摘要：

As any visitor to Kenya's capital can see, farming activities are everywhere, notonly in the outskirts but also in the heart of the city. Along roadsides, in themiddle of roundabouts, along and between railway lines, in parks, along rivers,under power lines, in short, in all kinds of open public spaces, crops are cultivatedand animals like cattle, goats and sheep roam around. What most visitors do notsee is that there is even more farming, notably in backyards in the residentialareas. People of all socio-economic classes grow food whenever and whereverpossible. This paper is based on the four studies that have been carried out thus faron urban farming in Nairobi.1 By "urban farming", we mean any farming activitywithin the city boundaries2, including the cultivation of food and cash crops,animal husbandry, forestry and the production of flowers and garden plants.Nairobi is located at the southern end of Kenya's Central Highlands and lies at analtitude of between 1600 and 1800 metres above sea level (Ng'ang'a 1992). Meanannual temperature is 17oC, while the mean daily maximum and minimum are23oC and 12oC, respectively (Situma 1992). Mean annual rainfall ranges fromabout 800 to about 1,050 mm, depending on altitude (Ng'ang'a 1992). Most of itfalls in two distinct seasons: the long rains from mid-March to June and the shortrains from mid-October to early December.The present population of Kenya is estimated to be about 30 million. The averagepopulation growth between 1980 and 1993 was 3.3%. Due to the large influx ofpeople from the rural areas, the population of Nairobi grew much faster, from halfa million in 1969 (Kenya 1971) to an estimated 2 million in 1998 (Kenya 1996a).Most of the migrants end up in one of the low-income areas of the city. Almosthalf (47%) of Nairobi's population live in very-low-income neighbourhoods(Jones et al. 1995). Population densities can reach values of more than 30,000persons/km2. One of the highest densities is found in Korogocho Sub-Location,where in 1989 more than 44,000 people were packed together in an area of aboutone km2 (Kenya 1994). Such "informal" or "uncontrolled" residential areas, asthey are usually called, can be found as "pockets" all over the city (Syagga &Kiamba 1992).

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