Ethiopia: Urban Agriculture and Poverty Alleviation

Currently, millions of urban dwellers are forced to engage in urban farming throughout many African cities either to supplement their household income or to meet their daily food needs.

By Getachew Minas
The Ethiopian Herald
May 27/ 2021

Excerpt:

The contribution of urban agriculture to food security and healthy nutrition is probably its most important value. Food production in the city is in many cases a response of the urban poor to inadequate, unreliable and irregular access to food, and the lack of purchasing power. Urban farming can also be a good source of income for the urban poor, if it is especially practiced as a formal sector. However, it is highly doubted if it has a significant macroeconomic contribution such as foreign exchange through export of urban farm produces. Urban farming has an economic relevance because it is helping urban farmers, especially the poor, to use their non-farm income for other purposes.

It is true that urban farming improves the welfare of urban farmer households. In Ethiopia, urban dwellers benefit from cheap urban farm produces such as vegetables, particularly tomatoes, carrots, green-peppers, onions, garlic, etc. which are sold in the open markets and streets in and around villages. Usually, the producers “carry” these produces to corners where the urban dwellers have access for purchase. Sometimes, farmer-traders take their produce to the doors of urban dwellers and exchange them at bargain prices. Usually, the buyers are willing to offer only about half of the price quoted by the mobile trader. Both the buyer and the seller are poor people who try to make ends meet through cheap bargain. They may call it “poverty alleviation.” The concerned agencies have to devise realistic policies and programs that may alleviate the poverty of the urban working poor in Ethiopia.

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