An examination of the extent to which architectural design has supported commercial urban agriculture
Abstract
The modernisation of agriculture to the state that it can have the ability to alleviate a number
of low income earners out of poverty has been a vision of the government of Uganda since
2000.(Nabbumba and Bahiigwa 2003)
One of the first introduced agricultural technologies included improved maize varieties,
mixed cattle breeds etc. In spite of the efforts by the state to modernise agriculture from the
subsistence norm to a more commercialised system, there are still issues to do with under
productivity in the agricultural sector. This under productivity has continued to see many
farmers, investors and the government not benefiting from the profitability of agriculture as
an economic activity. This struggle in the Agricultural sector could be illuminating the need
for new-fangled approaches to designing these farms to enable them maximise productivity.
This research was an examination of the extent to which Architectural design had supported
the productivity of commercial urban agriculture on UWEPO farms. A more detailed
background and objectives of the study are clearly stated in Chapter 1. The study sought to
identify any productivity-hindering challenges in the agricultural facilities which could be
solved with the aid of architectural design.
Chapter 2 contains the literature review that took a panoramic view at the phenomenon of
urban agriculture and analysed why urban farms were productive in the different global
locations. This provided the benchmark against which the productivity of UWEPO farms was
accessed. The structure of the research design is demystified in Chapter 3.
The findings on the UWEPO farm in Chapter 4, however revealed very different farm
models than those studied in the literature review. The reasons for these variations are
discussed under Chapter 5 where the productivity of the farms is also accessed.
The latter stage (Chapter 6) of this investigation was the generation of recommendations on
how these commercial urban farms/agricultural facilities can be architecturally redesigned for
maximisation of output.