Waste water agriculture booms

towards urban agriculture in the country have been changing of late. Urban agriculture is the production of crops and keeping of livestock on land that is administratively and legally zoned for urban uses.
Although it has a relatively long history and is widely- practised, urban agriculture has been under-valued and resisted by generations of public officials. A misconception prevailing among them is that such agriculture competes with and is less efficient than rural farming.
Urban agriculture has often been dismissed as kitchen gardening or marginalised as a remnant of the rural way of life. But not all have been scornful of urban agriculture.
Vegetable gardening using treated waste water is providing cash income to poor urban farmers in the country’s second largest city, Bulawayo.
More than 1 000 farmers, who previously earned US$120 a year from backyard gardens, now make an average of US$3 000 a year selling vegetables and crops from a pilot project launched by the Bulawayo City Council and the Municipal Partnership Eastern and Southern Africa.
“I grow vegetables, tomatoes and maize,” says urban farmer Kelvin Nkomo.
The project has ensured a steady income to pay school fees for his children. Nkomo said at first consumers were sceptical about the produce, but are increasingly willing to buy the vegetables once safety is guaranteed.
Nkomo is one of about 1 000 urban farmers who are part of this project to grow leaf vegetables such as rape, sugar beans and crops like maize using treated waste water.
A critical shortage of water has led the urban farmers to turn to treated waste water to grow food within the city limits.
Bulawayo has a population of approximately one million inhabitants. It is situated in a dry part of the country. It receives less than 800mm of rainfall every year.
Due to the city’s situation in a dry area, water supply has always been a challenge. The city’s water supply dams rarely get to fill up and over flow in a rainfall season. It is therefore usual that measures are put in place by the municipal authorities to limit the residents’ water use through water rationing.
The 350-hectare Gum Tree Plantation Allotment project, in Hyde Park, on the outskirts of the city, is a joint venture partnership between the city of Bulawayo and MDPESA. It is using waste water to improve on food security and create livelihoods.
“For one, it creates employment. While most of the food that is produced by the farmers is eaten by the family, some have enough left over to sell, which creates income,” explains Nkomo.
The water is treated to World Health Organisation standards so as to be used in agricultures and vegetables must be cooked before eating to reduce the risk of pathogens.
Agnes Maziya is another urban farmer benefiting from the project.
She says: “The waste water has enabled me to grow vegetables. I have used money from the sale of these vegetables to pay school fees for my children.”
“We grow vegetables and sugar beans at the project site,” explains Mary Hove, whose husband works for a leading commercial firm in the city.
She says her husband’s salary is not enough to keep a family of six.
“I sometimes make as much as US$15 a day in addition to providing for my family, ” she says.
For the urban poor, food is an expensive commodity. Recent surveys by the International Development Research Centre show that poor urban households in developing countries, including Zimbabwe, spent around 60 percent – and in some cases as much as 89 percent – of their income on food.
But the project is easing this burden. Land provided by the city council has been divided into individual plots of
5 000 square metres and a co-operative section. Each group is allocated 4 500 cubic metres of water daily.
Flood irrigation is used to channel water from the reservoir to the field using lined canals, reducing water loss due to seepage and evaporation.
“The use of marginal water is not very common in Zimbabwe,” said MDPESA urban agriculture programme coordinator, Takawira Mubvami.
In the capital, Harare, marginal water is mostly used to water cattle pastures.
“Bulawayo has pioneered the use of treated water for crops,” said Mubvami.
Mubvami said the water is treated using the radiation and conventional biological methods at the treatment works. Currently, farmers use buckets to get water from the irrigation canal which is not the ideal method, according to Mubvami.
“Suction hoses for flood irrigation should be used. This reduces the frequency of the farmers coming into contact with water,” he said.
Plans are at an advanced stage to introduce this.
“Our urban farmers are growing crops all year round as a result of the reliable water supply from waste water,” said the Bulawayo City Council deputy director of engineering services, Job Ndebele.
Urban agriculture, which produces for both subsistence and the market, is also kind on the environment and creates employment.
Elsewhere in Zimbabwe, local authorities have been viewing urban agriculture as being illegal and urban farmers as invaders. They have not been provided clearly demarcated land, their crops have been destroyed and they have been harassed.
Despite such repression, urban agriculture is an increasingly popular practice. The continuing displacement of the poor from rural areas, population expansion and government cuts in social spending combine to maintain the trend.
Most municipal authorities have been indifferent to the needs of the urban poor. City cultivation covers almost all areas, especially open spaces in residential and industrial areas.
These cultivated spaces where lands that were reserved for future development. They could also be patches of undeveloped land on the fringes of developed pockets.
Municipal by-laws, dating from the colonial era, ban cultivation in the city, with the exception of small vegetable gardens and flowers. Residents are not allowed to keep any livestock at all, unless they get permission from city council.
“Technically, their crops and animals could be seized or destroyed,” said a lecturer in the Department of Rural and Urban Planning at the University of Zimbabwe.
“The situation is so inhuman, environmentally unsustainable, economically inefficient, and politically vulnerable that it is inconceivable that city planners have for a long time continued as they have,” he said.
l [email protected]