Urban Farming

Urban Farming or Urban Gardening is the practice of cultivation of food in an around a city or town. It also involves practices like Animal Husbandry or Horticulture or Aquaculture. It involves processing food and also markets the food in response to the daily demand of the customers within the town or city. It is done on many types of privately and publicly owned lands and water bodies. It is done on rooftops and yards in major cities where there is a scarcity of big lands. Natural resources and the wastes are employed in urban farming. Roof Garden allows garden dwellers to maintain green space in cities. Rooftop farms allow otherwise unused industrial roof space or housing space to be used productively, creating work and profit. The water used for different activities can be better reused. Temporary or permanent kitchen gardens are now employed by many people. Here the organic solid waste can be effectively used as fertilisers for the plants and the water used for household activities in irrigation process. Vermicompost can be made and later used as fertilisers. City people are growing fruits vegetables, raising animals, fish keeping, beekeeping to improve their food safety and their intake of nutritious food.

City dwellers are planting on roofs, balconies, containers, vacant space and even on walls and turning their grey cities to lively green. These also add up to more fresh air and a better environment.

To facilitate food production, cities have established community-based farming projects. One such community farm is the COLLINGWOOD CHILDREN’s FARM in Melbourne, Australia.

There are projects that use the allotment of a garden model in which gardeners care for individual plots. SEATTLE’s P-Patch gardens use this model.

In QUEENSLAND, Australia people have started a trend of urban farming both utilising Aquaponics and self-watering containers.

In Egypt, during the early 1990’s at Ain Shams University, a group of Agriculture professors developed an initiative on growing organic vegetables. It was later adopted in 2001 by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)

In India, Mumbai Port Trust (MBPT) central kitchen distribute food to approximately 3000 employees daily. It has developed an organic farm on the terrace of its central kitchen. Another example is a 1000 plus buffalo dairy farm in midst of Jogeshwari flyover Mumbai.

In  NEW YORK, projects like green roofs, rooftop farms, and rainwater harvesting on private property in combined sewer areas made the city the world’s largest rooftop farms.

The list is never-ending. Almost every city has its own type of urban farming techniques and process.

Wastewater and organic solid waste can be used as resources for growing crops. It helps in conservation of the other natural resources. The use of wasted water in it helps in water management and increases the availability of freshwater. Dead leaves, vegetable peels can be used for making composts which can later be used as fertiliser for the crops. Urban farming can help preserve bioregional ecologies from being transformed into croplands. The energy consumption also decreases that is used for transportation of food from rural to urban areas. Also, the surplus food can be sold to the local market generating more income. It creates savings in household expenditure on consumables.

Talking about the benefits, it’s never going to end. From its acting like carbon sink offsetting some of the carbon accumulation that is innate to the urban cities to its contribution to sustainability. It improved health to a good extent and also in poverty alleviation. These are free from harmful chemicals and pesticides used. They are much healthier and nutritious. Urban farming provides people with a chance to produce their own food and learn in the process. Efficient use of land is made in it that would otherwise go unused. The food we get has to travel miles before reaching our tables. Urban agriculture has helped consumers reduce their “footprint” by providing the opportunity to purchase food that is grown within the community thus reducing carbon emissions.

In urban areas, poverty and hunger issues are often persistent. The gardens or large community spaces create opportunities to involve the community creating jobs for the needy.

It also brings people together with a common interest- food. This helps in community building and improving its people health. Urban farming in cities provides more green space. This contributes to a healthy ecosystem.

There are many community centres that educate the community to see agriculture as an integral part of urban life. It is very helpful for the people to learn and utilize it for their own good as well as for the environment. This improves health and nutrition, income, food security. Its better application can effectively fight malnutrition by facilitating access to food to the needy.