Does Urban Agriculture Enhance Dietary Diversity? Empirical Evidence from a Sample of Developing Countries

There is growing evidence of urban poverty in and around cities in sub-Saharan Africa in the form of food and nutrition insecurity. Although many studies have been done across sub-Saharan Africa on urban agriculture, food and nutrition insecurity, little is known about the association of urban agriculture to household food and nutrition insecurity along the urban–rural continuum, especially in West African cities. Therefore, a survey was carried out between August and September 2014 in and around Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), using a transect approach to guide the data collection. The purpose of this study was to understand the dynamics of urban, periurban and rural agriculture and its association with household food and nutrition insecurity. A total of 240 households participated in the survey. From these households, data were collected on 179 women of reproductive age (15–49 yr) and 133 children under the age of 5 yr to compute Women's Dietary Diversity Scores (WDDS) and other anthropometric indices. The results of this study provide a general picture of crop production which is inclined to subsistence and income generation. Households in rural and periurban areas were more engaged in crop and livestock production compared with their urban area counterparts. Households in periurban areas had the highest relative proportion (54%) of food insecurity (household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS) > 11), compared with urban areas (39%) and rural areas (45%). At the same time the periurban households had the highest relative proportion of stunting and wasting prevalence compared with urban and rural households. Households in the rural areas had the highest dietary diversity (WDDS ≥ 6), compared with periurban and urban households. Households keeping livestock significantly experienced less wasting (weight-for-height index (WHZ)) (coef = −0.15;P= 0.008) by a factor of 0.15, and overweight (body mass index (BMI)-for-age (BAZ)) (coef = −0.12;P= 0.015) by a factor of 0.12 compared with households not doing livestock keeping. Households involved in crop production significantly experienced more food insecurity, HFIAS (coef. = 2.55;P= 0.042) by a factor of 2.55 compared with households without crop production. The complexity of periurban areas coupled with the scourge of food and nutrition insecurity will require more periurban agriculture and food policy consideration.

Despite the perceived white-collar and industry-based formal employment gravity of urban areas of developing countries, poverty and food insecurity persists. Therefore, urban agriculture, a predominantly rural economic activity, emerges as a lucrative livelihood strategy used to curb urban food insecurity. We assessed the contributions of urban agriculture to household food security and income in Cold Stream, a low income residential area in Chinhoyi town in Zimbabwe. Weadministered 20 questionnaires to a convenient sample of urban farmers, interviewed five purposively sampled informants from key institutions and carried out three temporally spaced fieldworks. The results clearly show that urban agriculture is a prominent livelihood of the poor unemployed majority (53%) who dominate the economic category. Key informants interviews indicated that although local non-governmental organisations boost urban agriculture by providing farm inputs and technical advice free of charge, there is no government support this activity. Furthermore, results from questionnaires show that yields as well as income from their sales is used primarily for acquiring basic necessities rather than for luxury thereby confirming that the farmers are poor. All urban farmers (100%) consume their farm produce indicating that urban agriculture enhances food security. Moreover, a majority (80%) overwhelmingly concurred that urban farming makes food cheaper hence improves food accessibility, which is an important pillar of food security. Additionally, a majority (60%) earn significant income from selling farm produce, of which 84% sale to informal markets while remaining minority 16% to the formal markets. Notably, about half the sample (48%) also concurred that urban agriculture reduce food insecurity even in their rural homes where they also remit some of their farm produce. However, there are challenges negatively affecting urban agriculture. Some of the challenges include lack of credit lines for inputs and unfavourable policy arrangements that classifies urban agriculture as illegal activity.

