EFUA’s objectives were to unlock Urban Agriculture’s potential by achieving better knowledge, better deployment, and better policies in this field.
1. Better knowledge in Urban Agriculture
EFUA was reviewing research and publications on UA to define the knowledge status in UA. It consulted and cooperated with ongoing research projects and influenced upcoming ones to better coordinate research on UA. EFUA strived to define knowledge gaps hindering UA’s development and to define Research & Innovation activities to fill these gaps. EFUA provided the UA stakeholders with updated knowledge. EFUA’s objective was to co-build knowledge together with the stakeholders engaged in the UA Forum.
2. Better deployment of Urban Agriculture
EFUA was reviewing research, publications and reports to collate and analyzed good collective practice and their related forms of governance in Europe. Governance is understood to mean ways of planning, realizing and sustaining UA practices at the city level in the context of interaction with the local social, economic, political and environmental context. EFUA was identifying barriers hindering UA’s development and define strategies and actions to overcome these barriers, targeting the different tiers from EU, to member states and regional and local level. EFUA was also identifying future challenges, potential game changers and promising next practice. This was done again through engaging the UA Forum to achieve stakeholder targeted and adaptable solutions.
3. Better policies for Urban Agriculture
Based on a better understanding, it was EFUA’s goal to build the UA agenda for the next two decades and to purposefully advise policies from EU to city level. EFUA investigated both, 1) policies impacting UA and 2) policies that potentially benefit from UA. By analyzing institutional and normative frameworks EFUA is uncovering links between UA and policies to benefit policy making and define action, and guide UA towards a policy conforming with development priorities. EFUA aimed to relate UA to the decisive EU agendas and priorities to achieve better support and funding. This was undertaken from the European level to the city level and also taking into account a globalized UA, namely by addressing UA in LDCs. In doing so, the UA Forum was helping to define a comprehensive vision and policies and actions that really fit to the requirements of the UA stakeholders.
4. Better networking of stakeholders in Urban Agriculture
EFUA continued the work of the COST Action Urban Agriculture Europe (COST UAE; 2012-2016). EFUA was building on this network and its achievements and link it with other European research activities - namely the Horizon programmes - and communities – from local to global ones and including Least Developed Countries (LDCs) - to establish a community of stakeholders in the field of Urban Agriculture (UA). This community - called the UA Forum is intended to be sustained beyond the project’s lifetime in order to give UA a European voice and to provide policy makers in Europe with a forum to continuously fine tune their UA related policies. Following a quad helix approach, the UA Forum was also one of EFUA’s main mechanisms to boost its various activities from research to impact and to achieve its other objectives.
