By EMMANUEL ONYANGO

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Due to the rapid expansion in Tanzania’s major cities, and with the growth the rising demand for food, policy makers and urban administrators have been scratching their heads for solutions.

Gone are spaces such as Msimbazi Valley, which was once a source of vegetables, thanks to the rapid growth, leaving city dwellers looking farther afield for their supply of groceries.

It is against this background that Malembo Farm, located near the waterfront in the Mbezi suburb, Kinondoni, on the outskirts of Dar, has sought not only to feed this need but also to act as training ground for urban youth who wish to engage in green farming.

Green farming involves organic agriculture, which does not deplete resources or harm the biodiversity.

The farmers use compost, green manure, and bone meal and places emphasis on techniques such as crop rotation to maintain soil health.

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The location of Malembo Farm, which overlooks the Indian Oceanic, is ideal for this kind of farming.

Lucas Elias, the man who runs the farm, says it is a training centre for interested youth.

Skills

The repertoire of knowledge and skills ranges from poultry farming to technical expertise in handling chicken, aquatic fish and crops.

Lucas has a greenhouse where he grows vegetables such as lotus Chinese cabbage and spinach. They use drip irrigation, with the water distributed mostly using gravity. The farm uses renewable energy sources to decrease gas emissions. The water is recycled.

There are three conical gardens and he practises hydroponic farming. Hydroponics is the technique of growing plants using a water-based nutrient solution rather than soil, and can include an aggregate substrate, or growing media such as coconut coir.

Lucas says that the inadequacies in agricultural policies in the country has been a drawback in the development of agriculture and agro-business in Tanzania.

He says the country lags in technological innovations to attract youth to engage in large-scale farming in a country endowed with large swathes of arable land.

Lucas says financial institutions are not funding a majority of farmers due to the lack of collateral, which is discouraging unemployed youth from going into agriculture, as they don’t own land.

The United Nations Food Agricultural Organisation shows that 60 percent of the world’s land is arable, and Tanzania, Mozambique and Zambia own close to half of it.

The National Bureau of Statistics of Tanzania says that out of the over 45 million hectares available for agricultural activities, only 24.4 million hectares are used for irrigated farming and 10.9 million hectares for normal, rain-fed agriculture.