Urban And Peri-Urban Agriculture Essay

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter contains various literatures on research works, books, journals and other materials relevant to our study.

2.1 Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture

Urban and peri-urban agriculture can be defined as the production, processing and distribution of foodstuff from crop and animal production, fish, ornamental plants and flowers within and around urban areas (Mougeot, 2000). Maxwell (1995) also defined urban and peri-urban agriculture as the deliberate use of land and labour for the production of subsistence crops to reduce dependence on financial or exchange entitlements in the provision of food. An estimated number of 800 million people are engaged in urban agriculture worldwide. Out

According to Deninger (1998), by the year 2020 at least 35-40 million urban residents will depend on urban agriculture to feed themselves. No matter how efficient urban food supply may be, rapid urbanization growth will increase the demand for food and farmers will have to engage in intensive cultivation of crops. Urban and peri urban agriculture are not the only suppliers of food, peak and lean seasons show differences with respect to the quantities of food supply from various sources. According to a study conducted by IWMI (2003) during the peak season, plenty of food enters into Kumasi especially from urban and peri-urban areas. However, in the lean season they depend on food from rural areas or beyond. Urban and peri-urban agriculture contributes to employment livelihood and poverty alleviation. According to Nugent (2000), the economic impact of urban agricultural appears at different levels; benefits for households include employment creation, savings on food and income from sales of surpluses. However, crops produced in urban and peri-urban agriculture has a potential of contamination. In most countries of Sub Saharan Africa vegetables are highly contaminated with pathogens through the use of polluted

Worldwide, 200 million out of 800 million urban farmers are known to engage in the use of poor quality water (Qadir et al., 2007). The volume of wastewater generated by domestic, industrial and commercial sources has increased with urbanization and economic development. The productive use of wastewater has also increased, as millions of small-scale farmers in urban and peri-urban areas of developing countries depend on wastewater sources to irrigate vegetables for the markets, due to the lack of alternatives (Olufunke et al., 2007). One tenth of the world population is thought to consume foods produced with wastewater which may contain undesirable constituents that can harm human health and the environment (Smit and Nasr., 1992). Alternatively, according to Food and Agricultural organization (FAO, 1992), typical wastewater effluent from domestic sources could supply all the nitrogen as well as the phosphorus and potassium that are normally required for agricultural crop production. Other benefits of using wastewater include an increase in the availability of water for irrigation which will in turn increase the choice of crops as well as the conservation of natural resources. Municipal wastewater also contains a variety of inorganic substances from domestic and industrial sources such as arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, zinc among others