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Urban Agriculture in Kenya¹

Cultivation and livestock keeping are widely practiced in the towns of Africa. Spatially juxtaposed with other urban activities and competing for land, labour, and resources, urban agriculture (UA) makes a vital contribution to the household economy of the urban poor. Although UA is nearly ubiquitous, it has remained almost “invisible.” Until recently, it has been generally ignored by academics and planners. This reflects the fact that subsistence production, undertaken in the domestic economy, has not been considered to be of great significance.

The article analyzes the characteristics of UA in Kenya within a wider conceptual and socioeconomic context and is based on a recent survey by the Mazingira Institute (Lee-Smith et al. 1987). The survey encompassed both food and fuel, the two major components of the domestic economy in Africa. This article, however, only focuses on the food component of the survey — crops and livestock. It emphasizes the significance of incorporating this consequential aspect of urban reality into urban theory, and it also raises questions of policy for sustainable urban development.

¹ A version of this paper has also been published in the Canadian Journal of African Studies (Vol. 27, No.1, 1993). This chapter appears here with permission of the Canadian Association of African Studies.

Conceptual Issues

A study of UA raises many concerns regarding theory and policy. The conceptual context of UA resides in understanding the informal sector, and it also has a significant bearing on the question of the role of women in Third World cities.

Urban farming is virtually excluded from the definition of the informal sector in the literature on African cities. This is true even though it shares a number of characteristics with other elements of the informal economy including ease of entry, reliance on indigenous resources, small scale, labour intensive and adapted technology, lack of formal training, and unregulated markets (ILO 1972).

More importantly, scholars of the “dependency” school criticize the “dualist” model of separate informal and formal sectors of the urban economy, which implicitly or explicitly advocates the informal sector as a solution to the problem of urban unemployment. A number of critics are of the opinion that the informal sector cannot improve the living standards of its operators because linkages between the formal and informal sectors are characterized by a dependent and subsidizing relationship (Gerry 1979). One basis of the debate between such “dualist” and “dependency” conceptualizations has revolved around whether the informal sector or petty commodity enterprises have a capacity for growth, and thus make an economic contribution or whether they are basically parasitic and transitory (Moser 1978, 1984).

Urban farming is seldom considered worth examining within the context of,this debate because it is assumed to be a subsistence activity. As discussed in the following case study, such an assumption is valid: 77% of urban farmers in Kenya produce entirely for their own consumption. The important question is whether such subsistence activities, carried out mainly by women, should be dismissed as irrelevant and economically unimportant.

In many rural areas in Africa, the women’s mothering role in providing food for her family is of crucial importance. Her role in food production both provides labour and is critical to nutrition. It has been demonstrated that cash cropping does not support subsistence but

competes with it for land, labour, and resources (Bassett 1988). The relative and absolute losses in women’s production and incomes as a consequence of expansion of cash-crop farming bear on the food crisis in African countries. Current policies and recommendations for the African food crisis are likely to fail because women’s work and subsistence production are largely ignored, and the situation therefore remains misunderstood. Evidence indicates that capitalist penetration has simultaneously depended on women’s food-providing role and undermined it (Trenchard 1987). The situation in urban areas with respect to urban farming must be understood as part of this wider crisis.

The running-together of the meanings of production for subsistence with the reproduction of the work force, and their identification with women’s work, has obscured the economic significance of these activities. Women’s work links reproductive and productive activities in an inextricable way (Rakodi 1988). Women’s and men’s work in urban and rural areas is first directed toward self-sustainment. Subsistence farming needs to be better understood within the context of the global environmental crisis and the sustainable development debate (Lee-Smith and Hinchey Trujillo 1992). It is evident that urban farming is of widespread economic importance to the survival of many Africans. Within such a context, the Kenyan study in this paper examines the attributes and significance of the urban farming sector and the related policy implications.

Political Economy of Urban Farming in Kenya

Today, Kenya is one of the world’s more rapidly urbanizing nations. The momentum of urban growth has been sustained by a high rate of national population growth, inadequate access to farm land, and large-scale rural to urban migration. According to the 1989 census (provisional data), the current urban population comprises 14.8% of the total, compared with 7.8% in 1962 and 4.5% in 1948. The urban population is projected to grow to 8.6 million by the year 2000 (24.7% of the total population). Although the large cities of Nairobi and Mombasa continue to dominate the urban system, the medium and smaller cities, such as Nakuru, Kisumu, and Kakamega, have more recently also become destinations for an increasing number of migrants from the rural periphery.

