Martín Pineda (R) is in charge of a four-hectare community farm on the outskirts of San José Villanueva, in southern El Salvador. He says no government has focused on food sovereignty in the past 30 years. He and other farmers, like his co-worker Miguel Ángel García (L), complain that they lack technical support to produce food efficiently. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN JOSÉ VILLANUEVA, El Salvador, Apr 18 2023 (IPS)

Sitting under the shade of a tree, Salvadoran farmer Martín Pineda looked desperate, and perhaps angry, as he said that governments of different stripes have come and gone in El Salvador while agriculture remains in the dumps.

“I think this shows contempt for farmers,” Pineda told IPS, frowning.

Pineda is in charge of a four-hectare community farm worked by 12 families near San José Villanueva, in the department of La Libertad in the south of El Salvador.

Pineda’s hopelessness turned into concern when he commented on the risks that the agricultural sector faces from climatic phenomena that hit crops almost every year.“It is sad that we have to import beans, when we have the capacity to produce them, if we just had government support.” -- Martín Pineda

This risk increases when considering reports that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (Enso) climate phenomenon is expected to appear in 2023, which would mean new droughts and loss of crops.

“Last year we lost a good part of the bean crop,” said Pineda, 70. He explained that of the four hectares they plant they lost 2.7 hectares, and the same thing happened with the corn.

In October 2022, Tropical Storm Julia devastated 8,000 hectares of corn and bean crops in the country, leading to losses of around 17 million dollars.

The backdrop is the rise in the cost of inputs for production, due to international factors, such as Russia’s war with Ukraine. In addition, in El Salvador there have been unjustified price increases because just three companies monopolize the import market for the inputs required by farmers, adding to their difficulties.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned in a report published in 2023 that in 2020, factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climatic phenomena, and structural aspects like poverty and violence, exposed the Salvadoran population to even greater risks.

The FAO report said that since 36 percent of vulnerable Salvadorans depend on agriculture for a living, “it is essential to provide affected households with the necessary means to rehabilitate their productive assets and resume production activities.”

However, this course is not being followed in the agricultural sector.

According to official figures, in this small Central American country of 6.7 million people, 22.8 percent of households are living in poverty, a proportion that rises to 24.8 percent in rural areas, of which 5.2 percent are in extreme poverty and 19.6 percent in relative poverty.

Given the difficulties in growing crops under the current conditions, the 12 families who collectively work a farm in the surroundings of San José Villanueva, in southern El Salvador, have turned to the production of chickens and eggs. They presently have 1,400 laying hens. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Agriculture is not recovering

El Salvador has failed to jumpstart its agricultural sector for at least three decades. It is one of the most deficient nations in several categories of food, such as vegetables.

It is estimated that the production of vegetables in El Salvador barely covers 10 percent of domestic demand, while the remaining 90 percent are imported from neighboring countries, such as Guatemala.

But what is most worrying is that the country is also deficient in Central American staples such as corn and beans, although the shortfall occurs especially when climatic events hit hard, whether excess or lack of rain.

When that happens, El Salvador must import beans from neighboring countries, such as Nicaragua, although if those nations face drops in production, this country must look for them elsewhere and at higher prices.

For example, in 2015 El Salvador had to import around 1.5 million kg of beans from Ethiopia.

“It is sad that we have to import beans, when we have the capacity to produce them, if we just had government support,” Pineda complained.

He said that over the last 30 years, neither left-wing nor right-wing governments have had the political will to provide agriculture with decisive support, and that it appears that the focus is on promoting imports.

“There is no well-defined government policy,” said Pineda. “For example, we have the land, but we do not have the inputs, or ongoing technical advice.”

He was talking about the lack of a clear policy in the last 30 years, including the four governments, between 1989 and 2009, of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), the two administrations of the ex-guerrilla Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), from 2009 to 2019, and the almost four years of the administration of Nayib Bukele, in office since June 2019.

“This government has followed the same pattern, of not showing strong support,” he argued.

To illustrate, the farmer pointed to the need for an irrigation system on the San José Villanueva farm, which would not be difficult to achieve, since there is a river nearby with sufficient flow.

But when the farm has requested technical support for an irrigation system, it has consistently received the same negative response from governments.

“We have no machinery here, no irrigation system, although we have a river nearby,” said Pineda. “We have two wells, but at this time of year they dry up, and we have to buy water.”

“How can we produce food efficiently in these conditions?” he asked.

