Urban Agriculture: Who Cultivates and why? a Case-Study of Lusaka, Zambia

Abstract

Contrary to the official view that rejects urban cultivation as an irrational activity by a small group of recent migrants who have yet to be integrated into the urban environment, urban agriculture is an innovative response by a majority of the urban poor, who are fully entrenched in an urban economy that currently lacks the capacity to provide them with sufficient real income. Though insufficient income is a primary reason, it is not the only factor affecting a household's decisions regarding cultivation. Low-income households consider urban cultivation as a form of long-term investment that requires a minimum threshold of predictability of return on the investment. To be sure of this return, most households must decide to live in the city on a permanent basis and gain access to land, which usually requires seven to eleven years of urban residence. Once the decision to invest is made, variations in the pattern of cultivation among households result from relative differences in access to land and the need to maximize the return on domestic labour time, the opportunity costs of which vary with household income. Variations in the pattern of crops between plots and rainy-season gardens also occur as a result of rational decisions by households to maximize the return on land at two different locations. The policy implications of these findings are at least threefold. First, since urban cultivation allows urban workers to survive with insufficient monetary income, not only should the harassment of cultivators be stopped but efforts should be made to encourage cultivation, particularly since the opportunities for these workers to increase their monetary income, at least in the short term, are minimal. Second, one sure way of encouraging cultivation is to provide assurance to low-income households regarding the return on their investment. This would involve ensuring that they have access to land through the granting of legal titles, either for renting, leasing, or owning land. Third, there is scope for further increases in the productivity of rainy-season gardens, for instance by providing better access to the peripheral areas and taking some measures to reduce the theft of produce. To be sure, bringing about changes in official attitudes towards urban cultivation and formulating new policies to encourage it are not easy tasks. There are interested social groups who benefit from the rising price of urban land, and they are bound to object to policies which will not contribute to property inflation. It is hoped that this article will at least help explode some of the myths about urban cultivation that are currently used to legitimize the arguments of these interests.

Home Garden Production and Energetic Sustainability in Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico

“…Home gardens are an essential part of household agro- systems in the tropics, and they show a wide variety of management practices (Wiersum 1982;Niñez 1985b;Torquebiau 1992). These have been shown to reflect socioeconomic conditions, productive orientations, global family strategies and ecological conditions (Wiersum 1982;Sanyal 1985;MacDicken 1990;Méndez et al 2001;González Jácome 2003;Shajaat Ali 2005).…”

“…Nevertheless, because HSA gardens are more productive both strategies sold similar amounts of energy, although the amount sold may have represented important cash differences that favor HCA households. The emphasis on animal production for the market has also been observed amongst rural colonists of urban origin in the tropical forests of Colombia (Pinton 1985;Sanyal 1985). In Calakmul, all HSA migrants came from agricultural households in their home towns, but many HCA migrants came from urban areas (Rodríguez 2003).…”

“…Tropical home gardens are ecologically sustainable systems that not only generate important household savings on food, medicine and spice expenditures (Sanyal 1985;MacDicken 1990;Torquebiau 1992), but provide subsistence agriculturalists with a supplementary income and improve the nutritional quality of the families' diet (Immink et al 1981;Niñez 1985b;Soemarwoto et al 1985;Immink 1990;Nair 1997). They offer productive opportunities (MacDicken 1990), and their food products provide badly needed energy, protein, minerals and vitamins to low-income peasant households (Niñez 1985b).…”

A systematic review of urban agriculture and food security impacts in low-income countries

“…Two studies showed that the majority of participants practiced UA both to provide food for the household and to generate income (Asomani-Boateng, 2002;Adeoti and Egwudike, 2003). In some cases, the lines were blurred between motivations of subsistence and income-generation, as participants reported the unaffordable cost of food or the need to minimize food expenses as motivations (Sanyal, 1985;Gbadegesin, 1991;Flynn, 2001). Across included studies, only one (Ngome and Foeken, 2012) found that a small minority of participants reported reasons aside from subsistence or income-generation for practicing UA (e.g., gardening as a hobby).…”

“…The remaining 12 studies included both farmers and non-farmers: nine sampled cases from the general population within specified cities (Sanyal, 1985;Memon and Lee-Smith, 1993;Maxwell, 1995;Gockowski et al, 2003;Hovorka, 2006;Foeken and Owuor, 2008;Hillbruner and Egan, 2008;Crush et al, 2011;Gallaher et al, 2013), two used data from national surveys representing the general population (Ersado, 2005;Zezza and Tasciotti, 2010), and one study recruited a comparison group of non-farmers . Two studies made multi-country comparisons: Zezza and Tasciotti (2010) used nationally representative data from 15 countries across several continents, and Crush et al (2011) compared data from poor urban neighborhoods in 11 southern African cities representing nine countries.…”