Thirty years ago, El Alto was a dormitory suburb, inhabited by mining families and migrants from rural areas, on the plateau that lies at an altitude of 4 000 m above the city of La Paz. Since then, its population has almost tripled, from 300 000 to 890 000. Today, it is the second biggest municipality in the Plurinational State of Bolivia, after Santa Cruz, and together with La Paz forms the country’s most populous urban agglomeration. In the early 2000s, more than 70 percent of the population lived in poverty and 12 percent of families were indigent. Around 40 percent of El Alto’s children under five years were malnourished, the consequence of extremely low consumption of animal protein, fruit and vegetables. To improve food and nutrition security in the city, Fao and El Alto’s municipal government launched a project, funded by Belgium, aimed at promoting the year-round production of vegetables in family gardens. That experiment in urban agriculture has had a lasting, positive impact in the city’s poorest neighbourhoods and has helped find a place for Upa in Bolivia’s National Food and Nutrition Policy.