A group of young people who created the Micelio Suburbano organization are promoting agroecological gardens in residential areas of San Salvador, like this one in the Zacamil neighborhood on the north side of the Salvadoran capital. The aim is to encourage families in the area to grow some of the food they need in their daily diet. CREDIT: Micelio Suburbano

Bukele follows the same blueprint

Academics agree that the collapse of the agricultural sector was influenced by the 1980-1992 civil war, which left some 75,000 dead and 8,000 disappeared.

But that doesn’t explain everything.

Neighboring countries, such as Guatemala and Nicaragua, also suffered civil wars, and are more self-sufficient in food production.

When the ARENA neoliberal party took power in El Salvador in 1989, the agriculture sector was abandoned by policy-makers.

This was accentuated in the second ARENA administration (1994-1999), when the growth of the textile maquilas or export assembly plants was bolstered as a source of employment, and the government focused even less on development in the countryside.

Decades later, the country still hasn’t found a clear direction for getting agriculture on track, Luis Treminio, president of the Salvadoran Chamber of Small and Medium Agricultural Producers, told IPS.
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The chamber is made up of 15 agricultural organizations and in total brings together some 15,000 farmers. An estimated 400,000 people in the country are dedicated to agriculture.

Treminio said that a plan promoted by the Bukele government to reactivate the agricultural sector, announced with great fanfare in June 2021, did not come to fruition because the 1.2 billion dollars in funding needed was not found in the international financial market.

This was due to a lack of confidence on the part of the multilateral lenders, he added.

Treminio said the government lacks vision and priorities, since national income is allocated to unfeasible projects, such as the millions of dollars spent to buy bitcoins, which have been legal tender in El Salvador since September 2021.

“The problem is that the government does not prioritize food sovereignty,” he said, but instead focuses on food security – that is, providing food regardless of whether the country produces it or not, and much of which is actually imported.

One illustration of the government’s chaotic agricultural policy is the fact
that there have already been four ministers of agriculture, in less than four years of government.

Treminio said El Salvador’s farmers are not opposed to imports, but argued that they must complement what the country does not produce.

“We are not against imports, but they have to be regulated,” he added.

He said that what often happens is that, under the justification of shortages of grains or other products, more is imported than what is actually needed to cover national demand, driving prices way down for local farmers.

“For example, in dairy there is a 40 percent deficit in consumption, and 120 percent imports are authorized,” he said.

Yellow plum tomatoes are part of the harvest of the Micelio Suburbano collective, which takes advantage of green spaces in urban areas in the north of San Salvador to plant gardens and encourage families to start growing some of their food. CREDIT: Micelio Suburbano

Growing food in the city

Given the scarcity and high costs of food, small initiatives have begun to emerge to promote gardens, even in urban areas, taking advantage of all available spaces.

One of these efforts, which are new in the country, is fostered by Micelio Suburbano, a group made up of a dozen young people and adolescents who are trying to show that part of the food consumption can be met by growing vegetables and fruit in open spaces in urban areas.

“It’s kind of a utopia to think that in our homes we can grow our own crops of aromatic herbs, tomatoes, etc.,” Nuria Mejía, an architect by profession with a passion for spreading the idea of urban agriculture, told IPS.

The group set up its first garden in 2022 in a working-class area of apartment buildings known as Zacamil, on the north side of San Salvador.

In small spaces that were once green areas in the apartment complex, they have planted three gardens, where they grow on a small scale tomatoes, radishes, eggplant and various kinds of aromatic herbs.

The aim is for people to see what can be achieved and to get involved.

“People see the radishes we are growing and ask us for seeds,” Mejía said.

A worker on the Marta farm, which was founded by one of the first proponents of agroecology in Cuba, harvests organic lettuce in the municipality of Caimito, in the western Cuban province of Artemisa. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA/LA PALMA , Mar 30 2016 (IPS)

The United States has indicated a clear interest in buying organic produce from Cuba as soon as that is made possible by the ongoing normalisation of ties between the two countries. But farmers and others involved in the agroecological sector warn that when the day arrives, they might not be ready.

“The impact would be conditioned by several factors, including the capacity of farmers to design, implement and evaluate agroecological business models that can meet the demands and requirements of the domestic and international markets,” Humberto Ríos, one of the founders of the green movement in Cuban agriculture, told IPS.

The possible opportunities offered by the big U.S. market, where requirements are strict, will test the response capacity of the country’s organic farmers.

“The farmers know how to grow things without agrochemicals. But that’s not enough for developing agroecology,” said Ríos, a researcher who is now working in Spain at the International Centre for Development-Oriented Research in Agriculture, told IPS by email.