FOOD FOR THE CITIES: URBAN AGRICULTURE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Zimbabwe is becoming increasingly urbanized, and with this accelerating process comes a host of socio-economic challenges. Rapid urbanization process has resulted in increase urban food insecurity and malnutrition, especially on the side of tandem increase in urban poverty. Urban poverty and food shortage are taking root in Zimbabwe, as a result increased food production and access becomes critical to achieving major nutritional improvement and addressing food insecurity. In the face of urban food shortages, the present paradigm of rural food production cannot meet the challenges of the new millennium. It is hardly surprising that increasing umbers of urbanites are looking to grow their own food, if only to supplement their family food needs. Food is one of the basic needs and urban agriculture, both legal and illegal, has grown as a consequence of the difficult economic climate. Many urban households lack adequate amounts of foods that are rich in the nutrients needed for health and a productive life. It is against this background of increasing urban poverty that this discussion puts forward some suggestions for promoting urban agriculture. Urban agriculture has diverse economic, social and ecological functions and can be valued as one of the agricultural sectors having enormous potential to contribute to food security in Zimbabwe. In this discussion the role of urban agriculture in improving nutrition and food security is highlighted. Urban areas are becoming more 'modern' in their patterns of consumption than in their patterns of production, and there is a danger that the urban poor will become more and more marginalized while, at the other extreme, a small increasingly wealthy elite develops. The demand for food due to increased urbanization is predicted to grow faster than production resulting in a growing food deficit and insecurity in urban areas. Strategies which foster gender equality in urban food production will impact positively on food production, which may translate into expanded food production base to meet the needs of the growing urban dwellers, who are failing to make ends meet. This means participation of women in urban agriculture on the understanding that they are custodians of food production in many urban communities is recommended. However, challenges associated with urban agriculture need to be addressed to avoid land degradation and pollution in urban areas. Therefore, urban agriculture should be considered as a normal component of agriculture system and urban development, which has the capacity to improve nutrition and food security, as it lends itself to the majority of the urban poor. Greater and more sustained food production from urban agriculture will increase the potential access of the urban household to an adequate diet. It is envisaged that urban agriculture will be the new approach to satisfying urban food demands, however best provided incentives to urban farmers are credited by formulating policy fair to urban food producers. In the face of this bleak situation, major efforts are required to promote urban agriculture in addressing the nutritional needs and the perpetual food insecurity challenges in urban areas of Zimbabwe. On the other hand, given the economic, social and ecological advantages of urban farming it is arguably deserves even greater attention than before.

In this PhD research, the major environmental challenges of our time, such as climate change, sustainable energy transition and scarcity of resources, are approached from a spatial, landscape-architectural perspective. The goal is to accelerate the transition to liveable, low carbon cities. The focus of the research is at the local scale and attempts to turn challenges into opportunities for a better quality of life and living environment. Since 1857, when Frederick Law Olmsted combined the construction of two large drinking water reservoirs for the city of New York with the design of a beautiful park, these types of assignments are part of a landscape architect's job. At that time, the issue was to solve the problem of drinking water while now we are concerned about solving the combination of very diverse and different flows. This renders the assignment more complex but certainly no less landscape architectonic.<br/><br/>As part of this research, many functions, flows, areas and actors in the urban landscape system of Rotterdam have been studied. This research focuses on the development, design and testing of new approaches to strengthen existing urban qualities and to tackle problems in such a way that positive effects for other functions (synergies) arise at the same time in order to improve the quality of life in cities.

The activities of urban farming in Southeast are still limited and scattered. In order to give valuable insights into the urban agriculture of Southeast Asia and to support researchers, we need to know in details the available options and gaps in this research direction that will serve future researchers. Thus, in this study, a review is conducted to map the research landscape into a coherent taxonomy. The research procedure focuses on all these subject matters related to urban farming system activities, technology application and their use in the urban farms and smallholder farming activities in Southeast Asia. These studies selected from the three major digital databases, namely, the ScienceDirect, Web of Science, and Scopus. The study selection process consists of research into literature sources, followed by three iterations of screening and filtering, excluded duplicate articles, screening the titles and abstracts and reading of the full-text articles. The final included result is 88 articles, which will be adopted on in this study. Further, a review in details of the layout of the research landscape of literature is conducted into a cohesive classification with its descriptive analysis. We also identify the essential characteristics of this emerging field in the following aspects: benefits of using urban farming activities in Southeast Asia, challenges hindering utilization, and recommendations to improve the acceptance and use of urban farming applications in literature.

Throughout the world, poverty, income inequality and food insecurity in urban areas have continued to be pressing issues. As a solution, a productive urban safety net program has been launched to provide conditional cash transfers (CTs) to poor households since 2017 in urban areas of Ethiopia. This study examines the impact of CTs made by the program to beneficiary households on the financial inclusion options, participation in urban agriculture and levels of food security among women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Random stratified sampling was used to select 278 women for questionnaire surveys. Mixed research, comparative impact analysis, food security index, Ordinary Least Square (OLS), Logistic, and Ordinal Probit regressions were applied. Results showed that 94% of respondents could have ownership of a bank account and participated in urban agriculture as additional income source only after receiving CTs from the program. This contributed to better access to other financial inclusion components such as saving, credit, mobile banking, advice on finance management, and farm incomes. The study found that 171 (61.5%) women households were food insecure, while 107 (38.5%) were food secure. The minimum, maximum, and mean K/calorie consumed by food-insecure female farmers was 674.6, 2082.1, and 1378 Kcals, respectively, while 2192.5, 5360.4, and 3776.6 Kcals for food-secure ones. Furthermore, mean calorie consumption of women also significantly varies with the type of urban agriculture they are involved in. Accordingly, among the food-secure women, the mean calorie consumption was relatively better in those involved in horticulture relative to animal husbandry. The OLS model indicate the coefficient of bank account ownership, amount saved in the last 1year, farm income and proportion of credit used for actual collection intention have a significant positive effect on food security index. The logistic regression model also confirmed that among the financial inclusion options, amount saved, advice on finance management, and proportion of credit used were the most significant predictors. The safety net program’s CTs have moderately improved financial inclusion for women and slightly increased food-secured women, but their overall contribution to food security remains inadequate, as a significant portion of women’s households still experience food insecurity and poor urban agriculture. The study implies urban planning and development policies still need to be more pro-poor, gender-sensitive & responsive & inclusive to bring majority of urban women households out of food insecurity by improving their nutrition calorie consumption & job via urban agriculture. Accordingly, it informs partners to revisit and expand the safety net program scope, consider more financial inclusion options and urban agriculture facilities, including soft loan provisions, grants, Agri-input, market links, training, incentives, and increasing CTs amount. Besides, business-to-business networking events among financial service providers is essential to create long-term partnerships to improve financial services, access to agricultural technology and income-generating job options including Agri-Micro Small and Medium Enterprises to urban poor, particularly women program beneficiary households. Organization of further research with wider scope is also necessary.

