Monitoring, Maintenance, and Management
How has the initiative been designed and implemented so that long-term needs for management and maintenance are reduced and can be met?
The urban and peri-urban agroecological (AUPA) activities of “Reverdecer Bogotá” (Bogota’s greening) have been raised from the social environment, considering that the community fabric through the cultural appropriation of agroecological practices is the best strategy for sustainability over time. Without the interested community groups and organizations, the AUPA simply could not be implemented or carried out in Bogotá.
Horticulture in urban and peri-urban areas with agroecological management contributes to food sovereignty, which the different population groups appropriate as a lifestyle, which enhances food production, environmental management, adaptation mechanisms to climate change and conservation. of biodiversity.
What protocols are in place to facilitate monitoring of results?
To measure the results of the urban agriculture program in terms of technical assistance, support visits are made to vegetable gardens, where it is verified that the communities comply with the guidelines defined from the Botanical Garden and receive advice and support.
With the training processes, participants are invited to implement their gardens and receive technical support, the knowledge acquired is evidenced and other more specialized topics are offered in order to increase opportunities and new agroecological ventures.
These goals are monitored monthly and their results are reported in the Botanical Garden monitoring system, which in turn is linked to the indicator platform of the Bogotá District Planning Secretariat.
There is also a co-creation platform called Bogotá es Mi Huerta, a microsite directed and fed by interest groups identified in the program, that is, urban farmers, through which successful experiences are made visible along with windows of opportunities for the community to transfer and acquire knowledge and experience.
This is supported by pedagogical, scientific, promotional and informative publications in order to put the generated and applied knowledge at the service of citizens.
In April 2022, the urban agriculture cell phone App will be enabled, with real-time information on the results of the project in all its variables, as a transparency tool that makes timely, updated information available to citizens for decision-making.
How has the initiative been enhanced in response to monitoring of results?
Since 2020, based on the manifest need to generate food security, compliance with the strategic lines of the District Development Plan 2020-2024, and following the diagnosis and monitoring of urban agriculture in the district, the low structuring of this line of action was detected. Therefore, an agreement has been generated with the Organization of Ibero-American States, OEI, in order to design and formulate the Agroecological Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Program of the Capital District.
Additionally, and in parallel, a concrete response is given to community requests related to technical assistance and delivery of supplies to urban farmers, strengthening more than 5,800 urban and peri-urban vegetable gardens in just one year and approximately eight months, an action that has not been running in the city since the second half of 2008, that is, 12 years ago.
Another aspect of improvement is the development of a mobile application (App) for AUPA ( acronym for urban and peri urban agriculture ) in Bogotá D.C. which allows loading and updating information, in real time, on characterization, training processes and technical assistance; marketing actions, agroecological routes and monitoring of the gardens, as well as their respective georeferencing, data that will be integrated into the entity’s geographic information system and the “Bogotá es mi huerta”( bogota is my vegetable garden) microsite
Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture Protocol document was formulated in a participatory manner with the entities that administer the public space and the community interested in the practices.
