For regular updates on UPA trainings, workshops, funding possibilities, and key publications join the Urban Harvest Listserv


  25 Years of City Farming, 1978-2003 - City Farmer's Story

In 1978, a group of young environmentalists working at the Vancouver Energy Conservation Center stumbled across a book called The City People's Book of Raising Food by William and Helga Olkowski. It described in everyday language how the authors grew all their own food right in the middle of the city of Berkeley. This inspiring book led us on an exploration of urban food production, which continues today, twenty-five years later.
http://www.cityfarmer.org/history.html#history

More Eye for Local Partners in UPA

The Urban Harvest website and listserv has recently attempted to increase awareness of developing country, local-level initiatives (NGO's, community initiatives) in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA). See how your local community project/initiative can benefit from this, and be involved in a larger network on UPA issues. View our "More eye for Local Partners in UPA" web page. 

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New website for CIAT in Africa featuring research in UPA

The International Center for Tropical Agriculture - CIAT - in Africa recently announced their new website: http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/africa/index.htm 

CIAT pursues a progressive R&D agenda in Sub-Saharan Africa which looks among other things at the opportunities and limitations faced by urban and peri-urban farmers in the region.To read a CIAT Research Highlight on " Identifying market opportunities for Kampala’s urban and peri-urban farmers" please click on the following link: http://www.ciat.cgiar.org/africa/pdf/highlight_12.pdf 

The Urban Agriculture Programme (UAP) of the city of Rosario arose from the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina, that in Rosario manifested itself with levels of poverty of 60 % ! With the purpose of responding to this reality with a productive proposal, municipal authorities and several other stakeholders developed and implemented a city UA program to promote productive small community-owned enterprises that 1) facilitate food security for the urban poor by generating income, and 2) improve the city landscape by transforming the uncultivated lands into productive spaces.

Read more in the best-practice program report

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The 'Hands On-Ideas to Go' multi-media initiative of TVE/ITDG, described by one regular viewer as "the best environmental programme around", brings information on what people around the world are doing to meet the practical challenges of Agenda 21 - the Earth Summit's action plan to save people and planet. One of their recent features - A Growing Trend - was recently broadcast on BBC World and highlights the rise of urban agriculture, in its various forms, around the world to meet nutritional and economic needs and at the same time to help build communities and protect the environment. To view this feature on the TVE website access the following url: http://www.tve.org/ho/doc.cfm?aid=1398 

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AVRDC course on vegetable crop production and research in Tanzania

The World Vegetable Center (AVRDC) - Regional Center for Africa is offering an intensive course on vegetable crop production and research from 4 July to 4 November 2004 in Tanzania. This course is directed toward professionals who undertake vegetable research and extension activities in Africa.
The course offers a balanced blend of classroom and field-oriented training with emphasis on addressing production constraints of priority vegetable crops for Africa. Topics will include crop production practices, pest and disease management, soil fertility management, seed production, experimental design and analysis, breeding, indigenous vegetables, human nutrition, and more.
The course will be conducted in English. More information and an application form can be downloaded from the AVRDC website
If you have difficulty accessing the website please request these documents from info@avrdc-rca.co.tz ; and/or mlchadha@avrdc-rca.co.tz 

DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS (JUNE 7) HAS PASSED !

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New UPWARD publication on Urban Gardens in the Philippines

"Urban Gardens: persistence and change" is a recent publication by UPWARD based on a research project which aimed to examine the socio-cultural and biophysical dimensions of urban homegardens in Baguio City, northern Philippines. The project, including this publication, was supported by Urban Harvest

For more information on this book please view our documents and publications section

RUAF call for contributions to Urban Agriculture Magazine  

The Urban Agriculture Magazine (UA Magazine) is published three times a year on the RUAF-website (www.ruaf.org) and in hardcopy version. This English version is translated in Spanish, French, Arabic and Chinese. The UA Magazine facilitates sharing of information on the impacts of urban agriculture, promotes the analysis and debate on critical issues for the development of the sector, and the publication of “best” or “good” or even ‘bad” practices in urban agriculture. Attention is given to the technological aspects, as well as to socio-economic, institutional and policy aspects of sustainable urban food production and distribution systems.

