(The Herald) Controlled urban agric necessary
Controlled urban agric necessaryHARARE’S desire to legalise and plan urban agriculture is long overdue and should help those thousands of residents who need a modest allotment to plant maize and vegetables to help their families have a healthy life.
For many years, Harare residents have been staking out small plots on waste ground. Sometimes the areas have been suitable. But some of these plots are on recreational land, some are far too close to streams and have no safeguards to prevent erosion and siltation, and some are a positive nuisance.
Bulawayo embraced the idea many years ago. In a very simple scheme that city designated areas where people could plant a few mealies or vegetables, ensured that anyone interested actually had to apply for permission, and then told them very roughly where they could plant.
A more formal scheme was adopted in many European cities at the end of the 19th century as mass urbanisation created the same sort of problems that African cities, including Harare, faced a few decades later in the 20th century and still face.
Blocks of land were assigned for subdivision as allotments. These helped many families survive the "hungry 1930s" of the Great Depression and then helped feed many during the Second World War. The schemes only started withering in the great boom of the 1960s, although they lasted a little longer in Eastern Europe, which started urbanising later.
In Harare, despite all the in-fill housing development, there is still a lot of land around most suburbs suitable for urban agriculture, at least for a few more years. This land is already being used for this purpose, but haphazardly and with the risk that crops may be destroyed.
It makes sense for planners and the city to legalise this use, bring it under control, ensure that basic environmental standards are respected and give allotment holders at least the security of being able to reap the crop they plant.
Some more sophisticated small-scale farming could well be possible on land "banked" for housing development, but not in the immediate future. There it could be possible to give security of tenure for more than one season.
Good planning could also create small permanent farms ringing the city, a sort of greenbelt, although those plots are more likely to be suitable for permanent farmers specialising in horticulture and poultry rather than for part-timers with city jobs.
Allotment schemes are largely an interim measure in the development of any city.
In time, as housing densities rise and incomes grow, open land within a city will be needed for recreation by the evermore prosperous residents of the city.
But at the moment in Harare such land is just lying idle and, if not used for allotments, will be waste, infested with weeds and quite probably made dangerous by criminal activity.
It makes excellent sense to allow this land to be used productively by poorer residents. The main change proposed will be to ensure that there are rules to allocating and using the land, and making sure that when it is needed for development or other purposes adequate notice is given to the urban farmer.
Labels: AGRICULTURE, THE HERALD, ZIMBABWE
posted by MrK @ 6:23 AM
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