Despite rising public interest in urban food production, very few cities have so far developed effective programs for food planning, particularly in France. Our compared field study in Provence (France) and Tuscany (Italy) corroborates the idea that a major obstacle for improvement of local and regional food systems through urban agriculture is the land issue, i.e. the competing demands for land in and around cities. In these two regions, landowners are usually farmers, but they know they will earn less money by producing food for city dwellers than by selling their property to developers claiming space for housing and other urban activities. In Europe, a variety of policy instruments has thus been developed and experimented to protect open space, including public acquisition of land, regulatory approaches and incentive-based approaches. In France and Italy, exclusive agricultural and/or forestry zoning was resorted to in most situations. This land-use planning approach failed to avoid urban sprawl in most metropolitan areas. In this context, how can we explain that some local communities have managed to protect farmland in highly urbanized settings for several decades? Were there already an interest in and an organization of urban food production? Our comparative study of two municipalities – Puyloubier in Provence and Fiesole in Tuscany – highlights several factors for successful agricultural land preservation : (i) the first planning choices made in the 1960s and 1970s, (ii) wide discussion (even leading to conflict) and participation of stakeholders in land-use planning implementation, (iii) involvement of a mediator (either a person or an institution) capable of reconnecting agriculture and urban life, (iv) development of an agricultural project supported by a local group of farmers and the whole community. These factors stress the role of social innovation and institutional interactions in the governance of urban agriculture, but food production didn’t often come up in the debates. How can this absence be accounted for? This is partly due to the historical institutional separation between urban planning and agricultural policies. It may also be explained by the multifunctionality of urban agriculture. City dwellers look firstly for fresh fruit and vegetables – every week. But the vineyard and the olive trees being grown around Florence and Aix-en-Provence represent a different type of urban agriculture that is valued and protected by the city for the environment, landscape and quality of life preservation, more than for its food production. However, the link between city dwellers and these farms is growing through agritourism, with guided tours of wine cellars and direct sale of wine and olive oil on the farm. A multifunctional land use approach, connecting urban planning with agricultural development and including recreational activities, is thus an alternative way to cope with the problem of competing claims to space, to promote urban agriculture, and to provide access to urban food production.