Placing urban agriculture and agroecology in the social, environmental and planning agenda: learning from local/metropolitan policies in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Urban (agroecological) agriculture constitutes a major way of implementing food security and achieving the social function of urban land/property. It reconnects urban dwellers with nature, and with food production, distributions and consumption. In Lefebvrian terms it may produce radical change through everyday practices, articulating the right to the city with the right to nature and the human right to adequate food. This is particularly important in urban/metropolitan areas of the South where deep urban/social/environmental inequalities prevail in urbanization. Public policies are (still) important means to fight deprivation and insecurity, while university extension programmes associated with social movements have helped to develop innovative collective action toward food-producers autonomy and self-reliance. In this paper we discuss the case of Belo Horizonte in southeastern Brazil, a city of 2.5 million inhabitants in the center of a metropolitan region. At the local level, the city is known, since the 1990s, for placing food policies within the social, environmental, and urban planning agendas, attempting to deal with challenges related to developing agricultural production within disputed urbanized areas. The present decade is characterized by a new wave of local participatory programs related to urban agriculture and food security. At the metropolitan level, the authors participated in a planning experience carried out within our university, comprising the development of a metropolitan master plan in which food security policies and planning instruments aimed at promoting agriculture and protecting rural land and water from pressures derived from more profitable land uses. Giving visibility to metropolitan food producers, to their motivations, practices, organization and collective action helps to strengthen their activity, and to promote healthier food consumption habits. As an extension project, it improves interaction between university and society, and social learning both ways. The paper critically assesses those experiences.