REVIEW PAPER ON PERI URBAN AGRICULTURE IN NIGERIA

AFRICA DEVELOPMENT AND RESOURCES RESEARCH INSTITUTE (ADRRI) JOURNAL

ADRRI JOURNAL (www.adrri.org)

pISSN: 2343-6662 ISSN-L: 2343-6662 VOL. 5,No.5(2), pp 1-19, February, 2014

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Review of Peri-Urban Agricultural Concept and Its Place in Solving Food Crisis of

Developing Countries: A Community Development Approach

Muhammad Bello Ibrahim1 and Nobaya Bint Ahmad

2

1PhD student, Faculty of Human Ecology, Department of Social and Developmental

Sciences, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.

2Associate Professor, Faculty of Human Ecology, Department of Social and Developmental

Sciences, University Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.

1Correspondence: Email: [email protected] Tel: +601 635 89366

Received: 11th

January, 2014 Accepted: 15th

February, 2014 Published Online: 28th

February, 2014

URL: http://journal.adrri.org/aj/

[Cite as: Muhammad, B.I. and Nobaya, B. A. (2014). Review of Peri-Urban Agricultural Concept and Its Place in Solving

Food Crisis of Developing Countries: A Community Development Approach. Africa Development and Resources Research

Institute Journal, Vol. 5, No. 5(2), Pp. 1-19.]

Abstract

The place of agriculture in any economy is very vital, this paper attempts to review the concept of peri-urban

agriculture (PUA) and its place as a contributor in solving urban food crisis in developing countries. Historical

development and current happenings in peri-urban agriculture from different parts of the world were reviewed

relating its role in solving ever increasing vegetable food demand in our urban centres. Agricultural

communities participating in peri-urban agriculture are known the world over to have their relative

multifunctional contributions to the effort of solving food crisis in our urban centres and contributing their quota

to respective national economies. Different countries have their various approaches to PUA and it is the duty of

the community to look at the function that will benefit their people the most. Lastly, the paper looked at how

peri-urban agriculture through community and rural development can be used to boost urban food supply and

one of the options for generating income to the farmers in developing countries.

Keywords: peri-urban agriculture, food supply, urban communities, population, community

development

mailto:[email protected]




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INTRODUCTION

Increasing urban population the world over has propelled a lot of study and researches on

ways and means of providing food to the ever increasing urban people. It has been projected

that by the year 2020 the developing nations will be home to some 75% of all urban dwellers

and to 8 of the anticipated 9 mega cities that have excess of 20 million (Hoornweg and

Munro-Faure, 2010), a trend that will bring about increasing food demands in the urban

centres and the workforce to produce the food. Rural dwellers in most developing countries

do engage in various agricultural activities, with most of them practicing subsistence

agriculture enabling households to feed themselves. The excess produce, which seldomly

comes, ends up in the local markets in their efforts to get income that will enable the

households address socio-economic and health needs.

Poverty usually characterizes the rural dwellers and most of them in efforts to solve survival

hardship problems will explore engaging in petty agricultural activities in the fringes,

interface of urban centres to practice peri-urban agriculture, eying a ready-made urban market

for their produce (FAO, 1999). Efforts towards foods supply should look at alternative food

system (AFS) which can boost more stable food quantity (more food for more people) and

quantity covering socio-economic, health and environmental benefits. But AFS has its own

challenges as shown by Albrecht et al. (2013) that more robust data collection can strengthen

alternative food systems in the global south covering local and traditional foods research.

While in the global north, food literacy and skills research will go a long way in

understanding alternative foods systems more stable within the socio-economic ideals, on the

whole food supply should be knowledge driven through academic researches.

THE CONCEPT OF PERI-URBAN AGRICULTURE (PUA)

In the 1960s the first French geographical account of Urban Agriculture was published on

Central Africa and was later used by scholars, media and now adopted by international

agencies of the United Nations (Smith et al, 1996 and FAO, 1996 and 1999).Recent literature

(Mougeot, 1994; Mwangi, 1995 and Smith et al., 1996) cited in their work that empirical

studies of Nigeria agriculture have concentrated on the traditional / subsistence rural based

farming with little modern techniques, with PUA data in Nigeria very scares and not well




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documented by the stakeholders(Kareem and Raheem, 2012). Mortimore and Wilson (1965)

in their work on Kano City, Nigeria, described it as a closed-settled zone where by people

as a survival strategy in rural areas, but specifics of PUA have not yet received much

attention and research, as supported by the work of Mandere et al.(2010) showing that little

study has been done within sub-saharan Africa, though they acknowledge studies centered on

concepts, definitions and environmental impacts of agriculture in the peri-urban areas. Later,

as many developing nations started witnessing growing urban demand for foods and services,

population serves as a driving force to adapt a multifunctional farming in peri-urban areas in

efforts to meet the ever increasing demand of food by the urban dwellers (Zasada, 2011).

Explaining this point further, Gig and Battershill (1998) cited in Zasada (2011) established

that food production remains an important function of PUA with consumers increasingly

preferring countryside high quality and natural products like vegetables and fruits than

processed ones.

