Who engages in urban and peri-urban agriculture in the condensed urban slums of Bangladesh?

Abstract

Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) have been considered solutions for improving poor living conditions in undeveloped urban and peri-urban areas of developing countries. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the factors affecting UPA decision-making, with special attention to land constraints among poor urban slum dwellers in Bangladesh. A logit regression model was applied using secondary individual household data obtained from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the predicted probabilities of engaging in UPA for each significant independent variable were estimated. In moderately populated Jessore, households that had more family members without children under five, had some savings, lived in their own house or lived there without paying rent, and had any water logging around the house 1 to 60 days per year were more likely to engage in UPA than other households. On the other hand, in densely populated Tongi, households that lived in their own house or lived there without paying rent, lived there for longer periods, had any water logging around the house less than four months per year, or could rely on neighbors through a difficult period were more likely to engage in UPA than other households. This finding suggests that constraint factors associated with engaging in UPA differ in various urban settings. Therefore, nonprofit/community organizations or local governments are required to plan carefully when promoting UPA, which is one of the coping strategies of poor urban dwellers wishing to enhance their resilience against food insecurity.