Agriculture and livestock at the urban margin: fertile ground for collective action

Urban Farm DB summary

This 2010 dissertation is a comparative ethnographic study of agricultural and livestock production strategies in peri-urban Montevideo, Uruguay. It examined the factors shaping urban and peri-urban agricultural and livestock enterprises, the conditions under which growers organize collective action, and how municipal politics and institutional linkages affect production practices. The study focused on three populations: displaced urban working-class residents known as neo-pobres, waste-collector communities called clasificadores, and family-run organic grower organizations. The analysis found that all three groups strategically form organizations and collective-action strategies to raise their institutional visibility, secure and improve access to urban resources, and contest or resist municipal land-use policies and the push to "regularize" informal settlements. The research also points to the effects of large-scale political and economic forces on the urban margin and the difficulty of implementing policy there.