The City of Cape Town is hosting its first Urban Agricultural Summit. The aim of the two-day event is to look at the role of urban farmers and food growers in the City. The summit will also bring together all the different stakeholders in government, business, agricultural support services and civil society to discuss the opportunities and challenges of urban farming.

Delegates to the summit will discuss the assistance that should be rendered to make each farming unit economically sustainable. The assistance can take the form of improving access to loans from the relevant financial institutions, training of emerging farmers, etceteras

Councillor Kent Morkel, Executive committee member responsible for Economic Development, Tourism and Property Management believes that "a challenge awaits us in the urban agricultural sector as the majority involved in the sector are from previously disadvantaged backgrounds". Morkel said the City needs to look at every possible way to assist people in maximising resources needed - be it land, water, access to finance, extension services, infrastructure and public facilities.

The City’s Urban Agricultural Unit’s Stanley Visser echoes this view; "it is especially people from low-income groups that are involved in urban agricultural activities for the explicit reason of household food security". Visser believes it is therefore essential that the City investigate the contribution that urban agriculture can make towards poverty alleviation, and employment. This Summit will also contribute to the Urban Agriculture Policy and Development Framework formulation process that is currently underway.

Urban farming is part of Cape Town just as much as Table Mountain. Whether you produce vegetables in your backyard to put food on the table, whether you farm with chickens and sell their eggs or whether you farm with cattle for traditional reasons or resale, you are regarded as an urban farmer. All these farmers need assistance and the summit will determine what type of assistance each one will get and the role the stakeholders will play.

Morkel believes that the City of Cape Town must become the catalyst to helping urban farmers and their communities towards greater economic empowerment and sustainable development.