Metropolitan agriculture in Santiago de Chile: An urban agriculture heading for the hills

Abstract

griculture features strongly in the central region of Chile, in spite of the advance of Santiago’s urban front since the 1970s. Whether it was inherited from an ancient farming belt or whether it developed around export products since the beginning of the 1990s, agriculture is intimately linked to the city of Santiago and to the port of Valparaíso, which it feeds, and on whose infrastructure it relies for its sale and distribution. Even if some forms of agriculture responding to the new needs of urban consumers and public authorities are appearing, such as organic farming, it is still difficult to speak of an urban agriculture on account of the limited number and peripheral condition of the plots of land concerned. This article offers a survey of the agricultural sites around Santiago on the basis of fieldwork carried out since 2005.