Cuba needs “a clear policy to boost the economic growth of the private sector and cooperatives interested in offering agroecological products and services,” said Ríos, who won the Goldman Environment Prize, known as the Green Nobel, in 2010.

Ríos also won a prize for his work in the Programme for Local Agrarian Innovation (PIAL), which with the help of international development aid has taught participative seed improvement and other ecological agricultural techniques to 50,000 people in 45 of Cuba’s 168 municipalities since 2000.

Ríos also said Cuba’s new economic openness could have either a positive or a devastating impact. Experts describe Cuba’s agroecology as a “child of necessity” because it was born after this country lost the agricultural inputs it was guaranteed up to the collapse of the Soviet Union and east European socialist bloc at the start of the 1990s.

If measures are not taken and pending issues are not solved, “the invasion by conventional agriculture and its products is likely to erase more than 25 years of agroecology,” Ríos said.

There have been several U.S.-driven initiatives to create open ties in agriculture, since the thaw between the two countries began in December 2014. And the climate is even more positive since U.S. President Barack Obama’s historic Mar. 21-22 visit to Havana.

A woman picks organic green beans on the La Sazón organoponic farm in the Casino Deportivo neighbourhood of Havana, which forms part of the country’s urban agriculture system. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

La Palma: an example

In the mountainous municipality of La Palma, where Ríos began to work as a young man with a handful of small farmers in this locality in the extreme western province of Pinar del Río, green-friendly activists already feel the looming threats.

“The surge in improved seeds is a weakness,” said Elsa Dávalos, who belongs to the National Association of Small Farmers of La Palma and coordinates the local agroecological movement, where 500 of a total of 1,127 farms grow their produce without using chemical products.

Dávalos said the improved seeds she was referring to are crops given high priority, such as maize, beans or taro, whose seeds are distributed along with a package of agrochemicals. “Many farmers go this route to get big harvests without having to work so much,” she lamented in her conversation with IPS in La Palma.

Improved seeds became more widely used after the government of Raúl Castro launched economic reforms in 2008, with a focus on increasing agricultural production to reduce food imports, which cost this island nation two billion dollars a year.

Up to now, the measures applied, such as the distribution of idle state land to farmers in usufruct, have brought modest growth in agriculture – 3.1 percent in 2015 – considered insufficient to meet domestic demand and to bring down the high, steadily rising prices of food.

Farmers complain about a lack of inputs like fertiliser, machinery and irrigation systems, a shortage of labour power, limited access to complementary services, red tape, and weak industrialisation, to preserve and sell surplus crops, for example.

Ecological farms struggle against these difficulties common to the entire agricultural industry, and others particular to green-friendly farming.

“It is very hard for small (organic) farmers to attend to all of their responsibilities and to also find time to produce the necessary ecological inputs,” Yoan Rodríguez, PIAL coordinator in La Palma, told IPS.

To boost yields, “some people must specialise in obtaining only inputs such as efficient microorganisms, compost and earthworm humus,” said the researcher, who is pushing for an improvement in agroecological services in the area, to support and attract farmers.

“Cuba has started to open up to the world, and even more so as a result of the negotiations with the United States. The chemical inputs that saturate the global agricultural market will also arrive. It’s going to be very difficult to maintain what we have achieved through our efforts over so many years,” he said.

Other factors that discourage the movement in the country is the virtual absence of certification of agroecological products, and a lack of differentiated and competitive prices for organic products in state enterprises, to which cooperatives and independent farmers are required to sell a large part of their production.

But PIAL and other initiatives are coming up with new strategies to take advantage of the opportunities opening up with the country’s economic reforms and reinsertion into the international markets.

The Marta farm, located in a privileged position between the capital and the special economic development zone of Mariel, in the western province of Artemisa, produces fresh vegetables without using chemicals, and its clients include 25 upscale restaurants in Havana.

Members of the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, supported by more than 30 agricultural organisations and companies, visit the Primero de Mayo Cooperative in Güira de Melena, in the western Cuban province of Artemisa. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“We have a good connection with the markets and we sell enough,” said Fernando Funes-Monzote, another founder of the agroecological movement in the country, who in 2011 launched this farm, where 16 people currently work.

“The idea was to show that an ecologically sustainable, socially just and economically feasible family farming project was possible here,” he told IPS.

Push for openness from interests in the U.S.

Meanwhile, interest in Cuba’s ecological agriculture has been reiterated during visits to this Caribbean island nation by U.S. businesspersons and agriculture officials, who are among the most active proponents of a total normalisation of relations between these two countries separated by just 90 miles of ocean.

