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Urban agriculture in Malawi: a win-win sustainable strategy?
By David Mkwambisi
Policy makers have noted that despite persistent economic growth; food and social insecurity, unemployment and poor housing remain pressing problems in African cities. As such, urban poverty is in some ways more alarming than rural poverty and exposes systemic barriers that prevent marginalized groups from accessing the full range of economic opportunities offered by the city. Related to these economic, health and social problems, the urban poor are especially affected by poor environmental services such as sub-standard housing, polluted water, air pollution, lack of sanitation and solid waste systems. Ignoring such problems threatens human health, the environment and the viability of urban centres as the engines of economic growth and productivity. Malawi, one of the poorest countries located in Southern Africa is not immune to these urban problems that have been aggravated by a high rate of urbanisation.
A report by the World Bank suggests that by 2015, about 44% of Malawi’s population will be urbanised. At 4.7 % this makes Malawi one of the urbanising nations in the world. In 1998, only 14% (1,435,436) of the national population (9,933, 868) lived in urban areas. The level has been rising from 6% (260,000) in 1966 to 8% (539,000) in 1977 to 10.7% (853,390) in 1987. This is projected to increase 2.7 fold from 1.4 million in 1998 to about 3.8 million in 2020. This urbanisation has brought new forms of poverty, including slum dwellings that have caused environmental problems associated with waste management, insecurity and social exclusion.
Food insecurity and lack of disposable income among poor communities remains pressing problems in many parts of Malawi, especially in and around the major urban centres. Despite the promise offered by urban agriculture, however, there is a real gap in Malawian policy and urban agriculture is not seriously considered by the Malawian government as a viable livelihood option. For example, despite urban agriculture being mentioned within the Town and Country Planning Act, there are still no practical regulations to guide and support urban food production. As a result, the Malawi Growth Strategy, Malawi’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, Malawi Land Policy and previous models to reduce poverty in Malawi, fail to recognise the potential of urban agriculture to contribute to food production and future food security.
A recent study has revealed that overall, the households surveyed in Malawian two main cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe, produced an average of 228 kg/capita of cereal (or cereal equivalents), which is above the 181 kg/capita that the Government of Malawi recommends as a typical food budget. This suggests that, on average, the households surveyed could support themselves entirely on the food they produce on urban agricultural plots.
However, results also reveals considerable variation between groups, with more educated, wealthier and male-headed households consistently obtaining larger harvests than poorer, less educated and female-headed households. For example, the households where the household head was ‘illiterate’ only harvested 68 kg per household member from urban agriculture. This is considerably below what they would need to survive, while high income households harvested 306 kg per household member from their plots. There were also significantly lower crop harvests recorded among the respondents who only had a primary education as compared to those with post-secondary education.
Individuals from female-headed households harvested only half (127kgs/capita) of what male-headed households obtained (265kgs/capita).This study suggests that urban agriculture is mainly undertaken by two ‘types’ of farmers. Firstly, there are the wealthy (and usually male) farmers who dominate agricultural activities and generate a moderate proportion of their income by selling produce from relatively large plots of land. These farmers, however, also consume the majority of their crop themselves, and tend to employ people to help with a range of tasks including marketing whatever produce the family does not need. These farmers are more efficient in terms of yields (kg/ha).
The second group of urban farmers are poorer, have much smaller plots, and are often run by female-headed households. The role played by poor farmers is restricted mainly because of access to land which is of crucial importance to economies and societies, and constitutes the main livelihoods basis for a large portion of the population. The dominance of ‘elite’ urban farmers also echoes one of the most consistent findings from the literature on land tenure and nutritional status that households who own more land are better off than those that do not. Another implication of high-income households dominating urban agriculture is that the farmers who produce the majority of Malawi’s urban crops do not consider urban agriculture as an important tool in terms of the urban food supply systems. For example, most agricultural land in these two cities is used for maize production as this is the staple crop in Malawi. However, national level research has shown this dependence on maize precludes a more diverse and nutritious diet and is a significant contributor to malnourishment.
The study revealed that although female-headed households consumed less of the food they produced, they obtain significantly more income (MK2723.79) per capita than male-headed households from urban agriculture. These were followed by individuals from high-income households who had an average annual per capita income of MK2381.17. These incomes were significantly higher than those generated by individuals from male-headed households (MK 1828.28) and low-income households (MK 1509.99). Notably, higher incomes have been generated from households involved in livestock and poultry sectors, but these are not widely practiced by many in urban Malawi. In this study, only 6% kept cattle, 15% were raising poultry and only 2% were raising goats or sheep (shoats). Maize was found to be the main food crop, and was the most commonly crop sold crop to market, making up almost 30% of the total income from urban agriculture. Detailed analysis found that green maize was mostly sold form of maize due to high prices that it attracts relative to other forms. But this strategy has implications for food security since it reduces the total yield.
The study found that most crops, including maize, were processed before selling either as flour, roasted or cooked, especially cassava and sweet potatoes. This improved the market price compared to unprocessed farm produce but cooked food presented several health and sanitation problems. The results show that male-headed households are most likely to sell horticultural crops, followed by high-income households and female-headed households. Income from vegetables ranks among the top four cash earners after maize, poultry and cattle for urban farmers. The study found that many households have resorted to growing root crops not only as a supplement to maize as the main food crop, but also because they do not require expensive plant nutrient inputs and their potential to withstand the impact of drought, which has been common in Malawi.
The study revealed that households obtain a higher income from livestock than crop enterprises with women leading in both cattle and poultry sectors. There were a larger number of low-income households keeping livestock because their location in peri-urban areas increased the land available to them and they have lived in the cities for a long period, allowing them to maintain their pastoral livelihoods. In addition women, especially those from high-income locations, have started livestock farming since they are not in formal employment and have resources to purchase expensive inputs associated with livestock production.
