Impacts of Urban Agriculture Annual Report.p65 - International ...

Introduction to urban livelihoods and marketsThe sustainable urban livelihoods frameworkrecognizes that increasingly in rural settings, and verymuch so in complex urban contexts, poor householdsdepend on a diversity of strategies to ensure foodsecurity, income and well-being. These diversestrategies depend on a set of household assets orcapitals: natural capital (such as land, water, pollutants);financial capital (money); physical capital (houses,equipment, vehicles, animals, seeds); human capital(labor power, ie. health, and capacity or skill); and socialcapital (networks of trust, exchange and mutualsupport, which all individuals and households maintainto a greater or lesser degree).Deployment of assets in household livelihoodsstrategies also depends on the influences andimpediments that household members experiencewhen they deal with urban institutions, such asmunicipal regulation, or policies of local marketingpractices. This constrained deployment of assets and thelivelihood outcomes which they achieve are all part ofthe urban livelihood process. Inability to adequatelydeploy assets can leave households vulnerable toeconomic, environmental, health, and political stressesand shocks, which are referred to as the “vulnerabilitycontext”: the level of susceptibility to poverty and thedifficulty of moving out of poverty. Conversely, betteraccess to social and material assets, improvedcapabilities and diversified activities to deploy theseassets, combined with a more supportive institutionalcontext, can move households out of poverty.The participation of men and women in agriculturevaries along the rural-to-urban transect, as do otheraspects of farming systems, such as land area, tenancy,principal crops and animals production, food securityand marketing strategies and health risks. Women playa dominant role in many types of urban agriculturesystems, especially those involving small livestock andmultiple food crops. The important role women play in“feeding cities” indicates the importance of workingwith them in action research interventions. Women’sfrequent access to sources of social capital (women’sassociations) provides scaling out opportunities.9