Urban Agriculture in Latin America: A Green Culture Beyond Growing and Feeding

CASTELLARINI, F

Frontiers in Sustainable Cities

Frontiers

Lugar: Lausanne; Año: 2022

Artículo aceptado en Diciembre 2021. Publicado en Febrero 2022.Over the coming decades, the level of urbanization in Latin America (LA) isexpected to increase nearly 90%, with unwanted consequences such as accentuatedsocio-economic inequalities, food insecurity, violence, and environmental and healthcrises. In LA countries, urban agriculture (UA) has been adopted as one of the majorstrategies to address urban poverty and food insecurity, which have increased fordifferent drivers, such as population growth, economic crises, or forced migration.Nevertheless, experience in these countries has demonstrated that urban agricultureis a complex activity that involves multiple benefits, risks, actors, processes, scales,and interactions. In this review, I analyse urban agriculture in LA countries using theecosystems services framework as a tool to integrate UA functionalities and the foursustainability dimensions. I considered five issues derived from plant production: (1)ecosystem services, benefits, assets, drivers, and stakeholders in UA; (2) ecosystemservices bundles; (3) economic and socio-cultural factors associated with the ecosystemservices bundles; (4) research progress in LA countries; (5) issues and possible strategicdirections in decision-making of UA in the LA region. Using proxy variables, a total of 17ecosystem services, six benefits, six assets, and six indirect drivers were recognized.Projections of the 17 variables over the four dimensions of sustainable developmentshowed that the environmental dimension was most studied than the social, economic,and governance dimensions. Most of strengths of UA in LA were related to ecosystemservices, benefits, and beneficiaries; main weaknesses were related to the misuseof inputs, and human and environmental health; threats were related to regulation,governance and land tenure issues, and opportunities to several topics related to thefour dimensions of sustainability. The concepts, frameworks, and methods used in thisstudy may be effective tools to make scientific information available to managers anddecision makers.