By: Dr. Daniella D. Sedegah,
Senior Lecturer, SSD.
School of Sustainable Development.
Abstract
Water use in urban agriculture has mainly covered waste water reuse in several countries. In Ghana and other countries, the studies have largely covered health perceptions and concerns of use of waste water for urban agriculture. Many urban studies on water use have either been assessed from the lab due to water quality concerns or been qualitative because the focus is mainly on descriptives. In our study, we contribute to literature in two ways; first, we assess the various sources of water used in Ghana’s urban agriculture during the dry and rainy seasons and second, employ quantitative methodology to assess the factors that are associated with specific types of water use among farmers within the developing country context. We covered a total of 17 farm sites and 251 farmers in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area using a three stage sampling methodology. Our chi-square analysis and multinomial logit regression revealed that the type of water use is largely associated with farm locations and farm characteristic and personal characteristics to a large extent explained the type of water use during the dry and rainy seasons among urban farmers.