City overview
Introduction
Accra is the capital city of Ghana and covers an area of about 170 km². It has an estimated population of 1.6 million (Ghana Statistical Services, 2000). The population growth rate is estimated at 3.4 % per
annum. Accra lies within the coastal-savanna zone with low annual rainfall averaging 810 mm distributed over less than 80 days. The rainfall pattern of the town is bimodal with the major season falling between the months of March and June, and a minor rainy season around October. Mean temperatures vary from 24 ºC in August to 28 ºC in March.
Types and Characteristics of UA
There are two major categories of UA in Accra: household gardening, which takes place in and around homes, and open-space farming (about 300 ha of open-space urban farming) which takes place on lands some distance away from human dwellings along drains, road sides, abandoned waste dumps, around public buildings, wetlands, etc. Irrigated urban agriculture takes place on more than seven larger sites with a total area of about 150 ha, mostly along streams and drains
Tenure arrangements on urban open spaces vary. In general, no open space farmer owns the land cultivated and hardly do they pay any fee. Most of these lands are owned by the government, Municipal authorities or individuals. In Accra, farming in open spaces takes place without formal authorisation. Farmers may or may not be given notice to quit the land to make room for any development. Under such insecure tenure conditions, farmers do not invest in farm infrastructure, soil conservation or long-term fertility improvements.
In urban Accra, there are about 1000 vegetable farmers of whom 60% produce exotic and 40% indigenous local or traditional vegetables. Some of the modern or exotic crops cultivated are lettuce, cabbage, spring onions, cucumber, green pepper and cauliflower, while the more traditional crops are tomatoes, okro, garden eggs (aubergine) and hot pepper. Plot sizes under UA cultivation range between 0.01-0.02 ha per farmer, and reach 20 ha in peri-urban areas. Farmers are engaged in seasonal farming, growing crops such as maize, tomatoes, pepper, okra, groundnut, etc, relying entirely on rainfall or engaged in irrigated vegetable farming 28.02.07 pattern depends completely on the demand for a particular product at a particular time. As many vegetables are grown in short rotations (for example, lettuce can be cultivated 8-11 times per year).
Households farmers use treated pipe-borne water and grey water (water from bathrooms and kitchens) for irrigation, and open-space farmers use drain water, streams/rivers, pipe borne water and hand-dug wells, (in decreasing order); peri-urban farmers rely mainly on rainfall and streams/rivers.
Urban open space vegetable farming is dominated by men mainly because of the arduous nature of most of the farm tasks. Women rather dominate the marketing of the produce with a few men playing the role of wholesalers and very few found as retailers in the markets. A number of reasons account for this gender division:
- the arduous nature of vegetable farm work, especially land clearing, land preparation, carrying water cans for watering and spraying,
- general lack of interest in farming, and
- traditional/cultural definition of gender roles- men do the farming and women do the selling/marketing.
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