The contribution of urban agriculture to household poverty reduction: the case of Morogoro municipality in Tanzania

This study was carried out to evaluate the contribution of urban agriculture to household poverty alleviation in Morogoro municipality. A survey was conducted covering a sample of 100 households selected using a stratified random sampling procedure. The analytical techniques used were gross margin, Gini coefficient and coefficient of variation. The findings of the study showed that urban agriculture is practiced by people from all social demographic groups. The Gross margin analysis, showed that paddy provided the highest gross margin averaging at Tsh 257 700, followed by maize (Tsh 130 725). The gross margins for other crops were Tsh 51 650 (for beans), Tsh 44 100 (banana), Tsh 55 197.50 (vegetable), Tsh 85 050 (cassava) and Tsh 82 230 (fruits). For livestock, egg production recorded the highest annual gross margin of Tsh 4 110 000, followed by milk (Tsh 2 598 000) and pork (Tsh 1 538 400).Urban agriculture contributed about 13% to total household income with livestock keeping and crop production contributing about 7 % and 6% respectively. The source of household income that contributed greatly to total household income was salaries/wages which contributed about 44% of the household income followed by business, transfer payments and other sources which contributed about 27%, 11 % and 5 % respectively. Three income sources—business, transfer payments and other sources—represented inequality-decreasing sources of income while two sources of income—agricultural and salaries/wages—represented inequality-increasing sources of income. Considering urban agriculture alone, income from livestock enterprise represented an inequality-increasing source of income and crop production represented inequality- decreasing source of income. The study recommends that there is a need of integrating urban agriculture in the urban economy and legitimitise that urban agriculture become an integral part of the urban economy and deliberate actions should be taken to promote it.

Directorate General for Development Cooperation of the government of Belgium through the Belgian Technical Co-operation (BTC) agency in Dar es Salaam