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This new website is the access point for all issues and information related to urban agriculture in the MENA region. It includes a special document repository section where all the material that are developed for training courses and workshops are posted.
The target audience for this website is professionals, academics and practitioners in the various fields of agriculture and development. The content is managed by the ESDU team at the American University of Beirut.
Why urban agriculture?
Agriculture in urban areas is gaining greater recognition across the globe as food production, nutrition and health, economic returns, poverty alleviation, natural resource management, and land use play increasingly important roles in governmental policy and strategy. Agricultural production in and around cities is an ancient activity, and, although some research has been conducted on various aspects of urban agriculture in some regions of the world (notably, eastern Africa), very little research has been undertaken in the Middle East and North Africa region. The relationship between urbanization and agriculture is getting more and more complex as both compete over the same diminishing resources which are mainly land and water. Agriculture activities have been receding for many years now in most of the MENA cities thus its main functions are being hindered. Despite the negative pressures, crop cultivation and animal husbandry remain common throughout the region’s cities. Fertile agricultural areas are still considerable and are expected to remain productive for years to come. Urban agriculture in the MENA countries is at present a highly diverse and widespread activity, yet it still suffers from lack of recognition form the planners, agriculturists, policy-makers, researchers and even by its practitioners. Consequently, research, extension, resources suitable policies and strategies pertaining to existing urban agricultural lands and other urban fertile areas are insufficient.
*urban and agriculture are used in their broadest senses, as reflected in the definition of urban agriculture that can be found in Jac Smit, Annu Ratta and Joe Nasr, Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable cities (New York: United Nations Development Programme, 1996), 3:”an industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to the daily demand of consumers within a town, city or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urban area, applying intensive production methods, using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes, to yield a diversity of crops and livestock.”
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