It could be argued that the root cause of the current reticence to accept the presence of agriculture as a legitimate urban activity in Kenya is historical. In many respects, the development of the Kenyan urban system, as well as the planning ideologies that have shaped its evolution, can be attributed to influences emanating from abroad. Initially, prior to the mid-19th century, these forces originated from the Indian Ocean seaboard and resulted in the development of the Afro-Arab city states along the East African coast line. However, since then Western influences have predominated.

From a global perspective, archaeological evidence indicates that agriculture and livestock keeping were developed in cities and not in rural settlements. The early cities of hunters required food storage and this led to the selective domestication of animals and to the regeneration of seed stock (Jacobs 1970, p. 47). Urban agriculture was an important phenomenon in many preindustrial cities, and a close relation prevailed between a city and its hinterland (Sjoberg 1960). Today, in Western countries, urbanism excludes agriculture, except as a recreational activity or in times of crisis. Specific cultural connotations have become attached to the notions of the “city” and the “countryside” (Holton 1986). Although the roots of such cultural values may extend back as far as the Greco-Roman period, their predominance has been reinforced by the recent history of urbanism associated with the industrial revolution.

Cities have played an important role in the development of modern capitalism and are closely associated with an urban industrial way of life. The Western industrial city is a product of capital accumulation, derived initially from the surplus of primary sector activities in the rural countryside and later from urban-based secondary and tertiary activities (Castells 1977). Agriculture became displaced and divorced from the growing urban nexus because it proved uncompetitive in relation to the demand for land for housing and industry. Ideological biases against UA were also apparent in models of urban land use, based on assumptions derived from economic theory (Carter 1983).

British economic institutions were transplanted from Europe to the Third World within the framework of the Empire. Capitalist penetration reshaped the production process, organization of space, and gender

roles. With the advent of European colonization of Kenya from the late-19th century, the Highlands were developed as the basis of an export-based farming economy. The European-settler agricultural enclave was surrounded by traditional African homelands, a source of cheap labour.

Within the context of such an economy of space, the genesis of many of today’s main urban centres in Kenya can be attributed primarily to administrative considerations, the beginning of the railways, or both. Several of these urban centres were gazetted as townships under the Townships Ordinance of 1903, as centres of colonial authority and rule and as “islands of health” and security, over which strict sanitary control could be maintained under the Township Rules provided in the Ordinance. Based on these origins, the growth of the urban system during the 20th century was primarily driven by exogenous forces, within the framework of an international mercantile economy and a dependent colonial relationship (Memon 1974, 1975).

The boundaries of these urban areas were carefully defined by the early administrators to avoid existing areas of subsistence farming and settlement. In the upper-middle-income suburbs of cities such as Nairobi and Nakuru, residential areas were laid out on the basis of the garden-city model, with large quarter-acre (0.1 ha) allotments and treelined avenues. Frequently, these salubrious neighbourhoods were protected from competing urban uses by buffer zones of public open space. In this new urban setting, the presence, on a permanent basis, of the indigenous African population, let alone their traditional means of livelihood, was proscribed and carefully policed.

Nevertheless, urban farming in the “upcountry towns” was begun as early as 1899 by the immigrant Indian railway workers who sold their surplus to Europeans. Some of their African employees started their own cultivation and also became hawkers (Mitullah 1991). However, it was only during the past 40 years that the African population was permitted to reside permanently in urban areas in Kenya. Since then, the growth of the urban population has consistently far surpassed forecasts. This has been paralleled by an expansion of informal and farming activities and an increasing ruralization of the cities: the boundaries between the city and the countryside have become clouded.

