Abstract
This chapter has the objective to analyze the transformation process of the urban agro ecology landscape in territory transition. It begins questioning the implications that the agro ecological practices and territorial transformation and transition have on food systems sovereignty and security as well as other effects on land uses, climate change, environmental services, etc. The method used is based on an analytical review of the literature to elaborate a critical perspective of benefits and challenges. It is concluded that agro ecology is the key element in the construction of food system sovereignty and security which requires the transition towards the urban agro ecology based on the transformation of social and political power structures moving away from corporate control towards community governance aimed to achieve improvement ecosystem services and environmental sustainability of the city.
TopAgro-Ecological Landscapes
The agro-ecological rationale of small-scale farming represents community-based local agriculture to continue feeding people in most rural and urban landscapes. Urban agroecology is related to the growing, processing, distributing, and marketing of organic food through intensive plant cultivation and animal husbandry in cities. Urban agroecology is a broad term to describe grassroots and institution-led projects of food cultivation and animal husbandry on urban land, which creates alternatives of commons to capitalist organizations reshaping urban landscapes.
Urban sustainable agroecology refers to food cultivation and animal husbandry on urban and peri-urban land, reshaping city landscapes and forms of recreation of Commons as an alternative of urban life organization. Urban agro-ecological actors and stakeholders can open their lands and build socio-economic communities for mutual support to build more natural open green spaces in the rural and urban interfaces.
Urban agroecology is a feature of the urban economy that is not integrated into the urban land use system and remains outside, contributing to income, employment and healthy food supply. Urban agroecology is growing or producing healthy food in urban land used for this purpose in heavily populated settlements. Feeding the world’s growing population while caring for the public health and environment, urban agroecology can be the answer to solve the problems if land use, financial incentives, infrastructure and support systems are properly planned and implemented. Urban agroecology and animal production occurring within inner cities and peripheries is a productive process linked to feeding the urban population.
Urban agroecology is integrated and embedded into the urban socio-economic and ecological system, managing the use of natural resources, competing with other uses of land and water, connecting with the urban food systems based on the needs of healthy nutrition of resident consumers.
Agroecology produces food by restoring degraded landscapes of smallholder producers to maximize biodiversity and ecosystem services provided by natural resources. Ecosystems are shaped by the benefits of agro ecological landscapes involving different interests of various stakeholders and actors. Some stakeholders’ agro-ecological initiatives, practices and policies to improve biodiversity and natural resource management in natural landscape elements embedded in food systems are the territorialized agro-environmental measures
Key Terms in this Chapter
Agro Ecological Practice: It is the practical application of ecological concepts and principles to the study, design and management of ecological interactions in agricultural systems (for example, the relationships between biotic and abiotic elements).
Agro Ecology: Is the discipline that is responsible for administering the ecological principles of the production of food, fuels, fibers and pharmaceuticals. This encompasses a wide range of approaches and they consider it a science and a way of seeing life, whether organic, conventional, intensive or extensive.
Landscape: Extension of land seen from a specific place and considered as a spectacle.
Territory: Extension of land that belongs to a state, province, or other type of political division.
Transition: Step or change from one state, way of being, etc., to another. Intermediate state between an older one and another that is reached in a change.
Urban Agro Ecology: Is called agroecological practices that are developed in or near cities. ... Urban agroecology usually develops on the roofs of buildings, on the walls of houses and on the balconies and terraces of buildings.