Food production and supply has been on the decline in Nigeria with a consequent impact on household food security. This study examined the influence of urban farming on household food security in Oyo State, Nigeria. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 159 farm households in a cross-sectional survey. Structured questionnaire was used to obtain data on socio-economic characteristics, determine the food security status of urban crop farming households in the study area, and examine the effects of urban crop production on households’ food security status. Data were analysed using descriptive statistics while the statistical tools were Food Security Index (FSI) and Probit Regression Model (PRM). Results revealed that 84.9% of the respondents was male, 81.2% married. The average age, household size, and farm size were 49.6 years, 6 persons, 1.1 hectares respectively. Most (75.5%) of the respondents did not have access to consumption credit and 62.3% did not belong to any farmers association. Based on minimum daily energy requirement per adult equivalent of N230.8, 90.6% of the farm households was food secure.
 The PRM showed that age (β = -0.1, p<0.05), household size (β= -0.4, p<0.01) and economic efficiency (β = -61.6, p<0.05) reduced the probability of household food security while access to consumption credit (β= 1.7, p<0.05) and allocative efficiency (β = 67.9, p<0.05) increased the probability of household food security. The study concluded that urban farming significantly influence household food security.
 JEL Classification: Q11

Urban farming has for years served as a vital input in the livelihood strategies of urban households in Zimbabwe. In general, urban dwellers rely on the market for food but with the tremendous surge in food prices beyond the reach of the majority of the population, the poor urbanites in Zimbabwe have resorted to intensifying urban agriculture as a coping strategy to meet their immediate food requirements. This paper discusses the contribution of urban agriculture to reducing food poverty in the context of sustainable urban development. The elements of urban agricultural production and food insecurity, alleviation of urban poverty and the state of the environment are analysed holistically. The findings of the paper are derived from qualitative and quantitative data collected from 59 low income urban farming households, field observations and key informant interviews conducted in Harare, Zimbabwe in July and August 2008. The results of the data analysis indicate that urban agriculture in low income households has rapidly become a significant source of fresh produce but shortage of agricultural resources, serious environmental health risks and policy gaps remain paramount obstacles to realizing the full potential of urban agricultural development. The results also show that active participation in urban agricultural activities is done predominantly by women. The research shows that urban agriculture contributes to household food supply and access but its potential in terms of food utilization, dietary diversity and poverty alleviation should not be overemphasised. Finally, a number of recommendations are suggested for improving urban agriculture from a human ecological perspective.

Assessing Gender Inequality in Food Security among Small-holder Farm Households in urban and rural South Africa

The literature on urban agriculture (UA) as a food security and poverty alleviation strategy is bifurcating into two distinct positions. The first is that UA is a viable and effective pro-poor development strategy, and the second is that UA has demonstrated limited positive outcomes on either food security or poverty. These two positions are tested against data generated by the African Urban Food Security Network’s (AFSUN) baseline food security survey undertaken in 11 Southern African cities. At the aggregate level, the analysis shows that (1) urban context is an important predictor of rates of household engagement in UA—the economic, political, and historical circumstances and conditions of a city are key factors that either promote or hinder UA activity and scale; (2) UA is not an effective household food security strategy for poor urban households—the analysis found few significant relationships between UA participation and food security; and (3) household levels of earnings and land holdings may mediate UA impacts on food security—wealthier households derive greater net food security benefits from UA than poor households do. These findings call into question the potential benefits of UA as a broad urban development strategy and lend support to the position that UA has limited poverty alleviation benefits under current modes of practice and regulation.

