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Urban Cultivation: A Reflection of Household investment

A household's decision to cultivate is also its decision to invest its resources. And as an investment, households are likely to prefer plot gardens over rainy-season gardens for at least four reasons. First, security of tenure is more assured for residential plots than peripheral land in the city over which households have very little control. Second, since rainy-season gardens are far away from home - on average, 40 minuses' walking distance there and back - they not only require more time expenditure but are also relatively less safe for female household members.* Third, the practical impossibility of irrigating rainy season gardens limits their use to certain crops and to a single season. Fourth and last, rainy-season gardens are more vulnerable to theft than plot gardens.

FIG. 1. Nature of Cultivation by Per Capita Income (1 kwacha = US$0.75 in 1980)

All households, however, may not have the option of choosing between the two types of garden. For example, households who live on plots too small to grow anything in may need to cultivate rainy-season gardens more frequently than those who live on relatively larger plots, since the latter are free to opt for plot gardens instead. Moreover, even if a household cultivates a relatively small residential plot, there may be so little produce from the garden that the household also needs to cultivate a rainy-season garden. Since low-income households usually reside on quite small plots, a higher percentage of them may need to cultivate rainy-season gardens or both types of garden. On the other hand, households who reside on fairly large plots and cultivate plot gardens may not need to cultivate rainy-season gardens as well because their income is usually higher.

There is evidence that suggests that this proposition may have some merit. As indicated in table 6, there is a significant correlation between the rank order for plot size in the five survey areas and the rank order for the percentage of households cultivating plot gardens in each of these areas. There is also a significant rank order relationship between the survey areas ranked by their plot sizes and median incomes. This suggests that since the poorer households reside on smaller plots, they are less likely to cultivate plot gardens than the better-off households, even if the need for subsistence production of the former may be higher. This is further supported by the finding that when households were asked why they did not cultivate plot gardens, 55 per cent replied that their plots were too small for cultivation. And of these respondents, a majority lived in Kalingalinga - the squatter area with the smallest plot sizes.

As for rainy-season gardens, it is evident from figure 1 that the frequency of cultivation decreases with rising per capita income. As indicated earlier, increased household income is expected to lead to a higher valuation of time, which is then reflected in the rebudgeting of time-expenditure with less emphasis on lower-yield and more on higher-yield production activities. Since a rainy-season garden is usually farther from home and requires more time for cultivation than a plot garden, it is not surprising to observe the pattern of cultivation documented by the survey.

The household responses regarding the reasons for not cultivating rainy-season gardens also confirm the hypothesis. Nearly 30 per cent of the households indicated that they had not even looked for a plot for a rainy season garden; and 65 per cent did not find land either adjacent to their residences or nearby. In other words, the first group of households was not willing to spend any time cultivating rainy season gardens. As for the second group, the time-expenditure that would have been required for cultivation of rainy-season gardens farther away from home outweighed the expected benefits from it.

Patterns of Cultivation: A Reconfirmation of Rational Investment Decisions

We have observed so far that variations in the extent of cultivation are the outcome of rational investment decisions by low-income households who may prefer plot gardens to rainy-season gardens. To what extent does this preference affect a household's decision regarding the types of crops grown in both gardens? One hypothesis is that since low-income households in general try to maximize the return from their investment in cultivation, they tend to cultivate plot gardens more intensely than rainy-season gardens. Moreover, households will be expected to cultivate higher-grade vegetables in their plot gardens since these vegetables require relatively more input investments in terms of time (for tillage, tending and protection of plants from insects and disease), irrigation and fertilizers, all of which are less expensive to provide near one's home. In terms of return on investment, plot gardens will also be a logical choice for higher-grade vegetables because not only will the produce be more accessible for immediate use, but it will be less vulnerable to theft than if cultivated in a rainy-season garden. Conversely, rainy-season gardens are more likely to be used for cultivating lower-grade, weight reduced crops (particularly the type that requires more space and less care) and are less likely to be sanctioned by city officials.

TABLE 6. Rank Size Distribution of Survey Areas

a. The distance from the centre of town for each survey area may not be inversely proportional to the distance from nearest peripheral land. For example, though Kalingalinga is nearer to the city centre than Chilenje (South). it has relatively more access to peripheral land.

The responses to our survey questions concerning the kinds of crops cultivated confirm this hypothesis. As table 7 indicates, plot gardens are used not only for different types of crops from rainy-season gardens, but also for higher-grade vegetables such as rape, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, spinach and fruits; weight-reduced crops such as maize, beans and groundnuts are grown primarily in rainy-season gardens.

The household responses regarding the reasons for the pattern of cultivation further verify the hypothesis. Nearly 40 per cent of the households mentioned that they grow tomatoes, rape, cabbage and onions near home because they require regular watering. Thirty-two per cent mentioned that vegetables and fruits are less susceptible to theft if grown in plot gardens. And 14 per cent said that it is convenient to grow vegetables and fruit near home because they can be picked at any time. Five per cent of the households indicated that fruit trees also provide shade for outdoor activities.

TABLE 7. Kinds of Produce from Plot Gardens and Rainy-Season Gardens

a. Each column adds up to more than 100 per cent because one household may cultivate more than one type of vegetable.

As for rainy-season gardens, 77 per cent of the households said that they cultivate maize on the periphery of the city primarily to avoid harassment by city officials who have repeatedly slashed down maize plants in the past. Other households mentioned reasons such as "lack of space in plot gardens" or "everybody grows maize on the periphery.

With regard to cultivation of beans, groundnuts, and pumpkins, nearly 60 per cent of the households thought that rainy season gardens offer more horizontal space, and 27 per cent that beans and groundnuts are sturdy plants and require less care than tomatoes and cabbage.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Contrary to the official view that rejects urban cultivation as an irrational activity by a small group of recent migrants who have yet to be integrated into the urban environment, urban agriculture is an innovative response by a majority of the urban poor, who are fully entrenched in an urban economy that currently lacks the capacity to provide them with sufficient real income.

Though insufficient income is a primary reason, it is not the only factor affecting a household's decisions regarding cultivation. Low-income households consider urban cultivation as a form of long-term investment that requires a minimum threshold of predictability of return on the investment. To be sure of this return, most households must decide to live in the city on a permanent basis and gain access to land, which usually requires seven to eleven years of urban residence.

Once the decision to invest is made, variations in the pattern of cultivation among households result from relative differences in access to land and the need to maximize the return on domestic labour time, the opportunity costs of which vary with household income. Variations in the pattern of crops between plots and rainy-season gardens also occur as a result of rational decisions by households to maximize the return on land at two different locations.

The policy implications of these findings are at least threefold. First, since urban cultivation allows urban workers to survive with insufficient monetary income, not only should the harassment of cultivators be stopped but efforts should be made to encourage cultivation, particularly since the opportunities for these workers to increase their monetary income, at least in the short term, are minimal. Second, one sure way of encouraging cultivation is to provide assurance to low-income households regarding the return on their investment. This would involve ensuring that they have access to land through the granting of legal titles, either for renting, leasing, or owning land. Third, there is scope for further increases in the productivity of rainy-season gardens, for instance by providing better access to the peripheral areas and taking some measures to reduce the theft of produce.

To be sure, bringing about changes in official attitudes towards urban cultivation and formulating new policies to encourage it are not easy tasks. There are interested social groups who benefit from the rising price of urban land, and they are bound to object to policies which will not contribute to property inflation. It is hoped that this article will at least help explode some of the myths about urban cultivation that are currently used to legitimize the arguments of these interests.

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