The Role of Urban Agriculture in Mitigating Urban Poverty

Urban agriculture is neglected by policy makers, researchers and urban planners in Ethiopia in general and in research area in particular. Moreover, there are controversial ideas concerning its role in household poverty alleviation. In a modest attempt to fill in the research gap observed in this area; the present study was carried out at Bahir Dar city. The objective was to analyze the role of urban agriculture in mitigating urban poverty. The study employed primary data collected by using structured questionnaires from 240 sample respondents selected randomly using proportional to size technique in the respective sub-cities and secondary data sources. The data were analyzed using poverty index, descriptive statistics and logistic regression model analyses. The finding depicted that the poverty alleviation role of urban agriculture was found to be 80.3% in the study area. The result of logistic regression displayed that family labor, non-farm per capita income, membership to cooperative, modern input use and educational level (primary & secondary) had significant and negative impact on the probability of being poor in their marginal effect. Therefore, urban agriculture can play a significant role in poverty reduction, and the government should make it an integral part of urban policy.