**Box  5.6 Land issues and urban agriculture in the peri-urban community of Carapongo**

Carapongo is a community of 3,200 inhabitants in the periphery of Lima, Peru where urban agriculture is commonplace. It covers some 464 ha, of which 46 per cent is cultivated land mainly under vegetable production, with indirect irrigation using polluted water from the Rimac River. About 60% of the population is involved in agriculture.

A recent study found that 37 percent of the producers in Carapongo occupy land that they own, although less than half held legal title. About 19 percent occupy rented land. Seven percent of farmers access land through informal squatting ( _posecionarios_ ) on land located on the bank of the Rimac River. Seventeen percent of producers occupy land with a combination of ownership and rental. The rest have some other form of occupancy such as guardianship or share-cropping.

Even though farmers who were interviewed during the study generally declared that urban agriculture is not profitable, the majority obtain some income from the sale of crops or animals which makes it possible for them to make a subsistence living. Those farmers who have secure access to the land (either owned or rented) generally have more opportunities to earn a higher income and attain a better quality of life.

In recent years some 30 per cent of the agricultural land in Carapongo has been lost to urban sprawl. Agricultural lands are being converted into small residential plots, while in other places individual farm plots are being used wholly or partially for extraction of earth for brick-making or as construction material. The local government does not recognize urban agriculture as an important activity within the city development plan, and has designated the land use as urban residential, a classification which naturally conflicts with the perspective of the farmers.

To maintain the livelihoods of urban farmers, the study recommends the redesign of municipal land-use policies, encouraging co-operation between the Housing and Agricultural Associations, individual landowners and cultivators of the plots, and participation of all stakeholders in urban land-use planning, in order to increase security of land tenure for producers.

_Source:_ Arce _et al_ ., 2009; Maldonado, 2009.

Any agricultural activity that uses treated wastewater should have sufficient land area to take full advantage of the available effluent (Egocheaga and Moscoso, 2004). Moreover, future increases in wastewater flows should be considered so at to ensure both treatment capacity and land resources will remain sufficient. When planning for wastewater use, wastewater treatment plants should be located near to existing or potential irrigation sites where effluent irrigation can be carried out on an economically appropriate scale. Conversely, land areas suitable for effluent irrigation should be identified and/or preserved in the vicinity of existing or planned treatment plants. The model provided by the Mendoza ACRE project (Box 5.7) illustrates how this can be done in a practical and productive way for a centralized treatment plant.

Even within urban areas it may be possible to find sufficient land areas that can be irrigated with effluent from decentralized wastewater treatment plants. An example is the Agricultural Zone of San Augustín (ZASA) in the periphery of Lima, Peru where a waste stabilization pond system was planned to service the farmers with safe irrigation water (see Box 2.6).

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