Urban agriculture can ease COVID-19 impact

APART from battling with the coronavirus health emergency, countries around the world today are taking various measures to ease the apparent longer-term impacts of the health menace on food security.

So some countries have enormously embarked on the development of urban agriculture, establishing a municipality-level commission which is fully in charge of urban agricultural development in cities.

Various studies show that almost all countries would face food supply challenges in some way.

A recent Food and Agriculture Organisation analysis states that in the absence of timely and effective policies, millions more are likely to join the ranks of the hungry as a result of the COVID19-triggered recession.

That number will vary according to the severity of economic contractions, ranging from 14,4 million to 38,2 million or even 80,3 million more hungry people, should there be a contraction of 2,5 or 10 percentage points, respectively, in all 101 net food-importing countries’ gross domestic product growth.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to increase the food insecurity of the country due to resource mobilisation towards prevention of the disease, movement restriction subsequently affecting food production, transport, processing and consumption patterns.

Cognisant of these plausible food crises, cities should launch an official extensive urban agricultural scheme. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the urban agricultural scheme launch came with the donation of 200 water pumps and five tractors handed over to farmers in and around the capital city, with the aim of alleviating scarcity of agricultural products due to COVID-19 pandemic as well as creating job opportunities for young people in agriculture.

With the current pressing situation, many believe that the urban agriculture initiative would mean a lot in stabilising food price in cities and town.