Urban farming is undertaken by two groups, traditional farmers, who have been engulfed by urban development, and recent migrants. During the last 20 or 30 years, relatively large areas of peri-urban land have been annexed from contiguous rural local authorities and incorporated within urban municipalities. To a large extent, this has been necessitated by land-use changes in the urban fringe, as well as by local political pressures. Although the rigid definition of urban boundaries during the colonial period enabled local government councils to exercise control over the ownership and use of land within the designated municipalities, such restrictive policies could not contain the overspill of urban growth into the peri-urban areas. To the contrary, these areas sustained the latter by encouraging the location of unauthorized, lower-grade housing in such areas, and later these were incorporated into existing municipalities.

Consequently, the larger urban centres include territory characterized by a mixture of predominantly low-income residential and agricultural land uses. Traditional land owners in these locales may grow crops and keep animals for personal consumption as well as for sale. Increasingly, however, many of these land owners have found it more profitable to build cheap rental housing on their former farm land (Memon 1982). This group of urban farmers is small, but in many cases includes quite prosperous and politically influential persons.

The second major group of urban farmers comprises urban migrants and their families. Although these urban farmers come from all income groups, the poor dominate. The majority of urban households in Kenya are unable to feed themselves adequately from their earnings, and those who are able cultivate land in backyard spaces near their dwelling, on roadside verges, or on other publicly owned vacant land.

Subsistence farming is an economic imperative for them. Hence, satisfaction of basic needs is the primary motivating factor governing their behaviour, rather than profit making and capital accumulation. The number of urban dwellers is large and will grow even larger with projected population growth. These farmers are not represented by any organization, either in any town or at the national level, even though they constitute a substantial portion of the urban population (about 30%). In contrast, hawkers and vendors, who are represented by a

relatively powerful Nairobi-based association that has recently become national in scope, comprise only 6% of the population in all towns and only 5% in Nairobi.

Urban Crop Farming

Almost two-thirds of urban households (64%) who participated in the Mazingira survey grow part of their food in the urban areas where they live, or in rural areas, or both (Table 1). This underlines the significance of rural-urban links at a household level for food production for a majority of urban Kenyans. Furthermore, a substantial minority (29%) grow these crops within the urban area where they live. The proportion practicing urban farming is much higher in the smaller towns, such as Kitui (57%), than in the larger cities of Nairobi (20%), Mombasa (26%), and Kisumu 00%).

However, 29% of all urban households interviewed had no access to land, either rural or urban, where they could grow crops. An even higher proportion (69%) had no access to urban land for growing crops. Smaller town residents generally had better access to urban land, while those with the least access to urban land were the very low-income earners, particularly residents of the capital city of Nairobi.

Of all urban households surveyed, 17% formerly farmed but had ceased for a variety of reasons such as change of residence, pressure by the landlord or the municipality, crop destruction by animals, or crop theft. Clearly, commercial pressures from both formal and informal

Table 1. Access to urban and rural land for crop production for selected towns (as % of total households).

^a % in urban areas.

A large garden plot adjacent to a cinema in downtown Nairobi.

businesses and other urban land uses have eroded the supply of urban farm land in Nairobi and other towns.

Although urban farming is practiced by all income groups, the incidence is higher among lower income people. In contrast with better-off households, who tend to farm on private land, mostly their backyards, the very low-income groups tend to use public land.

These findings are comparable to those from the 1970s and 1980s from low-income residential areas in Zambia, mainly in the capital city of Lusaka. There, the proportion of households growing crops on their plots, or unused land elsewhere, varied between 25% and 56%. The proportions in some areas were even higher (73-80%), depending on local circumstances, such as encouragement by the authorities or the availability of mining-company land (Rakodi 1988) .

Most urban farmers in Kenya are women (56%), with the proportion of women being higher in the larger towns (62% in Nairobi). Only in Kitui were there fewer women than men among urban farm workers (47%). Among household heads engaged in urban farming, women form an even higher proportion (64%), whereas men were the large

majority among hired urban farm workers (82%). Women also made up the majority (56%) of unpaid household labour, other than the household heads.

Overall, an estimated 25.2 million kg of crops, worth about 60.9 million KES (about 4 million USD in 1985), were produced in urban areas in one season. This represents a considerable contribution to national economic production, especially if it is assumed that most urban areas have two crops per year. Most of this production was consumed by the households and only 23% of urban farmers sold even a portion of what they produced. This is broadly consistent with Freeman’s data on Nairobi urban farmers’ intentions to sell crops. Freeman (1991) also found that 26% of his sample had other informal sector work and concluded that a number of urban farmers, especially women, used the produce to supply their own small businesses selling cooked or uncooked food. A recent study of Nairobi hawkers, 68% of whom were women, found that 13% of them grew their own food, although most were commuters from outside the city (Mitullah 1991).

