In the growing slums of Nairobi, home to more than one-half the population of Kenya's capital city, food insecurity and environmental contamination are an increasing concern. Given the growing number of slum residents, new ways need to be identified to address urban poverty. One approach is through urban agriculture, which allows people to positively contribute towards their local livelihoods. In early 2008, following post-election violence, a non-governmental organization introduced a new form of urban agriculture called sack gardening to residents in the Kibera slums. Tens of thousands of resident now engage in sack gardening, but these urban agriculturalists are potentially exposed to environmental toxins via contaminated soil and water due to the lack of sanitation in the slums. This doctoral dissertation research project will examine the tradeoff between sack gardening as an activity that may help to improve people's ability to eat or earn an income and the potential health risks to which they are exposed. The doctoral student will focus on the following questions: (1) How does participation in sack gardening serve to improve the livelihoods of gardeners in the Kibera slums of Nairobi? (2) To what extent does participation in sack gardening expose people to environmental risks? Key informant interviews, in-depth interviews with members of thirty households, and surveys of 200 households in Kibera will provide data regarding the ways in which sack gardening contributes to various aspects of the livelihoods of people. Soil, plant tissue, and irrigation water samples from household gardens will be analyzed for heavy metal contamination. These data will be combined with interview and survey data to answer questions related to the extent that people are exposed to environmental risks.
Project results will provide quantitative and qualitative measures of the tradeoffs inherent in urban sack gardening regarding household livelihood strategies and food security on the one hand and exposure to environmental risks on the other. Because urban agriculture increasingly is promoted as a viable option to improve urban food security around the world, this project will provide practical information on the potential benefits to improved food security and environmental risks related to urban gardening for slum dwellers. In addition to contributing to the academic literature, information from this research will be useful for local community members, non-governmental organizations, and policy makers interested in working on issues of increasing food security and health in Kibera or other slum areas. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.
This dissertation research examined the impacts of a particular form of urban agriculture, called sack gardening, in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Urban agriculture is often promoted as a means of addressing urban food insecurity, but because slum dwellers generally lack access to plots of land to farm, this activity has remained largely inaccessible to them. Sack gardening, a relatively new form of urban agriculture in the Kibera slums, involves planting various crops into the top and sides of large burlap sacks, which allows people to plant a larger number of plants into relatively small spaces by making use of the vertical space occupied by the sacks. While urban agriculture has great potential to address urban food insecurity, there are also potential risks associated with farming in urban environments that lack formal waste and sanitation systems. Households that consume produce grown in urban environments are potentially exposed to a range of environmental contaminants, including heavy metals and biological pathogens. This dissertation investigated the trade-offs between urban agriculture as a means of improving local livelihoods and increasing household food security, and as an activity that potentially exposes people to a variety of environmental risks. This research used qualitative interviews, a household surveys, focus group discussions and sampling of plant, soil and water samples for heavy metal contamination and total coliform bacteria to investigate the impacts of sack gardening. This research demonstrated that sack gardening is a viable livelihood strategy in the Kibera slums that can be integrated with other household livelihood strategies, and that farmers in Kibera were able to successfully integrate sack gardening into their urban livelihood strategies. With regards to household food security, we found that sack gardening contributed to improved household food security directly. Farming households consumed a greater variety of vegetables than non-farmers, including many indigenous vegetables, which have broader nutritional benefits and are culturally preferred to the kale, swiss chard and cabbage which are consumed by most households in Kibera. Farmers reported feeling more food secure than non-farmers, and sack gardening also resulted in an increase in social capital, which helps food security indirectly. In terms of exposure to environmental risk, this research demonstrated that farmers’ perceptions of environmental risks focused primarily on visible contaminates, while the major contaminants found in samples of vegetables from their sack gardens were heavy metals, often at concentrations above the recommended levels for human consumption. The disconnect between farmers’ perceptions of environmental risk and actual risk raises questions about how to appropriately promote urban agriculture within urban areas as well as the trade-offs inherent with farming in densely populated urban areas. While this research is based on a case study of urban agriculture in one location in Kenya, it demonstrates both the potential benefits and risks associated with farming in an urban environment. The intellectual merit of this project lies in its interdisciplinary approach to understanding how urban agriculture has served to empower slum residents, both economically and socially. The broader impacts of this research are several. First, this research has provided practical information on the benefits and environmental risks related to urban gardening for slum dwellers in Nairobi, a typically underrepresented group of people. Second, institutional ties between the University of Nairobi and Michigan State University have been strengthened, and resulted in the training of local field assistants. Most importantly, this research has provided useful information to local community members, NGOs, and policy makers interested in working on issues of increasing food security in Kibera, or other slum areas.
