Alternative ways to food production: The right to food approach

 Hello readers!

 My latest piece for the Digital Development debates  February 2013 edition under the right to food focuses on alternative ways to food security, hunger and food production with special focus on  urban farming. Check it out! 
 

 Greenhouses in the Backyard
Digital Development Debates
February 2013 Hunger  Edition
Emmie Kio


Urban farming in Kenya has moved beyond just being a poor man's profession. Can it even provide a solution to looming food insecurity?

On a stroll through Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, one's eyes are drawn to a myriad of agricultural activities taking place. From a distance, greenhouses seem to sprout from any available piece of land and backyards. And that is certainly not all: As the greenhouses disappear, backyard vegetable farming, rabbit keeping, cattle rearing, fish farming and even pig farming sets in; and tassels of maize grown at roadside farms wave at you as you pass. This is, in a nutshell, what experts have called urban farming or urban agriculture.

According to the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security, urban agriculture refers to the cultivation of plants and raising of animals within and around cities. It may be right inside a city – "intra-urban" – or at the outskirts of a city – "peri-urban". The major crops grown include tomatoes, beans, maize, sweet potatoes, kale (locally known as sukuma wiki), African leafy vegetables, arrowroot, cowpeas and Irish potatoes. The major livestock kept includes cows, goats, sheep, rabbits, pigs and poultry.

Urban agriculture is primarily distinguished from rural agriculture as we know it by the way it operates. It is characterised by labour drawn from the urban population, the use of treated or even untreated waste water for irrigation, and its need to be incorporated in urban policy planning.

A remedy against poverty and hunger
In Kenya, poverty and food insecurity are just two of the many development challenges the government has been trying to eradicate since independence. Urban areas are in no way spared the problems of their rural neighbours, and bear the extra burden of a high cost of living. Rapid population growth in these urban areas, either as a result of urbanization or births, accelerates these issues.

"Urban areas are in no way spared
the problems of their rural neighbours,
and bear the extra burden of a high cost of living."

Take Nairobi, for instance, the capital city, where the annual growth rate is currently 4.1 per cent. This has led to an increase in food insecurity here, especially among low-income earners and informal settlers. And with the population projected to rise to 61 million as of 2030, with a higher percentage in urban areas, new ways of feeding the population need be devised.
Urban agriculture seems to be a viable option, as it can utilize limited land area to yield quality produce. This is because it can incorporate technologies like sack gardening, which uses very minimal land space and water while ensuring maximum produce. Such approaches are particularly important to informal settlements where the available land is quite limited and clean water for irrigation is a scarce commodity.

(Read the Full story here )

Youth would embrace farming if parents stopped clinging to land

By Patrick Mbataru

Young people are increasingly finding agriculture appealing. Unfortunately, they face enormous problems, and that is where policy makers must step in.

Most people under 40 years have moved away from on-farm activities. Actual production has been left to the parents, mostly aged 60 years or more.

The dichotomy of labour roles in the countryside, between the young and old, mirrors the emerging orientation of economic productivity away from basic farming. Young people are engaging more in the profitable stages of the value chain, mostly in value adding activities like processing, packaging, brokerage and transport.

 In fact, government policies targeting young farmers should focus more on value adding activities. Yet the grave problem is the gripping control of farm production by ageing parents.

Cultural attitudes make it difficult for young people to participate in long-term agricultural production. Parents in many places do not allow eligible children full land rights, mainly because it is considered a bad omen to “be inherited” when one is still living.

Many parents fear that if they give land to their children, they will be abandoned as their children exploit the land. Parents therefore cling to land even in their twilight years as financial insurance, yet this greatly limits productivity.

Many parents are growing too old for meaningful agricultural production. They lack modern skills and the entrepreneurial attitudes necessary to enhance quantity and quality in the face of diminishing acreage.Watching them labour out with hoes and pangas does not inspire much hope in meeting food security. Besides lack of production skills, they may not understand the intricacies of the global agribusiness value chains.

To compound the problem, parents in Kenya actually socialise their children away from land. They educate them so that they can move out of what they consider farm “slavery”.

To many young people in central Kenya, for example, coffee is the symbol of rural drudgery. Few youths want to be associated with the rigours of coffee production — the disciplined husbandry, the grading that starts during picking in the rainy season, to the pulping factory — only to be paid peanuts at the end of the year. The glittering city is more alluring.

And that is not all. There is the punishing waiting for payment. Even if the younger generation would have the land rights, few would have the patience to wait for months to be paid. Most prefer to cultivate “three-month-crops”, like tomatoes that guarantee prompt payment.

This is the appropriate industry model for the highly fragmented rural firms. Being more educated and exposed, young people are aware of the folly of blind production. Their mantra is “you produce what you can sell” and not tie to selling what you have produced. Luckily for them, wealth creation in Kenya is steadily leaning towards off-farm activities.

Globalisation and liberalisation have gradually opened up international markets for high value agro-products. Emerging issues related to traceability, quality control, certification and even carbon crediting need a whole new schooling on the way we do agriculture.

A ballooning middle class, said to now stand at 32 per cent of the population, offers a huge market for quality agro-products. Note the increasing space for greens and agro-products in major supermarkets. Any supply manager in these supermarkets will tell you that a major constraint is to get reliable suppliers, both in quantity and quality.

There is an emerging market opportunities for carrot, wheat grass, cabbage juice and millet-ugali as a new health consciousness takes root. The new drive based on organic foods represents another wealth-creating opportunity.

The good news is that the older land-clinging generation is thinning out. In the high output highlands of Central, land is slowly being released through natural attrition, leaving their more entrepreneurial children to take over. Many young farmers also lease such land.

By Dr Mbataru teaches agribusiness at the School of Agriculture, Kenyatta University (pmbataru@gmail.com)

Reblogged from the Daily Nation Wednesday January 23, 2013