The foremost example is the 30 companies forming part of the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba (USACC), which emerged in January 2015 to help push for an end to the U.S. embargo against Cuba in place since 1962.

The U.S. Agriculture Department even asked Congress for financing for five officials to work full-time in Cuba, to pave the way for trade and investment to take off as soon as the current restrictions are lifted.

It is also significant that the first U.S. factory to set up shop in Cuba in over half a century, after getting the green light from the U.S. government in February, will be a plant for assembling 1,000 tractors a year, to be used by independent farmers. The plant will operate in the Mariel special economic development zone.

A loophole to the embargo dating back to the year 2000 permits direct sales of food and medicine to Cuba by U.S. producers, but strictly on a cash basis. However, in the past few years these sales have dropped because Cuba found credit facilities in other markets.

In 2015 food purchases by the United States amounted to just 120 million dollars, down from 291 million dollars in 2014, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

With reporting by Patricia Grogg in Havana.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Women from the Sucre Association of Urban Producers, who are from poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Bolivia’s official capital, with a basketful of ecologically grown fresh vegetables from their greenhouses, which have improved their families’ diets and incomes. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS

By Franz Chávez
SUCRE, Bolivia, Oct 17 2015 (IPS)

The hands of women who have migrated from rural areas carefully tend to their ecological vegetable gardens in the yards of their humble homes on the outskirts of Sucre, the official capital of Bolivia, in an effort to improve their families’ diets and incomes.

“The men worked in the construction industry, and 78 percent of the women didn’t have work – they had no skills, they washed clothes for others or sold things at the market,” Lucrecia Toloba, secretary of “productive development and plural economy” in the government of the southeastern department of Chuquisaca, told IPS.

Her hair in two thin braids and wearing traditional native dress – a bowler hat, a short, pleated skirt called a pollera, and light clothing for the mild climate of the Andean valleys – Toloba, a Quechua Indian, is an educator who now runs the National Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Programme in the region.“We organised as women, and now we eat without worry because we grow our food free of chemicals." -- Alberta Limachi

In her modest office, she explains that women are at the centre of the programme, which brings them recognition from their families and communities, diversifies their families’ diets, and offers them economic independence through the sale of the vegetables they grow ecologically in the city, which at the same time benefits from healthy, diversified fresh produce.

Five km away, on the outskirts of the city, women in the neighbourhoods of 25 de Mayo and Litoral, who belong to the Sucre Association of Urban Producers, met IPS with a basket of fresh produce from their gardens, including shiny red tomatoes, colourful radishes and bright-green lettuce.

A total of 83 poor suburban neighborhoods in Sucre are taking part in the project, which has the support of the national and departmental governments and of the .

The initiative has 680 members so far, said Guido Zambrana, a young agronomist who runs the Urban Garden Project.

The lunch we are served is soup made with vegetables grown in their backyard gardens, accompanied by tortillas made with cornmeal mixed with flour from different vegetables. Fresh produce is also grown in greenhouses built throughout the hills of Sucre, 2,760 metres above sea level and 420 km south of La Paz, the country’s political centre.

The women have learned how to grow vegetables and how to improve their family’s food security, Tolaba explained.“We want to reach zero malnutrition,” she said.

In Sucre temperatures range between 12 and 25 degrees Celcius. But in the greenhouses, built by the families with support from the government, temperatures climb above 30 degrees.

Sometimes, the temperatures marked by the thermometers in the greenhouses spike and the windows have to be opened. The greenhouses have roofs made of transparent Agrofil plastic sheeting and walls of adobe. They are built under the guidance of technical agronomist Mery Fernández.

Two of the peri-urban agricultural producers of Sucre proudly show one of their greenhouses, which families from 83 poor suburban neighbourhoods have set up in their yards as part of the National Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Programme. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS

The luscious leafy chard and lettuce in the greenhouse of Celia Padilla, who came to Sucre from an indigenous village in the neighbouring department of Potosí with her husband in 2000 and settled in Bicentenario, a neighbourhood in a flat area among the hills surrounding the city.

Padilla, who also belongs to the Quechua indigenous community like most of the women in the association, joined the project with a garden of just eight square metres last year, and is now thinking about building a 500-square-metre greenhouse.

Her husband, a construction worker who does casual work in the city, is pleased with the idea of expanding the garden by building a greenhouse. Their home garden provides the family with nutritional food and brings in a not insignificant income through the sale of fresh produce to neighbours or at market.

With the earnings, “I buy milk and meat for the kids,” Padilla told Tierramérica, holding bunches of shiny green chard in her hands.