Waste management
On urban agriculture and waste management, the study found that on average, 0.44kg/capita/day of waste is generated in Malawi’s main cities with more waste (0.5kg/person/day) being generated in Lilongwe than in Blantyre (0.37kg/person/day). These figures were backed up by experts’ opinion during the policy makers’ workshop and they exclude additional wastes from industrial, building and construction sectors. The study found that solid waste management systems in both cities is grossly inadequate as it serves few households and does not cover the vast majority especially in the unplanned housing areas (UHAs) and traditional housing areas (THAs). During focus group discussions, a resident from Blantyre city said:
“Workers from City assemblies have never been able to come to our locations for almost five years now to collect wastes. Therefore in the absence of waste management facilities, we normally burn or bury the waste. The roads have become impassable because of unplanned settlements and in some parts there is need for strong bridges for access especially during rainy season”.
This observation was complimented by an expert from Blantyre City Assembly who indicated that they don’t provide services to unplanned settlements due to infrastructure and financial problems. He said:
“It is difficult to access densely populated locations with no standard roads and waste collection facilities. One other implication is that most residents in these locations are always in the inner city either working or doing business causing more waste problems in public places than at household level. Our priorities in such locations are public places such as markets and schools because they are areas of concern in terms of public disease”.
During experts’ meetings in Lilongwe, an official from the Ministry of Local Government, the Ministry responsible for cities in Malawi said that City authorities are faced with unstable population changes to enact proper waste management programmes.
“We have different demographic results in this city as people continuously move in and out of the cities. While the average population is around 700,000 people, in many cases this has reached 1million especially during weekends and the situation is worse during month ends when people come into town for shopping and festive seasons. In such conditions, it is difficult to deliver effective waste management programmes. In addition, the democratic dispensation empowered people wrongly as they were not cooperative enough in issues of urban development in general and specifically land acquisition, unplanned settlement, vending and waste disposal”.
In such conditions, the study found that waste removal to dumping sites, the only mechanism available in cities was grossly affected. For example, a break down of wastes delivered to dumping sites showed that on average, approximately 37,262 tonnes and 20,754 tonnes of wastes were delivered to dumping sites per month by Blantyre and Lilongwe cities respectively with more waste being collected in Blantyre. There was an annual increase of 1.7 % wastes removed in Lilongwe and an annual decrease of 20.46 % of wastes delivered to dumping sites by Blantyre between the same periods. The drastic decrease in waste removal from Blantyre was due to problems with transportation and very weak capacity in the cleansing department.
For example, the City has only three small vehicles against a need of eight and one large skip against a need of 4 which was also broken down at the time of the study. This led to a piling up of solid waste at the collection points and dumping of solid waste along the road or streams. Despite collection of a small fraction of waste generated in the cities, waste management was the most costly activity carried out by the city authorities. For example, Lilongwe City Assembly spent a total of MK 20.80 Million and MK26.78 Million in 2005 and 2006 respectively on salaries and wages, appointment expenses, housing allowances, pension contribution and protective clothing for staff working in the refuse collection and disposal department only.
During the same period, the city of Blantyre spent MK12.05 Million in 2005 and MK14.11 Million in 2006 to cover the same expenses. The break down of the costs based on personnel, vehicle maintenance and fuel, illustrated how cities are vulnerable to changes in both international fuel prices and local labour costs.
It also shows the extent to which waste management activities that can be undertaken within any given budget. The variability of annual city authority budgets adds further complexity to the ability of cities to produce long-term waste management policies and practices. Despite the above waste management costs, it was found that all the cities are no recycling their organic waste for urban agriculture. Most of the municipal solid waste delivered to dumping sites has a high level of essential plant nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that could have been utilised for crop production. The sad thing was that most agricultural plots in these cities were highly degraded on soil nutrients.
Farm scale results are showing that soils in Lilongwe require 77 kg N ha-1, 19 kg P ha-1 and 28 kg K ha-1 per year to provide an annual balance between nutrient inputs and outputs at the level of the fields studied. Results from three regions marked in relation to their proximity to the industrial centre (main source of solid waste used as manure for agriculture) revealed that farmers applied less inorganic fertilisers in farm plots located 0-5 Kms from the main source of tobacco wastes as compared to those located over 5 kms radius. There was also statistically significant difference on nutrient output with farms located over 5kms losing more nutrients than those close to the sources of industrial tobacco waste. This demonstrates that farmers are aware of the benefits of organic manures in agriculture and do change their practices when a significant large organic waste manure source is made available.
Institutions
On institutions, results suggest that formal institutions do not provide much support to urban agriculture. This came up during interviews in a number of ways. For example, an official from the Department of Public Health at Lilongwe City Assembly Civic Centre said:
“Despite the population increase, funding has not been forthcoming to cope with both population pressures, social and environmental problems”.
In terms of the type of land tenure where urban agriculture is practiced, the results showed that 38.5% of the sample practiced their agricultural activities on leased land followed by 26.4% on public land, 23% on rented land with 12.1% undertaking urban agriculture on customary land. One area where a number of stakeholders mention that Government policy can and should play a role is to secure land for farming. Despite this, in both cities there are no legal frameworks to help provide land for small scale agriculture. Responses from the structured questionnaire revealed that formal institutions such as Ministry of Lands, City Assembly, Malawi Housing Corporation, and Ministry of Agriculture were not promoting urban agriculture through provision of secure land tenure. There was some evidence that households with higher education and older farmers opt for other forms of land tenure other than public land. This issue of insecure land tenure was raised by the farmers who indicated that access to secure land tenure was a limiting factor when it came to urban agriculture. One woman farmer registered with Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA) an organisation that provides small loans in Lilongwe city said:
“Land earmarked for farming has been taken by rich people who have constructed buildings, therefore, even if we have loans to undertake agricultural programmes, land is the main limiting factor”.
