Medellín’s Urban Farming: Huertas con Vos and the Terraces of Comuna 13
Medellín runs a real municipal urban-agriculture programme and hosts one of Latin America’s better-known rooftop farming projects. Both are frequently described with numbers that are an order of magnitude too large, so here are the ones that carry a source.
Verified figures
| Figure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Huertas con Vos, operating | 1,007 | Telemedellín |
| Consolidated over three years to 2018 | 1,707 | El Colombiano |
| Minimum space to join | 10 m² urban, 100 m² rural | Alcaldía de Medellín |
| Households in Medellín Cero Hambre, 2025 | 15,484 | El Colombiano |
| Severe food insecurity | 34% of city households | El Colombiano |
| Terrazas Verdes, Comuna 13 | 32 terraces, 1,500+ m² | El Espectador |
| Terrazas Verdes, direct jobs | 20 | El Espectador |
Huertas con Vos
Huertas con Vos is the municipal urban-agriculture programme. Its design point is a shift in how the city spends on food: away from assistance handouts and toward subsidies that generate opportunity, with participants growing for their own consumption and selling any surplus (El Tiempo).
To join you need 10 m² in an urban area or 100 m² in a rural one, and you apply during an open call. The city has run calls for 700 further huertas on top of the 1,007 already producing (Alcaldía de Medellín).
The wider food-security picture
The huertas sit inside a much larger problem. 34% of Medellín households face severe food insecurity, and the Medellín Cero Hambre alliance — consolidated in July 2024, with 40 companies participating — supports 15,484 households in 2025, funded with COP 34,937 million prioritised through participatory budgeting (El Colombiano).
Producer sales have grown steadily: 9,126 kg of food commercialised in 2024, 15,653 kg in 2025, and 8,349 kg in the first four months of 2026, returning COP 158 million+ to participating families (Alcaldía de Medellín).
Terrazas Verdes, Comuna 13
The rooftop project people come to see is Terrazas Verdes, founded in 2018 in Comuna 13 by Carlos Alberto Sánchez Mosquera — “Nene”, co-founder of the Afro-Colombian hip-hop group Son Batá (Vanguardia).
It converts the flat roofs of houses in a hillside barrio into hydroponic growing space, deliberately built around women who head households and people with reduced mobility — growers for whom a rooftop at home is workable and a plot across the city is not.
The numbers: 32 terraces, totalling 1,500+ m² of cultivation, generating 20 direct jobs and benefiting 5,000+ people. El Colombiano has reported the count at 37 terraces as the project has grown (El Espectador; El Colombiano).
What grows there: lettuce in four varieties — lisa, crespa, morada and romana — plus green and purple basil, chard, kale and European cogollo (El Colombiano).
The model has been replicated in Bogotá and Cali (Vanguardia).
Visiting
Terrazas Verdes operates through the Corporación Terrazas Verdes Comuna 13, which is contactable through community networks in the neighbourhood (Futuros Urbanos Medellín).
These are people’s homes and workplaces, not an attraction. If you want to see the project, arrange it through the corporación or a Comuna 13 guide from the neighbourhood rather than turning up. Buying produce is the most direct way to support it.
A note on this guide
Rebuilt in September 2026. The previous version stated 15,000+ gardens — the real figure is 1,007 under Huertas con Vos, with calls out for 700 more. Terrazas Verdes was described as 350 households across 8,500 m² with 120 jobs; it is 32 terraces across 1,500+ m² with 20 jobs. A range of further claims — production tonnages, savings figures, three international awards, an IoT sensor network, restaurant and farmers-market counts, tour prices and a 2024–2030 expansion plan — carried no source and were removed. The founder’s name and the project’s actual origin in Son Batá were absent from the article entirely.