The urban producer's resource book

The manual focuses on issues of central concern to urban producers worldwide: access to resources for production; financial constraints; policy and regulatory environment; local government and institutional support; environmental and food quality; and safety standards and group organization. Not only does the manual advise urban producers on how to tackle these issues, it does so by showing and illustrating how much more effective it is for producers to tackle these issues as groups rather than as individuals. It explains how urban producers can be assisted in forming themselves into organizations or how they can strengthen their existing organizations. It distinguishes between issues whose solution lies within a group’s control from those, usually more serious ones, whose solution requires co-operation with other groups and stakeholders.

It shows how urban producer groups can cooperate with specific categories of urban actors for their mutual benefit. One action, in particular, seems needed – to document and disseminate to others in the city, the progress made by urban producer organizations in helping to resolve some of the city’s key challenges and the progress made by the producers themselves in improving some of their own practices that have raised concern among other urban actors, including local authorities. Showing focus, commitment, self-reliance and transparency improves respect and legitimacy of urban producers in the public eye as trustworthy builders of a better city.

This manual draws on FAO’s programme experience with rural producers and agricultural enterprises, as well as with UPA through various sector and commodity-specific interventions. It also draws on information from networks active in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA), such as the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF), supported by the Dutch DGIS, IDRC and other bilateral agencies. This network recently issued a special issue of its Urban Agriculture Magazine on urban producers’ organizations, a timely support to this manual.