Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

Urban Farm DB summary

A policy-recommendation text on urban agriculture in Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries (2018) states that private landowners will more readily allow others to cultivate their land if given incentives, that Ghanaian urban residents rarely resettle in rural areas, and that even an attractive government relocation package failed to draw redundant urban residents back to rural areas. Because sub-Saharan farming divides labor by gender — men earning cash income, women farming for subsistence — most people running commercial urban farms are expected to be men. Where urban cultivation is small-scale and open-space-based, government should focus on the problems of open-space cultivators and provide conditions that raise yields, but should avoid paternalism by not granting urban farmers preferential treatment over rural farmers.