Urban Agriculture Waste Management Practices and Community Environmental Perceptions in Osun State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study assessed the waste management practices among urban farmers and explored the perceptions of residents on environmental changes associated with nearby farms in Osun State, Nigeria. The study adopted a mixed methods approach that included data from 390 urban farms and 310 nearby residents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse quantitative data, while thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. The findings highlight a structural infrastructural deficit. Dedicated waste disposal facilities are only present in 12.6% of farm neighbourhoods with near-zero adequacy and condition index scores (FAI = 0.30 and FCI = 0.26, respectively). Consequently, urban farmers resort to informal waste collection systems (55.6%), open dumping (35.4%), burning (33.3%), and most significantly, water body disposal (22.8%). The results of the Chi-square analysis showed that waste disposal practices are uniform with the exception of government refuse vans utilisation, which showed a significant variation across urban centres (χ² = 8.963, df = 2, p = 0.011 < 0.05). Residents perceive an overwhelming negative impact of farms on the environment (66.8%), with 60.3% reporting that air quality has worsened, and 65.5% identifying waste management as the most critical environmental issue related to proximate farms. The study reveals that urban agriculture waste governance in Osun State is beset by institutional neglect, regulatory invisibility, and infrastructure deficiency. Mandatory farm registration, the provision of dedicated waste infrastructure, improving local waste collection, and enforcing environmental standards are recommended as policy measures to mitigate the uneven distribution of the environmental costs of urban agriculture.