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Rosario: The Reruralization of a City
Located in the province of Santa Fe, where soybean fields dominate the skyline, this city of 1.3 million inhabitants has become a paradigm of urban planning based on urban agro-ecology
Rosario's planetarium is located in Urquiza Park, a huge public space on the banks of the Paraná River. Antonio Lattucca, one of the pioneers of urban agriculture in Rosario, greets the director of the astronomical complex with a hug and forms a circle with all the attendees –about thirty people– so that we can introduce ourselves and talk briefly about what we will be doing today: applying biodynamic preparations in the garden that has been set up by this scientific institution that has been enthusiastically supporting agroecology and biodynamics in the city for some months now.
What happened for an institution like the planetarium to promote urban agroecology in its own headquarters? Antonio argues that there were many conditions that allowed the consolidation of urban gardens in a city that proudly exhibits them, not only for supplying Rosarinos and Rosarinas with locally produced agroecological vegetables, but also for having a decisive influence on the formation of social projects based on the intervention of empty spaces to revitalize vulnerable neighborhoods, ennoble the land and dignify rurality.
The beginnings
“Many of the people who are here come from a peasant tradition, and this is a richness of Rosario that we have revaluated to the point of transforming this impulse into a public policy”, says this agricultural engineer who has been promoting the reruralization of the city since 1987. In 1990, the initiative gained momentum when gardeners, municipality and academia began to legitimate urban agriculture, which would take a qualitative leap forward in 2001, when Argentina experienced one of its worst economic crises and millions crossed the poverty line.
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Antonio Lattucca at the Agroecological and Biodynamic Center of Rosario. ‘This collective project was possible thanks to the participation of the municipality, academia, international cooperation and gardeners' associations.” / The biodynamic garden at Rosarios planetarium.
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Javier Couretot from the PAUR preparing biodynamic preparations at planetarium. / Virginia Ponce (left) exposing the biodiversity at the garden. /
In this context, the NGO CEPAR, the Prohuerta programme of the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) and the municipality saw urban gardens as a way to alleviate the crisis, and these emerged as real options on vacant land to produce agroecological food and give hope to thousands of unemployed people in the slums.
Antonio has given hundreds of lectures on the development of this impulse, which in 2002 turned in the first agroecological fair, which connected urban gardening production with consumers. “I wanted it to be set up in a central place, because we wanted to unite the people from the neighborhoods, the unemployed, with the people from the center. In the end we set up the organic market in a central place, although not so visible. If it failed, nothing would happen. The gardeners thought they were not going to sell, but in two hours it was all over.” After two years, this urban and agroecological urban management had 800 vegetable gardens set up, with guaranteed access to land and thousands of unemployed people proud to revive the rural knowledge they had buried when they first arrived in the city.
The Agroecological Center demonstrates that urban gardens, as well as uniting pedagogy, social economy and healthy food, are also spaces for sharing and breaking down social barriers.
The good reception of the project led to further contributions, as a study in cooperation with the University of Rosario in 2004 specified the percentage of undeveloped land (36%) in the city that could be used for the development of more urban agroecology. The corridors near the train tracks, parks and marshlands had appropriate conditions to further develop the urban farming program, beautify the city with edible landscaping, create jobs through communities, and establish a direct marketing system through the growth of organic markets and productive neighborhoods.
The Parque Huerta Oeste, founded in 2018 as a extension of the agroecological urban farming programm in Rosario.
Urban farming in Rosario is based on secure land tenure through a collaboration agreement with the municipality. Those who cultivate, commit themselves in reciprocity to produce with ecological techniques. Some qualitative achievements are the protection of undeveloped areas from improper occupation, the saving of public funds destined to the custody of idle land, and the transformation of degraded spaces into productive and aesthetically pleasing areas.
Productive biodiversity on the railway tracks.
Compost and Seeds for Everyone
The day before the planetarium activity, we visited the Centro Agroecológico y Biodinámico, an enclave that fully summarises all the facets of urban agroecology in Rosario. A dim sunlight beautifies the entrance with nettles and pumpkins covering part of the pavement, while beds of crops full of edible biodiversity, leafy fruit trees and mounds of biodynamic compost crown this enclave founded in 2017, when the “Huertos” were already a public policy legitimised by the municipality, the Red de Huerteros y Huerteras (Network of Gardeners) and the population itself.
Antonio describes today's task: setting up a biodynamic compost. We are a large group, made up of people who have been trained in the city's agroecology promotion programmes, journalists and farmers. We gather organic matter, arrange it in a mound, and top the short hill with the six biodynamic preparations –nettle, yarrow, dandelion, oak bark, chamomile and valerian–, while a cameraman from the Argentinian television station TELEFE documents the whole process. Different impulses flow together in this centre: training is offered by the PAUR and the Biodynamic Association of Argentina and the seed bank takes care of the preservation of organic quality seeds from all over Argentina and the dissemination of knowledge through booklets. The group works quickly and splendidly. Once the compost is ready, we talk about the importance of the activity. A gardener, emotionally touched, thanks urban agriculture for the self-determination she has been able to develop thanks to the ‘huertos’.
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Seed sorting in the Agroecological Center, a contribution to food sovereignty. This project also counts with the support of the municipality.
In 2004, Rosario's Urban Agriculture Programme won the Dubai Award for Best Practices from the UN Habitat programme.
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Urban agriculture workshops transmit traditional knowledge and bring people together, like these colleagues sharing their know-how to prepare a biodynamic compost.