As a result, a number of farmers are undertaking their farming activities illegally on areas that are ecologically fragile and not protected by the Government. This has resulted in limited institutional attention as it creates a conflict of interests between the Department of Environmental Affairs and those responsible for poverty reduction programmes. The general response from the experts’ meeting indicated that the national poverty reduction policy framework is designed to reduce rural poverty rates and therefore ignores urban issues. This response was echoed by development partners such as United States Aid for International Development (USAID), Department for International Development (DFID) and European Union Malawi officials. They indicated that they support what the local government has put in place in terms of policies, strategies and interventions.
For example, secondary data from Ministry of Economic Planning and Ministry of Agriculture revealed that those supporting urban poverty reduction programmes were spending less than 10 % of their annual budget on urban food security programmes and most of this was through food-for-work schemes to repair roads and water drains within high density residential communities. The main donors also noted that lack of NGOs involved in urban poverty reduction programmes meant that there were no local level institutions that they could even fund. When asked about this, spokespeople for two major NGOs operating in Malawi (the Canadian Physician for Aid and Relief and Small Scale Livestock Promotion Programmes) both indicated that since many urban settlements are informal and because much of the poor urban population is transitory, it is very difficult for them to identify legitimate beneficiaries and this stood in the way of them developing effective urban poverty strategies.
The qualitative analysis of transcripts of the focus group meetings also showed that formal institutions were unable to support urban agriculture because the traditional authority of village chiefs had been undermined by urban migration. Village chiefs provide a logical channel whereby Government and external aid supports rural development. Focus group discussions with low-income households, suggested that the fact that these traditional authorities were not present in Malawi’s urban regions created a major obstacle that stands in the way of urban development policy. For example, one focus group participant noted:
“There are no village headmen in cities and those given the responsibility to distribute free inputs are biased towards their relatives or sell the products. In some cases people from other locations or rural areas do access the donations since we can not identify them”.
A number of other problems were also noted during focus groups and expert interviews. First, people argued that small and fragmented farm plots meant that it was difficult for institutions to enact any sort of large scale reform programme that would help urban farmers. Second, the fact that urban residents are highly mobile, moving quickly in search of jobs and cheaper accommodation within locations and between cities means that the target population for any policy of institution is constantly changing, making it difficult for Government agencies to provide on-going support for urban development activities.
Overall, these problems mean that when individual urban farmers were asked what type of institutions they obtain support from; only 3.9% responded that formal institutions were of any help whatsoever. Of all households surveyed for the questionnaire, 28% received no support for their urban agricultural activities, while 43% received support from informal social contacts within the city.
This suggests that informal social networks are by far the most important form of institutional support mechanism. A slightly different picture emerges when the sources of support are broken down by household income status
These show that low-income households receive less support overall from formal institutions, and are more likely to receive support from social contacts in both the city and rural areas. This lack of institutional support was directly linked by many stakeholders to the provision of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertiliser and delivery of extension services. Inputs are supposed to be controlled and regulated by Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with relevant stakeholders (producers, traders and research centres). In this study, however, interviewees and focus groups revealed that there is no control and regulation of agricultural products and services in urban areas.
The study found that farmers obtain their seeds and fertilizer from different sources. For example, the study showed that although city markets are the main source of urban farm inputs, the majority of low-income households accessed their seeds from informal street vendors. This is serious for small urban farmers as it puts them at a disadvantage compared with their better off or more educated neighbours. One farmer complained that the dominance of unregulated service providers had an impact on urban farmers especially through exploitative mechanisms employed by street vendors. The other implication is that this institutional failure has also affected the delivery of extension services in urban areas. Farmers were asked the main source of agricultural and environmental information.
Majority of farmers used input suppliers (33.3%) through instruction labels outside and inside packaging materials followed by sales agents. Almost a quarter of the sample did not access agricultural information with only 14.5% receiving information from government and NGOs. The study also showed that accessing information was directly related to level of education with those with primary education failing to access information or relying on private and government agents and those with secondary and post secondary using input suppliers.
In addition, unregulated street markets and city markets have appalling conditions for storing agricultural inputs thereby affecting seed viability and quality of fertilizers. Most of the farm inputs were not certified by authorities resulting in phytosanitory problems. The other implication with these sources is unscrupulous vendors have taken to mixing certified seeds and fertilizers with uncertified sources distorting the original contents and reducing crop field performance. During the policy makers’ workshop, the Seed Production Manager of Monsanto Seed Company noted:
“New local and international migrants have destroyed the social network that existed in our peaceful locations, and they have taken advantage of lack of institutional structures, to exploit most poor urban farmers’. ‘For example, ‘…Street vendors have been packing local and uncertified maize seed and sell to urban farmers as seed from Monsanto Company.’ In some case, rejected maize seed and chemical damped at disposal sites, are repacked and sold to urban farmers compromising the safety and health condition of the poor communities as well as the environment. In this case, the problem has seriously affected the brand names of certified products manufactured and processed by legitimate agricultural companies”.
Participants in focus group discussions spent a lot of time talking about the informal organizations they belonged to. Although most urban farmers were members of faith based groups, many people were also involved in local political movements, neighbourhood security groups and informal social groups. Unsurprisingly, none of these informal groups actively supported urban agriculture. This, however, presents an interesting question. Given the problems associated with finding inputs and land reform, it would seem that these informal organizations, especially the faith based ones, would be ideally positioned to help support urban agricultural activities.