Water for irrigation is scarce, but a local government programme has donated 2,000-litre tanks to capture water during the rainy season and store it up for using in drip irrigation.

The chance to improve the family diet generated a good-natured dispute between Alberta Limachi and her husband, who came to this city from the village of Puca Puca, 64 km away.

The couple, who own a 150-square-metre plot of land on the outskirts of the city, had to decide between a family garden or using the space to build a garage. Limachi, one of the leaders of the urban producers, won the argument.

Her enthusiasm is contagious among her fellow urban farmers.

“We organised as women, and now we eat without worry because we grow our food free of chemicals,” she told Tierramérica, after proudly serving a snack of green beans and fresh salad.

One of the farmers on the outskirts of Sucre with her son, sitting proudly on the 2,000-litre water tank donated by the government of Chuquisaca. The tank stores rainwater used in drip irrigation on the organic vegetables she grows. Credit: Franz Chávez/IPS

“I don’t ask my husband for money anymore, and we don’t spend anything on vegetables,” Padilla said, pleased to help support her family. Her garden is well-known in the neighbourhood because she grows lettuce, chard, celery, coriander and tomatoes, and her neighbours come knocking every day to buy fresh vegetables.

A committee made up of associations of farmers and consumers monitors and certifies that the fresh produce is organic and of high quality, José Zuleta, the national coordinator of the Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Programme, told Tierramérica.

“The women grow their food without (chemical) fertiliser, using organic compost that can return to the soil, which means their production is sustainable,” Yusuke Kanae, an agronomist with the FAO office in Sucre, commented to Tierramérica.

Kanae, originally from Japan, offers the women technical know-how and simple practices such as converting a creative variety of containers – ranging from a broken old football to plastic television set packaging – into improvised pots for growing vegetables.

“Even if it’s just 20 bolivianos (slightly less than three dollars), the women can help buy notebooks and shoes,” said Kanae, to illustrate the importance of the women’s contribution to the household, which chips away at what he described as “sexist” dependence, while putting them in touch with their indigenous cultural roots.

Kanae also supports the introduction of organic vegetables in the city, and has encouraged the owners of the Cóndor Café, a vegetarian restaurant, to buy products certified by the women as organic.

Visitors to the restaurant enjoy substantial dishes prepared with the vegetables from the women’s peri-urban gardens, which combine Japanese and Bolivian cooking, and cost only three dollars a meal.

The manager of the restaurant, Roger Sotomayor, told Tierramérica that he enjoys supporting the family garden initiative. “We want to encourage environmentally-friendly production of vegetables,” he said, stressing the high quality of the women’s produce and the fact that the cost is 20 percent lower than that of conventional crops.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

This reporting series was conceived in collaboration with Ecosocialist Horizons

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Urban agriculture is catching on in Jordan. Credit: Qtea/CC BY 2.0

By Elizabeth Whitman
AMMAN, Dec 12 2013 (IPS)

Flowers burst out of old tires and rows of pepper plants fill recycled plastic tubs as herbs pop out of old pipes. As utilitarian as it is cheery, this rooftop array is one of several urban agriculture projects that are significantly improving livelihoods for the urban poor in this sprawling city.

A slowly but steadily growing phenomenon in Jordan, urban agriculture has vast potential for reducing poverty and improving food security, and it has the added benefit of greening and cleaning up more rundown sections of cities.

But the success of urban agriculture depends on key components that are increasingly difficult to secure: land and water. Space for planting is growing ever slimmer in Jordan, and the country suffers froma perpetual shortage of water. While such problems are major, they have also forced those involved in urban agriculture in Amman to devise innovative and efficient ways to work around them.

The more successful they are, the more valuable urban agriculture becomes in Jordan, where two-thirds of the 160,000 people who are food insecure live in cities and 13 percent of the population lives below the poverty line. For them, urban agriculture is not a complete solution, but it does alleviate poverty, and in the long term, its indirect benefits can be even more widespread.

An ideal environment

Unchecked population growth and relatively unplanned development transformed Amman from a village in the 1940s to a vast, 1,000-square-kilometre metropolis in the 21st century. With a population of 2.3 million, the capital has 312 people per square kilometre, more than four times the national population density.

While willy-nilly urbanisation has not created the most functional of cities, the resulting urban sprawl actually jibes quite nicely with the concept of urban agriculture – using empty spaces between houses and on windowsills, balconies, and roofs to plant vegetables, herbs and other plants that families can consume or sell to boost their income.

Amman started its official urban farming programme in 2006, according to Hesham al Omari, the engineer who heads the urban agriculture office at the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), as part of an initiative by the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF), an international network of resource centres.

