Impacts of Urban Agriculture Annual Report.p65 - International ...

Adopting Farmer Field Schoolsto urban realities in Lima, Peru22products. Most producers in the area have limitedknow-how or money to improve the quality andefficiency of production and therefore have no optionbut to sell their products to local markets at a nominalprice.Implemented in 2004 and 2005, this Urban Harvestproject utilized the Farmer Field Schools (FFS)approach, which involves intensive adult educationand social learning techniques to stimulateagricultural education. This approach, which up untilnow had only been applied in rural settings, wasadapted for the first time to an urban context. Thismeant factoring in, among other things, theparticipants’ multiple livelihood activities, limited timeavailability, and competing priorities.A participatory project on the outskirts of Lima ishelping an organized group of farmers to improve theirquality of life and care for the environment bystrengthening the management of their crops andlivestock production systems.As metropolitan Lima continues to sprawl further into theRimac river watershed and turn traditional agriculturallands into concrete, urban farmers in the communities ofCarapongo and Huachipa continually have to deal withthe health, legal and environmental problems thataccompany urban growth. An estimated 20% of Limahouseholds are involved in agriculture—backyardlivestock raising or growing horticulture products—withmany of these families depending on horticulture as theirmain source of income.In an effort to curb the negative effects of urbanization,Urban Harvest designed and implemented a program thataims to adapt improved technologies to farmers’horticulture production, decrease their use of pesticides,and search for new market opportunities for theirAside from adapting the FFS approach to an urbancoastal setting, specifically Lima’s eastern river valley,the approach used in this project was innovative inthe fact that it aimed to find integrated solutions tothe management of vegetable crops and not merelyfor the specific problems of disease and pest control.The main themes discussed during the FFS sessionsand experiments were land use management,fertilization, management of insect pests, watermanagement and irrigation techniques, plantingtechniques, and market access. This helped farmersbecome aware of the environmental and healthproblems, market indicators and crop productionissues in their urban environment.The prevalent theme, however, was land use and cropmanagement. Study results highlighted the fact thatthere exists a lack of local knowledge of urban agroecologiesand of pest and disease managementamong producers, which in turn leads to thewidespread use of highly toxic pesticides to combatinsect pests and diseases.