Abstract:
This study was carried out to evaluate the contribution of urban agriculture to household
poverty alleviation in Morogoro municipality. A survey was conducted covering a sample
of 100 households selected using a stratified random sampling procedure. The analytical
techniques used were gross margin, Gini coefficient and coefficient of variation. The
findings of the study showed that urban agriculture is practiced by people from all social
demographic groups. The Gross margin analysis, showed that paddy provided the highest
gross margin averaging at Tsh 257 700, followed by maize (Tsh 130 725). The gross
margins for other crops were Tsh 51 650 (for beans), Tsh 44 100 (banana), Tsh 55 197.50
(vegetable), Tsh 85 050 (cassava) and Tsh 82 230 (fruits). For livestock, egg production
recorded the highest annual gross margin of Tsh 4 110 000, followed by milk (Tsh 2 598
000) and pork (Tsh 1 538 400).Urban agriculture contributed about 13% to total household
income with livestock keeping and crop production contributing about 7 % and 6%
respectively. The source of household income that contributed greatly to total household
income was salaries/wages which contributed about 44% of the household income
followed by business, transfer payments and other sources which contributed about 27%,
11 % and 5 % respectively. Three income sources—business, transfer payments and other
sources—represented inequality-decreasing sources of income while two sources of
income—agricultural and salaries/wages—represented inequality-increasing sources of
income. Considering urban agriculture alone, income from livestock enterprise represented
an inequality-increasing source of income and crop production represented inequality-
decreasing source of income. The study recommends that there is a need of integrating
urban agriculture in the urban economy and legitimitise that urban agriculture become an
integral part of the urban economy and deliberate actions should be taken to promote it.
