Jose and Compost Students with over 80 bags of compost. Lo de Marcos is a small town of some 3,000 people one hour north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Photo by Amigos de Lo de Marcos.

Jardin de Composta in Los De Marcos

Piles of yard waste no longer sit on the streets of Lo De Marcos. Burning of yard waste no longer pollutes the air. As well residents of the town receive a small income from selling the finished compost. Students at the local schools are involved in the compost process and the community garden.

Excerpt from Recycle Committee Report
November 2012 – Amigos de Lo de Marcos

Compost is being screened and bagged every Saturday morning by our compost students (Beto, Neto, Fernando, Adrian, Francisco, and Esteban). Last Saturday, they filled more than 80 bags in 4 hours.

55 bags of Compost Futures have been redeemed – 125 bags remain to be redeemed. Your compost futures may be redeemed on Wednesday or Saturday mornings at the Compost Lot.

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This project improved the nutritional food security of 6000 people who participated

Global Horticulture Initiative
30th May 2012

Excerpt:

During the project 1,075 family orchards were selected in different periurban colonies (Los Pinos, Villanueva, Monte de los Olivos Trees and Nueva Suyapa), using the methodology based on the training manual “A Kitchen Garden for All” in 6 cycles of two months each. Six CDCs in urban areas and 1 in rural area were settled on as Units of Technology Transfer that operated as education-learning and integration spaces for the families. At the end of the project 79.1% of the gardens (850 family gardens) were active. The main reason for this (as declared by project participants) was the supply in healthy food made available at homes.

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The project provides welcome jobs for the city’s farmers, many of whom work in the watery southern district of Xochimilco.

The Economist
Oct 27th 2012

Excerpt:

The 21 million residents of Mexico City have far too much rubbish and not enough healthy food. Now they can swap one for the other. A new monthly market run by the city government takes paper, glass, plastic and aluminium in return for tokens that can be swapped for locally grown food and plants. Since it began in March the “Barter Market” in Chapultepec park has exchanged 140 tonnes of rubbish for 60 tonnes of produce.

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Estela Lopez and her husband, Sergio Hernandez, grow fruits, vegetables and lavender in a rooftop garden in Mexico City. Photo by Tim Johnson/MCT.

Mexico City has advantages. Residents can tend gardens 12 months out of the year, and a generous four-month rainy season lessens pressure on water resources.

By Tim Johnson
McClatchy Newspapers
Oct 19, 2012

Excerpt:

MEXICO CITY — Climb to a rooftop and scan the horizon of this metropolis, and you’re likely to see nearby rooftops or balconies with vegetable gardens.

Urban rooftop gardening is on the cusp of a boom here, sponsored by a City Hall that sees gardening as a way to alleviate poverty, provide residents with their own healthy food and add some green to one of the world’s most populous cities.

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The grass is almost all gone and we can see the fence at the back now! On the other side of that fence we’ve painted our community noticeboard. Photo by Tamara Pearson.

CIARA (Training and Innovationto Support the Agricultural Revolution)

By Tamara Pearson
Venezuelanalysis.Com
Oct 19, 2012

Excerpt:

With the help of the government, our community council La Columna, in the Andean city of Merida, began a project of urban agriculture so that we can grow food free of agro-chemicals in a way that doesn’t damage the land, recycle organic waste in our composter, contribute to national food sovereignty, and start to break down alienation in our community.

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Luiz Alberto de Jesus with the newly sown planters on his balcony in the Babilônia favela. Photo by abíola Ortiz/IPS.

Organic agriculture is a growing trend in big cities around the world, including Latin America, and now the favelas of Brazil are no exception.

By Fabiola Ortiz
Additional reporting by Humberto Márquez and Estrella Gutiérrez (Caracas) and Patricia Grogg (Havana).
IPS News Service
RIO DE JANEIRO
Sep 25 2012

Excerpt:

This means that urban agriculture is both a “strategy of emancipation” and a significant means of improving the quality of life in cities, said Hélio Tomaz Rocha, the coordinator of urban and peri-urban agriculture at the Brazilian National Secretariat for Food and Nutrition Security.