Although gardening at home was not new in Jordan, GAM’s programme aimed at making it more widespread and efficient by helping people start gardens in their homes – even giving them the materials to do so – and holding trainings to teach them how to grow as much as possible at a minimal cost.

“We choose inexpensive materials for people,” Omari said. Trainings teach people how to reuse materials like metal tins, plastic bags, and old wood for planting. Early projects ranged from planting carob and olive trees in an impoverished area of East Amman to prevent desertification to teaching women in another district to raise drought-resistant and aromatic herbs. The office is currently holding trainings in schools and women’s organisations.

“Fruits and vegetables in the markets are expensive, so if people can produce these things in their home, it’ll save them money,” Omari noted. He estimated that there are at least 400 rooftops gardens in Amman, though he hopes to see that number someday surpass 1,000.

In Arab countries, which import the majority of their food and are expected to import even more in coming decades, food security is linked to food prices, which are steadily rising. As a result, urban agriculture is one way to improve food security, noted a paper for the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM).

“Although it is a longstanding practice, urban agriculture receives poor recognition from agricultural scientists, policymakers, researchers, and even its practitioners,” said the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), which funded research for the CIHEAM paper, pointing out how undervalued urban agriculture can be.

Tackling challenges

In the third most water-scarce country in the world, expending precious water on household plants may seem like a luxury Jordanians cannot afford. So GAM has also been teaching urban agriculturalists efficient water usage through grey water recycling systems, irrigation techniques, and rainwater catchment.

Khawla al-Amayra, who lives in the village of Iraq al-Amir on the western outskirts of Amman, where GAM held one of its training projects, said that a lack of water is the biggest challenge and that “in the summer, we have very little water.”

Land fragmentation and urbanisation also significantly affect agriculture. In governorates where the drop in cultivated land has been most severe, including Amman, between 1975 and 2007 land for growing grains decreased by 65 percent and for vegetables 91 percent, according to research by the World Food Programme and the United Nations Development Programme.

Land prices have also been on the rise, so if people own empty plots, the incentive to sell is much stronger than the incentive to work the land, Omari added.

Despite these challenges, the IDRC praised Amman, where “strong municipal support has encouraged development [of urban agriculture].” Furthermore, once participants have gone through the training with GAM, they spread their knowledge to neighbours and friends outside the programme, Omari said.

Going national

The success in Amman has paved the way for other cities to take up similar projects. Eighty-two percent of Jordan’s population is urban, which means the vast majority of the population could become involved in urban agriculture and reap the same benefits -extra income, better food security and access to fresh produce.

A final report from RUAF on one of the GAM projects it funded was optimistic about urban agriculture’s prospects not just in Amman but also throughout the rest of Jordan, noting that urban agriculture “has become an integral part of the agenda of the municipality” and that “legislation has become more UA [urban agriculture] friendly.”

Thanks to the municipality, it noted, urban agriculture has garnered support from higher levels of government. Last week, the Jordanian ministry of agriculture decided to start selling fruit saplings to the public at bargain prices, “to increase green spaces in Jordan, especially with crops and trees which are economically feasible,” said Nimer Haddadin, the ministry’s spokesperson.

From Omari’s perspective, however, the government can’t do everything to spread urban agriculture, even as new projects have begun in Jerash, north of Amman, and Ain Al-Basha, northwest of the city. “They need help from the people,” he said with a smile.

Workers harvesting vegetables from one of Sky Green’s vertical towers. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE, Dec 8 2012 (IPS)

With a population of five million crammed on a landmass of just 715 square kilometres, the tiny republic of Singapore has been forced to expand upwards, building high-rise residential complexes to house the country’s many inhabitants.

Now, Singapore is applying the vertical model to urban agriculture, experimenting with rooftop gardens and vertical farms in order to feed its many residents.

Currently only seven percent of Singapore’s food is grown locally. The country imports most of its fresh vegetables and fruits daily from neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as from more distant trading partners like Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Chile.

An influx of immigrants has resulted in a rapid crowding of Singapore’s skyline, as more and more towering apartment buildings shoot up. And meanwhile, what little land was available for farming is disappearing fast.

The solution to the problem came in the form of a public-private partnership, with the launch of what has been hailed as the “world’s first low carbon, water-driven rotating vertical farm” for growing tropical vegetables in an urban environment.

The result of a collaborative agreement between the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and a local firm, Sky Green, this venture aims to popularise urban farming techniques that are also environmentally friendly.

