Peri-urban and urban vegetable growing contribute essentially to an improvement in nutrition and income, especially of the poor. Increased demand on foodstuffs leads to a higher input use and decreasing land availability, due to a changing land use. Therefore sustainable and economically sound vegetable growing has to be reconsidered. The importance of specialized spatial zones for peri-urban and urban food production has been recognized for many years. Dating back conceptually to the 19th century, von Thunen in 1826 argued that locational advantages favoured production of essential commodities for city development, and that the most perishable of primary products, vegetables, were produced as close to markets and consumers as possible. Although modern communications and transport to some extent dilute locational advantages for the production of some commodities, as long as the highest prospect for profits can be achieved through production of vegetables in urban and peri-urban lands, the system will remain of utmost importance. This is evidenced by three major studies conducted by the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center (-AVRDC) (Jansen et al., 1995ab, Kieft, 1994), and by the concentrated interest of international development agencies (DSE/ATSEF, Schnitzler and Basier, 1995; IDRC, 1993) wishing to sustain ur- ban and peri-urban production of vegetables, and other commodities, which can positively contribute to nutrition and income generation of marginalized sectors of the general populace. Indeed, peri-urban vegetable production in its own right is important in supplying vegetables to city dwellers; up to 80 per cent of demand in Ho Chi Minh City (Jansen et al., 1995b) and between 25 and 85 per cent in other major Asian cities (Mougeot, 1993) is dependent upon urban and peri-urban sup- ply.
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