Few other groups are as well integrated or respected by the communities. However, when asked directly about this, elders from one FBO indicated that constitutionally they are not supposed to be engaged in any work that is considered as an income generating. Lack of funding was also identified as a main limiting factor since urban agricultural activities require an investment in the form of extension officers, technical materials, transportation and farm schools which FBOs can not achieve if not taken as a business. One church elder from Lilongwe said:
“Our hands are tied up constitutionally as we can not extend the support to activities that require capital investment in terms of human, equipment and infrastructure. The weekly pledges (offerings) are not enough to diversify in intensive development projects”.
One interesting outcome is that of the 30 FBOs interviewed, those undertaking urban economic development activities were doing so in home economics, adult literacy programmes, child care, nursery schools and youth empowerment. None of these programmes were involved in food security. During the focus groups, the leaders of these groups argued that supporting urban agriculture required proper land titling but would also divert their attention from spiritual and social matters that were more important to them. Finally, the leaders of a number of faith based organizations indicated that most farm plots are located outside their jurisdictions, as such; undertaking development programmes in such areas might lead to institutional conflicts with other FBOs.
Because of the gap left by both formal and informal institutions, majority of those who were contacted during this research noted that the level of agricultural activities has been greatly affected due to weak social structures, the dominance of street vendors as the primary source of inputs and increased theft of agricultural products. Focus group discussions with high-income men and women revealed that opportunities to engage in urban agriculture were affected by the fact that most agricultural land is available in peri-urban areas where there is high insecurity due to high unemployment rates. A government official engaged in urban agriculture complained that farming in peri-urban areas has its security implications that were raising production costs:
“We need to provide security through out the growing season, which is expensive than buying already produced food. More over, economically, its better and ideal to buy staple food from the market as other unnecessary costs are avoided”.
However, participants at the policy makers’ workshop concluded that peri-urban areas have the potential to promote urban food systems due to effective and permanent traditional leadership structures that can be used as channels of development aid. An expert from the international development agent commented:
“Most peri-urban areas have ideal characteristics to be supported by formal institutions and there is need to look the possibilities of supporting the areas that can act as a buffer zones to reduce urbanisation, absorb organic wastes and create employment”.
Stable communities, adequate land, and ideal agro-ecological conditions were all identified during the workshop as some of the attributes for peri-urban areas have that should warrant institutional attention. One participant during a workshop, however, lamented that high-income households were disturbing peri-urban locations:
“Peri-urban areas should not be disturbed by high-income communities who have caused labour costs to be high and grabbed land from the poor people for housing purposes. These people brought immigrants who are disturbing our social life”.
Overall, the findings of this work suggest that barriers to promoting urban agriculture in formal and informal institutions fall into three broad categories. First are those based on the nature of the urban population. The facts that urban residents are transitory and lack traditional leadership structures mean that it is difficult for formal agencies, such as government departments, to develop meaningful urban agricultural policy. Similarly, the fact that there are more pressing urban issues than food security means that informal organizations such as faith based groups are unlikely to promote urban agriculture.
Secondly, since formal institutions work within the national poverty reduction framework that focuses on rural poverty, there is minimal official support for urban based activities and this means that few NGOs actually work at local level in urban Malawi. Thirdly, the fact that the plots of land used for urban agriculture are small, fragmented, and widely dispersed around the city, means that the characteristics of urban agriculture itself are difficult for institutions to support.
With regard to the characteristics of the urban population, it is clear from all sources of data used in this work that the transitory nature of the urban population really hinders the ability of formal institutions to work in Malawi’s cities. Although Malawi’s urban centres are similar to many other regions in the world in that they act as the engines of economic growth. However, these urban centres are expanding without the recognition of the government. This has brought serious loss of arable land, degradation of ecosystems, as well as social and environmental changes.
As a consequence, new styles of governance are needed to overcome the consequences of economic, social and political restructuring taking place in cities. The distribution, expansion and transitory aspects of urban population have also made it difficult for economic growth to trickle down to the poorest and most marginalized. For example, the density of residential houses, the road infrastructure, and general settlement pattern all restrict civil participation in development activities
With regard to the nature of the institutions that are present in urban Malawi, the work encountered a strange problem: even though civil society generally contributes towards cohesive cities and the governance arrangements that promote them in Malawian the scenario is slightly different. The lack of a clear urban policy focus means that local communities do not have the expected levels of NGO activity. This also means that livelihood strategies such as agriculture are not officially recognised supported or even assisted through civil society. All this results in a situation where the poor, including those undertaking agriculture for food insurance purposes, have no administrative channels through which to access support such as agricultural inputs, technical information and markets to sell their products onto.
One of the most pressing issues that make it difficult for institutions to promote urban agriculture, however, is the nature of urban agriculture itself. By definition this is an activity mostly undertaken by households with very low income and a lack of access to resources. As such, the people most in need of urban agriculture as a poverty-reduce strategy will be those least likely to have access to land and urban agriculture will only flourish on fragmented plots, scattered around the city, and on the most marginal of landscapes. As a result, most urban farmers do not have the necessary income or incentive to invest on public and rented land and this prevents farmers from diversifying into high-value horticultural crops and livestock.
This problem is not restricted to Malawi, and the Food and Agricultural Organisation, as well as research from the developed world, report that insecure land tenure and environmental degradation are closely related. One implication of this research is that there needs to be a policy framework that recognises urban poverty. This policy tool should put in place mechanisms to establish leadership structures that can be used to link local communities with those in control of resources. Establishing effective leadership structures will not only promote communication between the formal and informal social institutions but will also allow aid and support to be channelled to those in need of livelihoods strategies such as urban agriculture. This sort of approach would build on previous findings that good governance tends to happen in places where there is strong leadership and this should facilitate an enabling environment for urban institutions to perform their duties.
