Box 2.1 Commercially successful urban agriculture in Jakarta, Indonesia

Urban Farm DB summary

This piece reviews the literature on urban agriculture (UA), noting that Bryceson (1993) provides documentary evidence from as early as 1939 of UA's importance during and after the Second World War, and that the UN University's Food Energy Nexus research programme in the mid-1980s prompted researchers to examine agricultural cultivation within city boundaries more seriously. Since then, a significant body of literature has developed around a central debate over whether urban agriculture is beneficial, summarized by Lynch (2002). This summary is described as having two problems: it assumes urban agriculture is a homogenous activity with universally similar impacts, and it is largely viewed from the perspective of a city's population, so urban agriculture tends to be seen as beneficial for food, employment and the environment with little consideration of its impacts on the rural-urban food supply. This led Lynch, Binns and Olofin (2001) to argue that urban agriculture should instead be considered part of the broader urban food supply system.