In Africa, for a very long time, the role of PUA in enhancing the situation of urban dwellers

has either been ignored or taken less seriously as contributing marginally to the urban

economy. At some point PUA was considered as a nuisance and an activity characterising

rural not urban economic activities. This misconception by mostly policy makers, resulted in

people in people who engaged in urban/peri-urban agriculture not been supportive and

sometimes harassed, even in periods of food shortages (Kuuire et al., utilises land around the

city maximally, producing agricultural produce to feed the city and creating an interface with

rural dwellers that are far in the hinterland. This work further showed that households closet

to the city practiced the most intensive agriculture and are mostly dependent on peri-urban

agriculture as a means of livelihood. The work of Kareem and Raheem (2012) suggests

increasing PUA in Nigeria from the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) implementation

days of 1986 due to the decline of average real income of urban and rural households coupled

with increasing demands for farm fresh vegetables by the urban dwellers, citing Egbuna

(2001) showed and suggested that PUA could be harnessed and used as a strategy for

reducing poverty, corroborating Maconachie et al. (2011) that PUA serves as an important

vehicle for strengthening livelihoods of households and supplementing their food supplies.

The concept of peri-urban agriculture (PUA) is often seen presently as a midway between

urban centres and rural spaces and or lying between the cities and country sides, the interface




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that is characterised by rural values and tradition, proximity to highways, light industrial

developments, increase commercialisation and changing agricultural practices from

traditional cereals production to vegetables and fruits (Randhawa et al. 2009). Kareem and

Raheem (2012) citing Nelson (1996) established that about 200 million urban and peri-urban

dwellers worldwide participate in PUA making a productive use of urban open spaces,

recovering and/or treating urban liquid and solid wastes, generating employment and income

to many people in the sub-sector. The work of STEP (****) on PUA sees peri-urban as area

of complementariness, from where arise various opportunities and exclusions, but their view

suggest that, these complementarities will create a climate of competition where the

interdependence between natural resources, agriculture and urban processes in peri-urban

spaces will be encouraged. This can be seen in peri-urban areas where complex competing

claims over natural resources especially water, its sources and land are on the increase.

Holding another view Knowd et al. (2006) research seems to suggest that PUA as a new

frontier, is leaving society with the choice of seeing agriculture as an integral part of urban

and peri-urban landscapes or forever lose the contribution it can make in providing a sense of

place in building community pride that will have choices secured about agriculture for future

generation, as earlier shown by Smit et al. (2001:23) that community food security and food

system in the 21st century is seen as “where we live and what we eat are being reconnected”.

In their work on the definition of peri-urban concept, which means varying activities with

proximity to city, Iaquinta and Drescher (2000) stressed their goal as trying to provide some

theoretical clarity, covering demography, economic sector and socio-psychological

components, for practical utility of the term by creating a typology of peri-urban. Their

typology identifies the institutional framework and different networks in the categories of

peri-urban and their applicability in social science studies. Galli et al. (2010) corroborating

the above cited work, see PUA as a pivot, an interface zone between parts of a region that has

not been wholly researched , then again it constitute an unique answer for activities that occur

past outskirts between county and urban regions. It can also be seen as a hinge with

capacities: i) as a marker, delimiting unique spaces. ii) as a joining focus favouring trades, iii)

as a particular asset to endeavour, iv) as a propelled wilderness of solid progress, and v)

scenery border preserving protected areas. Upon this explanations, Galli et al. (2010) defines

PUA as “a multi-actor, multi-function, multi-scale agriculture based on position of food and




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fibre suppliers along with environmental and social services” with the sole intent of satisfying

urban and rural dwellers’ demands of food and income.

In Europe during the agricultural crisis of the 1980s, diversification in PUA was seen 2012).

On the issue of identifying the actual area of PUA practice, Tanko et al. (2003) observed that

in sub-Saharan Africa researchers find it difficult to “delimit and define the socalled ‘urban’,

‘peri-urban’ and ‘rural’ zones” seeing it as an endeavour of delimiting the spatial extent of

the peri-urban interface or region, laying or subject to the work of planners and policy makers

in the third world. Kuuire et al.(2012) and Binns et al. (2003) observed that, now as the

potential of PUA for food security, environmental management and economic development

become well understood by stakeholders, there is hope on the side of key players of PUA,

who are persistently realising its vital role in improving livelihoods, suggesting that such

intensive cultivations may indeed be a panacea for urban food supply deficit that is associated

with many third world urban centres. Corroborating the above, Simon et al. (2003) argues

that PUA in Africa should be seen as complementarily because of its enduring relationships

between farmers on the one hand and urban consumers on the other, demonstrating farmers’

innovative responsiveness to and dependence on market forces through economic linkages

between the city and its periphery.

