The Millennium Development Goals and Urban Agriculture

Farming the City and Advancing the MDGs
[MDG is the eight United Nations 1990 - 2015 Millennium Development Goals which are adopted by 189 countries]

Desk of Jac Smit
12 5 '07

The advocates of Urban Agriculture will do well to present the case for farming the city as a tool to contribute to the achievement of these goals.

Four of the eight goals can clearly be advanced by urban and peri-urban agriculture, numbers 1., 3., 5., and 7. At the base this can be argued because; in 1990 the earth's urban population was under 40%, in 2007 it is over 50% and on the target date [2015] it will be close to 60% urban.

The Eight MDGs in Brief; (Urban Agriculture's Targets Underlined)

Eradicate extreme poverty & hunger

Achieve universal primary education

Promote gender equality and empower women

Reduce child mortality

Improve maternal health

Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

Ensure environmental sustainability

Develop a global partnership for development

To get the discussion started, and with the intention of presenting a case to the United Nations and 189 Countries, allow me to state some clear possibilities, and list some references for research and documentation.

First MDG: Urban Agriculture reduces hunger: A/ By providing direct, on-the-ground, access to good food without having to make the money that will move your family out of poverty; B/ UrbanAg provides opportunity to earn money in the most stable of industries, food production close to market, which will reduce poverty.

Third MDG: The majority of chief farmers or 'farmer-in-charge' in the urban sector is women. Men are in charge in rural areas. Farming in the city gives women a major stepping stone to equality.

Fifth MDG: Maternal health: Studies in several of the 189 committed Nation's urban populations find that the health of women engaged in farming is significantly better than other women in the same income range and in some as healthy as healthy as the richest women in the city.

Seventh MDG: Environmental Sustainability, City farming advances sustainable development in at least five ways:
A/ It greens the city;
B/ It uses solid waste and waste water as inputs, reducing pollution;
C/ It reduces the transportation, cooling and processing and packaging of food conserving energy;
D/ It slows and reduces the expansion of polluting rural agriculture into forests and up mountains;
E/ It reduces the global shortage of water by using efficient drip irrigation and grey water, rather than trenches and overhead sprinklers.

There is a multiplier to these four factoids. Studies from NASA to FAO find that urban agriculture has seven to ten times more productive capacity per square meter than rural agriculture.

Given that a) half to two-thirds of the market demand is in urban areas, b) urban areas can produce much more per person, c) the majority of urban farm production is achieved by women and d) farming the city and its fringes makes both urban and rural areas more ecologically sustainable.

We can make a strong case that the MDG strategy and program of the United Nations should give a greater weight to urban agriculture as a MDG achievement tool.

References and Cases:

- Wikipedia, -- Millennium_Development_Goals
- Earth Institute - Sanchez, Pedro , 2005 "Halving Hunger---" a report of the Task Force on Hunger, @ Columbia Univ.
- World Bank, 2005 SIMA Database
- World Bank and IFPRI 2005 "-- MDGs faster through Agriculture"
- UNFAO, MDGs "The Road Ahead. www.fao.org/mdg/
- InterAction, Monday Development, 2006, Volume 24 Numbers 17 & 18
- Millennium Development Goals: 2007 Progress Chart

- The United Nations, Google and Cisco unveiled a pioneering online site- www.mdgmonitor.org- that tracks progress towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. MDG Monitor tracks progress toward the MDGs in a number of categories in nearly every developing country in the world. The site presents the most current data from multiple sources in development areas like public health, education and women's empowerment. By laying out areas of progress and continuing challenge for the world to see, MDG Monitor aspires to keep the global community's eye firmly fixed on the Millennium Goals, and to provide vital information for policy makers and development practitioners worldwide.

On one portion of the site, MDG Monitor allows a Web surfer to use Google Earth to fly anywhere on the planet and explore from above, in three dimensions, the places where work is being done to realize the MDGs. With a few simple clicks, users can access country assessments and data collected by the UN worldwide.

The Millennium Campaign has set up a page on Myspace and an application on Facebook.

·         In Africa the leader in the scale of UA is Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

·         Cuba in the 1990s, particularly Havana, presents and excellent example of the benefits of UA, www.aguila.org

·         A positive example extending from the 1980s is the Kampung Improvement Programme [KIP] in Indonesia.

·         In the 21st century one of the best programmes can be found in Rosario Argentina.