Agroecological urban agriculture: production and food contributions from three community gardens

Abstract

Urban agriculture (UA) is important for its contributions to food and nutritional security and sovereignty in food production. In Uruguay, more and more people and institutions are becoming involved in the urban agroecology proposal with the concern of consuming food free of pesticide residues and the interest in generating spaces for education and socialization, but also in connection with rural culture and the achievement of increasing levels of autonomy. There are several contributions for the understanding of UA, but in the country there is a lack of efforts to understand the contributions in quantity of food and nutritional contributions, which is the subject of this work. The amount of food produced in three urban agroecological community gardens in Montevideo, the contribution to food, the work time required to produce in the cities, and the degree of satisfaction are determined. Secondary information, interviews with qualified informants and analysis of field records were used. The results indicate that in these urban agroecological community gardens (HUAC) important volumes of quality food are obtained that can cover the nutritional requirements of people, with a potential contribution that can satisfy between 34% and 74% of what is recommended and where gardeners and gardeners perceive that it contributes around 42% of the food they consume, but that above all it contributes to freedom of choice, autonomy and satisfaction.