Abstract
It is estimated that 25% of Zimbabwe’s population lives in urban areas (CSO, 2002), 70% below the poverty line, and a million in the city of Gweru. The worsening macroeconomic situation in 2008 resulted in urban food insecurity. Households adopted different survival strategies, including the intensification of urban agriculture. In an effort to assess the extent to which urban household food insecurity is mitigated by UA activities, a comparative analysis between households practicing and not practicing UA was done in Gweru in 2009. Household size as well as household head sex, age and employment status were found to affect household UA practice. Results indicated that UA practicing households were food-secure than non-practicing households. Household size, UA participation, household income, household head sex, maize meal price affected household food expenditure. Household head sex, UA participation, household head age and informal activities carried out by household members significantly affected urban household food security. The study concluded that there are synergies that exist between UA and urban household food security. Key words: Urban agriculture, household food security, Gweru.
Highlights
Urban food insecurity is a growing challenge emanating from rapid urbanization and rising poverty heightened by the HIV/AIDS epidemic
Despite respondents hailing from the same socioeconomic environment, heterogeneous traits between UA farming and non-farming households were noted in household head age, sex, employment status; and household size
UA participation is dominated by bigger families, maleheaded, formally employed and relatively young-headed households
Summary
Urban food insecurity is a growing challenge emanating from rapid urbanization and rising poverty heightened by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Rapid urbanization, declining rural productivity and poor marketing systems results in increased urban poverty and food insecurity. Urbanization increases resource competition, costs of supplying, distributing and accessing food, negatively impacting on urban household food security. The challenge of feeding cities lies in enhancing consumer access to food by ensuring increased local food production, processing and distribution as well as reversing dependence on distant production sites, enabling cities to become more autonomous in food production (Rabinowicz, 2002). Macro-economic policies since the late 1990s have had a deleterious effect on wage-dependent workers, creating vulnerable urban people. It is estimated that one-fourth of Zimbabwe’s population lives in urban centers, 70% living below the poverty line (STERP, 2009). Recession has culminated in non-wage unemployment rate soaring from 80% in 1995 to an
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