Randhawa et al. (2009) observed that forty years after the work of Mortimore and Wilson

(1965) the peri-urban is still ‘conceptualised as a heterogeneous mix of urban and rural’

features that is characterised by a high and often increasing population density, small

holdings, some rich countryside houses, poor slums, diverse income sources, slack and lack

of regulations, contested land tenure rights, intensified resource exploitation, environmental

problems and inadequate lack of service provisions. In furtherance to the situation in Nigeria,

PUA is seen to be done in a flow-based approach, used to understand the urban demand for

fresh vegetables of high value foodstuff with farms developing very intensive, very small

land areas to actualise this demand giving a symbiotic relationship in some instances seen as

a union where rural and urban features of agriculture co-exist in environmental, socio-

economic and institutional terms (Andres and Lebailly, 2011; Otegbulu and Babawale, 2011).




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THEORITICAL PARADIGMS AND MODELS OF PERI-URBAN AGRICULTURE

(PUA)

The ability of urban and peri-urban agriculture to supply fresh vegetables and perishables to

the urban dwellers has been explained, according to de Bon (2010) in line with Von Thunen’s

agricultural land use model. Johann Heinrich Von Thunen (1783-1850) was a farmer and an

amateur economist who created and propounded the model in 1826, showing how a city

centre can be serviced with continuous supply of fresh agricultural produce by exfoliated

circles of activities outside the city. Looking at PUA in the same view with Von Thunen,

Kuuire et al. (2012) observed that vegetable supplies from PUA areas of 30km radius of

urban areas in African countries attribute to 70% of the sources of these food to the sector,

suggesting a potential growth, going by the African projected population growth from 39% in

2005 to 53% in 2030 which will significantly increase urban food demand making PUA

standing the chance of playing a strategic role of enhancing urban food security and

livelihood.

The Von Thunen’s agricultural land use model has been based on the assumption that i)the

city centre in the middle of the is an ‘isolated state’ which is self-sufficient with no external

influence, followed by ii)a ring zone of intensive farming and dairying activities closest to

the city, allowing vegetables, fruits and milk to get quickly to city dwellers, then iii) the

forest zone for lumbering activities and forest product exploitation, timber and firewood as

important resource for fuel and construction are located close to the city due to high transport

cost of heavy items, then iv) extensive field crops zone to cater for cereals demand of the

city, this zone is farther than that of wood and its products because grains are light and can

reach the city at a lower cost than the usually heavy forest products, and v) zone of ranching

and animal products, occurs in the final ring of the city, animals are raised here because they

are self-transported to the city for sale and butchering. Beyond the fourth zone lies the

unoccupied area of wilderness which is too great a distance to be covered from the city for

any type of economic/agricultural activity that will be beneficial to the city dwellers

(Rosenberg, 2012).




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Fig 1. Von Thunen’s Agricultural Land use Model (1826).

Another model of PUA was the one put forward by Galli et al. (2010) where they look at

peri-urban as rural inter-municipalities formed in relation with the urban agglomeration, and

on the other side, epi-urban areas, where rural inter-municipalities are formed in relation with

the urban territory and play a pivotal role in neighbouring rural territories that provide the

required labour for servicing the agricultural activities of PUA. In this model they identified

three types of PUA actors:

i. The inhabitants of the PUA activities who are consumers, citizens, tax payers and

voters. They express themselves individually and collectively through varying

level of participation.

ii. Policy makers (local governments) and administrators who intervene in

agricultural activities in the areas of PUA shaping and moulding how it operates

spatially.

iii. Agricultural economic community who manages cultivated lands and influence on

its fixed assets e.g buildings, equipment and soil (fertility) land resources.




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Fig 2. Theoretical Paradigm for Peri-Urban Agricultural Development

Source: Kuirre et al. , 2010

Models are abstract representations of reality and developing its coherency involves building

an ideal desired future state of being with its accompanying strategies that are coherently

conforming to the said model (Fischer, 1989). In the above model after Galli et al. (2010)

they looked at the multifunctionality of PUA and relate it with how an integrated approach

will create lots of synergies and cohesion among the actors. Territorial approach that involves

different spatial components of peri-urban systems with the sense of the place where the PUA

activities are taking place will be seen from the theoretical paradigm that suits the purpose of

boosting food supply to the urban populations.

On understanding the role of urban and peri-urban agriculture, Kuuire et al. (2012) look at it

from a top – down approach where National policies will condition what happens in urban

and peri-urban levels in terms of planning policies, land availability and tenure, water supply

systems and extent of the urban area and its periphery, in most developing countries of Africa

and Asia, peri-urban Agriculture usually takes a bottom-up approach because of loose

policies by governments towards the endeavor.. These policies in a way will be dictating the

nature of food demand from the persistent population growth and the market niches that will

address these demands. Urban and peri-urban agriculture will be born and the immediate

impacts will be increase food security from the produce of the farms, improve nutrition due to

MULTI-FUNCTIONAL DIVERSIFICATION

THEORETICAL

PARADIGMS

TERRITORIA-

L

APPROACH

S E N S E OF P L A C E

INTEGRATE-

D

APPROACH




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good dieting and vegetable consumption, job creation and income generation. Other issues

that will be closely related to the PUA activities are the municipal waste management, use of

household waste as compost coupled with long term impacts of agricultural knowledge

transmission, stimulating sectoral linkages and environmental benefits.

