Impact Of Urban Expansion On Fringe Zone Farmers

The city of Mekelle is expanding horizontally by engulfing of the surrounding settlements particularly in recent year.The reason behind the expansion of the city is the high potential in attracting investments mainly due to high accessibility to various types of infrastructures and government policies towards investment.The expansion of the city has been made at the expense of conversion of plenty agricultural lands and green lands of the surrounding settlements.This study was under taken at peri-urban area of Mekelle city to explore and analyze the rapid expansion of the city and its impacts on farming communities.Hence,a sample of 172 households who had previously been displaced from their land due to the town expansion was taken for the study.In addition,secondary data from various sources were complimented the study in order to understand the magnitude of the city's expansion.Primarily data collected from sampled households were processed and analyzed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences(SPSS).The result from the findings indicates that an expansion of the town during the last few years made significant impacts on livelihood of farming community on the peri-urban areas:shortage of agricultural land,land insecurity,and loss of assets.The result indicates the average land holding of sample households is the lowest to sustain their livelihood from agriculture.Although,proximity to urban center benefits peri-urban farmers in terms of accessibility to infrastructures,markets finance and off farm employment opportunities,farmers in peri-urban areas of Mekelle city did not fully take opportunities that were come up with the city expansion and development.This is mainly due to shortage of land size and lack economic options that absorb them.In addition,rehabilitation mechanisms used by the city municipality mainly an arrangement of cash compensation for evicted households is found inadequate to replace the resource base,which is land.As a result,most of the families exposed to further economic,social and cultural impoverishment.Therefore,to ensure sustainable city development,government should make sound planning prior to displacement without treating farmers' livelihood living at the edge of the urban area.These include pursuing appropriate compensation packages and implementing other available opportunities to rehabilitate the livelihood of evicted households.