| dc.description.abstract | Urban agriculture is the practice of cultivating, processing and .distributing food in, or around (peri-urban), a village, town or city as is practiced in many countries of the world. In Kenya though there are no legal municipal laws Urban agriculture is widely practiced to supply the diet of the poor. Mwiki location experiences chronic food and nutrition insecurity. Many of the households practice subsistence agriculture to supplement their diets and may be acquire some income. The objective of this study was therefore to assess the contribution of urban agriculture to food and nutritional security in the low income families in peri-urban area of Mwiki Location of Kasarani Division Kasarani District.
A descriptive cross-sectional survey was used. The study population consisted of households who practice urban agriculture either as fulltime farmers or part time farmers but not in salaried employment. The required information for dietary diversity was collected using a questionnaire comprising 14 food groups. Energy, protein, and vitamin A were the nutrients considered and their adequacy and their association with dietary diversity assessed. Dietary diversity scores were developed to measure diet diversification, while nutrient adequacy ratio for each nutrient was calculated to reflect specific nutrient adequacies in the diet. A pre-tested structured questionnaire and focused group discussion were used to collect information on various areas in the study. Data was then analysed using stastical packages for social sciences (SPSS).
The findings showed that most of the heads of households relied on casual labor to earn more livelihoods. More than half of the study population keep small livestock such as poultry, rabbits, dairy goats and some keep dairy cows, there are also those who rely on crops such as kales, cabbage, sarget. Although the study showed that up to 78% of residents engage in urban agriculture, they are not able to obtain sufficient food for own consumption from their production and rely on purchases to a large extent. Demographic characteristics of the households were recorded using a previously pre-tested structured questionnaire. Results were analysed using Statistical Packages for social sciences (SPSS version 12.0). Descriptive statistics, analysis of variance and correlations were performed and p~0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
There is a significant relationship between dietary intake of protein, energy and vitamin A and the age of the respondents. However the study shows a positive but insignificant relationship between dietary intake and type of roofing, type of wall and type of floor. This means that, occupation and age determined a lot about the dietary intake of protein, energy and vitamin A. The study shows that there was a positive and significant relationship between reducing the frequency of meals and food sufficiency as showed by p=0.008; and between reducing the meal size and food sufficiency as shown by p 0.042. The study further showed a positive but insignificant relationship between sale of assets and food sufficiency as shown by p=0.387. This implies that reduction of the frequency of meals served well as a coping measure to ensure food sufficiency in the household. | en_US |
