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Rikolto and UN Environment Programme (UNEP), supported by the One Planet Network Sustainable Food System Programme, have launched three new policy briefs that provide cities and national governments with actionable recommendations for integrating a sustainable food systems approach into urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) policies and practices.
Rapid urbanisation in cities like Hanoi, Arusha and Surakarta presents challenges for urban food systems. As cities grow, they often take over agricultural land, reducing the capacity to produce local food. However, urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) - especially when using agro-ecological or regenerative principles - has the potential to mitigate these challenges by providing fresh, healthy food for urban populations, supporting biodiverse and healthy diets, increasing residents’ wellbeing, and generating income for local farmers, among other benefits.
In Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, urban and peri-urban agricultural production already meets 65% of the urban population's dietary needs, particularly for staples such as rice, vegetables, pork and poultry. However, urban expansion is expected to reduce the available agricultural land due to competition with non-agricultural uses such as buildings, industrial zones and public spaces. This has already led farmers to switch from traditional crops such as rice to higher-value alternatives such as fruit and vegetables.
Hanoi is currently witnessing a diverse landscape of UPA practices, which includes commercial, home-based, community-based, and institutional food production. This diversity underscores the important role that UPA plays in ensuring the stability and resilience of the city’s food system. While recent policy documents such as Hanoi’s 2022 Plan on Restructuring the Agricultural Sector and its 2022 Strategy for Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development reflect high-level ambitions for UPA, they do not provide detailed guidance or actionable strategies for implementing a systemic approach to UPA. Policy documents often emphasise the environmental and economic outcomes of UPA, but do not sufficiently explore how they can help address critical challenges, such as competition for land use, or fully capture their contributions to nutrition, health, community well-being, and other social benefits.
Arusha, in the north of Tanzania, faces a not so different set of challenges. With a population of over 600,000 and an annual growth rate of 4%, the city is expected to reach 2 million by 2050. This rapid expansion is already putting pressure on the city's food system. Unsustainable agricultural practices, such as overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, are widespread, raising concerns about food safety. In addition, poor waste management and urban growth are adding to the degradation of the environment.
However, UPA has historically played an important role in Arusha's economy, particularly for low-income and women-headed households. As well as providing a source of income, it also contributes to food security through the production of nutritious food - as fruits and vegetables are often grown in urban and peri-urban settings. UPA can help improve access to affordable, healthy food, particularly as part of an integrated approach to sustainable urban food systems that recognizes the multiple benefits of UPA.
Surakarta, in Central Java, Indonesia, is known for its vibrant culture and traditional foods. Despite a large tourism industry and a local diet dominated by rice, only 8% of the city's food needs are supplied by local agricultural production. The rest must be imported from other regions. This makes Surakarta highly dependent on external food sources, which could prove vulnerable to supply chain disruptions in the future.
The City of Surakarta has several programmes and initiatives related to UPA and has recognised UPA as a policy priority. Through the development of the Regional Action Plan for Food and Nutrition and the Food-Smart City Roadmap, the city has focused on strengthening urban agriculture, enhancing food supply chains and market operations, promoting healthy eating habits, improving food waste management, monitoring food safety, and more. However, the potential of peri-urban agriculture remains largely untapped. One of the challenges is that many of the peri-urban areas around Surakarta, which possess high agricultural potential, lie outside the city’s municipal boundaries. To address this, it is essential to foster cooperation with neighbouring districts in order to develop peri-urban agriculture and secure a consistent supply of nutritious food.
Rikolto and UNEP started their collaboration on UPA in 2021 with the aim of promoting a sustainable food systems approach to UPA to ensure it not only meets the immediate food security needs of urban areas but also contributes to environmental sustainability, climate resilience, long-term ecosystem health, economic resilience, and social well-being. The collaboration started in Kampala, Uganda (see article “Preparing Kampala for a future in urban farming”), shortly followed by technical support for the city of Semarang in Indonesia.
A new collaboration launched in 2024 aimed to integrate a sustainable food systems approach into UPA policies and practices in three additional cities: Arusha, Surakarta, and Hanoi. By involving multiple stakeholders - local governments, SMEs, civil society and research institutions - the project aimed to facilitate a collaborative process in which different viewpoints could be heard and integrated into the policy-making process.
A key activity was the organization of training sessions on food systems thinking and its application to UPA policies. Training materials were tailored to the specific context of each city and included policy analysis, stakeholder mapping and overviews of existing initiatives. The materials were also translated into Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesia to ensure accessibility.
The collaboration also involved organising multi-stakeholder dialogues on how to incorporate a sustainable food systems approach into UPA policy development, taking into account the unique challenges and opportunities of each city. By involving a wide range of stakeholders - from government agencies to farmers' associations, research institutions, private sector, and civil society organizations - the dialogues resulted in policy recommendations that aimed to be both practical and broadly accepted.
These recommendations are now available as policy briefs to inspire local, city and national authorities.
While the recommendations and target audience of each brief are different, they highlight a common trend: it is crucial to adopt sustainable food systems and multi-stakeholder approach to UPA to acknowledges the interconnections and potential trade-offs between nutrition, socio-economic, resilience and environmental sustainability. Promoting such an integrated approach to UPA is an important step towards building resilient, sustainable, and inclusive food systems that can respond to the challenges of the future.
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