In the Gaza Strip, the rapid increase in the urban population, land scarcity and the challenge of urban food security has increased the attention on the practice of urban agriculture, particularly in terms of the pressures this puts on the (scarce) water supply.

In spite of the fact that urban agriculture is practiced widely in the Gaza Strip, planning for it is almost non-existent, and seems to have been neglected by water companies. Farm profit analysis suggests that the underlying principles of urban agriculture have failed and must now be reconsidered.

Furthermore, evidence shows that there is illegal over-exploitation of water resources by farmers in the Gaza Strip, who are using it for irrigation. This illegally used water supply is enough to irrigate more than 100km2 of permanent trees. Nevertheless, farming is an important industry in Gaza, and as such plans have been proposed to convert 178,000 tonnes of urban organic waste water into useful material for agricultural production, in order to boost farm profit.

This study put a questionnaire-based survey to farmers in order to gain an understanding of whether or not they are really prepared to use treated waste water for farming. Surprisingly the results indicate that Gaza’s urban farmers would be willing to utilise such a resource.