The Contribution of Urban Agriculture for the Urban Household Incomes in Kandy District
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Date
2019-02
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Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
There is a high potential to apply urban agriculture in Sri Lanka to earn additional income for households as it is gradually popularizing in the country at present. This study aimed to analyze the role of urban agriculture in the urban household incomes. Objectives of the study were to identify the benefits of urban agriculture, to evaluate the perception of urban growers towards urban agriculture, to determine the profitability and contribution of urban agriculture to total household incomes while identifying the constraints faced by urban growers. Kandy district was selected as the study area taking a sample of 100 urban households using the procedure of convenience sampling. A questionnaire was administered to collect the data. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon signed-ranked test and gross margin analysis were used as the analytical tools. The findings of the study revealed that, there is a positive perception towards the urban agriculture. Further, it revealed that the highest and the lowest gross margins were observed in Anthurium (Anthurium andraeanum) and Ambarella (Spondias pinnata) respectively. The study also found that urban agriculture has contributed about 1.63% on average to the total household income of the urban sector. Off farm engagements contributed about 85.4% to the household income of the urban sector followed by business and other sources such as transfer payments about 12.05% and 0.87% respectively on average. Inadequate land to cultivate, time constraints, high cost of irrigation and pest attacks were identified as constraints that urban growers faced. However, at present urban agriculture is not practiced well at household level and the study revealed the need to enhance the awareness regarding the potentials and benefits of urban agriculture.
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Keywords
Agriculture, Entrepreneurial Agriculture