Cooperating despite Differences
The celebration of compost at the Centro Agroecológico y Biodinámico ends with some good empanadas made by two vegetable gardeners, and we have to hurry to visit the Sunderland bar, which for more than a decade has been supporting urban agriculture initiatives by providing a space located in the upper part of the premises and lending its facilities for conferences that articulate the efforts of diverse social actors and make agroecology in Rosario visible to the media. The dozens of vegetable gardens are the setting for the training of young gardeners through a scholarship programme and mark the communion between gastronomy, education and reciprocity, as spices such as dill have been successfully integrated into various dishes at the bar, which also experienced moments of anxiety during the crisis in 2001.
Bringing together diverse social forces was a challenge that was overcome by building bridges. ‘We started as an NGO and were almost marginalized because we connected with the State, which was perceived as dirty. We all have prejudices, even those who are in the State think that the NGO is funded by I don't know who. We have to break down prejudices and link up with as many people as we can,’ says Lattucca, with whom we will be giving a talk in a few hours in the centre of Rosario on the reruralization of cities, complemented by a photographic documentary on German, Swiss, Peruvian and Greek city gardens.
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The Bar Sunderland articulates urban farming with pedagogy and gastronomy.
Landscape and Railway Agroecology
The next day, the Parque Huerta Oeste welcomes us very early in the morning with freshly harvested spices and the sympathy of gardeners who recognise the feeling of wellbeing that comes from working on regenerated land. The green spot –with carrots, aromatic herbs and lettuce– is already set up on a table and two boys are in charge of the sale. There are currently four parks in Rosario that combine the usual functions of this kind of enclaves –recreation, walking, sports activities– with agroecological cultivation.
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The Parque Huerta Oeste. This garden community has also a green point that connects the varied agroecological production of the garden with the neighborhood.
Edible landscaping? Examples such as Andernacht in Germany –“the edible city”– show that it is possible. In the last decade, Growing Power in Milwaukee (USA) even managed to turn food deserts –no fresh food available for five kilometres around– in low income neighborhoods into agroecological gardening enclaves. Antonio, who has travelled extensively, knows about these initiatives. “That's why it's important to have gardens in parks. Otherwise it is something to look at, something static. In these landscapes we are all actors, where you can come, harvest and produce”.
Not far from here, the railway tracks stage the same kind of citizen intervention. Many bumblebees are grateful for the diversity of scents and colours that make up this green corridor, where there used to be rust and rubbish. Three elderly vegetable gardeners are in charge of showing us this succession of plots that bring freshness and compose a peaceful frame. Antonio asks me to take a photo with them, as “these ladies are the pioneers of this project”. At the end, they bid us farewell with a bouquet of edible herbs and the fruit of a lemon tree that, imposingly, guards the entrance to the orchard.
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"The Green Point" on the railway tracks.
The 2007 land-use plan considers agriculture as a fundamental part of land use and urban modelling. The metropolitan strategic plan, approved in 2008, even considered the creation of a green belt in the city, consisting of family and community gardens and orchard parks.
Three pioneering women gardeners in the agroecological gardens on the railway tracks.
Solidarity Marketing and Recreation
On Sundays, the Plaza Suecia, located on Rosario's waterfront, welcomes dozens of gardeners who defy the bad weather and set up their agroecological vegetables in one of the most emblematic fairs of the city's agro-ecological movement. Cyclists, runners, kids, tourists: regular customers who support direct sales at fair prices - for themselves and for the urban farming community. Antonio talks to some gardeners and encourages them to have their photos taken, to show off with pride. “Biological biodiversity is a richness, but human biodiversity, when we all get together, is also a richness.”
Fairs like these guarantee direct marketing, the last link in this solidarity economy system, where agroecological production free of agrochemicals receives the recognition it deserves. Even the marketing network can expand and provide an attractive concept for the marketing of value-added products –such as the natural cosmetics project based on wild herbs cultivated in the “Huertas”–. “Suelo Común”, an agroecological shop located in the Mercado del Patio, one of Rosario's most important markets, sources vegetables and spices from the city's green belt, as well as offering a showcase for biodynamic and organic products from all over Argentina.
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As well as the sustainable use of land, the system of organic markets in public spaces is essential to connect the production of the 160 hectares dedicated to urban agroecology in Rosario with the public.
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The ecological store “Suelo Común”, located in the Mercado del Patio, in front of the bus station, displays the edible biodiversity of the city.
For Antonio Lattucca, the fact that the gardens and fairs have contributed to overcoming social prejudices is a source of legitimate pride. “Many people in the neighbourhoods thought that people in the centre were selfish and looked down on poor people, while from here they think that people in the neighbourhood are delinquent, that they don't produce. There is a link here.” And as in the case of the astronomy centre, discussed above, bridges are also being built between science and ancestral and biodynamic tradition. “To have prepared the biodynamic preparations yesterday with the scientists from the planetarium in a public place like the Urquiza Park, and for them to take the calendar as something important, represents a qualitative leap and an opening for biodynamics and the ancestral knowledge of our continent.”
The preparation of organic inputs and biodynamic preparations is essential for healthy production in the urban agroecology in Rosario.
The succession of agroecological interventions in Rosario will continue because it is a legitimized practice. The function of the gardens, beyond generating economic autonomy –as is the case with thousands of gardeners who now have financial independence despite the chronicle financial crisis–, providing healthy food and maintaining clean land, is perceived as the protection of an environment. Despite the enormous challenges faced by this Argentinean city, this collaborative way of managing the soil and influencing the food system is a solid strategy that has brought it recognition from the urban farming global movement.