Antioquia proposes to Colombia the model of urban orchards as a solution to malnutrition in cities

With the delivery of 3,300 urban gardens in Medellín and its Metropolitan Area, the Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Government of Antioquia, proposes the country to adopt this supply model that seeks to balance the imbalance between the food production capacity in the rural areas and the need for healthy food consumption in urban areas.

The Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Government of Antioquia delivered 3,300 urban gardens in Medellín and its Metropolitan Area, as a solution to fight malnutrition in the Antioquia population.

With the delivery of these orchards, the Government of Antioquia takes a step forward in the generation of food solutions and aims at the sustainable production of food in the Metropolitan Area. Many cities in the world have adopted this successful model that allows combating food insecurity, enabling access to nutrition since each family can choose what they want to plant and is involved with the protection of the planet.

The panorama of poor nutrition in Colombia is highlighted in the latest National Nutritional Situation Survey (ENSIN), according to which 7 out of every 100 school-age minors and 1 in 10 teenagers suffer from chronic malnutrition. 17.9% of the population between 13 and 17 years of age is overweight and 1 in 5 young people and adults is obese. In this sense, more than 28 million people in the country are overweight.

This initiative aims to transform the relationship between the countryside and the city through self-consumption gardens in homes. According to the FAO, about 700 million inhabitants in the world eat from their home grown crops.

“Guaranteeing food security for newborns, children, teenagers and adults, is a priority task for the Ministry of Agriculture, and for that we understand that access to food becomes essential and even more so in Antioquia where 78% of the population is urban and 22% is rural. For this reason, we finished the process of delivering 3,300 urban gardens in the Metropolitan Area of the Aburrá Valley, to generate conditions that allow the families of these main populated centers of the department to have access to a healthy and balanced diet in their own homes, with all nutritional guarantee”, said Rodolfo Correa Vargas, Secretary of Agriculture.

Edible gardens are an important way to solve the food problems of the future, since by 2050 it is estimated that it will be necessary to produce 70% more food to meet the needs of an additional 3 billion people. “With measures like the ones we are developing, we attend to the most critical needs of the present, given that today, 1 in 5 children in the urban areas of Antioquia suffers from malnutrition. This initiative, which emerged more than 100 years ago to combat a food crisis caused by war, is being applied today as a mechanism to address the great challenges posed by the right to food security in a post-pandemic world”, concluded Rodolfo Correa.