Spring visitors to the Argentinian city of Rosario, on the Paraná River, 300 km north of Buenos Aires, should not miss the week-long “Rosario grows roots” festival. Last year’s festival included guided tours of vegetable gardens along the city’s main railway line, workshops on organoponic gardening, and openair cooking classes at a 46 ha garden park. It ended with a Sunday fair in the riverside Plaza Suecia, where members of the Rosario Gardeners’ Network displayed their organically grown vegetables and medicinal plants, along with the technologies they use for vertical gardening, solar drying of produce and anaerobic waste recycling. Celebrated annually since 2004, “Rosario grows roots” is a showcase of urban agriculture in a city which is, itself, internationally recognized as an example of how agriculture can be integrated successfully into urban development. With a strategy of recovering and transforming the city’s underutilized resources, the city government’s urban agriculture programme has helped to reclaim brownfields for food production and recreation, create permanent employment in agriculture for low-income residents, and boost the city’s supply of chemical-free fresh food.