Inputs and Commodity Exchange

Clearly, the level of investment in urban farming is very low, and the level of agricultural inputs correspondingly so. Only 11% of urban farmers indicated that they used fertilizers, for example. However, many more said they use organic inputs because they can obtain access to them at low or no cost. For example, 30% of urban farmers used manure. It was employed more in Kisumu (44%), Isiolo (43%), and Kitui (33%), all pastoral areas. About 50% of the urban farmers used manure from their own animals, but more than half obtained it through informal gift or barter from friends or relatives: only 2% bought it. Chicken droppings were used by 16% of urban crop farmers, 76% getting it from their own chickens. However, in Nairobi, unlike other towns, over 50% of the farmers acquired it through informal barter.

Similarly, compost was used by 25% of the urban farmer sample; almost all (96%) said they produced it themselves, except in Nairobi where it was even found in the market and Mombasa where it was acquired by barter. Mulch was employed by 19%, almost all of whom (90%) had their own source, except in Nairobi, where it was exchanged.

The pattern that emerges is of a relatively simple self-sufficient peasant economy, based on petty commodity exchange existing in the larger urban centres. The study indicates that agricultural productivity is higher in the capital city (9 000 kg/ha) compared with the norm for all towns (3 200 kg/ha), which is higher than rural peasant productivity. These findings are indicative of the high intensity of land use. They are consistent with Nairobi urban farmers, higher use of inputs on smaller plots than is the case in the other towns. The trend is consistent for Mombasa, the second largest town, but not for Kisumu, the third largest, which has a large land area enclosing many underutilized shambas (farm plots) in outlying areas.

Higher usage of water by urban farmers also shows the advantage of urban over rural farming, and perhaps explains why the former may be more productive. Almost half (45%) of Kenyan urban farmers water their crops and 71% of these used piped water to do so, although 50% of them carry the water in buckets from the source to the crops; the rest employ hose pipes or dig furrows. Again, the highest use of water is in Nairobi (66%), with 87% of these using piped town water. The second highest use of water is in Isiolo, which is in a drought zone; almost the only agriculture here is concentrated around the seasonal river that flows through the town, and this activity is supported by the urban local authority, which assists in the digging of furrows.

The pattern of self-sufficient urban peasants in the smaller towns and more exchange in the capital is repeated in the case of seed and seedling sources. The trend is again not consistent with the size of the town, although generally the larger the town the greater is the exchange. It is also worth noting that Nairobi farmers buy much more of their seed from formal sources such as shops and markets than is the case in other towns.

Sale of seedlings is a common informal sector business in Nairobi, although the majority of plants and seedlings on sale seem to be trees and decorative shrubs. These are popular products among middle- and high-income Nairobi households, and the trade appears to be well supplied by gardeners who take cuttings and thin out natural growth from the well-established gardens where they work.

Urban Livestock

Just over 50% of the urban households in the six towns surveyed keep livestock in the urban areas, back in the rural areas, or both (Table 2). This emphasizes the significance of urban-rural household links. However, in contrast to urban farming, only 17% of the respondents keep livestock in the urban areas. The figures range between a high of 36% in Isiolo, a small town in a region of pastoralists, to a low of only 7% in Nairobi. There were an estimated 1.4 million head of livestock, worth about 259 million KES (about 17 million USD), kept in all towns in Kenya at the time of the survey: others were disposed of in various ways during the year. In fact, these livestock represent only 47% of the total number of animals that were kept or disposed of in various ways. They are kept for investment, livestock products, or stock maintenance and reproduction. A further 16% were eaten during the year and 8% were sold. Surprisingly, an even higher percentage, 20%, died. The remaining 9% were either given away or stolen.

The value of the animals eaten for subsistence in urban Kenya is calculated as 23 million KES (about 1.5 million USD) in 1985. The loss in value attributable to livestock deaths in the same year was 36 million KES (about 2.4 million USD). Large numbers of small animals, mainly chickens and rabbits, die. Nevertheless, analysis of the data by type of livestock indicates that fully 17% of cattle, 21 % of goats, and 26% of sheep die. This represents a massive loss of investment in cash and labour for the households concerned and for the domestic sector of the economy generally.

