ASSESSMENT OF THE EFFECTS OF URBAN EXPANSION ON THE SURROUNDING RURAL AGRICULTURAL LAND AND LIVELIHOODS OF THE PERI-URBAN FARMERS: THE CASE OF TEFKI TOWN, OROMIA REGION, ETHIOPIA

Abstract

The process of urban expansion is a worldwide phenomenon, recorded in the history of all urban centers and it started with the earliest human civilization of Babylonian. This phenomenon is now a rising trend seen all over the world, mostly in an upsetting rate in developing countries. Most small town near Addis Ababa city is recently becoming expanded towards the adjacent farm land. This has directly resulted in the loss of the surrounding farm land. An expansion of this town was resulted in the conversion of farm land to urban land uses. Therefore, the major objective of this study is to analyze the effects of urban expansion on farm lands on rural kebeles surrounding Tefki town from the year 2012-2016. Specifically, the study was concentrated on Identifying the effects of urban expansion on the farmer’s households in terms of land loss and income from 2012-2016, Identify the opportunities of the house hold heads farmers due to the loss of land for the expansion of the town over agricultural land and assessing the policy implementation on compensation for land on time for those who lost their land Hence, a sample of 166 households who lost their farm land due to the town expansion were selected by the use of snowball sampling method and 5 officials from different institution were purposively taken. The study was undertaken by using cross sectional research design. In addition, secondary data obtained from different sources were arranged in order to understand the magnitude of the town’s expansion from year to year, primarily data collected from sampled households by the use of questionnaires and interviews were also processed and analyzed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. The result from the findings showed that an expansion of the town during the last five (5) years made significant effects on farm land surrounding the town. Some of the causes for the expansion of this town towards farm land were population growth and industrialization in the area. Although they access to certain services like road, water, school; it was also brought effects like loss of agricultural land and losses of assets, unfair compensation and conflict between administration and affected farmers. As compared to the average land size that the farming community in the study area had before they lost some of their lands due to the ongoing Urbanization trend in the locality, every farmer has been made to lose an average of their farm land that he/she is economically dependent on. Besides, the urbanization trend in the study area has had an expelling effect on a significant proportion of the population out of the agricultural business on which most of them devoted decades of their ages. Due to this a detailed potential effect assessment studies have to be carried out by responsible bodies prior to implementing urbanization programs since their negative impacts could sometimes outweigh their benefits.