The willingness of existing institutions to assign resources to municipalities and community based organisations is currently affected, however, by a lack of appropriate national urban infrastructure and policies to address the need of the poor people at local level. Currently, a decision on allocating resources by-passes urban communities because there are no mechanisms to empower local communities within an urban setting. Another area where policy could play an important role is to improve the quality of agricultural information urban farmers have access to. For example, current sources of agricultural information are mostly limited to the packaging materials/labels on inputs. This is too brief for the farmers to understand and, in many cases; this information only provided planting details and fertilizer application rates. There is no recognized source of other equally important information such as pest and disease control, moisture and soil conservation management. Policy could target this and work to provide consistent high quality agricultural information for urban farmers. This need not be entirely done by the government, however.
Commercial agricultural-input manufacturers should take a key role providing this technical information beyond product labels by perhaps engaging extension officers or call centres in urban areas. This could be done by seed and fertiliser supplying companies to conduct field days, agricultural fairs through out the agricultural season. Similarly, institutions need to regulate street vendors as an important urban farm input supplier. This can be achieved by providing training to street vendors by both the government and private institutions. Institutions should similarly take a leading role in providing a proper marketing infrastructure in main urban agricultural locations.
Institutions might also consider empowering farmers to procure inputs as a group or association direct from suppliers to cut-off street vendors. If done in conjunction with a technical assistance program, this could be an appropriate way of meeting the needs of farmers with timely information on markets, pests and diseases as well as funding opportunities. All of these changes could be incorporated within urban infrastructure development plans. New residential plots should incorporate farm plots and be linked to technical assistance tied to input suppliers.
Another approach would be to establish “urban forums” that could act as focal points to coordinate and collaborate activities between stakeholders as well as take a lead role in formulating policies and regulations to be fed into the national poverty reduction framework. Tapping the existing human and organisation potential within the Faith Based Organizations should be considered one way of channelling such aid to poor communities including those engaged in urban agriculture. The results presented here suggest that it may be appropriate for national governments to provide Faith Based Organizations with the resources to engage directly with urban poverty and urban agriculture.
In the short term, churches could be used as input distribution centres for local community members, thereby ensuring the quality of seeds and fertilizers that farmers obtain. More ambitiously, faith based organizations, which are amongst the only trusted and well attended social groups present in Malawi could become centres of urban poverty reduction. This would, of course, require convincing church leaders to expand their mandate into economic issues, but at present, it seems that faith based organizations are the most likely type of institution that could help promote urban agricultural activities.
Policy recommendations to help UA contribute to household entitlements
As noted above, results suggest there are two types of farmers engaged in UA in Malawi. In this case, policy needs to recognise this and an appropriate over-arching policy goal would require recognising these two farmers. For poor farmers the key to effective policy would be two fold. First to establish better access to land and second to ensure better access to inputs. And for rich farmers to maximize their potential to provide UA related employment, they need access to better agricultural technology and better market incentives.
As such, appropriate policy may be to provide training opportunities, reduce import taxes on inputs specifically regarding livestock production. High-income farmers could be located land marked for agriculture or special agricultural programmes that can create employment and promote export market. To promote UA activities in general on these “poorer” farms, the policy could provide access to security land tenure through government sponsored land grants and through making connections between input suppliers and FBOs to provide high quality fertilizer and seed to farmers.
In addition, low harvests and restricted access to land have forced food producers to seek alternative sources of food and cash. As a result, (i) prevalence of underweight children, (ii) proportion of household income spent on food for the poorest quintile of the population, and (iii) proportion of the population who consume less than the minimum level of daily dietary energy are all increasing in urban Malawi.
One relatively simply solution would be to establish programmes to help poor farmers become more efficient, say through the use of capturing rainwater as a source of irrigation, or integrating livestock and horticulture to provide additional sources of protein for the households. More specifically, a key policy goal would be:
To integrate crop and livestock programmes and promote use of simple technologies such as waste water re-use for irrigation. This could be supplemented by income generating activities through resource recycling.
In terms of labour-based entitlements, results presented here suggest that it is the wealthy farmers who can offer jobs in the UA sector to poor communities who currently supply casual labour and receive very low incomes. As such, it may be appropriate for this sort of work to become regulated by authorities. This is the possible areas where the government could intervene by:
Providing training programmes to poor urban farmers to better equip them to obtain jobs that can be created by richer urban farmers, and by better regulating the labour market and linking richer urban farmers with training programmes that help build skills in lower-income groups that specifically target UA activities.
Another observation is that when many households have no food during the main agricultural season they tend seek paid employment. The result is that ratio of those offering employment to those seeking employment falls. However, excess supply of labour drives the urban wage rate down making it difficult for poor communities to purchase enough food that is in short supply at this time in season. This imbalance can only be corrected if urban food supplies can be increased during rainy season through new technologies and utilisation of excess labour. Therefore, a key policy goal is:
To formulate an effective urban agricultural labour market by promoting both short-term horticultural crops and annual arable crops that can be utilised as a sellable commodity while providing food for households.
Another key result is that the employment generating activities of UA can be enhanced if urban agriculture is considered as a business with various crops and animals produces throughout the year. In this case a possible policy goal would be:
To advocate post-harvest technologies, such as food drying, that will ensure food availability through out the year, stabilise prices, and create employment through handling, processing, marketing and export. This policy can even create a strong link between farmers and industries.
This research has also shown that those urban farmers with the opportunity to produce more have not been able to market their products causing food prices to be high as food is imported from other places including neighbouring countries. It has been found that the poor are weakly integrated into the city markets and the quality of their produce (due to lack of extension services) has resulted in low prices. Therefore, even though they have enough harvest, they are restricted in their use of city facilities. This affects availability of cheap food at local scale, reduces market supplies and increased food prices.
