Assessing The Potential Of Urban Agriculture In Entebbe Municipality (Uganda)

Map: Entebbe, Uganda.

By Kayita Dan Davis Lule
Third Year Paper, BSc. Agricultural Land Use and Management
Makerere University (11,000 words)

5.1 Conclusions

Women are more actively involved in urban farming activities more so in food production oriented activities than their male counterparts. Women endeavored to supplement on the market purchased food stuffs, where as their male counterparts did show more involvement in market oriented production activities i.e. rearing activities (mainly in instances of poultry and zero-grazing units).

Urban agriculture significantly contributes to additional income generation activities of many town dwellers either directly or indirectly. For example those involved do, save on food costs, others from sales made more so of animals and their related products such as poultry, eggs, milk from zero-grazing units etc, food stuffs like greens, yams, potatoes and many others; fruits like jack fruit, mangoes and oranges.

Urban farming reduced on a number of costs for urban dwellers individually, for example in purchasing food preparations materials like banana leaves, fibers for those with stools, costs of cooling houses in hot weather (seasons) for those with reasonable trees around their houses, a few periodically can get fuel wood and many others.

A significant portion of many town dwellers’ incomes greatly went to food and yet according to Kigutha (1998), the greater the shares of household resources devoted to food acquisition, the higher the vulnerability of households to food insecurity, and more so if you consider the fear that many of the urban dwellers lack sustainable income generating opportunities or are under employed.

According to the findings, despite the fact that the real contribution of urban agriculture to food security is not quite clear to many stakeholders, especially metropolitan authorities who in most cases control land acquisition, urban agriculture does significantly contribute to food security to a number of urban dwellers, not only in the perspective of food quantity but also with reference to quality, if only relevant production innovation are embraced. Its contribution may be either directly through access to some desired food stuff or indirectly through cutting down of their costs in the perspective of transportation from distant areas, thus even low income earner being in position to meet their feeding needs.

The lack of full appreciations of the numerous benefits of urban agriculture by the various deemed stakeholder, has hindered the element of adoption of modern farming innovations and practices in the on going production activities, which seriously affects optimal production on the limited available land for such production activities.

Urban agriculture is yet to receive full pledged formal recognition for its enormous potential contribution to socio-economic aspects, as well as ascertaining a healthy environment for the urban dwellers, as evidenced by the lack of its full inclusion in the comprehensive cosmopolitan authorities’ development plans.

Tree growing or urban forestry still lacks full appreciation from many municipality dwellers as an important integral or component of urban agriculture, inspite of its numerous contributions to a healthy environment and viable opportunities for income generation.

The study also revealed that young people more so in the age range of 18-35 years and below, in most cases lack access to land and thus are loosing out on the benefits of urban agriculture more so even that it’s increasingly becoming hard to access any land for production. Thus young people lack the purchasing power of land as even many are urban migrants, either lacking reasonable income generating opportunities especially permanent jobs, while those who are employed are even under employed. Therefore urban agriculture would offer reasonable opportunities to them to generate some income or supplement on the little, if only they do have an opportunity to have access to land.

Lastly, the study established that all urban open spaces (land in general), within the municipality either agricultural, woodland natural or recreational, are under enormous pressure from potential developers, more so from residential, business and other physical infrastructure developers.

Link to 11,000 word paper
‘Assessing The Potential Of Urban Agriculture In Entebbe Municipality (Uganda)’
By Kayita Dan Davis Lule

Email: jesusjudahlion@yahoo.co.uk
Makerere University
Faculty Of Agriculture
Department Of Soil Science

A Special Project Report Submitted In Partial Fulfilment Of The Requirement For The Award Of The Degree Of Bachelor Of Science In Agricutural Land Use And Management