Growing greener cities with urban agriculture, By Kayode Fayemi

I had the honour of speaking at an interactive session, titled: “Urban Agriculture: Growing Greener Cities” during the 2022 Brazil-Africa Forum in São Paulo, Brazil.

The Forum is taking place at a time when the world is experiencing a food crisis of unprecedented proportion, the largest in modern history, as a result of several interlocking factors including ongoing conflicts, climate change, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, and since February 2022, the avoidable Russia Ukraine crises.

According to the latest statistics presented by the 2022 Edition of The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, as many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night: an increase of about 46 million since 2020 and 150 million since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Women and girls are disproportionately impacted. Globally, an estimated 60% of undernourished people are women or girls particularly in low-and middle-income countries.

Rising urbanization has become one of the major megatrends that is shaping the world today. Currently 56% of the world’s population – about 4.4 billion inhabitants – live in cities. This trend is expected to continue, with the urban population more than doubling its current size by 2050, at which point nearly 7 out of 10 people will live in cities, mainly in low and middle-income countries in Africa and Asia.

Nigeria has the largest economy in Africa and is also the most populous with over 200 million inhabitants. Agriculture is a significant contributor to GDP, and it employs about 70% of the population. It is a fact that many towns and cities in Nigeria grew out of farming and fishing communities where agriculture had, in the past, been the major occupation of the inhabitants. However, since the advent of western education and white-collar jobs coupled with the discovery of petroleum in commercial quantity a lot of Nigerians especially the youth have abandoned the farms for the city in search of jobs.

As the population of cities like Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt continue to grow with the attendant increase demands on food and shelter, many people are now turning to what is called ‘urban farming’. Urban farming is also a good source of food security options for households in the cities in the face of serious unemployment crisis in the country. Urban farming can easily be noticed in Lagos, being Nigeria’s commercial nerve centre with the greatest concentration of manufacturing and service industries.

LAGOS, A CASE STUDY

Lagos is 1 out of 36 States in Nigeria and being the commercial heart of the country, attracts people from all over. Lagos is also the economic hub of West Africa and is known to be the leading tech hub in Africa where there are various innovative start-up companies. Lagos state is also known to have a fast adoption of technology and innovative techniques to solve economic challenges in various sectors including agriculture. The Lagos economy is larger than that of Kenya and Ghana combined -and its 22 million or so inhabitants consume around EUR 10bn annually.

Currently Lagos produces just 20-24% of the food it consumes. The Lagos State Government with various partnerships, has set itself the target to increase this to 40-50% by 2025 exploring several techniques such as vertical faming in urban gardening to expand the city’s economic base by creating economic activities through the production, packaging, and selling opportunities for food, vegetable, herbs, and fruit products. As a result, jobs are created, the cost of food goes down, and people consume more quality foods.

The speed and scale of urbanization poses several challenges, including increased poverty, malnutrition, high cost of living and food insecurity, particularly to the urban poor. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing climate crisis is forcing us to rethink how we produce, process, and distribute food in cities to avoid interrupted supply chains.

Urban agriculture is being progressively recognized as a key player in supplying safe and nutritious food from different types of crops and animals to urban dwellers in the face of rising urbanization and population growth.

Studies have highlighted the potential for urban agriculture to contribute further to food security, food system resilience and sustainability. The role of urban agriculture is, however, specific and complementary to food supply from rural areas, as it helps meet local demand and contributes to short, efficient supply chains, thus reducing food loss and waste.

The agricultural sector is currently a major contributor to climate change and environmental degradation. It is estimated that between 21% and 37% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are linked to the global food system. Modern agricultural practices also account for more than 70% of water withdrawals at the global level and contribute to the acidification and eutrophication of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems via the intensified use of agrochemicals. Land expansion for food production is also associated with widespread deforestation, soil degradation, biodiversity loss and habitat fragmentation. Urban agriculture has been touted as a potential remedy to some of these ills.

HOW WE HAVE URBANIZED AGRICULTURE

It is estimated that between 5% and 10% of the global production of legumes, vegetables and tubers is currently delivered by urban agriculture, while between 15% and 20% of global food is produced in urban and peri-urban environments.

