Multiple Livelihoods and Wastewater Irrigation Farming in Peri Urban Areas in Zambia: Opportunities and Challenges

The urban poor use heavy metal contaminated wastewater in production of crops to sustain their livelihood in Zambia Despite the inherent dangers of food crop contaminations and potential health risks associated with consumption of heavy metal contaminated food crops a lot of people engaged in wastewater irrigation farming as a source of livelihood in peri urban areas in Zambia The study focused on the urban poor engaged in cultivation of crops using heavy metal contaminated industrial wastewater and domestic sewage in order to sustain their livelihoods in peri urban areas of Mufulira and Kafue towns in Zambia To study investigated the livelihoods of people engaged in crop production using heavy metal contaminated wastewater Two study field sites were selected in the peri-urban areas of Mufulira in the Copperbelt Province and Kafue in Lusaka Province in Zambia The snowball principle was used to select informal crop cultivators at two study sites A total of 31 crop cultivators were sampled at New Farm study site in Mufulira from 26th April 2007 to 14th November 2007 whilst a total of 29 crop cultivators were sampled at Chilumba Gardens study site in Kafue from 17th September 2013 to 12th December 2013 The interview schedules were administered to selected crop cultivators The results indicated that the majority of informal crop cultivators had attained primary education and engaged in multiple livelihood activities for self sustenance The majority of crop cultivators were poor by Zambian Government standards There were multiple sources of labour while there were multiple markets for selling of crops The benefits of crop production include improved food security at the households and income generation which contribute to accumulation of capital used to invest into other economic activities apart from crop production Consumption of heavy metal contaminated food crops and informal access to the land cultivated were the major challenges In conclusion th

TRADITIONAL FARMING PRACTICES AND WASTEWATER IRRIGATION FARMING IN PERIURBAN, ZAMBIA

Studies on urban and peri urban agriculture in Zambia have not adequately tackled issuespertaining to farming practices in wastewater irrigation farming. The investigated thefarming practices in relation to heavy metal contaminated wastewater irrigated farming attwo peri urban areas in Zambia. The method comprised observation of crop cultivationactivities at field plots located at intervals along transects established in the stratified landzones at the two study sites namely New Farm in Mufulira and Chilumba Gardens in Kafue.The results revealed that farming practices were characterised by traditional landmanagement farming practices and traditional multiple cropping systems which wereinfluenced by a combination of agro ecological factors as well as availability of heavy metalcontaminated wastewater which has the potential to contaminate soils and crops. Thefarming practices were based on adaptation of traditional production systems to peri-urbanwastewater irrigation farming which confirmed the results from other developing countries