With a robust economy that boasts a gross domestic product of 239.7 billion dollars, Singapore has plenty of money. “But money (is) worthless without food,” according to Sky Green Director Jack Ng.

“That’s why I wanted to use my engineering skills to help Singapore farmers to produce more food,” Ng told IPS.

A vertical vegetable tower using the hydraulic rotating system. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

An engineer by training, Ng created the vertical farming system, which he nicknamed ‘A Go-Grow’. It consists of a series of aluminium towers, some of them up to nine metres high, each containing 38 tiers equipped with troughs for the vegetables.

In keeping with Sky Green’s focus on environmental sustainability, the water used to power the rotating towers is recycled within the system and eventually used to water the vegetables. Each tower consumes only 60 watts of power daily – about the same amount as a single light bulb.

Ng knew that if the system was too expensive or complicated, urban farmers would not be able to survive. And given that he designed the project with retirees and other housebound farmers in mind, he tried to create a situation in which “the plant comes to you, rather than you going to the plant.”

The multi-layered vegetable tower rotates very slowly, taking some eight hours to complete a full circle. As the plant travels to the top it absorbs ample sunlight and when it comes back down it is watered from a tray that is fed by the hydraulic system that drives the rotation of the tower.

This closed cycle system is easy to maintain and doesn’t release any exhaust.

Ng says that such towers, if set up on roofs of the many multi-storey residential blocs that house most of Singapore’s population, could provide livelihoods for retirees and housewives, who would only need to spend a few hours up on the roof to attend to the system.

Sky Green towers currently produce three vegetables popular with locals – nai bai, xiao bai cai and Chinese cabbage, which can be harvested every 28 days.

They already supply NTUC FairPrice, Singapore’s largest grocery retailer that has a network of over 230 outlets and supermarkets. The urban-grown vegetables cost roughly 20 cents more per kilogramme than the imported varieties.

The group’s purchasing manager, Tng Ah Yiam, recently told a Straits Times reporter that these ‘sky farms’ are now able to offer their customers quality, locally-grown vegetables “that are fresher because they travel a shorter distance from farm to shelf”.

Sky Green plans to supply two tonnes a day to NTUC by the middle of next year when they expand their farm towers.

Coordinated efforts

A Sky Green farm tower. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

The Sky Green project feeds into a trend that has been underway in Singapore for several decades.

Since the urban expansion of the 1990s Singapore has attempted to respond to the scarcity of land available for traditional cultivation by promoting rooftop vegetable gardens.

A number of local institutions developed hydroponic and aeroponic cultivation systems but none ever took off. “There was always concern over whether or not the rooftops could take the weight of these structures,” Shih Yong Goh, former head of public affairs at AVA, told IPS.

Experts like Lee Sing Kong, director of the National Institute of Education and a long-time advocate of the use of ‘sky farms’, believe there is an urgent need for Singapore to become less dependent on food imports.

Given the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, including “natural disasters such as flooding, which could impact food production, it may be necessary for Singapore to look at producing some of its own vegetables from the food security point of view”, he told IPS.

Kong said that he is currently involved in the development of ‘vegetable factories’, whole buildings designed to grow fresh produce.

“We have (begun) developing a 6-tiered aeroponic system to grow vegetables with the help of LED lights,” he said, adding, “this is in the experimental stage. If the model proves to be successful, then the multi-tiered system can be installed within enclosed buildings for producing vegetables. This will certainly enhance the opportunities for urban agriculture.”

Since 2005, the government has shed some of its reservations about rooftop production. The National Parks Board recently converted the rooftop of a multi-storey residential building in the densely populated Upper Serangoon Road into an educational farm to promote urban agriculture among school children.

Meanwhile, Sky Green has signed an MOU with Singapore’s Temasek Polytechnic technical college. Dr. Lee Chee Wee, director of the School of Applied Science, believes that partnering with Sky Green will expose his students to how technology is used in vegetable farming and make “modern farming so much more attractive as a career choice for our graduates”.

(END)

Luiz Alberto de Jesus with the newly sown planters on his balcony in the Babilônia favela. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz/IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
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.”

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.

Excerpt:

The El Caminito community garden in a vacant lot in Málaga, Spain. Credit: Inés Benitez /IPS

By Inés Benítez
MÁLAGA, Spain, Jun 13 2012 (IPS)

The economic crisis is fuelling the search for less individualistic ways of life in Spain, and a growing interest in urban agriculture has given rise to flourishing community gardens on vacant lots in cities and towns.

