A cultivated idea for cities

Source: The post is based on an article “A cultivated idea for cities” published in the Business Standard on 24th July 2022. 

Syllabus: GS Paper 3 – Agriculture – Urban Agriculture  

Context: Urban agriculture has not received the attention it merits. 

Urban agriculture is the practice of growing farm products in cities and their peri-urban areas(outskirts)  

In this practice, the farm products, such as vegetables, fruit, flowers, milk, eggs, mushrooms, and fish, can easily be produced in urban and semi-urban areas.  

What are the ways in which urban-agriculture can be done? 

The roofs, terraces, balconies, and walls of the residential dwellings even in densely populated cities, can be used for growing plants. For example, ornamental, medicinal, etc. can be grown in pots or other containers in roof-top gardening. 

There are innovative ways like vertical farming, greenhouse agriculture, aeroponics, and hydroponics. These methods can be used in the urban areas to produce agricultural products for self-consumption or marketing in a limited space.  

Further, activities like rearing small milch animals, poultry, piggery, and bee-keeping can be conveniently taken up in and around cities. 

What are the benefits of urban agriculture? 

The Urban and peri-urban farming leads to environmental and socio-economic benefits. 

This can promote greenery around cities in the form of trees, shrubs, or other plants. This would be beneficial to combat pollution and to sequester carbon from the atmosphere and in reducing the overall carbon footprint of urban living.  

Further, the presence of decorative foliage and trees in the exteriors of houses, gardens, and along the roadsides adds to the beautification of cities. 

Trends of the Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture 

Global Level 

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is promoting urban and peri-urban farming to boost food and nutritional security across the world.  

Further, it has become an integral part of modern town planning in many countries. Various Urban civic bodies, which also act as the community organisations, are encouraging the cultivation of farm products in public and private land. 

Case of India 

At an individual level, people have traditionally been growing useful plants on terraces or in kitchen gardens. 

At city level, most towns located on the banks of rivers allow crop cultivation in the floodplain zones of the rivers during pre- and post-monsoon periods. But India is still a laggard in systematic urban farming.   

Efforts for Promoting Systematic Urban Farming in India 

In the early 2010s, the Planning Commission’s working group on horticulture, set up for formulating the 12th five-year plan (2012-17) recommended to promote urban agriculture on an organised scale around cities in India. This would meet local needs, environmental services and health care need.  

Thereafter, in 2011-12, a Central sector scheme was launched with the twin objectives of ensuring adequate supplies to consumers and creating opportunities for employment and income. The scheme was supposed to set up urban clusters for producing vegetables and fruit around mega cities.  

Nowadays, the peri-urban farming has come up around several big, medium, and small towns. The civic bodies of several metropolitan cities offer incentives for cultivating vegetables and other crops in peripheral areas, using recycled water.  

About Delhi Government’s Urban Agriculture initiative 

Recently, the Delhi government has announced an urban farming project, as part of the “Rozgar budget” of Delhi. The project will be implemented with the help of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). 

It involves training citizens to produce vegetables and fruit for self-consumption and sale. To do so, there may be around 400 awareness workshops and 600 entrepreneurship training sessions to be organized in Delhi. 

Further, a large number of kits containing seeds, organic manure, and bio-fertilisers would be distributed to households interested in taking up such farming.  

The project is anticipated to generate about 25,000 green jobs in the next five years.