Fig 3. Conceptual Framework for Understanding the Role of Urban and Per-Urban

Agriculture

Source: Modified, after Kuuire et al., 2012

N A T I O N A L LEV E L

P O L I C I E S

EXOGENEOUS FACTORS

-Demand from population

growth

-Niche Markets

CITY & PERI-URBAN LEVEL

-urban planning policies

- Land Availability & tenure

- Water supply systems

URBAN AND PERI-URBAN AGRICULTURE

IMMEDIATE IMPACTS OF URBAN AND PERI-URBAN AGRICULTURE:

-Increase food security - Improve Nutrition - Job creation & Income generation

- Municipal waste management - Use of household waste as compost in the UPA farms

LONG TERM IMPACTS:

-Agricultural knowledge transmission - Stimulating Sectoral linkages

- Environmental benefits




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In the above conceptual framework, water and land are seen as a resource, and in many

societies being contested, as a common resource or not, having its access and consumption

not equally distributed. In the urban and peri-urban context, the waters of use in the farms are

from mixed sources and characteristics which give the farmers using it a myriad ways of

maximally benefitting from it in the PUA activities (Mortimore and Wilson, 1965), and

sometimes with its attendants consequences on the environment and human health as shown

in the work of Binns et al.(2003).

Another issue relating to conceptual issues of PUA is the area of coverage, most studies on

urban and peri-urban agriculture are centred within and around cities ( FAO, 1990; Smit et

al.,1996; Marshall et al., 2009 and Olayiwola, 2012 ) covering large urban centres, national

capitals or secondary cities. This suggests that few studies can be assumed to have largely

covered rural dwellers on the fringes of urban centres that exclusively service the urban

dwellers with everyday fruits and vegetables.

With the above background Egbuna (2001) citing works of Gunbo and Ndiripo (1996) and

Murray (1997) showed how in developing countries, they concurred official city limits,

municipal boundaries of the city and within the legal and regulatory purview of urban

authorities as areas where urban and peri-urban agriculture takes place, relegating effects of

FAOs committee on PUA, recommendations at its 15th

session in January 1996, that

development of organisation – wide cross-sectoral programme that is coordinated to boost

urban and peri-urban agriculture. The recommendation was further strengthened in the Quito

Declaration of 2000 urging local governments to promote urban and peri-urban agriculture in

towns and cities inorder to alleviate poverty, food supply, promoting local economic/

environmental development and general health improvement (FAO, 2001). Another area of

study that researchers have started working on is the issue of agro-tourism enterprise in peri-

urban areas. This practice combines food production with other forms of economic and social

functions related to societal wellbeing of urban residents.

Urbanisation today is increasing in most countries, Yang et al. (2010) pointed out that China

has urban growth rate of 26% in 1990 to 37% in 2000 and is anticipated to reach a record

high of 60% by 2020. Drawing clue of PUA serving agro-tourism purposes in Netherlands

where agriculture is combined with various forms of recreational activities and places for

environmental training and education with similar agro-tourism initiatives obtainable in the

United Kingdom, the authorities in China facilitated a prosperous business model in Xiedo

Green Resort in Beijing where agricultural production and tourism plus related services foster

a symbiotic relationship between demand (buyers) and supply (sellers) coming from the

urban and rural populace furthering development in agriculture and tourism and

environmental protection (Yang et al., 2010).




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PERI- URBAN AGRICULTURE IN DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE GLOBE

System of peri- urban agriculture is obtainable in a lot of places but differs with production

orientations and intensities, most having a complex mix of strategies, resource endowments

and production orientations that will be undertaken by individual and collective farming

households. PUA activities in Africa, Asia and Latin America provide a coping strategy of

curbing urban poverty and food insecurity contributing 15-20 % to the worldwide supply of

food. A common feature of PUA in the developing countries is a combination of raising

livestock with intensive cultivation of vegetables along natural water channels like streams

and rivers loaded with urban municipal waste and waste-waters (Abdulkadir,2012)

Many countries have as a strategy subscribed to PUA as a component of national food

security programmes. FAO (2011) surveyed 25 countries in Africa and Latin America and

found that PUA horticulture based activities are obtainable in fringes of urban centres. The

survey established that the trend is obtainable world over citing El Alto, Bolivia 4000m

above sea level in the Andes; Libreville and Port Gentil, Gabon, at sea level in hot and humid

equatorial conditions, Cairo and Alexandria, Egypt in the Mediterrean climate, Dakar Sensgal

in Sub-Saharan Africa and caracas, Venezuela, in the humid tropics of Latin America. A

recent work by Maconachie et al. (2011)in Freetown, Sierra Leone suggest that self-

organised and interest driven associations help a lot in strengthening PUA, and made most of

the farmers to be in it because of its ability to generate income and improve economic

wellbeing, the young farmers studied, discovered that their urban farming associations get

attention of NGOs and various tiers of government in attracting financial support and

community development roles.

