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'Provide enough land for urban agriculture'
The Herald (Zimbabwe)
November 17, 2005

http://www.herald.co.zw/index.php?id=48870&pubdate=2005-11-17

REGIONAL local authorities have been urged to make adequate land available for purposes of urban agriculture to cater for the growing demand of new farming systems.

The country is experiencing new farming systems in mushroom production, bee and bird keeping, aqua-culture, livestock rearing and poultry.

President of the Zimbabwe Institute of Regional Urban Planners, Dr Sasha Jogi said the unavailability of land for urban agriculture was a major concern, and needed to be urgently addressed to help resolve food security.

Dr Jogi was speaking during a five-day regional urban agriculture forum currently underway in Harare.

The former Provincial Town Planner for Harare City Council and currently an urban planning consultant said growing populations in urban cities has caused a lot of changes that included a high demand for services like water, good sanitation, schools, hospitals and essentially food.

"In view of a ballooning population, there is need for cohesion amongst various experts within the local governments and the politicians governing the systems to come up with the images they want their cities to be like," Dr Jogi said.

He said developing countries that have been under the colonial rule have to understand the impact of the phases they have to go through and benefits coming with their independence.

The majority of Zimbabweans during the colonial era, he said, were not allowed the freedom to stay where they wanted and therefore there was less pressure on the resources.

"The independence of this country brought with it immense freedom for people to explore other spheres in urban areas. They settled in different areas and had families but never left behind their fundamentals of being born farmers, hence the great demand for land to till in urban cities."

Dr Jogi said when most Indians came to Zimbabwe in the 1930's urban agriculture was not an issue and there were no conflicts with local authorities as it was done on a very small scale.

"We used to cultivate land to grow maize and vegetables in the Ardbennie area and there were no problems because not many people used to do that until during the days of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, which forced many companies to retrench leaving a lot of breadwinners jobless."

He said regional municipalities should not stifle positive development but make provisions that made land available on right locations and to deserving people.

"We should not keep policies that challenges or threatens the livelihood of people particularly the poor who look up to the local authorities for protection and free provision of other necessities they can not afford," Dr Jogi said.

He said regional municipalities should move towards ensuring security tenure through facilitating lease agreements, accessing institutional land, guaranteeing access for a definite period of time to help urban farmers access other financial assistance and boost production.

"Urban farmers should also work towards organising themselves and formulate a body that speaks of one voice for local authorities to take them seriously," Dr Jogi said.

Council officials also participating at the forum said Harare has 40 percent of its land vacant.

Some of those areas were still to be developed according to physical planning while few allotments were designed for urban agriculture.

It is clear, however, from a survey conducted by urban agriculture experts based in Harare that the bulk of the 40 percent of land that was not developed was being utilised by urban farmers.

Council Principal Town Planner Mr Percy Toriro confirmed that there was a lot of idle land belonging to council and Government alike.

"Yes there are very limited efforts in the Southern and Eastern Regions to make land available for urban agriculture despite ever rising levels of poverty and unemployment," Mr Toriro said.

"There could be concerns that the plots urbanites will have allocated themselves will be too close to water courses, wetlands, hilly lands and special habitats for other species creating an environmental crisis."

The experts however argued that local authorities needed to find effective ways to co-ordinate urban agriculture and provide farmers with environmental guidelines that included use of ecological techniques to curb land degradation and taking care of vleis, river banks and hill slopes.

"Urban agriculture should be co-ordinated in such a manner that also encourages conservation and integrates reclamation," Mr Rob Small of Cape Town said.

He said councils should continually conduct land audits for zoning purposes and assess if land was being utilised properly. Access to land for urban farming, the urban agriculture experts said, has to be done in an integrated and sustainable manner.

The experts, some of whom were also urban farmers, were expected to come up with a plan of action today on how they were going to tackle some of the challenges threatening urban agriculture in Botswana, Uganda, South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

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