The other implication is that poor farmers spend time in selling their produce from door to door. This approach has reduced number of hours to work on their fields and it has also an impact on children’s health. High food prices have been the main source of vulnerability as the poor can not manage to buy cheap food produced locally. As reported by Department for International Development (DFID-UK), income shocks reduce demand for non-agricultural goods and services and incomes of those whose livelihoods depend on agricultural incomes, therefore decline. This is very common during rainy season where food supply is very low. In this situation, a possible goal would be:
To design a programme that encourage contract farming by linking farmers engaged in specific crop and livestock production with relevant markets or marketing organizations.
The policy question now is to understand how best urban agriculture can make a significant contribution to tackling poverty, including the extent to which African cities could pursue self sufficiency, and the most appropriate agricultural development strategies (e.g. support to low versus high-income farmers; subsistence versus market oriented production). If urban agriculture can be given the required attention, food prices that have been increasing can be drastically reduced.
This is very clear especially that cities in African countries have diverse environmental and geographical conditions that can be able to sustain crop production through out the year. In addition, Africa cities are surrounded by peri-urban areas that have enough land for farming, ideal leadership structures and can act as buffer zones to reduce urbanisation currently affecting many local governments. These areas can supply food to the urban residents at cheap prices while acting as potential markets for products from the private sector.
The work has shown that even though various approaches, studies and programmes have been undertaken by developing countries, to curtail problems of solid waste management, the services still fall short of the required level. As such, a key policy goal would be:
To implement a waste management strategy that will promote waste sorting, recycling and re-use at the source. This strategy could involve provision of large and small containers for waste collection, establishment of collection points close to passable roads and creation of additional collection points. Collection points can be linked to resource recyclers who can in turn be linked to farmers and industries. Collection points can be supported by the government, NGOs or FBOs.
This approach will entail considering political factors at the local level, forming a working national urban forum, reducing dependence on city authorities in waste collection and empowering city assemblies to bring to court those breaking the environmental laws. Markets for recycled materials have also failed to open up due to lack of public awareness and non-involvement of the private sector. These weaknesses could best be answered by developing an urban sustainability goal and a policy approach would be:
To link communities that produce waste with industries that have facilities to compost or re-use it and then link these industries to urban farmers or third parties who can re-use the waste.
Vehicle costs especially fuels and oils were identified key constraints in this study, thus requiring a holistic approach along these lines that could be altered to suit a particular environment in terms of society needs and country resource capacity and constraints. Establishment of recycling posts close to waste source can drastically reduce such costs especially that agriculture is being undertaken at each and every available space in urban and peri-urban areas.
African governments could consider the use, re-use and recycle of organic urban wastes at the source, as it represents several significant components in urban livelihoods. If this is not possible, dumping sites should be established close to sources of waste and managed property with all ecological sanitation issues considered. Dumping sites should be source of reusable materials and centres of energy extraction for different sectors. The possible strategy and goal should be:
To create new and modern dumping sites that will promote resource recycling and energy conversion. This could be achieved if waste sorting is done at the source. Otherwise, city markets should be empowered to recycle their waste since they have been found to be the main sources of wastes.
In addition, waste generation has increased but the management is hampered by both human and financial capital constraints common in many African countries. This has resulted in poor environmental conditions and the loss of essential plant nutrients that could have been used to enhance soil conservation and promote food security at city and household scales. Alternative usage of recycled organic waste, lack of technologies are some of the most important constraints and sources of costs of current waste management strategies faced by developing countries. A possible strategy would be:
To invest in new technologies such as “composting” machine and establish training programme for municipal managers following the “waste hierarchy”. These policies should encourage city assemblies to move away from traditional reliance on cheap landfill and invest in the systems needed to manage waste in more sustainable ways, treating it as a resource from which as much value as possible should be extracted.
The availability of tobacco wastes and other industrial organic wastes common in African cities should be used to facilitate the production of high value organic manures. This could also be the opportunity to involve the private sector in waste recycling. Production of organic manures should be done at community level to pool resources to buy substrates such as livestock manures and facilitate marketing of the product. Strategic health control measures should be followed since wastes apart from being source of plant nutrients can also be a health problem especially during rain seasons. The policy goal here should be:
To introduce waste disposal taxes on private industries in order to promote recycling and distribution of their wastes to areas of need. Incentives for communities involved in waste recycling could also be introduced by the private industries.
There is need for research and training to prevent nutrients losses due to crop residue removal. One approach would be to integrate crop and livestock systems. Strategies are necessary to use crop residues that can not easily be composted such as silage, hay or livestock beddings. Otherwise, incorporation of residues into soil at farm level, will not only release the plant nutrients, but will also maintain both the organic matter and soil structure for crop production and reduce soil degradation.
This is a difficult task, however, to achieve when several households are faced with starvation and crop residues are also used as sources of energy for poor communities. In some cases, crops are harvested immature either to meet dietary needs or to prevent thieves. All these have implications on the type and amount of plant nutrients from crop residues to be recycled back into agricultural soils. Because of poverty, a good proportion of organic waste are used for other purposes such as constructing housing structures, roasting on tubers for business, a typical situation in the study areas and African countries. If households could be food secure, several by-products would be available to supplement agriculture including scavenging livestock.
environment goals
This work has identified institutional barriers that hinder promotion of urban agriculture in Malawi. These issues could also be common across the African continent. For example, because of poor housing, unemployment, shortage of land, unsafe drinking water and environmental problems, urban poor communities are always in search of income and food security opportunities. The transitory aspect has resulted in organisations failing to implement proper development programmes at local level. In this case the possible development policy could be:
To introduce leadership and settlement structures that will facilitate to identify bonafide project beneficiaries, improve delivery of services and allow public participation in decision making. This could also involve provision of secure land for both settlement and farming and proper registration of residents.
