Facing rising numbers of city dwellers, UN agency launches ‘urban farming’ campaign

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is launching a programme to promote urban farming across the developing world as projections show that the number of city dwellers in those countries will continue to surge dramatically.

Nine African countries are participating in FAO’s “Food for the Cities” programme, where thousands of hectares of urban land are being transformed into allotment gardens to grow fresh vegetables.

All the food is being grown according to quality agricultural practices to ensure the produce is fresh, safe and healthy, FAO said in a statement issued today at its headquarters in Rome. The gardens – especially those in slum districts – will also serve as valuable green spaces in often congested and polluted cities.

Some of the allotment farmers have already signed contracts with local supermarkets to sell their produce or set up kiosks to market surplus products to the neighbourhood.

In a related project in the Colombian cities of Bogota and Medellin, the FAO has launched a pilot scheme to support the production of vegetables by internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The campaign has been established in response to the rapid rise of urban dwellers around the world; this year, for the first time in history, the world’s urban population exceeds the number living in rural areas.

The rate of change is most acute in the developing world, where many new urban residents live in slums on the edge of cities. In sub-Saharan Africa, slum residents account for as much as three-quarters of the entire population of some cities.

UN demographers expect the trend to continue, with two-thirds of the world’s peoples living in cities by 2030.

“There will be a huge increase in urban populations,” said Alexander Müller, Acting Head of FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Department. “Making sure they have the food they need will pose an unprecedented challenge.”

The participating countries in the FAO project are the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Senegal, Gabon, Mozambique, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Egypt and Mali.