Women in Urban Agriculture: Are the Policies Supportive? The Case of Morogoro Municipality, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper is based on a study which examined the practice of urbanagriculture in the policy context in Morogoro Municipality. It studied how policiessupport urban agriculture as well as acknowledging its contribution to thehousehold economy. It involved in-depth survey of women who cultivate vegetablesin open spaces. Furthermore, it focuses on women’s experiences and attitudestowards practice of urban agriculture. Purposeful sampling was employed to selecttwo wards, while random sampling was used to select respondents among thewomen vegetables cultivators from the two wards. Findings show a mismatchbetween the benefits of urban farming and existing policies which affects women’sparticipation. In addition, from the findings, women’s participation in urbanagriculture contributes to food security, increases household income and reducespoverty. The paper concludes that policies are not supportive to urban farmers andwomen in particular. Thus women practise vegetable cultivation on a small scaleand end up earning little income. It is recommended that urban farmers should beassisted in transforming the practice of traditional vegetable cultivation intomodern, sustainable and environmental friendly which will increase productivity.

Keywords: Urban agriculture, vegetable cultivation, women, policies