In April 2000, Ecuador’s political and economic capital hosted a meeting of local government representatives from nine countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The outcome was the landmark Quito Declaration, the first to call on the region’s cities “to embrace urban agriculture” as a means of reducing poverty, food insecurity and environmental degradation. At the time, food production was widespread in Quito itself. Between 1980 and 2000, waves of Andean indigenous migrants had almost doubled its population, from 780 000 to 1.4 million. In inner-city barrios and settlements built on surrounding hillsides and ravines, many of them had resorted to small-scale agriculture to feed their families. Yet Quito’s urban agriculture was unrecognized in municipal regulations, only “tolerated” by planners, and not considered in the programmes of the country’s Ministry of Agriculture. Much – but not all – of that has changed over the past 14 years. Thanks to a city-wide participatory urban agriculture project, Quito is one of the region’s “greener” capitals, with 140 community vegetable gardens, hundreds of family and institutional gardens, thriving small-scale agribusinesses, and a network of farmers’ markets that sell locally grown organic produce. It all began in the neighbourhood of El Panecillo.