Saturday, December 7, 2024

Namibia turns to urban agriculture for sustainable food security

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The agriculture ministry recently launched a special project on urban agriculture, aimed at strengthening Namibia food systems and ensuring recovery from emergencies and disease-related shocks.

Agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein, who launched the project on the day, said the country’s food systems could recover from emergencies through the Build Back Better (BBB) programme.

The BBB programme is funded by the government of Japan and aims to support efforts towards strengthening the Namibia food systems to recover from Covid-19 pandemic, emergencies and related shocks.

It also aims to improve the livelihoods of mainly informal vendors and small-scale farmers in urban settings.

According to Schlettwein, the project envisage to achieve these aims through multi-faceted interventions that are focused on the prevention of the further spread of Covid-19 through the provision of hand-washing facilities for informal food markets, urban food production to mitigate humanitarian needs of food security and nutrition, amongst others.

The project is also geared towards addressing the socio-economic impacts of Covid-19 by supporting the livelihoods of the vulnerable through income-generating activities.

Urban agriculture, urban farming or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in or around urban areas. Urban agriculture is also the term used for animal husbandry, aquaculture, urban beekeeping and horticulture. These activities occur in peri-urban areas as well. Read more…

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