Economic Opportunity Mailing List Archive

[Godfrey Mitti <<address removed>>]

One thing about urban agriculture if not planned properly is that it tends to 
encourage production of the same products as in rural areas therefore can kill 
the market for the rural area. In some cases the same donor (no names) has 
promoted rural production in one decade only to promote production of the same 
prodcuts in urban areas in the next decade.
 
One of the issues CARE in Zambian Copperbelt province found out was that the 
main issues urban/periuban farmers faced were access to land and individualism. 
Most of them, each operating as an individual, were illegally farming on 
municipal land, timber campany estates, or encroaching on  private farms 
nearby. So apart from working with farmers on what they could produce and how 
to produce that, a lot of work was necessary and was done to secure access to 
land first. In this, they (farmers) had to negotiate access as a formal body 
(registered farmer association). And since space is so limited (and there were 
agro programs in rural areas), high value crops were essential, though this 
remained a challenge as most of them still wanted to grow maize, the main 
staple. However, a compromise was to encourge (via input costs for example) 
sale of fresh maize and fresh groundnuts, which brought most households enough 
incomes to buy grain maize (from rural areas) and other items later, including
 paying back input loans. 
 
Livestock rearing in townships has additional challenges often left out by 
promoters. We tend to forget municipal bye laws on environemental health that 
may not allow this toprotect peopls health. The tendence is to ignore the laws 
(in any case the Councils have other worries), in the process increase future 
environmental health risks. 
 
All I want to add to the discussion on urban farming is that its not just the 
biolgical issues of production that should be hilighted; local bye laws and 
envirnemental health concerns, land access and organisation of would producers 
present a terribly different environment from the rural set up and should be 
taken into account. And let us not casrelessly destroy markets for the rural 
majority as some one has pointed out.

 
Godfrey Mitti -(parttime urban farmer and agriculturist)
 

Johan Kieft <<address removed>> wrote:
Dear all,
 
This is a good point. Writing form Indonesia, the same is true here, around 8 
out of 10 poor live in rural areas. This counts as well for those who are 
malnourished or suffer otherwise from poverty. The experiences here with the 
economic crisis has learned that urban poor, when the economy starts growing 
again do recover quicker although they were initially harder hit. This recovery 
to a large extent explain the decline in poverty in the country. Instead of 
focusing on urban agriculture, it might more efficient to improve market access 
in remote marginal areas and ensure that those people gain access to better 
basic services including (culturally) appropriate agricultural extension. 
However lessons learnt from previous experiences have to be taken into account. 
 
regards
 
Johan Kieft
Program Leader Agriculture
CARE Int. Ind.
-----Original Message-----
From: <address removed> [mailto:<address removed> Behalf Of Martin Fowler
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 5:54 PM
To: <address removed>
Subject: Urban agriculture


Dear All,
 
Have we got the balance right?  We seem to be focussing our discussion so much 
on urban agriculture/the use of urban waste water for irrigation, etc (although 
far be it for me to underestimate its importance....to the livelihoods of urban 
dwellers; and I am enjoying reading the urban agriculture contributions).
 
A few figures from Uganda to support my position: 87 per cent of the population 
is rural.  96 per cent of the country?s poor live in the countryside (an 
increase from the 1992 figure of 93 per cent) and 42% of the rural population 
lives under the absolute poverty line, compared with 12 per cent of urban 
dwellers.  The heads of 81 per cent of those households classified as poor are 
employed in the agricultural sector.   
 
By mid-2000 poverty had decreased to 59 per cent of its 1997 level in the urban 
areas, but to only 80 per cent of this level in the rural areas.
 
I don't believe Uganda is the only country in which a similar situation exists.
 
Given the poverty-reduction focus of DFID (and all participants in this 
e-forum, I hope/assume) should we not, in the short time that remains to us, 
try to focus our thoughts, etc., on aspects of agriculture/development in the 
rural areas?
 
Yours,
 
Martin Fowler (....an urban-based agricultural economist)
Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries,
Entebbe 
Uganda

                
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs