What can be the contribution of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UA) to food security in a context
of rapid urbanisation (tables 1 and 2) ?
This paper focuses on four points : the contribution of UA to food supply ; to urban employment
and incomes ; the advantages of UA fresh products in a context of nutritional transition ; the role of
UA through short food supply chain in reducing the anxiousness created by the increasing distance
between city inhabitants and food.
In many countries, UA contributes to food supply of cities for fresh and very perishable products
like vegetables (table 3). But staple foods often come from rural remote areas connected to urban
markets. Urban agriculture and food marketing give employment and incomes to peasants who are
coming for job into the cities without other knowledge and know-how. But it is in the small-scale
food processing that new urban qualified employment is mainly created, in particular for women
who cannot go to school (table 4).
The supply of fresh vegetables from UA is a great challenge in a context of nutritional transition.
Diseases like obesity, diabetes type II, cardio and vascular pathologies and some cancers, are now
increasing in many cities of developing countries. These vegetables have advantages in term of low
energetic density, fibre and anti-oxidant content that can prevent these new diseases.
Based on a typology of risk acceptability factors, this paper shows that urbanisation and
industrialisation of food chains give anxiousness to consumers. From this point of view, UA have
the advantages of a food system based on proximity relations between suppliers and consumers, that
means between consumers and their food, between Man and Nature.