This sort of approach will help city authorities to have proper strategic plans for waste management, provision of other amenities such as safe drinking water and health services. Creating and empowering communities through their own leaders will also allow the people to police street vendors who are dominating the agricultural sector and reduce administrative costs currently faced by local governments in providing security services in urban areas. This work has shown that although the majority of urban poor farmers are affiliated to informal organisations such as FBOs and CBOs, they are not given the right support to achieve their livelihoods strategies.
For example, informal institutions are not providing training or any sort of technical information on issues related to urban sustainability. The division of responsibilities between state, national and local or community based organisation has been recognised as a factor which can promote sustainable development. This study has shown that FBOs and CBOs are not given the required attention at country level as they have been restricted through regulations and laws. In this case the possible goal could be:
To remove institutional barriers that hinder recognition of the role of FBOs and CBOs in urban sustainable initiatives. This can be achieved by putting in place decision-making structures that can facilitate integrated decision-making at central and local government levels.
There is an institutional gap to understand how diverse groups can work together effectively, mitigating income inequities and resource sharing; local authorities are failing to prioritize problems more objectively and build sufficient contextual understanding of problems. Despite spending huge sums of financial resources on waste management, there are still knowledge gaps to compare alternative solutions for relative sustainability and build sufficient societal capacity to sustain solutions. Lack of involving poor communities to reduce solid waste, local authorities are continuously delivering important plant nutrients to dumping sites causing land degradation, food insecurity and other public health problems. The development goal could be:
To create policy frameworks and institutional mechanisms to provide local governments of all sizes and urban constituencies, with appropriate financial resources and capacities to carry out necessary functions including local socio-economic and environmental development. Local governments should be reformed to become more accountable to their constituencies and active partners with their communities.
Land in urban Malawi is controlled by several players including Malawi Housing Corporation, and Ministry of Lands. This has resulted in city assemblies failing to control illegal land acquisition and mushrooming of slums despite being the main stakeholder in waste management and natural resource management. There is no integration of programmes among these key players and policies have failed to bring such issues on a single platform. In this case, the Government of Malawi should transfer all land within the cities to City Assemblies to ease land management and thereby ensure effective land delivery and development control.
This will make it easy to implement upgrading programmes, recognise the potential of urban agriculture. Chiefs in peri-urban areas should not have powers to locate land because this outcome has allowed the rich to get large chunks of land in both urban and peri-urban areas. The possible policy goal would be:
To develop integrated land information and mapping systems and create a new inventory of all publicly held land while enforcing provisions that prohibit chiefs from land management in urban settlements. The government could explore communal land title ownership to reduce the temptation of individual owners selling off plots to high-income people.
This will entail instituting a land right regularisation exercise to be implemented by consolidating existing land parcels, issuing of titles, resettling excess informal settlers engaged in urban agriculture to newly created plots within the areas or to other serviced areas chosen or acceptable to informal dwellers.
Conclusion
This work has been of significant in answering three main policy objectives that address poverty and environment in relation to agriculture which are (1) to improve the well being of the urban poor by improving the quality, quantity, productivity and value of the natural resources essential to their livelihoods; (2) to improve the environmental externalities associated with resource use and management by the poor and (3) to initiate a working policy framework for development partners willing to support urban agriculture.
This has been achieved by the integrated analysis of studies across different disciplinary perspectives and scales of analysis as facilitated by the ‘Venn-Prism’ Framework used to guide the research undertaken. For example, by assessing the potential for UA to help with waste management, millions of dollars could be saved and used for other development programs such as health, infrastructure and education. This research also investigated the conditions under which urban agriculture is a viable poverty reduction strategy that also benefits the environment. The involvement of the local farmer and the interaction with all relevant stakeholders displays that the research framework applied here is a potential tool in both human and institutional capacity building for development research and project initiatives more widely.
The work has also shown that integrating agriculture into the urban economy can bring ecological, social and economic benefits in developing countries. For example, the sustainable livelihood analysis, has allowed understanding the potential, limits and constraints in which urban agriculture is being practiced by different social groups. The institutional analysis has given insight to some of the barriers limiting support to urban agriculture; while participatory nutrient budget analysis has proved that urban agriculture has the potential to reduce waste management problems, improve soil fertility and food security.
Together these approaches offer significantly greater value than if each is simply conducted in isolation as has typically been the case in many past interventions and assessments of urban agriculture schemes. By identifying actors, policy issues, the level of community participation, local knowledge and nutrient-budget influxes, it has been possible to assess the food production potential of urban areas and many of the environmental problems associated with waste management. Of importance here was the integration of these findings using a conceptual framework (Venn-Prism) that brings urban agriculture at the centre of social, economic, ecological and institutional failures.
It has also helped to gather information on processes of social change in urban low-income locations that can help anticipate future trends. Analysis of the relative access to the various livelihood assets was scarce; this research has generated data and information on this gap. By utilising a new, innovative and integrated conceptual framework, the work has offered the potential to combine sustainable livelihoods and a nutrient budget analysis to assess the sustainability of UA as a poverty reduction strategy in urban areas.
These research objectives have led to a series of policy recommendations so that UA in Malawi (and beyond) can reach its full economic and environmental benefits. It has managed to guide policy makers in poverty focused urban environmental management and food security issues, especially considering that there was little available information that looks specifically at poverty issues in Malawi’s urban centres. It is expected that this will enlighten government officials in developing countries on the constraints on the people who cannot take advantage of the opportunity presented by urban markets including the land resource poor; those who have insufficient capital to purchase land and/or intensify production; and those who are excluded from credit and extension services.