In Australia, the peri-urban agricultural regions according to Knowd et al. (2006) after

researches, suggest that 25% of total agricultural production in terms of $ terms in Australia’s

five mainland states. Research has suggested that an estimated 35- 40% of money valued

agricultural products are from metropolitan areas that are actively engaged in urban and peri-

urban agriculture (Knowd et al., 2006).

In the United States of America, peri-urban farms contain most fertile soils and produce

varieties of highly valued agricultural produce. US metropolitan statistical areas, according to

Brinkley (2012) citing Jackson-Smith and Sharp (2008) have more total high valued

agricultural soils than the rural areas, accounting for about 55% of all farm sales. Supporting

the point further, Peri-urban farms according to Heimlich and Anderson (2001) as cited by

Brinkley (2012) produced 91% of all fruits, nuts and berries, 70percent of vegetables, 67% of

dairy and 54% of poultry, though the land area covered by the PUA is only 16% of the total

US land area.

While De Zeeuw and Dubbeling (2009) in their work on cities , food and agriculture, looked

at the various challenges of UPA in Europe and the way forward in effort to resolve the

problem of providing fresh vegetables to the growing urban population. Europe has

succeeded in marrying cities (urban centres) with their countrysides, mutually forming




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beneficial partnerships for sustainable food supply, income generation and poverty

eradication and sustainable management of resources, supporting Marshall et al. (2009) that

the PUA concept in Europe covers an interface between rural and urban activities, normally

in the urban fringes and the geographical edge of cities tailored for servicing the urban

markets with vegetables, fruits, dairy products and related goods.

In Asia, many studies had been made that looked at the various stages and level of

development in the UPA. The work of Razak and Roff (2007) looked at the status and

potentials of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Malaysia against the backdrop of challenges

of food security, while on the other hand, Islam and Siwar (2012) worked on the analysis of

urban agriculture development in Malaysia relating it to advances in environmental biology

and how the agricultural produce will be safe for human consumption. In Malaysia a National

Symposium on Urban Agriculture was jointly organized by UPM and two other organisations

in October, 2013 and Ramlan (2013) observed that researches suggest that by 2020, 75% of

Malaysians will be living in urban centres and therefore, roles of UPA will be numerous from

boosting food supply, socio-economic upliftment to environmental sustainability, with the

economic benefits affecting the urban poor positively, through improved food security and

easy access to food plus increasing income and providing various opportunities in all

agriculturally related businesses. Potentials of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Indonesia

was looked into by Indraprahasta (2013), his work seems to suggest that in Indonesia, urban

residents spend 30% greater than rural population on food. He pointed to the major problems

of increasing food demand, persistent growth of population and ecological degradation as the

biggest challenge facing Asian cities and Indonesia in particular. All these factors highlighted

above, gives a good starting to urban and peri-urban agriculture in Indonesia in the late 1990s

after the economic crisis that affected the country, making people to subscribe to the practice

due to its yielding benefits of creating alternative jobs and better access to food. Community

based food security projects as highlighted in the work of Provincial Health Services

Authority (2008) British Columbia, Canada discusses various strategies of community based

efforts, including UPA, as a way for boosting food security.

The global position of urban and peri-urban agriculture for positive results will be dependent

on the agricultural management of the sector, which will bring sustainability as highlighted

in the work of Galli et al. (2010) citing Brandtland (1987) that sustainability can be achieved

when an activity is economically viable, socially acceptable and uses resources in such a way

that there is inter- generational solidarity enabling benefits to future generations. It is also

important to consider the internal sustainability of the peri-urban farm itself and territorially

how the concept can contribute to sustainable development of the area, this approach has

been looked into by Godard and Hubert (2002) with emphasis to the developing countries. It

has been established by Olayiwola (2012) that the experiences in cities of developing

countries suggest that political stability and future sustainable development of the cities will

depend upon food supplies for the increasing populations through the practice of PUA as an

economic activity central to the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world

in the north and south (Olayiwola, 2012).




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There is very little literature on PUA (Nelson, 2007) and the few critiquing PUA under any

guise and form, opposition often come more often from urban planners, public health workers

and environmentalists (Mougeot, 2000), Birley et al., (1999)health impacts of peri-urban

natural resource development, while Dossa et al. (2011) were critical that systematic

classification of peri-urban agriculture in West Africa and most developing countries is

lacking and they opined that for meaningful comparisons between practices, regional studies

have to be intensified to generate data that will be vital to avoid misleading generalisations on

urban and peri-urban agricultural practices. The advantages of PUA as cited by Binns and

Lynch (1978), are seen as maximizing combining farm and non-farm work, a point

established further by FAO (2011) whereby every opportunity to produce food and generate

income from what many sees as a free resource, is fully exploited by the PUA farmers, these

efforts in developing countries has promoted unit-based vertical integration of smallholder

farmers that will enhance reaping the benefits of economies of scale to maximize the benefits

of PUA. In agitating for countries in the global south to subscribe to PUA, FAO (1999, 2001

and 2011), Brinkley (2012) and Kuuire (2012) gave the characteristics of PUA to include:

peri-urban areas are more endowed with natural resources for agricultural practices, farmers

have a full time job all year round, peri-urban agricultural production is economically

dependent on the urban centres, PUA has advantage of lower population densities that gives

more land/space area availability than the urban centres, farm management strategies are

likely to develop from medium to large scale and readily providing access to the produce due

to the primary market orientation and proximity to dwellers of urban centres. These

characteristics will go a long way in agricultural development, which implies a sustained

increase in output level and improvement of rural farmers’ wellbeing coupled with sustained

physical, socio-economic improvement of the peri-urban farmers (Medugu, 2006; Peet and

Hartwick,2009; and Abdulkadir et al., 2012).