Each UA Magazine focuses on a selected theme and the two forthcoming issues will focus on:
No. 12: Gender in Urban Agriculture: April 2004
No. 13: Urban and Peri-urban (Agro)Forestry: October 2004

For these upcoming issues, UA Magazine is looking for contributions on new initiatives at individual, neighbourhood, city and national levels. Please send your contributions to the RUAF editor - René van Veenhuizen at r.van.veenhuizen@etcnl.nl OR to  ruaf@etcnl.nl

To read more on the call for contributions for issue no. 13 please click here

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' Land in an urbanising world' is the theme of the December 2003 issue of the UN Habitat magazine - Habitat Debate -  which includes coverage of Urban Agriculture. You can view the debate, that includes articles by Don Okpala (UN-Habitat) and Diana Lee-Smith (Urban Harvest regional coordinator for Sub-Saharan Africa) at http://www.unhabitat.org/hd/hdv9n4/18.asp 

"Cahiers d'études et de recherches francophones / Agricultures" is an important journal in agricultural development which publishes studies/papers written in French. In their latest volume 13 the focus is on "Nutrition in cities". Please click on the link below to get the online version of this journal with original articles in French (and their abstracts in French AND English) :
http://www.john-libbey-eurotext.fr/en/revues/agro_biotech/agr/sommaire.md 

There are several interesting articles on Francophone Africa, Vietnam etc. covering UPA, urban food security, urban farming systems (vegetables,livestock) food processing, urban market and consumer studies, including studies of urban market access for small scale producers.

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The International Agricultural Centre in Wageningen, Netherlands is offering a new program on the "development of the dairy chain". This new programme aims to update the knowledge, skills and understanding of the participants on recent challenges, concepts, methodologies and technologies in relation to milk production, processing, and marketing. This new training programme replaces Dairy Farming for Rural Development. It combines 2 separate courses : *The Development of the Dairy Chain, and *Analysis and design of agricultural systems.These two courses can also be attended independently. For more information on this training programme contact the course coordinator Arend Jan Nell at arendjan.nell@wur.nl 

The IAC course information for 2004/2005 is available on: http://www.iac.wur.nl/iac/index2.htm?courses/annual.cfm
For some courses a limited number of fellowships are available, see for further information: http://www.nuffic.nl/nfp/ 

* Design, analysis and management of Urban Agriculture for Resilient Communities. Further information from the course coordinator hans.schiere@wur.nl

* Livestock - environment interactions (15 - 26 November 2004) further information on the IAC website or from the course coordinator arendjan.nell@wur.nl 

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IDRC Agropolis Research Grant 

AGROPOLIS is an awards program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), that supports innovative master's and doctoral level research that aims to add to the body of knowledge of urban and peri-urban agriculture, and thereby to support interventions that address critical areas in the industry.

The program supports graduate-level field research that is designed and implemented in collaboration with non-academic partners. As the end-users of the research, these international, national, or local partners will be actively engaged in sectors of development in which urban agriculture can make a contribution. These partners could include, for example, community-based organizations, NGOs, city councils and departments, national governments, bilateral and multilateral development agencies and so on.

For more information on the AGROPOLIS International Graduate Research Awards Programme in Urban Agriculture please contact:

AGROPOLIS
International Graduate Research Awards in Urban Agriculture
International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
PO Box 8500, Ottawa, Ontario, K1G 3H9 Canada
Tel: (613) 236-6163 Ext. 2040 Fax:(613) 567-7749
Email: AGROPOLIS@idrc.ca

NOTE: Deadline for submitting applications for 2004 has passed

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AGUILA or the Regional Network for Urban Agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean (AGUILA), held a training course on the the theme: “Fundraising & Marketing for Action-research on Urban Agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean” , from November 10-13, 2003. The main purpose of this conference, following up to an earlier brainstorming session in 2003, was to find innovative ways by which the regional network could become self-supporting and generate income for its activities when their external funding ends later this year. 

To read more about the workshop in Spanish please visit http://www.ipes.org/aguila/tallerproyectos.htm . For more information on the results of this workshop please contact aguila@ipes.org.pe 

The Resource Centre on Urban Agriculture and Forestry (RUAF) organized, in close cooperation with UN-Habitat's Urban Management Program (UMP), an E-mail conference - "Optimizing Agricultural Land use in the City area" from 3-22 November 2003. This e-conference closed the series of e-conferences on issues related to urban and peri-urban agriculture, that were organized with respectively FAO, CGIAR-SIUPA and IWMI. For information on the proceedings and results of the event (in English, French, and Spanish) please visit their website  http://www.ruaf.org/conferences_fr.html 

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The September edition of New Agriculturist online magazine  features a Focus on Urban Agriculture. New Agriculturist provides an update on the latest news and developments in tropical agriculture for a global audience. You can view the magazine at: http://www.new-agri.co.uk

City Farmer - Canada's Office on Urban Agriculture has recently set up an online urban agriculture discussion forum. To join the forum please visit the following website: http://www.xaia.ca/cityfarmer/

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