Two terms that are enjoying increasing overwhelming global literature advocacy and discussion are urban farming and climate change. While there is increasing advocacy towards the relevance of urban agriculture for urban dwellers and how it translates into a mitigation strategy against climate change variability and adaptation to urban poverty, the effect of some urban farming activities and how it serves as a driver to climate change needs to be investigated. In most of the urban periphery where there is availability of a large expanse of land areas, farming activities are usually practised in form of settlement farm, livestock rearing, or plantation agriculture. The study based on quantitative and qualitative data from urban farmers in Ibadan argues that the location of urban farmlands is dependent on climatic factor such as access to land. The study identified that climate variability as reported by the urban farmers has resulted in the increased use of fertilizer for farming by urban farmers, and the main activity that is pro-climate change and variability is bush burning.
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In Africa, Gonzalex-Sanchez et al. (2018) reported that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Africa temperature expected increase alert of between 2-6ºC within the next 100 years, which expected to result in rising average temperature and varying rainfall patterns which will birth incidences of aridity, drought, floods and subsequently a decline in food production. The effect on the changing and varying climate can be said to be multi-sectoral and multi-dynamic in nature. Its effect is felt in energy (Scott et al., 1994; Iwayemi, 2008; Oyedepo, 2012; Schaeffer et al., 2012), transportation accessibility, connectivity (Chapman, 2007; Amosun et al., 2012; Dillimono & Dickinson, 2015; Bakun et al., 2015; Metzler et al., 2019), health conditions (Popoola & Alli, 2015; Ryan et al., 2015) and food security status (Wahab & Popoola, 2018, 2019) of people and places.
Climate change as a stressor is expected to affect the quantity and quality of food produced across Africa (Connolly-Boutin & Smit, 2016). Henderson (2017) argues that the coming decades will be characterized by a decline in crop yield owing to the changing climate. Schroth et al. (2016) reported that in Nigeria, Togo, Guinea and Cote D’Ivoire, climate change has been a main identifier for the projected threat to the production of cocoa. Conway et al. (2015) states that the climate change experience in Southern Africa which has resulted in an expected 20% drop in precipitation is expected to result in shortages, reduced availability and crop yield. Thornton and Herrero (2015) reported that the threat of climate change in Africa’s food system and livelihood security is a result of her heavy dependence on a rain-fed system of agriculture. In Cape Town South Africa, the water crisis is a result of drought and increasing aridity which has been traced to climatic driven environmental factors (Wolski, 2017; Fallon, 2018).