Cities can grow their food and reduce reliance on rural areas

The challenge of food security is often seen  exclusively as one of feeding an ever-growing human population. Worryingly, food production has constantly failed to keep up with population growth. But now the problem is much more than just one of scale. The nature of the challenge, too, is changing. Not only has the human population been increasing, it is also changing from being predominantly rural as more people flock to urban centres.

Cities and towns are experiencing massive population growth the world over, receiving huge numbers of migrants every year.

 In 1950, urban populations accounted for only 29 per cent of the world population, according to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). At the turn of the century, the figure had risen to about 45 per cent. This was enough to declare the Twentieth Century the century of urbanisation and city life. Now the figure  is projected to  hit 70 per cent by 2025.

In Africa, urbanisation is most intense in Algeria, Tunisia and South Africa, which have more than 50 per cent of their populations living in urban areas. Generally, cities in the developing world are growing at a rate of 3.5 per cent per annum.

These figures indicate that there is a continuous massive movement of people from rural to urban areas worldwide. Driven by the desire for better living conditions, they flock to cities in droves in search of greener pastures every.  But, slowly, the illusion disappears, and is replaced by the harsh realities of urbanism: unemployment or underemployment, crime, poverty, hunger and life in the slums. 

To cope with this fast-moving wave of rural flight requires new strategies for urban planning and the use of urban spaces. Thus urban planners, policymakers and governments seek pragmatic and timely ways of addressing this challenge. The process of urbanisation transforms land use and farming systems, patterns of labour force participation, infrastructural requirements, and natural resource systems. When cities grow, their populations expand, putting a strain on food production.

URBAN AGRICULTURE

As a way of easing the food shortage, many urban households, particularly the poor, have taken to growing food on small plots.

Today, if you take a walk through some of the residential estates in Nairobi such as Ngara, Eastleigh and Buru Buru, you might be forgiven for thinking that a green revolution is under way.

And on the outskirts of the city, greenhouses and ponds compete for space with small gardens planted with flowers, vegetables and fruits. Banana plants and palm trees dwarf wrought-iron gates, their green dotting the skyline. Kale, cabbage, and maize gardens sprout in the middle of urban squalor. In this unusual rare blend, urban features and rural agrarian patterns are combined in a new form of settlement that one might call “garden cities”.

Although it is often not given much attention, urban agriculture is steadily increasing. The practice involves cultivating, processing, and distributing food in and around a town or city. It also encompasses an array of activities including horticulture, aquaculture, animal husbandry and bee keeping.

Many cities all over the world, notably Johannesburg, Washington (United States), Vancouver (Canada), La Paz (Bolivia) and the Ghanaian town of Tamale, have embraced this type of farming.

And just last month, Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero said some land in the city should be set aside for growing food.

Yet urban agriculture is not a new thing. As a response to food insecurity, allotment gardens were established in Germany in the early 19th Century. During the post-depression period and in the wake of the two world wars, the US, Canada and UK also started victory gardens to address the food shortages.

The most striking feature of urban farming is its ability to maximise the use of space and other inputs. Farmers capitalise on whatever space they can get to grow food. This is mainly in front or at the back of the house. The more innovative ones grow crops in containers such as pots and gunny bags. Meanwhile, fish are kept in tanks or small ponds.  Even rooftop gardens are cultivated in megapolies such as New York.

In fact, agricultural experts believe that no space is too small to grow food, as long as the farmers are driven by passion.              

There are three main types of urban agriculture. The first is where households grow food or keep animals within their own compounds. The second involves growing crops or keeping animals on public land such as along roads, railways and rivers, under power lines or in parks. The third type is practised in former rural areas that become part of a city or town when its boundaries are extended.

The use of public land for farming is more common in the developed world, where sustainably designed communities work  to grow food in communal gardens, orchards and greenhouses. These initiatives incorporate organic food production, which is considered the fastest growing sector in food production. By so doing, they provide steady supplies of quality food. They also help  create jobs and develop self-sustaining markets.

By contrast, urban food production in Africa is mainly a response to food insecurity.

In Africa, urban farming is practised by a wide range of people, regardless of their social class. According to a research on urban and peri-urban farming in Nakuru, the disparity in farming between the social classes had little to do with the size of their plots and more to do with the yields from their crops. Buoyed by the use of improved seeds and irrigation and their ability to hire more labour, high-income households realised harvests almost three times the size of those of  low-income households, which form the largest group among urban farmers.

REDUCED COSTS

With an agricultural sector that cannot meet the demand and an urban population boom, Africa might just have to embrace urban agriculture as a way of alleviating food shortages.  Reports of millions of Kenyans facing starvation during dry spells have invariably given rise to debates as to whether the country should adopt genetically modified foods, which were banned in 2012.