Rocha advocates the planting of urban gardens in vacant lots in metropolitan areas, which are otherwise used as dumping grounds, for the establishment of slum housing, or for real estate speculation.

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1865 photograph shows two fruit and vegetable vendors in Mexico City.

Local, Slow, and on the Street

By Devon G. Peña
New Clear Vision
Oct 12, 2012
Devon G. Peña, Ph.D., is a lifelong activist in the environmental justice and resilient agriculture movements, and is Professor of American Ethnic Studies, Anthropology, and Environmental Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Excerpt:

When I see this photograph, something entirely different comes to mind. It is not poverty that I see, but abundance, culture, and right livelihood. The photograph tells me that Mexicans have done local, slow and deep food for a long time. We have practiced urban agriculture from the start and farming in the backyard and on rooftops as well as food vending in sidewalk and plaza markets have been standard activities in the city since the time of the Colhua Mexica (Aztecs).

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Mamans Lumières from the municipality of Moron teach other local mothers about healthy child nutrition. Photo FAO/C. Deligia.

Haiti’s “Mamans Lumières” cast a light over the shadow of malnutrition

FAO
25/09/2012

Excerpt:

In the municipality of Moron, situated in the isolated Grand’Anse Department of Haiti, a group of women are making their way towards their shared community garden – a space that has been set up with the help of FAO and its partners, including the French NGO Médecins du Monde, the German Red Cross and various local NGOs.

The community garden has become a neighborhood hub — buzzing with activity — where the women farm together, but also regularly attend classes, workshops and practical trainings on how to make informed nutritional choices and improve their production of crops and small livestock.

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Margarita García, SEDEREC’s sub-director of special projects and business liaison: “We all have the right to a fresh, organic food source. Of course it’s primarily about growing produce, but urban agriculture also helps create green spaces within the community.” Photo by Peter Noyce.

Organizations promote healthier eating habits by training and supporting urban farmers in Mexico City.

By Peter Noyce
Infosurhoy.com
03/09/2012

Excerpt:

While at first glance Mexico City might not seem like a space conducive to the cultivation of food and plants, it is, in fact, surprisingly accommodating.

“It is an incredible place for urban agriculture,” Lukac said. “It has a luxurious climate, and there are many large, flat roofs that serve as perfect spaces to plant.”

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Unidad de Producción en el Centro de Caracas. Al Lado Del Hotel Alba Caracas Funciona Una De Las Unidades. (foto: Omar Sierra)

Urban agriculture is one of the strategies promoted by the government of President Hugo Chavez to increase food supply, combat poverty, recover urban spaces and reduce environmental effects caused by the use of agrochemicals.

Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the U.S.
TECHNICAL: Urban agriculture in Venezuela
August 2012 (in Spanish)

Excerpts:

Food Sovereignty is the “power of states to define their own agricultural and food policies according to objectives of sustainable development and food security” – La Via Campesina, 1996

Achievements (translated by Google)

With a total investment of USD 44 billion by the national government, now in Venezuela, is produced at a low cost and nationwide: onion, sweet pepper, leek, basil, celery, eggplant, zucchini, cucumber, cilantro, lettuce, tomato, radish, beets and green beans in spaces promoted by urban agriculture. By July 2012, there were 26,296 agricultural production units (UPA) from home gardens, community, institutional and school, in 10 states of the country prioritized (Anzoategui, Aragua, Carabobo, Distrito Capital, Lara, Miranda, Monagas, Tachira, Vargas and Zulia), rising food production of 457.9 tonnes in 2009-6340 201,216 tons in May.

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Mate plant, or Yerba mate.

“In 1998, two scientific missions to Belem, Amazonia, have registered ninety seven species in the home gardens.” Paper in Spanish

By Isabel Maria Madaleno
Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical
Isabelmadaleno8@gmail.com
Paper presented at The Association of Spanish Geographers, Urban Geography group, 9-14 July conference 2012. Galicia and North of Portugal.

Excerpt translated to English: Conclusions

The 20th century succeeding financial crisis, which number and cycle only increased in the 21st, constituted an excellent opportunity for all Latin American citizens to organize themselves in order to produce fresh food and to grow medicinal herbs in their home gardens, to mitigate pains and aches. To the urban agriculture plots whose produce they use in case of mild and chronic diseases, they add the collection of wild herbs on vacant lots, peri-urban farms and rural areas.

The compelling necessity to decrease the trade deficits and the sovereign debts led to the destruction of the national health care systems, worldwide. This fact, together with the decrease of the natural resources available to feed an increasing population, gave path to a widening gap between the rich and the poor in the last decade, and explains why the medicinal species are widely grown in front and backyards, as I’ve been observing in the last fifteen years, in Latin America.

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Unable to grow enough food to feed its population and facing soaring prices for imported goods, the Venezuelan government has opted for an ingenious solution – turning any disused space in cities into allotments where the urban poor can grow their own food

See more at FAO here.

15 beds, each 15 feet in length. In Portuguese.

A salada vem do telhado

Quer umas verduras? Vá buscar lá no telhado. O agrônomo Marcos Victorino, vem desenvolvendo projetos de hortas sobre telhas em espaços pouco valorizados da metrópole, como lajes, quintais e terrenos de imóveis comerciais e residenciais. As hortas foram plantadas em varios locais da cidade de São Paulo, como exemplo na foto acima, no campus da Faculdade Cantareira, no bairro do Belém-São Paulo Capital, sobre uma laje no telhado.

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Urban agriculture in Caracas (Patriagrande).

President Hugo Chavez approved a further Bs 97.6 million (US$ 22.7 million) to support urban agriculture.

By Tamara Pearson
Venezuelanalysis.com
Mérida, May 9th 2012

Excerpts:

Venezuelan Vice-president and minister for land and agriculture, Elias Jaua, said over the weekend that the program is also aiming to create 21,000 more productive units dedicated to urban agriculture this year, as well as 125 greenhouses, 44 nurseries, 16 artisanal seed units for producing certified seeds, 6 organic fertiliser units, and 40 aquaculture (water farming) units. So far, 19,000 urban agriculture units have been constructed, and these include family, community, and school gardens.

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Cooperative member Rosinéia Soares displays the aubergines growing in her garden in Parque Genesiano da Luz. Photo by Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS.

The visit to the cooperative was one of the field trips organised by World Nutrition Rio 2012, an international nutrition congress organised in Rio de Janeiro Apr. 27-30 by the World Public Health Nutrition Association and the Brazilian Association of Collective Health.

By Fabiana Frayssinet
Inter-Press Service
MAy 2, 2012

Excerpt:

NOVA IGUAÇU, Brazil – Women in one of the poorest neighbourhoods of this city 40 km north of Rio de Janeiro no longer have to spend money on vegetables, because they have learned to grow their own, as organic urban gardening takes off in Brazil.

The land here is not fertile, like it is in the hilly region of the state of Rio de Janeiro that supplies the city’s markets. And the climate is sometimes too hot for vegetables to grow without stress or pests.

But in the poor neighbourhood of Parque Genesiano da Luz in the city of Nova Iguaçu, local women can now proudly say they eat what they themselves have grown.

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Photo by Mark Victorino.

The roof has salad – Plantando na Cidade – Hortas

Translated roughly from Portuguese by Google Translates:

Want some vegetables? Go get them on the roof. The student Mark Victorino, Cantareira College, is developing a project on garden tiles in the less valued spaces in the metropolitan area, on pavement and on commercial and residential properties. The gardens were planted in the Garden of St. Paul College and on campus of Cantareira College in the neighbourhood of Bethlehem, both in the state capital.

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