According to FAO Sourcebook, urban agriculture contributes to the greening of cities, helps reduce food miles, protects biodiversity, supports green infrastructure, builds a resilient local food system (via a short supply chain, low food loss during distribution), and mitigates the impact of shocks on local food systems. In Nigeria, most of the urban agriculture practitioners largely produce for home consumption, a few of them do so for income generation through marketing of harvested or surplus farm produce. The Direct impact of urban farming on the Nigerian households includes guaranteed food supply or food supplementation, employment and income generation, environmental hygiene, and social relation build-up.

Despite these, urban food production is expected to be more resilient than conventional agriculture because of its short supply chain for urban dwellers and diversified farming activities. In terms of environmental sustainability, urban food growing delivers a wide range of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, and reducing air pollution, as growing food where it’s consumed can cut down transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions. Urban agriculture can also help grow greener cities that are better able to cope with social and environmental challenges, from slum improvement and management of urban waste to job creation and community-development.

However, urban agriculture has some drawbacks. It has to compete with other sectors such as housing, infrastructure and industry for the use of scarce resources, (land, water and labour). Contamination of water used in urban agriculture may pose potential health risks to both producers and consumers.

Risks are most often related to the use of untreated wastewater but may also be related to the use of water contaminated by other sources such as industrial pollution, runoff of chemicals into drains from domestic and commercial use, or overuse of fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture. Furthermore, limited finance and narrow access to credit can constrain the sustainability of urban agriculture.

HOW DO WE SCALE UP URBAN AGRICULTURE?

Despite the growing literature on urban food production, our understanding of urban agriculture is in relative infancy when compared to conventional rural contexts. Urban agriculture is still poorly, or at best intermittently, acknowledged by politicians and urban planners, who are inspired by visions of “modern” cities where agriculture is rather a negligible activity. This is the situation in most of Africa except few cities like Nairobi in Kenya, Kampala in Uganda or Dar es Salaam in Tanzania where urban agriculture policy is gradually taking root.

We also have had situations where cities pushing for urban agriculture also run into obstacles such as national governments that impede their efforts, because city-based agriculture does not fit within the national government’s concept of a modern city.

Urban agriculture is a vital strategy for building the resilience of cities’ food supply, reducing poverty and increasing employment, improving nutritional outcomes, and mitigating environmental degradation of urban spaces. While it is no silver bullet, when combined with effective city-region planning, the food system can more efficiently meet the needs of diverse actors in urban areas.

In order to scale up urban agriculture and support farmers, a variety of roles are expected from different actors. We must acknowledge the lacunae in knowledge and data gap on urban agriculture and invest in effective, systematic and regular reporting and measurement. Governments at all levels must create urban agriculture-friendly policies to support urban farming. Like in Nigeria, the Federal Government in a bid to achieve sustainable agriculture, introduced the Agriculture Promotion Policy, which ran from 2016-2020.

Policies about urban agriculture must be improved for the enhancement of urban agriculture benefits as well as the reduction of the risks associated with public health and environmental hazards. Policy integration should pay attention to issues such as urban land use planning, health, waste management, social housing, slum upgrading, park and nature management.

African cities can also draw useful lessons from the experience of Nairobi. Once reluctant to formally support urban agriculture, Nairobi is now one of the most advanced cities in the sub-continent in its promotion of laws, policies and programs to protect and support urban food production. Nairobi’s promotion and protection of the right to farm in the city has inspired other cities and the national government to promote and protect urban agriculture.

Finally, more cities need to sign up to the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact (MUFPP) that was launched in October 2015 as the first international protocol through which city leaders committed to developing sustainable food systems that are inclusive to grant healthy and accessible food to all, protect biodiversity, and fight against food waste while adapting to and mitigating impacts of climate change. The MUFPP has established regional forums for Europe, Africa and Latin America. It hosts an Annual Gathering and Mayors Summit for signatory cities, to share best practices from cities.

So far, it has been signed by over 200 cities, and is open to any city globally. As President of the Forum of Regions of Africa, a sub-entity under the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa, I commit to encourage our members to sign up to it.

I thank you for your attention.

-Text of address presented by Fayemi, former Governor of Ekiti State and President, Forum of Regions of Africa in Sao Paulo, Brazil at Brazil-Africa Forum