DEVELOPMENT OF PERI-URBAN AGRICULTURE IN DEVELOPING

COUNTRIES (NIGERIA)

Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s region that is least urbanized, with characteristic features

of agriculture been visible part of the landscape in most peri-urban fringes as economic

realities necessitates peoples’ involvement in agriculture in effort to produce food for the

people therein (Nelson, 2007). About 20 million urban dwellers in West Africa practice urban

and peri-urban agriculture giving it an increasing recognition for farmers in the sector,

traditionally open-space urban and peri-urban agriculture has been obtainable in many parts

of the West African sub region, using streams passing cities, groundwater and wastewater to

produce vegetables and paddy in some cases (Water Policy Briefings, 2007) supplementing

other sources of food in meeting the urban challenge (Lynch et al., 2013).

General agricultural activities in Nigeria, according to Muhammad-Lawal and Atte (2006)

contributed to the economy in the overall reduction of poverty, accounting for 50 percent of

government revenues in the 1960s with well over 80% of export earnings over the same




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period with the sector employing more than two third of the country’s total work force. While

in the area of urban and peri-urban agriculture, according to Aina et al. (2012) long sustained

practices are not new. It began long before independence in 1960 and received widespread

recognition due to economic downturn of the Nigerian economy in the 1980s as a result of

government effort of correcting the economy through structural adjustment program (SAP).

Aina et al. citing Scott (1993) observed that agricultural activities located within or on the

fringes of urban areas serves as shock-absorbers to the poor and means of livelihood and

income to farmers covering horticulture, floriculture, agroforestry, aquaculture and livestock

production, corroborating the cited works of Lynch (1995), Olofin (2006) and Maconachie

(2011) where they explained that in and around Africa, town and cities have for long shown

interest in food production in efforts to attain food security among urban residents.

In recent years urban and peri-urban agriculture have gain importance after being discovered

as an intervention that is seen to be a viable strategy for the urban poor to produce food and

earn income, thereby reducing the over reliance on cash income. Citing Mougeut (2000)

Egbunna (2009) observed that urban agriculture in less developed countries is moving the

economy and generating a lot of income in tens of millions of US Dollar. Arguing this point

further, Egbunna (2009) citing Nelson (1996) shows UPA as an important source of

supplying urban food and one of the food security options for poor urban households with

about 200 million globally participating in the endeavor. In their work on socio-economic

analysis of urban agriculture, Salau and Attah (2012) revealed that UPA brings additional

income to farmers, increase household feeding and generating full time employment

opportunities in and around fringes of urban areas supporting lots of people, citing Nigeria as

one of the most urbanized African country with over 35% of its population living in town and

cities.

Even though the work of Salau and Attah (2012) covers Nasarawa State of Nigeria, their

research seems to suggest that, urban and peri-urban agriculture in their study area has

developed a means of bridging seasonal gaps in the supply of fresh fruits and vegetable to the

urban dwellers of the state, supporting the findings of Dossa et al.(2011), Andres and

Lebailly (2011) and Abdulkadir et al.(2012) in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The

work of Adeogun et al. (2007) is a specialized one looking at urban aquaculture in Lagos

state, Nigeria. They studied the producer perceptions and practices of aquaculture as an

excluded or neglected area of researchers that worked on urban food insecurity as a result of

incessant rural-urban drift in Nigeria, they seem to suggest that with focus attention on urban

aquaculture, food security will be highly enhanced. In Nigeria there is paucity of information




15

on wastewater reuse in urban and peri-urban farming activities, prompting Ruma and Sheikh

(2010) looking at the issue and its urban planning implications in Katsina metropolis,

northern Nigeria. Their findings seems to suggest that urban planning processes has not

officially given due recognition to UPA, even though the use of municipal wastewater in

irrigation is a common practice in many parts of the developing world, urban poor in Katsina

uses wastewater for irrigation serving as a major source of income (Ruma and Sheikh, 2010).

