Urban agriculture and poverty reduction: evaluating how food production in cities contributes to livelihood entitlements in Malawi

Urban agriculture (UA) can reduce poverty but there is need for more precise analyses on how it contributes to food security. A study in Malawi,revealed two predominant types of urban farmers: <br /><br />poor, less educated, often female-headed households, who use UA as an insurance against income losses but employ skilled workers to support their livestock activities; and wealthier, often male-headed households that undertake UA for personal consumption and hire significant numbers of unskilled workers. <br />This suggests a need for a two-pronged policy approach; to target low-income women with extension support for food security and involve high-income farmers to increase employment opportunities and promote agro-industry.<br />The extent to which urban agriculture can actually make a difference in terms of entitlement bundles for the poor and impoverished of Malawi is currently unknown and forms the initial basis of this study<br /><br />The authors argue that:<br /><br />The results from this study reveal that at the current level of practice, urban agriculture is not acting as a realistic strategy for improving food security in Malawi.Richer households who undertake it mostly as a &lsquo;hobby&rsquo; and who have no incentives to expand activities to promote either direct or indirect food entitlements which dominate urban production. The evidence suggests that policy makers are not considering urban agriculture as a tool that can reduce poverty and create employment in developing countries.Currently, there are different and competing views on urban agriculture from NGOs, donors and governments. Governments should advocate a policy environment that will place urban agriculture on the economic development agenda through financial incentives that will promote utilisation of idle land, waste water resources, waste recycling and land restoration for agriculture. Facilitating the establishment of multi-stakeholder platforms on urban agriculture and food security and guiding participatory processes of policy formulation and action planning will allow policy-makers to make choices among powerful competing policy agendas surrounding urban agriculture.There is need to undertake an economic analysis of urban agriculture for purposes of better decision-making especially using trend analysis . Currently, the results of this study point to a number of key areas where Governments and donor agencies can implement policies and projects to promote urban agriculture as a food security tool.