Since the last decade, urban and peri-urban agriculture has been designated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as a fundamental strategy to provide means of subsistence, Following this trend, since 2006, Rio de Janeiro’s City Hall has been developing the Hortas Cariocas Program (PHC), aiming to encourage urban agriculture, and extract the various social and environmental services inherent to the practice. Inside an urban scenario of extreme inequality, legitimized by the public powers for centuries, we discuss how the Hortas Cariocas Program, with the efforts of its founders, contributes in a practical way to the improvement of the quality of life to the citizens of Rio.