PRACTITIONERS                GRADUATE STUDENTS                      APPLIED RESEARCHERS

The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development (JAFSCD) announces its call for briefs and articles related to

Best Practices in Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Development

To be included in JAFSCD Vol. 1 Issue 2

Deadline: June 5, 2010

[This submission deadline may be extended with permission of the publisher]

JAFSCD welcomes research or policy briefs, and case studies (up to 2,500 words) and full articles (up to 8,500 words) on best community-development practices related to:

  • Urban livestock management and regulation
  • Urban market gardening and backyard gardening
  • Marketing and value-adding
  • Waste management and reuse
  • Urban farming by immigrant or other special populations
  • Farming on the fringe

Briefs, case studies, and articles should focus on illustrative programs or projects, survey results, literature reviews, and public policy related — but not limited to — land-use planning and regulation, health ordinances or their implementation, training and educational programs, marketing systems or value chains, partnership development, systems approaches, issues of scale, and farm-neighbor relations. We are particularly interested in holistic approaches that combine community and economic development with environmental protection. Examples of applied research questions include:

  • Poultry, rabbit, swine, and small ruminant production versus community health: can a balance of interests be found?
  • Where and why are urban live animal markets flourishing? What are the SWOTs?
  • Where and why have some conventional family farmers been able to successfully adapt to urbanization, and what are winning programming strategies to support them?
  • What are key programmatic ingredients in helping older immigrants with a background and interest in farming gain access to agricultural opportunities in and around cities?
  • What are the trends in growth of urban and peri-urban farming, and what hinders or encourages urban or peri-urban agriculture?
  • What architecture or landscape designs are successfully accommodating urban or peri-urban agriculture?
  • Where are urban farming policies working or showing promise? Why?
  • What are viable approaches to market analysis and modeling for urban food production and sales outlets?
  • There is a rich literature on urban agriculture in the Global South. Can that literature inform approaches that can be taken in the North?
Background
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations has defined urban agriculture as “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” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture). The findings of national censuses, household surveys, and research projects suggest that up to two-thirds of urban and peri-urban households around the world are involved in agriculture. Much of the food produced is for their own consumption, with occasional surpluses sold to local markets (www.fao.org/ag/magazine/9901sp2.htm).

Urban and peri-urban agriculture appears to be on the rise in industrial countries, especially among ethnic immigrant groups in North America and Europe. This may be fueled by people’s economic situations as well as by growing interest in greening cities, localizing food production, and promoting food sovereignty These trends in urban and peri-urban agriculture are also accompanied by debates on related issues like land use, public health, sanitation, and economic viability. Our intent for this special-topic call for papers is to fill the significant deficit in the applied literature on trends and programming activities.

FOR DETAILS on this call for papers and submission guidelines, visit www.AgDevJournal.com.

The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development is published by New Leaf Publishing and Consulting (www.NewLeafNet.com).