Urban-Agriculture

Urban Agriculture in Developing Nations
Urban agriculture is a crucial strategy that helps the inner city poor survive in Latin America. To better define what is urban agriculture I researched an article called Agricultura urbana en Mexico, situaciones y perspectivas, por Ramon Soriano Robles. "Urban Agriculture is the agricultural practice and animal husbandry of inner cities and suburban areas that use local resources of labor, space, water and organic waste to generate sustenance for consumption and local sale." (tr Rosel) However, barter is also an important strategy in many impoverished communities that may have goods or services to trade, but lack hard currency to do so. Urban agriculture is an important part of this informal economy that is common among the less affluent classes of Latin America that depend on it to supplement their diet and help them negotiate a capitalist society in which they may have few marketable skills. A low-wage economy, poverty and lack of other opportunities have influenced the popularity of urban agriculture in Latin America. In contrast, the United States, Canada, and other first world nations have seen an increase in popularity of urban agriculture due to the organic food movement. This is not to say that Latin America doesn't value organic food; rather, the order of priorities is very different depending on the affluence of the society.
The demographic shift to large cities is being experienced on global scale. Today half of the world's population lives in urban areas and 1/6th of the world's total population lives in mega-cities in excess of 10 million people. The vast majority of people that migrate to cities/urban areas worldwide do so in search of employment opportunities. In the U.S. 82% live in urban areas, while on average Latin America stands at 75% and Mexico at 77.3%. These figures are quite similar; however, the percentage of urban poor is much higher in Latin America and developing countries.
In Latin America many people migrate to the cities for low-paying jobs that often do not provide much job security. In this regard one of the principal benefits of urban agriculture is the security of a ready food supply (la seguridad alimentaria) that does not depend on whether they could find enough work that day. The duality of urban agriculture allows a family member who is the primary childcare provider of the household to enhance its food security as well because it is home based. In these ways urban agriculture helps aliviate poverty and enrich the diet of the urban poor.