If you are growing your own food in the city, you are cutting down on transportation and pollution costs.

 

Grow your own Organic Food

 

AQUAPONICS system -  you grow fish and vegies together in a closed loop system. No chemicals can be used as it will kill the fish but you get excellent plant growth and healthy vegies plus fish. Foodmatters

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Publication:Times of India Mumbai Date:Aug 10, 2008 Section:Times City

Going green on the terrace

Joeanna Rebello I TNN

Mumbai: Who knew the Garden of Eden had been relocated to the Mumbai Port Trust? On the terrace of one of its canteens, no less.

The fruits of this kingdom swallow the eye—guavas hang like cannonballs, the lemons are pert and the pomegranates polished. Dragonflies, butterflies and birds are this emerald city’s flying squadron and slothful caterpillars and other creeps, its ground police. Mistress of these sights is catering manager of MPT Preeti Patil.

The patch of green started with looking for a way to dispose of kitchen waste produced from cooking for 2,000 employees a day, Patil recounts. It only took a workshop with seasoned urban farmer Dr R T Doshi for Patil to return with the lessons to turn waste to compost. She started with four saplings on her 3,000 sq-ft terrace—two of chickoo and two of guava. Five years later, 116 others fruits, vegetables and ornamentals moved in. Plastic laundry baskets, half-sawn drums and low brick rings (that can be widened as the plant grows) are now the tenements occupied by coconut, betelnut, pineapple, ladyfinger, tomatoes, custard apple, ginger, papaya, bananas, cherry, mango, amla, red guava, peppermint, strawberry, allspice, tamarind—the whole plant kingdom it seems.

The harvest, she says, weighs 3 kg ginger, 10-15 kg bananas and 6-7 kg cucumber per plant.

Now, Patil has miniature greenhouses and a compost pit that converts peels, pulp and other digestibles into high-nutrition feed for the farm. This once barren terrace has not just transformed into a cooperative farm with the canteen help eager to return to their roots, but it is also their ‘famers market’ where they take home fresh organic produce in exchange for their labour.

City fruits and vegetables are virtually insipid, Patil says, and with high doses of chemical inputs, their nutritional value is very low. “We city-breds are so out of sync with nature, we cannot even identify what grows around us, let alone what we eat. The first time I tried to grow corn on my balcony, I mistook the silk for wheat.’’

On Friday, Patil was invited to a dialogue on urban agriculture, where she, along with two others, narrated their experiences and research on recycling waste and growing food. It was a discussion initiated by the Centre for Education and Documentation and KISC (Knowledge in Civil Society).

For Pune’s Snehlata Srikhhande it was garbage that precipitated action. The Kachra Manthan, which she started with the local women, segregated waste, gave the inorganic recyclable deposit to ragpickers to ease their work and turned the rest into compost for terrace gardens. “Space should not be a contraint,’’ she says, producing the slide of a papaya tree growing on a narrow balcony.

“The roots don’t break into the floor, like people believe. In fact, only when roots need to anchor, they dig deep,’’ says Patil. “If support is provided externally, like a wall, for example, the feeder roots, which nourish the plant, only need nine inches of soil. And city plants should be pruned so they don’t grow too tall or you may not be able to pluck the fruit easily.’’ What an idea to be able to pluck a mango from a tree on your terrace!

Environmentalist Bharat Mansata propped Cuba as a macro specimen of urban agriculture. Mansata, who just launched a book, Organic Revolution, on the subject, referred to Cuba’s dire straits in the early 1990s, when it had to resort to growing its own food on account of the American trade embargoes and the collapse of its erstwhile supplier, the Soviet Union. In 2006 Havana grew 3 million tonnes of food; the city has 300,000 small gardens. No vacant land went uncultivated, he said. Citing Cuba, Mansata showed how urban farms are a unifying community tool, outside their tangible benefits of nutritional yield and green cover. “Let’s not wait to reach the brink, like Cuba did, but start growing our own food now,” he exhorted. “With food prices already high, we are not far from a stage when we have no food at all.” Srikhande ended with some practical advice—the next time you want to go on a tree-planting drive, begin at home.
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FRUITS OF LABOUR: The garden started with four saplings of guava and chickoo but now, from coconut, betelnut and pineapple to strawberry, it has almost the entire plant kingdom