The results of this research have been passed on to the authorities in Malawi and international agencies. In addition, the United Nations Development Organisation through the South-South Initiative has recognised the innovative approach taken in this work by sharing the conceptual framework with all UN nations. The establishment of the Malawi National Urban Forum, and the increase in number of communities involved in waste recycling, the introduction of teaching modules for undergraduate students in the University of Malawi and the forthcoming publications are but some of the examples that have come out of this work.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this work has weaved together livelihood entitlements theory and participatory methods to assess urban poverty and environmental problems; vulnerability theory to prioritize and identify the relationship between food security and soil nutrient budgets; institutions system thinking to understand development barriers; sustainability assessment to compare alternative solutions. It took an integrated approach to understand whether urban agriculture is a win-win development strategy that will reduce poverty while solving environmental problems in developing countries. The analysis of the contribution of urban agriculture to livelihood entitlements could be summarised based on the two ‘types’ of urban farmers as follow:
v Urban agriculture is dominated by male-headed households from high income locations while female-headed households are the main players from low-income households.
v The rich are engaged in urban agriculture mainly as a hobby and for personal consumption while the poor are taking this livelihood strategy for income and food insurance.
v Crop production is linked to education levels with high- income farmers being highly educated with high crop production compared to more illiterate farmers from low-income households who have low crop production.
v High-income households have larger farm plots approximately 0.27ha while low-income households have an average of 0.06ha
v In terms of labour hired, the rich are mainly using casual and unskilled labour to support crop production while the poor are hiring mainly skilled labour to support their livestock programmes.
v The rich are employed in permanent and management positions, in some cases they are self employed through formal business, while the poor are mostly supplying their labour as temporal and unskilled workers
v The rich are mainly involved in agricultural marketing while the poor are involved in agricultural production
v Labour is supplied and hired through out the year from production phases through marketing phases with more jobs available during rain season. Due to insufficient food at household level during the rainy season, there is more labour supply, leading to low wages while the food prices are high
v The main constraints faced by high-income farmers are lack of institutional support. On the other hand, access to agricultural land, inputs and extension services are the main problems faced by the poor farmers.
v The main livelihoods for the high-income households is formal employment while urban agriculture and informal income generating businesses are dominated by the poor farmers
v The main average crop yield per ha for high-income households is 1364 kgs/ha and for low-income households is 357kgs/ha
v In terms of harvests (expressed as kgs of cereal equivalent) per capita, the rich had 307kgs/year/capita and the poor had 92kgs/year/capita.
v The average income/capita from urban agriculture is MK2381.00 and MK1509.00 for high and low-income household respectively.
The findings referring to parameters of waste nutrient content, farm nutrient budgets and current waste management are summarised at three different levels as follows:
v Lack of funding to enforce and monitor urban environmental problems
v Cities have been encountered with population increase mainly due to rural-urban migration
v There is no substantial increase in funding to cope up with new demographic changes
v Difficulties to assess amount of waste generation due to poor infrastructure, human capacity and uncontrolled waste disposal
v High expenses in managing waste especially on fuel expenses due to global fuel price fluctuations
v Waste management is more concentrated in low-density areas and public places such as markets and low-density areas
v Wholesale delivery of solid wastes to dumping sites without control, processing and recycling
v More waste problems in Lilongwe city than Blantyre despite low population figures due to administrative constraints
v The city is loosing plant nutrient annually through current waste management strategies
v 60% of its waste taken to dumping site is organic and compostable
v Solid waste close to highly fertilised agricultural soils of rural areas have more plant nutrients
v High population is associated with waste generation, little waste removal and high plant nutrients in organic waste
v There is more than enough agricultural land to absorb current municipal solid waste
v There is no integration of agriculture into the urban economy for waste management
v Most farm plots are small and fragmented to warrant great waste recycling input
v Soils are highly deficient of plant nutrients
v Farmers close to industrial site use organic manure more than those located away from the site
v Tobacco wastes are preferred because of the ease associated with their use, availablity in good time and high nutrient content
v Very little waste recycling for agriculture
v High nutrient loss through crop residues
v High potassium loss due to government blanket fertiliser recommendation
The findings from institutional assessments are summarised below:
v Transitory aspects of residents make it difficult for formal institutions to target beneficiaries for policy implementation
v Lack of traditional leadership structures makes it difficult to channel aid to those in need especially the poor communities.
v Insufficient market and infrastructure for agriculture allows informal traders to dominate the sector which are difficult to control and work with.
v Informal institutions especially FBOs have more pressing social and moral problems than food insecurity
v Transitory aspects of residents make it difficult to undertake long term projects with communities
v There are few urban farmers affiliated to FBOs that have enough land to warrant investment in agricultural programmes.
v Lack of a working policy framework on urban poverty
v Funding to city assemblies has not increased despite population changes
v No NGOs involved in urban poverty reduction programmes at local level to receive funding from funding agencies
v Most FBOs are constitutionally, not allowed to engage in business related programmes
v More concerned with spiritual aspect rather than economic and political issues
v Insufficient funding by central government
v Insufficient human capacity
v Small and fragmented farm plots do not warrant institutional support
v No legal framework on land for farming in cities
v Unregulated agricultural services and products
v Farming on fragile landscapes against environmental regulations
v Farm plots located outside their jurisdiction boundary
v Small and fragmented farm plots
v Dominated by non FBO members
Therefore, based on the livelihood entitlements from urban agriculture, waste generation rates, soil infertility, food insecurity and biased policies toward rural areas, urban agriculture offers a plausible solution for improving urban areas economically and environmentally. The level of participation; wide distribution of urban farmers among all social strata of urban households; the estimated overall economic value of resource recycling, marketing potential of local grown food lead to the fact that urban agriculture is likely to prevail in Malawi and developing countries and requires institutional attention.
Acknowledgements
The author wish to express sincere gratitude to International Development Research Council (IDRC) through AGROPOLIS for funding the research work. Dr Andrew J Dougill and Dr Evan D.G. Fraser deserve special thanks for their tireless effort put into this study right from the designing phase. Their guidance during thesis writing was more constructive and editorial. TWAS here…..
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