Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Malawi, 2005a, b; USAID, 2005). Despite this, there is a real gap in Malawian
policy, as UA is not seriously considered by the Malawian government as a
viable livelihood option.
For example, despite UA being mentioned within the 'Town and Country
Planning Act' (Government of Malawi, 1998a), there are no practical
regulations to guide and support urban food production (Kwapata et al, 2001).
The latest policy instruments put forward by the government still favour rural
farmers but do not support or acknowledge urban food producers. As a result,
the Malawi Growth Strategy (Government of Malawi, 2004), Malawi Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper (Government of Malawi, 2002) and previous models
to reduce poverty in Malawi all fail to recognize the potential of UA.
The understanding of UA as a concept in Malawi is so limited that the
mention of it is often based on speculation without any real awareness of who
urban farmers are, what crops they produce, or the importance it plays in the
local economy (Mkwambisi, 2005). Therefore, the purpose of this study was
to evaluate the contribution UA makes to food security in Malawi. The
information presented is designed to contribute to policy recommendations
that are empirically grounded.
L ITERATURE ,C ONCEPTS AND O BJECTIVES
The 1996 World Food Summit in Rome defined food security as a state when
all people, at all times, have both the physical and economic access to su cient,
safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an
active and healthy life (FAO, 1996). The FAO (2002) explores this definition in
more detail, pointing out that food security has two components: it is a
phenomenon relating to individuals whereby the nutritional status of the
individual household member is the focus; and food security should highlight
the risk that this nutritional status may be undermined.
Garrett (2000) and the World Bank (1986) have developed similar themes
by pointing out that urban food insecurity and malnutrition may be different
from rural food insecurity because most urban dwellers depend on incomes to
purchase their food. This relatively recent discussion hearkens back to Sen's
(1991) approach that considered food security as a function of a person's - or
household's - bundle of 'food entitlements'. According to this argument,
people have different ways of meeting their household's food entitlements
using the totality of rights and opportunities that they have (Sen, 1991).
Broadly speaking, Sen identified four types of entitlement: direct or
production-based entitlement, which occurs when a person consumes or sells
the food they produce; labour-based entitlement, which is obtained through
working for a wage and purchasing food from the market; trade-based
entitlements obtained through sale or barter of assets; and transfer-based
entitlement, where entitlement is transferred through charity or food aid.
Sen's work is important because it focuses on the ability of people to
command food through legal means available to society (Sen, 1991). The
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