In Nigeria not much has been done to empirically study PUA, but lot of people are

increasingly dependent on its produce to meet their demand of fresh vegetables, fruits and

dairy products, a fact explained by Olayiwola (2012) that Peri-urban agriculture as an

economic activity central to the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout the world,

has not been studied in detail by various works within the local context. The role of urban and

peri-urban agriculture in enhancing food security and climate change resilience in East and

West Africa had been looked into by START (2011), pointing that evidence suggests that

urban population of largely older and middle income groups had a sizeable portion of their

livelihoods complemented by UPA through the provision of high-value nutritious crops and

fruits to poultry and herbal trees that will supplement food intake as well as household

incomes. Linking UPA with climate change resilience, START citing Agbola (2001) gave the

example of Ibadan (south-western Nigeria) where UPA has been integrated into ecological

and urban economic system, using urban residents as labourers, developing compost from

plant residues/organic wastes and urban wastewater for irrigation providing a symbiotic niche

between urban dwellers and urban ecology. This practice also provided recreational

opportunities for citizens through agro- tourism, educational excursions and provision of farm

fresh foods to visiting buyers in the farms. PUA researchers has so far mainly focus on its

role on boosting food security (Lynch et al., 2013), alleviating urban poor livelihoods

(Abdulkadir et al., 2012), economic benefits and poverty reduction strategies (FAO, 1999 and

Egbunna, 2009) and health and hygiene related risks associated with water contamination and

pollutants on land, water and the atmosphere of the area of operation (Binns et al., 2003). All

these factors are vital in the study of PUA, little or no study exist on the role been played by a

specific village or peri-urban community in developing peri-urban agricultural practices. The

work of Byerlee et al. (2009) observed that in the year 2002, the developing nations with a

population of 890 million has 3 out of every 4 people as poor with predominantly remaining

rural in most areas until about 2020 and the majority of the poor are projected to continue to




16

live in rural areas until 2040. Urban farming associations in Freetown was studied by

Maconachie et al., (2011) seeing PUA as a response to the rising demand for food and

employment well rooted due to historical bases of self-organised associational life in West

African communities, and in post war Freetown, encouraging a resurgence in community –

based cooperation, playing an important role in safeguarding urban food security and

livelihoods.

Therefore, the development of the rural community is seen through a quality of the

relationships which is causal factor in determining wellbeing of the residents in any given

study of rural and community development. Through the study of PUA maintenance of rural

agricultural activities, organisations and institutions that strengthen ties of communal

interactions of residents are very essential, in promoting development in the community,

where all spheres of life occurs regularly and through various organizational forms with the

active participation and involvement of local people (Henderson, 2005). Peri-urban areas and

communities according to Baumgartner and Belivi (2001) contain both urban and rural

elements that give birth to distinctive characteristics of their own, largely seen as a zone of

transition between modern and traditional lives that is helping in mitigating poverty and

waste management, seen as the most important intractable problem facing cities of the third

world, through helping improved resource management and enhancing public health by

provision of good food that will improve nutrition of the poor.

The development of rural community through the practice of PUA cannot be achieved

without its attending opportunities, constrains and risks as explained by FAO (2011). PUA

requires important sustainable environmental protection measures, adequate watershed

management devices in order to maintain a high productive capacity and stimulate emergence

of an agricultural community in peri-urban zones. Constrains comes through land tenure

issues, competition for scarce water sources and effects of careless misuse of farm pesticides

and herbicides (chemicals). Sustainable development of PUA can have constrains from

unsecured land grabs and occupation in the countryside by the rich and loose land tenure

legislation and factors due to abuse by stakeholders. Areas of risk will also cover

environmental risks associated with deterioration of the physical environment because cities

grow leading to increased demand for land to build houses, diminishing areas suitable for

PUA (FAO, 2011).




17

Upon all the constrains and risk associated with peri-urban agriculture, Fresh (2012), a work

on Edmonton’s Food and Urban agricultural Strategy detailed the characteristics of peri-

urban agriculture, after seeing it, as a farming practice in areas on the urban edge,

predominantly tailored for serving urban markets and these areas are iteratively shaped by

how cities grow and enlarge into surrounding lands. The characteristics are seen in terms of:

i) general food production through larger tracts of farmlands, market gardens, hobby farms,

small livestock husbandry, bee keeping and poultry, ii) produce processing which can be on

farm and its preserving, iii) storage and distribution with an identified area as an aggregation

centre for cooler and dry storage using existing appropriate technology, iv) buying and selling

in most hours of the day in Rural Farmers’ Market and Farm gate sales, v) waste recovery

through on farm waste management (for compost) and reduced packaging at farm gates and

lastly, vi) education and governance through the provision of extension services, training and

incubation farms for new comer farmers, avenues for crop and farm researches and farmer

trainings and a climax of availing universities specialized programs and opportunities for new

starters in peri-urban farming (Fresh, 2012).

AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITIES

In the peri-urban setting, the practice of raising and growing food, either individually or as a

group in a commonly owned land or small holdings usually favoured by the availability of

natural resources of land and water sources, gives rise to a territorial setting for social

processes in a community form, which will enhance the communal lives of people in the area

of study (Herndeson, 2005 and Knowd et al., 2006) giving rise to an agricultural community.

This group of people will form the agricultural population of the peri-urban area, defined by

FAO as cited by SWAC/OECD (2011), as all persons economically active in agriculture as

well as their dependents, sustaining their livelihoods on agriculture, animal rearing, fishing

and simple agro-forestry.

