RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 25 2012 (IPS) – You do not
need to live in the countryside to grow vegetables, as hundreds of thousands of
people involved in urban agriculture from Havana to Buenos Aires know very
well. Now they are being joined by residents of Rio de Janeiro’s “favelas”.
Plants can flourish in the middle of the city,
everywhere from community gardens to the rooftops and balconies of homes in
Brazil’s poorest neighborhoods.
A pioneering initiative is now underway in two
favelas or shantytowns in particular: Babilônia and Chapéu Mangueira, both
located in the southern Rio de Janeiro district of Leme. The initiative forms part of Rio’s Sustainable City
programme, being carried out by the Brazilian Business Council for Sustainable
Development (CEBDS). So far, 16 residents of the favelas have volunteered for
five months of training in techniques for growing crops in household planters.
Organic agriculture is a growing trend in big cities,
said Marina Grossi, president of the CEBDS. “Not only because people want
organic food, but also because it shortens distances and generates
income.”[related_articles]
In Cuba, urban farming dates back more than two
decades and has been a resounding success. Last year’s yield of vegetables and
herbs was more than a million tons, while the country’s total horticultural
production was 2.2 million tons.
The sector employs around 300,000 people, and the
products are sold without intermediaries. Small livestock and poultry farming
have also been incorporated, and training is provided on issues such as soil
improvement, water management and agroecological pest control.
In 2007, the Cuban government decided to extend urban
agricultural production to the suburbs, largely through small farms organized
into cooperatives.
Brazil, with a population of 192 million, is a world
power in agriculture, primarily on the basis of export-driven agroindustrial
production. But there are a mere 120,000 urban farmers, and just over half of
them receive support from the government to maintain their crops and supply
food for their own needs and local markets.
“We did a survey to find out what the residents of
Babilônia and Chapéu Mangueira eat. And we decided on a system of continuous
production based on agroecology,” with no chemical fertilisers or pesticides,
explained the coordinator of the organic agriculture course, Suyá Presta.
The highest possible degree of diversification is
achieved in every single planter. “Every week new seedlings are planted so that
production never stops,” Presta told Tierramérica*.
Luiz Alberto de Jesus, a 52-year-old resident of Babilônia,
is one of the students taking the course. He has a second-floor balcony where
he shares a garden with four neighbors.
“When I first heard about organic food I didn’t know
what it was. There is no mystery to producing food, you can grow it in planters
in very small spaces. I used to think you needed a big piece of land to plant
food,” he said.
In his garden there is lettuce, arugula, watercress,
cherry tomatoes, rosemary and mint. The first harvest will be in February, and
the apprentice farmers are anxiously awaiting it. “I want to raise people’s awareness so that they will
eat organic products. I’m going to pass this information on to the young people
and children,” he added.
In 1990, Argentina launched its successful Pro-Huerta
programme, aimed at promoting small-scale organic farming in both urban and
rural areas. In 2005, the initiative was “transplanted” to Haiti, and helped
spare many families from hunger when the 2010 earthquake demolished the capital
and other cities.
As one of the food sovereignty strategies adopted in
Venezuela, a major importer of food, urban agriculture has been actively
promoted since 2004.
There are no consolidated figures on the volume of
food produced by the country’s urban and peri-urban agricultural production
units (UPAs), nor on the number of consumers or people working in these
initiatives.
However, national volumes of horticultural production
for a market of 29 million inhabitants suggest that urban agriculture does not
feed more than several thousand or perhaps a few tens of thousands of families.
According to official statistics, there are some
20,000 registered urban UPAs, of which 2,400 have been consolidated and another
4,000 are in the process of doing so. In 2011, the Venezuelan government
invested 2.5 million dollars in this sector, according to the Ministry of
Agriculture and Land.
In Caracas and eight states, primarily in northern
Venezuela, vegetables and aromatic and medicinal herbs are planted. There have
also been forays into the raising of fruit crops – bananas, papayas, oranges,
mandarins – as well as the production of organic fertiliser. But there are other factors involved in the equation
in Venezuela.
The Women’s Development Bank (Banmujer) provides
financing for these initiatives as a means of combating the feminisation of
poverty and the loss of agricultural roots among the poor sectors of the
population who move from the countryside to towns and cities.
In 2010, 47 percent of the microcredits provided by
the bank were for agricultural activities, and “many of these are in urban and
peri-urban areas,” said Nora Castañeda, the president of Banmujer. “We now have
women farmers who devote themselves full-time to this work and put incredible
effort into it,” she told Tierramérica.
“One of our clients, a woman peasant farmer who was
abused by her husband for more than 20 years, recently came to give us a course
on how to produce humus,” she recounted. “For her, the most important thing isn’t being the
farmer that she is today, but having overcome a situation of violence, thanks
to an economic foundation that made her stronger and more valuable, even in her
own eyes,” said Castañeda.
Self-worth was also mentioned by Rio resident Reina
Maria Pereira da Silva, 58, who was inspired by the CEBDS course to plan a
garden for her own house.
“I have learned something new. It’s never too late,
and this has also raised my self-esteem. I feel more capable. It’s wonderful to
harvest healthy food that I planted myself,” she told Tierramérica.
“I always liked to plant things, but I didn’t know
how. There are techniques and planning involved, such as the time when you
should harvest in the summer and the winter. Everything we grow is going to be
for our own use and to donate to schools,” she explained.
By 2050, 90 percent of the population of Latin
America will live in cities. Today, 111 million people in the region live in
overcrowded neighborhoods like favelas, according to the United Nations.
The demand for food will be greater, and there will
be fewer people to produce it in rural areas.
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.
He also highlights the need for a specific public
policy to promote urban agriculture. “We know that it works, that there is
space available in cities, but there is no formal system. It is moving towards
greater sustainability, but it needs an initial boost,” he commented.
The Brazilian government began to provide funding for
urban agriculture projects in 2003, and many of the beneficiaries are also
beneficiaries of the Bolsa Familia cash transfer programme.
A total of close to 20 million dollars were invested
in the sector as of 2010, through agreements with municipal and state
governments, benefiting 74,000 people who were employed in urban garden
initiatives.
Of the projects that have been carried out in Brazil,
38 percent are concentrated in states in the southeast and 30 percent in the
south, while the remainder are divided among other regions, except for the
north and northeast.
This year, close to five million dollars will be
invested in 42 initiatives selected through an annual competition. The majority
will be carried out in the northeast, with 17 municipalities participating.
* This story was originally published by Latin American
newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a
specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations
Development Programme, United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.
Data: 25.09.2012
Texto: Fabiola Ortiz
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