The global debate on agriculture under urbanisation has often focused a priori on the replacement of agricultural uses by built-up space. It thereby often overlooks new opportunities for agriculture at the urban periphery.
A fresh perspective on urban-rural linkages allows us to re-envision urban fringe areas as zones for innovative businesses, growth, and prosperity. By Kaustubh Das
Urban agriculture is practised around the globe. Who practises urban agriculture, why they engage in it and what barriers they face are often similar across the seemingly disparate divides of the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’. Cross-site learning for the development of possible policy responses may therefore be fruitful. Food security will also be one of the issues discussed at the Dresden Nexus Conference in Germany this week.
Food security touches many different issues, among them poverty, hunger, price levels, and land and food policy. For URBANET, Inês M. Raimundo describes the situation in the Mozambican cities of Maputo and Matola, where the urban poor have resorted to food borrowing to survive.
