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Another
Urban Agriculture Office in the City
May
12, 2005
Urban Agricultural activities
usually are not approved or facilitated by municipal
authorities. In
many instances, they condemn it or are reluctant to
incorporate agriculture within city boundaries.
Consequently, on May 12, 2005, it was good
tidings to hear the words of Mayor Luis Bueno Quino,
at the inauguration of the urban agricultural office
at the municipal district of Lurigancho-Chosica,
say, “ we welcome our agriculturalists in the area
who partake in urban agriculture. Agriculture is not
necessarily a thing of the mountains or jungle or a
macro project, but that we can make it possible in
urban areas.”
These words were received warmly by the
variety of peoples* who attended the inauguration.
The office will be a center
for all peoples, involved in urban agricultural
activities, to meet, discuss, make requests and
suggestions, create contacts, and build a stronger
dialogue and relationship between the
agriculturalists and livestock raisers with the
municipality. The
office will help to strengthen the capacity of civil
society to pressure the municipality for the
sustainability and legitimacy of urban agriculture. Mayor Bueno was very enthusiastic in promoting urban
agriculture and promised, at the request from the
Urban Farmer Field School participants, to open an
agricultural fair in the area and eventually create
a system to certify vegetables that have been grown
organically.
With the establishment of two municipal urban agricultural coordination
offices in the Eastern Zone of
Lima, (C.P.
Santa Maria de Huachipa and Lurigancho-Chosica) the livelihoods and health of urban
agriculturalists and livestock keepers and the
natural environmental will begin to benefit and
prosper from its legal and formal status.
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