Growing Out of Poverty: Does Urban Agriculture Contribute to Household Food Security in Southern African Cities?

Urban Agriculture and Urban Food Insecurity in Maseru, Lesotho

“…At best, the analysis demonstrates a weak and inconsistent relationship between household engagement in urban agriculture and household food security among the sampled households in Maseru. The findings from this investigation also demonstrate that household income did change the strength or quality of the relationship between urban agriculture practice and food security, as was previously suggested by Reference [8].…”

“…The idea that poor urban populations should and could grow their own food achieved significant credibility in the 1990s and has begun to resurface in recent policy debates. While much of the literature is extremely enthusiastic about the practice and promise of urban agriculture, more critical perspectives are also emerging [5,6,7,8]. One line of criticism is that urban agriculture advocates assume that the fundamental problem and solution for urban food security lies in the realm of food production and availability, ignoring other well-documented dimensions of food security including food access, food stability and food utilization.…”

The socio-economic profile of urban farming and non-farming households in the informal settlement area of the Cape Town Metropole in South Africa

“…This is consistent with reports by Frayne, McCordic & Shilomboleni (2014). Furthermore, there were more female heads than males in households not involved in agriculture and household farmers, while community farmers had 37 males and 34 females involved.…”

Food and the City: Urban Scale Food System Governance

“…In the absence of strategic food system strategies, city-led responses to food security needs will, in the main result in project-driven food system responses. See Battersby and Crush (2014) and Frayne et al (2014) for a detailed discussion on this.…”

“…The growth in supermarket distribution was also noted in Cape Town (Battersby and Peyton 2014). The impact of the dominant responses to urban food insecurity, social protection and urban agriculture initiatives were challenged for their inability to effectively retard the systemic challenges of urban food insecurity (Tevera and Simelane 2014;Frayne et al 2014). Informed by these findings, Battersby and Crush (2014, p. 149) argued that context is critical, calling for a reframing of the Northern notion of an urban food desert as one of Bpoor, often informal, urban neighbourhoods characterised by high food insecurity and low dietary diversity, with multiple market and non-market food sources but variable household access to food^.…”