Urban Farmers as an Extension Domain: The Case of Atteridgeville (Pretoria, South Africa)

A study carried out in the informal urban settlements of Atteridgeville, Pretoria, involving a survey (n=120), which employed face-to-face interviews using a structured interview schedule, complemented by semi-structured interviews and observations of agricultural production activities sought to characterise urban farmers as an extension domain. In the study area, participation rates in urban farming were high (54 % of households), and the majority of urban farmers consisted of unemployed middle-aged females, who tended to form part of households categorised as poor, and who had gained some experience in agriculture before their arrival in the township from rural areas. Agriculture was limited to crop and vegetable production, with livestock farming completely absent. Key constraints to urban farming in the area, currently and in the future, were the lack of secure land for agriculture and a lack of water. It is argued that these constraints may be addressed by closer involvement of government and the public sector, whose interventions may include the introduction of space-saving and water-saving technologies, whereby public extension could play an important role in technology transfer and farmer training. AIAEE 2002 Proceedings of the 18 Annual Conference Durban, South Africa 265 Introduction The United Nations Development Programme (1996) defined urban agriculture as an industry that produces, processes and markets food and fuel, largely in response to daily demand of consumers within a town, city or metropolis, on land and water dispersed throughout the urban and peri-urban area, applying intensive production methods using and reusing natural resources and urban wastes to yield a diversity of crops and livestock. During 1980s, the importance of urban agriculture accelerated dramatically throughout the world (United Nation Development Programme, 1996). Farming by urban dwellers has been related to declining purchasing power, and to urban poverty, which in turn is partly the result of the poor economic state of many countries, including most African countries (Chaipa & King, 1998). As a result, urban cultivation in many cities is essentially a survival strategy adopted by the poor to reduce their vulnerable condition (Rogerson, 1993). In South Africa, the importance of urban agriculture is also on the rise. According to May and Rogerson (1995) and Rogerson (1998) agriculture in the cities of South Africa is one of ways urban dwellers supplement their low incomes. Urban farmers are defined urban as dwellers engaged in farming activities, i.e. crop or livestock production. According to Meadows (2000), people in Africa practice urban agriculture in order to reach self-sufficiency, to raise their level of household food security or to survive. As a result, the majority of urban farmers are from low-income groups, who engage in agriculture primarily for home consumption purposes. By producing their own food, they also improve their nutritional intake, because the food they grow is more nutritious than the food they can afford to buy (United Nation Development Programme, 1996). Research on urban gardening groups in the Cape Flats by Meadows (2000) showed that the majority of urban gardeners were female adults, whose engagement in agriculture was motivated by saving on household food expenditure and generating income through sales of surplus produce. In Mamelodi near Pretoria, Martin, Oudwater and Meadows (2000) reported that those involved in urban farming consisted mainly of elderly unemployed people. Many South African NGOs and welfare organisations have recognised the importance of small-scale urban agriculture in terms of food security and social function, and they promote gardening activities through extension, training and occasional input supply (seeds, fertilisers). However, town planners and policy makers in South Africa tend to view urban agriculture as a way of prompting economic development, thus favouring highly organised intensive production systems (Martin, Oudwater and Meadows, 2000). This narrow view of urban agriculture has contributed to a lack of adequate policy, legal and institutional support, and other public services for the type of agriculture practised by the majority of urban farmers, who at present rely mainly on the non-governmental sector for assistance (Meadows, 2000). Purpose and Objective The purpose of this paper is to encourage the public extension system in South Africa to broaden its support to urban farming by contributing to the body of knowledge on this sector. The specific objective of the study presented in this paper was to define urban farmers in the informal settlements of Atteridgeville (Pretoria) as an extension domain for the purpose of extension interventions. Low (1986), cited by Williams, Rose, Eckert and Tapson (1989) defined an extension domain as a homogenous group of farmers, who share the same problems, and posses similar resources for solving these problems. AIAEE 2002 Proceedings of the 18 Annual Conference Durban, South Africa 266 Materials and Methods The study area The study was conducted in the informal urban settlements (shanty towns) of Jefsville, Phomolong, Concern, Vergenoeg, and Brazzaville found along the southern edge of the formal African Township of Atteridgeville, which is situated approximately 19 km west of the centre of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. These informal settlements came into existence in 1990 on land previously owned by the South African Defence Force (Theron, 2000). During establishment of these settlements, the provision of infrastructure was largely ignored. Even now, roads still consist of tracks, there is no electricity, and water supply is by means of a limited number of communal standpipes. The residential plots tend to be small, ranging in size between 100 m and 400 m. The houses can best be described as shacks, because they are built from materials such as plastic, wood, cardboard and corrugated iron. There are no sanitary facilities inside the houses, forcing residents to make use of outside pit latrines. Data were collected from August to October 2001, by means of a survey, which employed face-to-face interviews using a structured interview schedule. A multistage cluster sampling procedure was adopted for the selection of the sample. Aerial photographs taken on the 4 September 1999, on a scale of 1:4 000, were used to count the number of residences (sampling frame), and to delineate 114 primary neighbourhood clusters, which consisted of approximately 100 residences each. From these clusters 12 were selected randomly. Systematic sampling was applied to identify 10 residences within each of the 12 primary clusters, yielding a total sample of 120 residences, which represented a 1% sample of the total population of 11 400 residences. The interviews sought data on demography, income and expenditure, agriculture and life history of households occupying these residences. Additional information was obtained by means of semi-structured interviews and observations of agricultural production activities to verify and elaborate information gathered during the survey questionnaires. The survey data obtained were captured and analysed using MS Office Excel. Households were classified into three income categories, namely, ultra poor, poor and non-poor. In 1999, the poverty limit for a family consisting of two adults and three children living in Pretoria was R1705.64 (Potgieter, 1999). The monetary value of this limit was adjusted to the time of the survey using the consumer price index supplied by Statistics SA (2001). This monetary value was then converted to the adult equivalent poverty line (May, 1996), which at the time of the survey amounted to R553.03 per adult equivalent per month. The number of adults equivalents (AE) in a household was determined by means of the formula proposed by May (1996), namely, AE = (A + 1⁄2 C) , whereby AE = number of adult equivalents in household; A = number of adults in household (household members aged 15 or older); and C = number of children in household (household members younger than 15 years old. Adult equivalent income (AEI) of a household was calculated by dividing total household income in cash and kind by the number of adult equivalents in the household. Households with adult equivalent incomes higher than the poverty line of R553.03 were considered not poor, and those with adult equivalent income lower than the poverty line were considered poor. The category of the poor was subdivided further into poor and ultra-poor whereby an adult equivalent income of R276.51 per month (half the poverty line) was used to AIAEE 2002 Proceedings of the 18 Annual Conference Durban, South Africa 267 separate the two sub-categories. In the study a household was defined as consisting of all persons who usually ate and slept together, and who shared the same bundle of incomes. During the survey, respondents reported crop yields using a variety of units. The method described by Van Averbeke and Mei (1998) was used to convert the yields to monetary values, enabling analysis and comparisons of data. Results and Discussion Combined, the 120 households that were surveyed counted 532 members, yielding a mean household size of about 5 persons. Of these, 47 % were male and 53 % female, and 65 % formed part of the economically active category of the population, aged between 15 and 64 years old. Nearly all the others (31 %) were children. Of the active population, 43 % were unemployed (actively looking for work), and 60 % of the unemployed were women. More than half of the households in the sample (54 %) were engaged in urban farming. On average, farming households tended to be slightly larger (5 members) than non-farming households (4 members) and heads of farming households were 6 years older than those of non-farming households. In both categories the gender of the head was male in four out of five cases. A