Urban agriculture is not a new term. It happened in ancient Egypt to utilize urban wastes for feeding agriculture. Or in Machu Pichu, Peru, where water was valued, organizing fields to reuse and conserve water was indeed needs. Or in the World War II, creating agriculture in urban or peri-urban areas to reduce distant from rural areas were done by many differ- ent ways.
Urban agriculture involves to culturing, pro- cessing and distributing foods around a vil- lage, town, city. Urban agriculture activities depend on different level of social and eco- nomic development of a community, town or city. Therefore the term “urban agriculture” was created. Those agriculture activities are still going on in the urban areas by small scale of land, less activities and mostly as hobbies for urban people who still want to go back to nature nowadays.
Purposes of urban agriculture are quite various. In development countries, urban agriculture is simple as a hobby of planting for urban people to be close to nature, hav- ing more activities and exercises, especially for the old or retired people who have more spare time. Urban agriculture can have or- ganic vegetable or fruits in short period and enjoy their-own agricultural products mostly. It can also be as an exercise activi- ties for retire people who really want to stay out of the 4 wall- life and enjoy sunlight and have another different activity than routine. Nowadays, urbanization is increasing rap- idly There are a lot of cities, which urban- ization has reached to 100% such as Singa- pore, Hong Kong etc. Agriculture activities remind old people of the past, or training for teenagers some of living skills and value of agriculture, make them understand where and how they have food, rice, vegetables in their daily time. Within neighborhood area, urban agriculture activities can be a spare small piece of land which is provided by lo- cal municipality and help residents to plant what they like. Or it can be on the top of an apartment building. Each householder who is interested in urban agriculture will have a small piece of land and plant their own crops.
However, in developing countries, it’s a re- source of food supply, income generation. People who try to improve their income by doing more work after their main work, ur- ban agriculture could help a lot. In this case, urban agriculture will be in a larger scale in a bigger land than. Normally, it is normally in peri urban areas.
For environment, it is very good for those activities of urban agriculture. If all free space is covered by soft scape, not hard- scape, drainage system can be shared the burden. If roof top is covered plants from ur- ban agriculture, the building can be reduced 30% amount of heat can be absorbed to the building.
For economics, it can be by Urban agricul- ture activity will not damage to local agricul- ture or bring new threaten species of insects. In fact, it can help as micro finance for low income people and as a source of income generating.
For culture, it is a good chance for urban people could exchange, share and talk ex- perience of doing agriculture. It is also give a sample for young generationg the value of agriculture and remind them land and work- ing values.