More than 70 per cent of the maize cultivated in Kenya is done by smallholder farmers, primarily for their own consumption. The average yield for the last five years is seven bags per acre, against a potential of 25 to 30 bags. This is anything but sufficient to feed an ever-increasing population. To bridge this deficit, the government imports millions of bags of food annually. The situation is the replicated across the continent.

Last year, the Vice-President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Mr Aly Abou-Sabaa, said the continent imports about $25 billion (Sh2.5 trillion ) worth of food each year. He added that the amount could increase since the demand for food in Africa is expected to double by 2020.

Mr Gideon Mukavani, a roasted maize seller in Kiambu, supports the idea of expanding urban agriculture, saying it would significantly reduce transport and storage costs.

“It would also save us the daily dawn trips to Marikiti (Nairobi’s main retail market) to look for maize imported from Tanzania. There is high demand for Tanzanian maize in Nairobi, which has ensured that their prices remain high,” he said.

He added that real estate speculators will have to tamed if adequate land for urban agriculture is to be found, noting that speculative purchases withhold land that could be used for food production in the urban and peri-urban areas from those who would wish to farm it.

Meanwhile, Katherine Muli, a fruit seller at the City Park market in Parklands, said urban centres should not be so heavily reliant on rural areas for food.

“If I had a sizeable garden in Nairobi, I would grow maize and beans and also rear dairy animals and poultry. I would use the animal waste as manure and save a lot of money,” she explained.

In May last year, First Lady Margaret Kenyatta, who has been very vocal in the fight against cancer, urged Kenyans to avoid eating too many processed foods in order to remain healthy.        

Besides food security, there’s an aesthetic aspect to urban farming. When crops are grown in yards, they create green spaces, which gives the environment a pleasant appearance. They also purify the air by absorbing carbon dioxide from the air through photosynthesis and producing oxygen in return.

“Vegetation has a positive effect on our physical and mental health through cleaner air, fewer carbon particles, and better micro-climate and by providing visual respite,” Christina Borcke, a landscape architect at the University of British Columbia, asserts in her book, Landscape and Nature in the City.

For urban farming to succeed, the government and the private sector should work hand in hand.

According to Sitopolis, a journal on urban agriculture, government support is necessary for the sustainability of urban agricultural systems. The government influences urban food production through subsidies and taxation and can also facilitate the creation of food-growing zones and a necessary legal environment.

It is, therefore, important to note that certain by-laws enacted by the city authorities place limits on agricultural practices in urban areas. For example, the Nairobi City County Urban Agriculture Promotion and Regulation Bill 2014 empowers an executive committee member to put in place measures to regulate the production, processing marketing, grading, storage, collection, transportation, warehousing of crops and livestock within a city. This limits the expansion of plant or animal husbandry.

Favourable government practices can be a boon to urban food producers, especially in impoverished slums. Proper zoning regulations, according to American architect and urban planner Douglas Farr’s book, Sustainable Urbanism, usually allows for individuals and communities to readily produce their own food.

Despite the inherent challenges, with proper policies in place, it is easy to visualise flourishing cities in the future with a steady supply of low-cost, year-round produce. The rural-areas-as-food-producers economic model will no longer hold. Agriculture will flourish in urban areas, rubbishing the notion of they depend on rural areas, at least with regard to the production of, and access to, food for subsistence. That would certainly go a long way in alleviating, even not  eradicating, hunger.

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CHALLENGES

•  Getting access to basic requirements such as clean water and unpolluted soil in urban areas could be a big impediment to the production of healthy food. For instance, vegetables grown in certain urban areas such as Gikomba and Kibera in Nairobi, are irrigated using sewage.

•  Such water, if used  for only a short time, should not be a cause for worry. In fact, the sludge in sewage  has been shown to add nutrients to the soil. Experience in Asian cities has shown that partly-treated sewage is especially ideal for the production of hydroponic crops and fish. However, if used for long periods, sewage can be harmful since it increases the acidity of the soil.

•   It is also worth noting that the rivers that flow through Nairobi city are polluted not only with human waste, but also with industrial effluents. In the case of the Nairobi River, for instance, this poses a threat to farmers downstream in areas like Korogocho, Eastleigh and Pumwani, and there

•  There is a real risk of crops being contaminated with dangerous metals such as lead. Crops can also take up the metals through the heavily-polluted urban atmosphere.

•  Many consider soil erosion associated with urban and peri-urban agriculture an environmental hazard. Farmers in Kibera were often faced with this problem, according to research around Nairobi. To combat the problem, they were forced to dig drainage ditches to prevent gully erosion and use crop residues to prevent sheet erosion.

•  Meanwhile, free-range animals tend to cause congestion and even accidents on roads.

•  With the increase in cases of lifestyle diseases such as cancer, diabetes and hypertension, it is imperative for current food systems to ensure good quality, taste and safety.