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of
UPA toward improving each country’s economic well-being.
Likewise,
he acknowledged FFTC’s confidence in continually tapping PCARRD
for the conduct of mutually beneficial undertakings such as organizing
workshops. PCARRD co-organized this UPA workshop.
Several
insights into the global trends in UPA were presented by keynote
speaker Dr. Gordon Prain, global coordinator of the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research-Urban Harvest.
Prain
stressed the need to respond, through UPA, to urban poverty and
food insecurity among affected towns and cities in the world.
Other
experts from Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam,
and the Philippines presented the technological developments and
approaches in UPA in their respective countries.
From
the country paper presentations, problems, issues, and constraints
related to UPA were identified. Recommendations on how to enhance
UPA’s impacts on urban livelihoods and the environment were
then formulated.
One
of the highlights of the discussion during the workshop was the
multifunctionality of UPA. It does not only help increase incomes
of farm villages. Rather, it also helps protect the environment
through organic farming, provides leisure places for the public,
improves health and nutrition, promotes herbal medicine use, and
serves other cultural and aesthetic functions.
Urban
agriculture is a type of agriculture applicable to towns and cities.
It involves growing crops, raising small livestock and fish for
own consumption or for sale in nearby markets.
Peri-urban
agriculture, on the other hand, refers to farm units close to town,
which operate intensive, semi-, or fully commercial farming.
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