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Water use among urban vegetable farmers in Ghana

Daniella D. Sedegah1, Michael Tuffour1 & Rexford Asamoah1

1School of Sustainable Development,

University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Ghana

Abstract

Water use in urban agriculture studies have mainly covered waste water reuse in several countries and these have largely focused on the health perceptions and concerns. Besides, many of these studies have either been assessed from the lab due to water quality concerns or remained qualitative because of the focus on descriptives. In this study, we contribute to literature in two ways. First, we assessed the various sources of water used in Ghana’s urban agriculture during the dry and rainy seasons and second, we employed quantitative methodology to assess the factors that are associated with specific types of water used among farmers within the context of a developing country. We covered a total of 251 farmers from 17 farm sites in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA). Our chi-square analysis and multinomial logit regression revealed that the type of water use is largely associated with location of farms within GAMA. Also, farm and farmer characteristics to a large extent explained the type of water use during the dry and rainy seasons among urban farmers.