Table 2. Households keeping livestock (as % of total households).

As these values indicate, livestock, like crops, were mainly kept for subsistence purposes. However, livestock products, particularly eggs and meat, were produced for both subsistence and sale.

Although it was hard to obtain precise figures of domestic consumption, it seems that only around 50% of the milk and about 25% of the eggs were consumed.

Poultry was the most common livestock in all towns, though goats, sheep, and cattle were fairly numerous in the smaller towns. There were a few pigs, especially in Kakamega and Nairobi, and a very small number of donkeys used for draft purposes in Isiolo and Mombasa. Very few urban households kept fish or bees. Even Nairobi had an estimated 23 000 cattle in the town, although most belonged to dairy farmers at the upper end of the income scale. The poorer Nairobi households keep chickens and rabbits in poultry sheds and hutches because of lack of space. Livestock keepers in the other towns usually let their animals roam freely, particularly during the rainy season, eating grass or whatever they can find.

Cattle, sheep, and goats are, in fact, used as a form of capital investment by many Kenyan rural households. Traditionally, they represent wealth and status and in the present economy they are sold at times of financial need, for example, to pay for school fees or for other capital expenditures.

Livestock are kept for these reasons in urban Kenya, but also, and primarily by the poor, as a source of protein. Few urban poor Kenyans can afford to buy meat. The numbers of animals dying may be attributed to disease and the lack of urban veterinary services: less than 25% of the urban farmers dip, spray, or vaccinate their livestock. Another cause of animal mortality is starvation. If the livestock are kept because there is no money for food, little is likely to be invested in animal feed: about 65% of the animals are free-ranging. However, about 25% of the households buy animal feed in the wet season and almost 30% in the dry season. Despite this, many animals may be underfed. Chickens and goats can survive if there is enough household or neighbourhood refuse, but cattle and rabbits require more care and attention. The reasons why such large numbers of livestock are dying in Kenyan towns needs further investigation.

Nutrition

Food is the most fundamental of all human needs. Although past studies have demonstrated that, in general, Kenyans receive adequate food, data on availability at the national level tend to conceal the fact that a significant proportion of households do not have access to adequate food (Collier and LaI1980). The urban poor are the most affected and are the most disadvantaged of all the groups with serious nutritional deficiencies. However, their particular needs have received only marginal recognition in formulation of nutrition policies. For example, although pastoralists may benefit from improved animal husbandry techniques, there is no comparable specific program targeted to improve the nutrition of the urban poor in Kenya. They do not form an effective political constituency, and even famine relief efforts ignore them.

Among the urban poor, preschool children and pregnant and lactating women are particularly vulnerable. Of the children under 5 years of age in the sample, 6% were undernourished, 2% being severely malnourished. As many as 4% of the children were sick in the 2 weeks before the survey, and 15% of all households indicated that their food supply was inadequate. Of the urban farmers, 40% said they would starve if they were stopped from farming. Table 1 shows that a significant proportion of urban households have no access to land for growing food. This emphasizes the importance of urban farming in the household economy of the poor in terms of meeting their nutritional requirements.

The high proportion of subsistence food production, both crops and livestock for protein, is consistent with the proportions of urban families with incomes below the level at which they are able to buy food to meet their domestic needs. Subsistence production is a common, but poorly documented, strategy adopted by the urban poor to feed themselves. Similarly, it is difficult for the urban poor to spend money on fuel with which to cook the food, and they therefore look for the subsistence alternative, or cook and eat less often.

Moreover, a very high proportion of urban households, 100% in the smaller towns, consume indigenous vegetables, which tend to be grown

wild and not cultivated. A large number of varieties were identified in each town and there is a rich variety of cooking combinations used in different parts of the country. These vegetables are mainly found in the rainy season on road and rail reserves, river banks, and similar sites. Although many people in small towns gather their own, most of what is consumed in the larger towns is bought in markets from traders who collect from the wild. There is even a trade in local varieties between different parts of the country. A very small proportion of the urban population (9%) grow their own indigenous vegetables, indicating that they are beginning to be domesticated. These vegetables play an important role in urban nutrition: some are very high in protein and are generally resistant to disease.

