Urban Farming - The Nakuru County Story

Nakuru County is home to Lake Naivasha, one of the fresh water lake within Kenyan Rift valley which gets its recharge from Aberdares water towers is the nerve of the horticulture business that contributes to over 10% of Kenya’s agricultural export, generating more than €350 million annually and creating direct employment opportunities for over 30,000 people as well as benefiting above 350, 000 people indirectly. 

However, the greatest story is found in the small scale urban farmers in the county. The first and up to now most comprehensive study on urban agriculture in Kenya ( carried out by the Mazingira Institute in 1985  on Nakuru) - showed the city presented one of the best opportunity to develop urban farming in Kenyan towns. The study showed that the Nakuru urban farming population consisted of households from all income categories. 

Today, urban farming is  considered as part of the informal economy. What is relevant, however, is that for some urban groups, agricultural activities are extremely important, in the sense that it is part of a strategy of income diversification necessary to maintain a certain level of living or even to survive. From this point of view, farming by urban dwellers is related to declining purchasing power and to urban poverty, which in its turn is partly the result of the economic crisis prevalent in most African countries. Because of their combined productive and reproductive responsibilities, the role of urban women is crucial in this respect.

For Nakuru county, Small-scale farming activities are growing within the municipality. This is mostly located in the peri-urban areas. The former rural area south of the Enjoro River in the southwestern part of the town, which became part of the municipality after the boundary extension of 1992 , is such an area. Many farms have been subdivided into small-holder portions and urban residential plots. Nevertheless, farming is still the main activity there.

Urban farming in these small holder residential plots is highly dependent on the availability of space. In other words, housing density, more than population density, determines whether farming in a certain residential estate is possible and to what extent. To some extent, housing densities coincide with income levels, in the sense that high-income areas have generally low densities while low-income areas have high densities . However, low-income areas with quite low housing densities also exist.

There are three types of urban agriculture in the town. First, there is farming in privately-owned compounds (on-plot farming). Second, there is farming in the compounds of the municipal residential estates. These are rented houses, but farming is very common either in the compounds of the individual renters or between the housing. Finally, off-plot farming by poor people on land that does not belong to them also occurs in Nakuru. 

From the above,  urban agriculture is a fact of life which cannot be ignored when planning for sustainable planning in cities. Urban farming is an important source of food, income and employment is something that can not be neglected by policy makers. At the same time, however, according to the municipal by-laws which date from the colonial period, farming in town is an illegal activity.

The county government could change this through an environmentally-friendly city plan and recognizing that urban agriculture is an inevitable part of all future urban  urban plans. The first step could be to designate zones where certain types of farming are allowed under certain conditions. In designing by-laws, the various acts which deals with agriculture and local government should be considered. Examples of such acts are the Public Health Act, the Agricultural Act, the Water Act, the Physical Planning Act, the Meat Control Act, the Local Government Act, the Chiefs Act, etc. There is need to review all such acts in order to construct a coherent set of regulations. The result could be a General Code, based on the local circumstances in Nakuru . 

More than this, In designing policies for urban agriculture, one should be aware that many urban people farm in the rural areas as well. Urban farming will always to some extent have to do with the need to fill the extra mouths during the stage that households are at their largest (in connection with rural urban - urban rural migration).  it is therefore important to learn more about the importance of the connection between urban-rural farming activities by city based households, the poor in particular.

Ken Gumbe 
www.trd.co.ke