Equitable Land Distribution: Affordability of Land for Urban Crop Farming and Sustainable Productivity in Lagos, Nigeria

Due to increasing population, migration and urbanization, demand for urban land uses is obviously outstripping supply leading to highly conflicting land uses in the urban areas. Consequently, there are lopsided land allocations by urban planners to residential, commercial and industrial uses leaving many uses especially in the informal sector uncatered for. Thus, urban crop farming which is a variant of urban agriculture is considered an illegal land use without land being provided for it. This paper advocates that urban crop farming be validly recognized by policy makers in order to enhance its contribution to sustainable urban land management. Seven farming communities in the metropolis where urban crop farming is thriving well were purposely selected while simple random sampling was subsequently used to select respondents in farming communities and structured questionnaires administered to them. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics to answer the various research questions while regression analysis was used to investigate the research hypothesis. The study established that most of the lands used by urban crop farmers are owned by public authorities (65.8%), private organizations (23.9%) and individuals (7.2%). Respondents therefore largely gained access to land through squatting or land grabbing (60.1%) and renting (28.7%). It also established that urban crop farmers’ productivity could be greatly improved if problems associated with affordability were tackled. The study therefore provided a blueprint for policy makers that would enable equitable land distribution in the Lagos metropolis.