Where does Lusaka get its vegetables?
Agricultural activities in townships (gardening and rainy-season cropping) provide a source of vegetables of the traditional type, such as the very widely distributed Amaranthus spp. In 1989, a group of researchers carried out a survey of the vegetable supply of urban townships in Zambia (Ogle et al. 1990). They found that nearly 50% of the respondents practiced vegetable gardening (Table 2), mostly in the dry season.The household-garden survey, carried out in 1992/93, showed that nearly 40% of the respondents in Lusaka still gathered wild vegetables for additional food or income (Figure 2). All of these families have gardens to augment their gathering activities. Urban households are more vulnerable during food shortages because they are unable to compensate for this through gathering. Plant resources have vanished around the urban centres.Table 1. Nutritional value of some widely grown or gathered vegetables, Zambia.Source: FAO (1990), except as noted below.Note: ND, no data; tr., tr
