Food production worldwide has been on the increase in the last two decades as a result of increase in
demand and emerging population growth. Similarly, the increase in urban growth has necessitated the
need to make maximum use of urban land, especially for farming and farming activities. Tinker,(1994)
indicated that Urban agriculture is wrongly considered an oxymoron. Despite its critical roles in
producing food for city dwellers around the world, scholars, agricultural planners and government
officials have largely ignored urban food production. Policy makers at best dismiss the activity as
peripheral and at worst burn crops and evict farmers, claiming that urban farms are not only unsightly,
but promotes pollution and illness within the urban environment.
Urban agriculture has been defined by various scholars but the work of Axumitte, et,al (1994)
indicated that it refers not merely to the growing of food crops and fruit trees but that it also
encompasses the raising of animals, poultry, fish, bees, rabbits, guinea pigs, or other stock considered
edible locally. In the same vein, Mougeot (1994) stressed that urban agriculture involves the
production of food and animal husbandry, both within (intra) and fringing (peri) built up areas.
Mougeot (1994…p18) expressed further that informal urban agriculture is one livelihood strategy that
the urban poor use in combination with other strategies. A review of definitions commissioned by
International Development Research Centre (IDRC) led Mougeot(2000) to propose the following:
“Urban agriculture is an industry located within (intra-urban) or on the fringe (periurban)
of a town, a cit or a metropolis ,which grows and raises processes and
distributes a diversity of food and non food products, (re-) using largely human and
material resources, products and services found in and around that urban area, and in
turn supplying human material resources, products and services largely to that urban
area”.
Sawio (1994) indicated that urban populations worldwide are growing fast because of natural
growth and rapid migration to the cities as people escape rural poverty, land degradation, famine, war,
and landlessness. Feeding urban populations adequately is a major problem in developing countries.
Rural areas do not produce enough food to feed both rural and urban people and food importation is
constrained by lack of sufficient foreign exchange. To meet part of the food needs of poor urban
dwellers, Urban Agriculture, defined here as “crop growing and livestock keeping in both intra-urban
open spaces and peri-urban areas” is becoming a common phenomena in urban areas in the developing
world.(see, for example: O’Connor 1983; Sanyal 1984,Wade 1986 and Sawio 1993).Urban agriculture
has recently become familiar, almost permanent feature all over tropical Africa and in many
developing coutries, however, research on this social pattern is limited.