Development of agricultural cooperatives with experiences from Japan as discussed by

Prakash (2003) can be seen as another way of strengthening development of agricultural

communities. He traced the historical reduction in the Japanese agricultural cooperatives

from 12,000 cooperatives in 1960, to 2,300 in 1995, and 1500 groups in 1999 and 550 by the

end of 2000, corroborating drastic decrease in farming households over the years in Japan




18

from 6.06 million in 1960 to 3.22 million in 1999. Agricultural communities and

cooperatives, once enhanced and empowered, can deliver development through multipurpose

services, operate as multifunction economic institutions directly responding to the felt needs

of the society and encouraging women and youth to form associations to compliment

development works for women associations do provide a bridge between cooperatives and

community needs. All these drives to development through agriculture have its hurdles and

constraints ( Praksah, 2003), which includes poor management and inadequate trainings, lack

of capital resources, lack of communication , poor feedback mechanism and participation

among community members, paucity of extension services and education programmes and

finally, unclear and inadequate government policies on development of agricultural

communities and cooperatives, which once taken care of, the communities will develop for

the well –being of its people.

In Europe, according to EUs Management Plan (2013), around 91% of their total land

territority is rural with about 59% of the population habiting it. Making the EU Directorate of

Agriculture and Rural Development putting a policy that is aimed at promoting:

i. Ensuring long term food production base through competitiveness in agri-food

sector, to be achieved through knowledge transfer, innovation and quality control.

ii. Sustainable land management: caring on biodiversity, soil and water management,

climate change, high nature value of forest through protection and development

of traditional agricultural landscape

iii. Improving quality of life in rural areas and diversification of economic activities

that will contribute to general growth.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

The place of community and rural development in any society cannot be over emphasized. People

need to improve their lives from hitherto low position to a better one. Writing on PUA and

community supported agriculture (CSA) which was founded in the 1980s in Japan, Europe and New

England, Freidberg and Goldstein (2010), sees them operating like collectives with shareholders of

farm work and community tasks to ensure sustainability. On a general note CSA is a notion of the

community deeply engrossed in market logic, with PUA farms for example serving as common source

of fresh vegetables and fruits in many African cities. CSA according to Freidberg and Goldstein




19

(2010) citing De Lind (2003:203) is more like “a small business arrangement in which farmers and

members negotiate their respective positions across a more personal market divide” enabling their

peri-urban agricultural practices to support urban rising food demands while providing income and

sustainable livelihoods in the rural communities.

After discussing the issue of community supported agriculture, the next issue that follows

automatically is developing viable farmers markets in rural communities. Farmers markets in

agricultural communities are increasing drawing attention of researchers, as a local source of

fresh and nutritious food from low-income and sparsely populated rural areas preoccupied

with agricultural activities. In the US, according to Schmit and Gomez (2010), consumer

interests in local foods has ignited substantial changes in recent years through the activities of

Farmers Markets (FMs) in food supply chains linking farmers and consumers blending a sort

of locality approach to development where emphasis on the importance of self-help and

mutual aiding of one another in building better communities (Wakefield and Poland, 2005).

The Farmers Markets can be used to provide opportunities for agricultural communities to

address broader community objectives like improving community social capital and farms

more viable, which is seen as useful resource in the possession of the group, who can use it to

achieve a particular goal(s) that is beneficial to the society (Schmit and Gomez, 2010;

Wakefield and Poland, 2005), leading to development for a better life as a powerful and

emotive ideal that appeals to the best in people providing a better life for everyone at the

community level and beyond (Peet and Hartwick, 2009). The development of the community

is generally seen as a quality of the relationships which are causal factors in determining

wellbeing of residents therein. Therefore the creation and maintenance of activities,

organisations and institutions that strengthened ties of interactions of residents are very

essential in developing the community, especially an agricultural one, requiring attention to

these cohesive and integrative structures that will go a long way in providing community

sustainability and peoples’ participation (Henderson, 2005). The development of agricultural

communities will definitely be very resourceful in strengthening the concept of peri-urban

agriculture as a strategy provide livelihood to increasing urban population. Many countries

have started realizing the import of this agricultural practice through a multifunctional

approach (Zasada, 2011) for providing food, employment and income to the farmers through

better management and sustainability (Galli et al., 2010 and Medugu, 2006). PUA now seen

as an economic activity central to the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout the




20

world (Olayinka, 2012) is worth studying from different perspectives and approaches,

collaborating the work of Mougeot (2000) on the agricultural practice seeing its definition,

presence, potentials and risks.

In conclusion, PUA as a strategy of boosting food supply, which Albrecht et al.,(2013) says

can boost more stable food quantity, as an alternative food system (AFS) providing more

food for more people covering quality and quantity in areas of socio-economic, health and

environmental benefits. In recent years peri-urban , as an important source of supplying urban

food and one of the food security options for poor urban households ( Egbunna, 2009) many

researches can go a long way in building very robust and viable communities that will mainly

be preoccupied with producing vegetables through cultural continuity in agricultural practices

for sustaining community well-being. Another dimension of promoting peri-urban

agriculture in developing country is looking at the social capital dimension of the

phenomenon, that is understanding the humanness contribution to solving the ever increasing

crisis of food in urban centres.

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