“I think it is essential for people to have access to spaces for activities and for getting together, because the crisis is social as well as financial,” one of the promoters of the El Caminito urban garden in the central neighbourhood of Fuente Olletas in the southern city of Málaga, who asked to be cited only as Jorge, told IPS.

El Caminito has occupied a vacant lot, on temporary loan from the Málaga city government, since mid-2011. After preparing the soil, the group planted trees and vegetables like tomatoes, garbanzo beans, maize, avocado and broccoli on a 100-square-metre area.

“The crisis we are experiencing is leading to a paradigm shift. Urban vegetable gardens are related to the breakdown of the economic system and of traditional social movements,” said José Luis Fernández, in charge of vegetable gardens for the Regional Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Madrid (FRAVM), which has 260 member organisations.

Spain is one of the European Union countries worst affected by the global financial crisis that first broke out in 2007, and the right-wing government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has imposed severe economic cutbacks that are shaking the foundations of the welfare state, in order to reduce the fiscal deficit by over three percent of GDP this year compared to 2011.

Unemployment has soared to 24 percent. And the director of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) partnerships in Spain, Andrés Conde, pointed out on Jun. 8 that 26 percent of children in this country are living below the poverty line. Within the EU, only Bulgaria and Romania exceed this figure.

Urban gardens began to emerge about six years ago, but they have really bloomed over the last two-and-a-half years. In the Madrid region alone there are more than twenty, managed by neighbourhood associations, universities, environmental groups and the Madrid city government.

Many neighbourhood assemblies, derived from the 15M movement which has been pressing for more participative democracy since major protests erupted on May 15, 2011, are joining forces with community associations to multiply the number of vegetable gardens.

“The main thing is that we have autonomy to manage the garden. It is pure participative democracy,” said Jorge. Some 15 people around the age of 30 participate directly in the work and assemblies of El Caminito, but more people are linked to it, including children and elderly people.

Fernández of FRAVM said that they are trying to put the community gardens on a legal footing, as 85 percent of them are outside the law. In these cases vacant lots, usually unused public spaces, have been occupied, or the plots are loaned on a “very precarious, tenuous” footing.

He called for public institutions to organise a legal framework for the vegetable gardens, and said urban planners should take them into account in the same way as green areas and other city spaces.

“Urban gardens not only recover unused spaces, but are also meeting places and open air social centres that promote values,” he said.

In his view, city authorities are not opposed to community gardens, but “lack political will” and “are afraid” that the citizens’ movement may be strengthened in the process.

“Urban community gardens are inter-generational, polyvalent spaces, and are characterised by people’s power,” said Fernández.

As an example he described the Adelfas community garden in a Madrid neighbourhood, which he said is a meeting place for new neighbours, dynamises the organisations that already exist in nearby schools, and includes in its activities a nearby home for the elderly.

It also provides an opportunity to learn gardening techniques, he said. Cultivating a plot of land helps people think about and discuss complex problems, like urban sprawl, the monopoly held by food distribution companies and the problems associated with transgenic crops.

The vegetable gardens seem to catalyse the creation of self-managed neighbourhood cooperatives and consumer groups.

“Without a hands-on relationship with plants, you don’t value agricultural activities,” said Fernández.

He said landscapers, agronomists and others who are part of Spain’s more than five million unemployed find in the gardens a niche where they can put their knowledge to work in the service of a collective project.

Jorge added that community gardens bring people together in networks of like-minded people, and expand social life at a time when “people are going around numb and half-asleep.”

At Adelfas there are monthly assemblies, collective work days and “open house” days, as well as maintenance committee meetings, workshops and talks.

Each garden is independently organised, but they are all managed in a participative way, generating a sense of community, contributing to raising self-esteem and creating mutual support networks.

“Our way of life prevents contact with our neighbours and with nature,” Victoria Barceló, one of the organisers of a community garden in the province of Málaga, complained to IPS.

She said her involvement in urban gardening had given her “a sense of belonging” and opened up a doorway to greater awareness and concern about her own health and nutritional habits.

“Urban gardens show that alternatives to current policies can be put into practice at local level,” said Esther Vivas of the centre for studies on social movements at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a university in the northeastern city of Barcelona.

Vivas told IPS that the gardens provide concrete solutions – like self-sufficiency – for specific problems, and also have a learning component.

“We have to get rid of all these weeds. There’s a lot of work to be done here,” 76-year-old Rafael Gálvez, a native of Málaga, told IPS as he hobbled around the garden leaning on a cane, accompanied by his dog.

Gálvez was a rural worker for many years. Now only a metal fence separates the El Caminito vegetable garden from the small shack where he lives because he cannot afford to rent a decent place on his meagre pension.