Policy Implications

At present, despite the increasing ruralization of Kenyan towns and cities, many Kenyans and their leaders continue to associate cities with modernity. Urban inhabitants are expected to enjoy higher living standards and better amenities than rural folk dependent on subsistence agriculture. Such values have been reinforced by recent public-sector urban-development and planning policies. These have sought, in the face of considerable adversity and lack of success, to maintain artificially high urban standards inherited from measures designed to protect public health.

Likewise, macroeconomic strategies to promote the expansion of the formal sector have only been marginally successful. In response to increasing urban unemployment and poverty, many informal sector activities, hitherto unauthorized, have been accorded partial recognition and even some degree of assistance. However, this is usually limited to artisanal activities, mostly conducted by men, and still excludes the hawking trade, mostly carried out by women (Mitullah 1991).

With a few exceptions, such as dairying and conventional commercial farming, urban-farming activities continue to be harassed or ignored, particularly in the larger urban areas: farming can either be permitted or restricted by local authority bylaws. The Nairobi bylaws only prohibit cultivation on public streets maintainable by the city. Regardless, city folklore maintains that cultivation of public land is illegal and both the

Mazingira and Freeman studies found physical and monetary harassment occurring as a result. Large livestock may be kept in Nairobi only with written permission, but small livestock can be kept unless someone complains of a nuisance.

Councils in a few of the smaller urban areas have been innovative and proactive. For example, in Isiolo, a town where most residents are traditionally pastoralists and lack farming skills, there is active public-sector support for urban farming, including irrigation. As well, Kitui has crop extension services in town. In contrast, the municipalities of Kakamega, Mombasa, and Nairobi have a laissez faire attitude, whereas Kisumu authorities actively prevent urban farming, except on private land.

Although high- and middle-income residents usually benefit from low density, which enables them to practice backyard farming legally, most low- and very low-income urban neighbourhoods are zoned for high-density housing, thus precluding urban farming. Worse still, those who live in unplanned and unserviced areas, and those who live one family to a room in these or legal tenement buildings, are too overcrowded to be able to grow food easily or legally.

The existing urban-planning practice of high-density development for low-income areas, dictated by economics of sewer sanitation, needs to be re-examined. New sanitation technologies, based on low water use, could be used to develop urban layouts that incorporate farming and livestock. These could be combined with supportive local authority action, including crop extension, veterinary, and other support services.

The city of Kitale has experimented with “allotments” for urban food growing. Such policies, common in some Western cities, have relevance to Africa to encourage UA and increase food supply. Underutilized urban land, road, rail, river, and power-line reserves provide ideal sites for short- or medium-term allotment of land to the urban poor. Women, particularly heads of poor households, should have priority access. A recent initiative by Kisumu municipal council, which successively targeted this group with nutrition, income generation, health, and family-planning services in the 1980s, could also include urban farming.

Crop- and livestock-extension services need to be made more available in urban areas. At present, their targets tend to be the better-off peri-urban farmers and not the urban poor. Specifically, they need to be directed to poor urban women. Extension services could specifically focus on urban water harvesting and reuse, as well as aiding the fledgling trade in organic inputs and indigenous vegetables.

Conclusions

Subsistence production and petty commodity exchange have been neglected and are ignored in economic and spatial planning to the point of being outlawed. Yet, this study demonstrates that the economic value of urban subsistence production nationally is both significant and crucial to the survival of the poor. The study also illustrates how petty commodity exchange operates in an urban setting.

Urban farming is one of the ways in which the domestic economy functions for survival in modern Africa. The domestic economy of the urban poor is an intricate mix of productive and reproductive activities. No urban programs, policy, or planning can work without an understanding of the complex character of this economy.

Urban farming is a reality that has not been incorporated in theories of Third World urbanization. These types of economic activity have been ignored in analysis of the informal sector because they are thought to “only” deal with basic survival and are carried out within the domestic economy, mainly by women. Urban farmers are mainly, but not exclusively, women producing for their own families’ consumption. However, this is no reason to discount the conceptual significance of these activities or the value of their primary economic production.

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