This article provides both a theoretical and empirical evidence on the role of urban agriculture (UA) to food and nutrition security as well as poverty reduction in urban areas, which have persisted as policy challenges in Africa. While countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa have taken agricultural interventions at the centre of addressing food and nutrition security in rural areas, UA does not feature well in urban food and poverty reduction policies in Tanzania. This creates policy gaps between the global, regional and national policies towards attaining the Sustainable Development Goal-2 of Zero hunger by 2030 and the African Union Agenda 2063 on food and nutrition. This study derives from the nexus of theories of urban sprawls and urban food systems which consider urbanisation and the associated demographic changes posing unprecedented challenges in terms of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. Based on a cross-sectional research design, the study employed a mixed-methods approach, collecting data through questionnaires, interviews, and a systematic review of the literature. A sample of 600 respondents was selected using purposive sampling from a target population of 6,000, consisting of adult male and female farmers, agri-food supply chain producers, food processors, input suppliers, distributors, and traders in urban and peri-urban areas of Tanzania. The study examined and confirmed the contribution of urban agriculture on food availability, accessibility, stability and utilization in urban households. A systematic literature review shows a multitude of benefits of urban agriculture on food availability, accessibility, nutrient utilization and stability. The examined literature shows potential of UA to overcome youth unemployment as they engage into urban agricultural activities and therefore contribute to income and poverty reduction. Findings provides an understanding of inadequate policy enabling environment for UA as n frameworks for increasing food security. However, UA is being practiced without legitimate policy and legal frameworks. The study recommends for institutionalization of UA as a pathway for attaining food and nutrition security and poverty reduction and therefore, calls for policy agenda setting to create space for UA in city policies and planning.

Food and nutrition insecurity remains a challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. Several studies have examined food and nutrition insecurity in urban or rural areas but have not captured the whole continuum. Between November and December 2013, 240 households were surveyed along the urban–rural continuum in Northern Ghana. The study objective was to understand the socio-spatial dynamics of household food and nutrition insecurity and to investigate the role played by urban, peri-urban and rural agriculture. The study found that there was more involvement in agriculture in rural areas compared to peri-urban areas and urban areas. Households from urban areas were more food insecure (HFIAS > 11) compared to their counterparts in peri-urban and the rural areas. Stunting increased by 3.4 times (p = 0.048) among households located in the peri-urban area. Wasting was reduced by 0.16 times among household that produced staple food or vegetables (p = 0.011). Overweight was reduced by 0.04 times among households that produced livestock (p = 0.031). The results reveal a socio-spatial dimension of food and nutrition insecurity that is related to agricultural activities.

Rapid urbanization in urban areas causes dissimilarity of food access in each household. It is become one of urban food security problem. Urban farming is a strategy to improve food access in urban areas. The purpose of this study was to analyze the difference in food security and coping strategy of agriculture and fisheries urban farming households. This observational study used a cross-sectional design. A sample of 62 households were divided into 2 groups: agriculture and fisheries urban farming households. Food security was assessed by United States Household Food Security Survey Module (US-HFSSM) questionnaire while coping strategy was assessed by Reduced Coping Strategy Index (RCSI) questionnaire. The difference of household food security and coping strategy in both groups was analyzed by Chi square test. A total of 64,7% household in agriculture group were in food secured, while 75% households in fishery group were in food insecure with severe hunger degrees. There was no difference of household food security between agriculture and fisheries urban farming group (p = 0,255), although two groups had different in food security status. Most of agriculture urban farming household has RCSI score <14 (65,6%), while the majority of fishery urban farming household has RCSI score ≥ 14 (66,7%). There was a difference of coping strategy between agriculture and fishery urban farming household (p = 0,021). Agriculture urban farming households were secured and rarely do coping strategy compared to fishery urban farming households. Government programs to improve food security should be more focused on groups of fishery urban farming households.Keywords: coping strategy, food security, household, urban farming

Introduction: Poverty is one of the key factors influencing food security in both urban and rural areas. This condition affects the decision-making of poor households regarding the implementation of food coping strategies. The objective of this study is to systematically analyze the level of food security among poor households in rural and urban. Methods: This study employs a systematic review approach following the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA). Relevant articles were sourced from seven databases: Publish or Perish 8, PubMed, MDPI, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Google Scholar, and Semantic Scholar. The selected articles were published between 2015 and 2025, covering both Indonesian and international publications. Results: Total of 12 articles met the inclusion criteria, revealing differences in food security levels between poor households in urban and rural areas. Rural poor households tend to have greater food security compared to their urban counterparts. The food coping strategies adopted by poor households in rural areas are generally more effective in ensuring food security than those implemented in urban. Conclusion: This study identifies disparities in food security between poor households in urban and rural areas. Poor households in rural areas tend to be more food secure due to greater access to food resources, while those in urban areas are more dependent on income and market conditions, making them more vulnerable. Poor households address food insecurity through various food coping strategies, including reducing food consumption, purchasing cheaper food, or relying on assistance. These strategies vary depending on regional conditions. Keywords: Food coping strategy, Food security, Rural, Urban