According to Secunderabad Cantonment Board estimates, a family of four requires 480 liters per day – this would mean 175200 liters a year. Therefore, the rainwater collected will be roughly 40per cent of the family’s requirements. If every household saves rainwater and supplements the Municipal supply, then the shortage can easily be managed.- Rainwater harvesting is the solution in Hyderabad and  Secunderabad.....

Rainwater harvesting is the solution, by Vyasamoorthy,

27 May, 2009, merinews
\"How will South Asian cities be fed?\" is an important question demanding attention due to the rapidly growing urban population of the sub-continent. Urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is one set of activities resulting in greater food production, improved livelihood opportunities for urbanites and the enhanced environmental quality of cities. This report provides an overview of existing UPA resources and activities in India with particular emphasis on Delhi and Bangalore though many examples from other Indian cities are also presented.
Urban Agriculture in India: A Survey of Expertise, Capacities and Recent Experience
by Gisèle Yasmeen, Sustainable Development Research Institute, 05 February, 2001
Urbanization and poverty growth By 2020 the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America will be home to some 75% of all urban dwellers, and to eight of the anticipated nine mega-cities with populations in excess of 20 million. It is expected that by 2020, 85% of the poor in Latin America, and about 40-45% of the poor in Africa and Asia will be concentrated in towns and cities.
About Urban Agriculture
by cipotato.org, cipotato.org, 01 January, 2005
Urban agriculture has gained increasing significance, popularity and advocacy in recent years. As documented by an ever-increasing body of research, the economic crises and restructuring which the developing world has seen in the past decade or two are prime factors behind the phenomenon. But a well-informed, critical look suggests that urban agriculture does little to support sustainable urban development.
Urban agriculture: What limits?
by Don Okpala, unhabitat.org, 01 December, 2003
Rooftops are places of fantasy and imagination - places that sit above the din and chaos of the city, engaged with and yet apart from the city\'s motion. Rooftops yearn for the sky and yet are grounded to the city through the buildings which they top. What better place could there be for a garden? Or even better, a garden and a source of food? In this thesis, I will explore the topic of rooftop agriculture, one that has little comprehensive literature written about it. I will examine case studies and the potential for the expansion of roof gardens, as well as barriers to their successful implementation.
Urban Agriculture on the Rooftop
by Michelle Nowak, cityfarmer, 01 January, 1970
Today, two strongly promoted urban management strategies for the developing countries are urban agriculture and reduction/reuse of solid waste. These strategies, promoted both to conserve and increase resources and assist low-income groups, include some interdependent and complementary activities.
Solid Waste Reuse And Urban Agriculture--Dilemmas In Developing Countries:The Bad News And The Good News
by Christine Furedy And Tasneem Chowdhury, City Farmer, 01 January, 1970
Cities can be transformed from being only consumers of food and other agricultural products into resource-conserving, health-improving, sustainable generators of these products. In particular, urban agriculture can convert wastes into resources, put vacant and under-utilized areas into productive use, and conserve natural resources in rural areas while improving the environment for urban living.
Farming In Cities:Raising food in cities improves urban landscapes and residents\' diets using urban-generated waste
by Jac Smit and Joe Nasr, Context Institute, 01 January, 1995
FOR THE past two decades, urban agriculture has been on the rise throughout the world, in both poor and wealthy nations. Millions of urban residents in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and increasingly in North America, are growing crops and raising livestock in yards, on rooftops and balconies, along roadsides, and on vacant urban land. Until recently, many countries had a strong government perception that agriculture is unsuitable urban areas. Many district level governments, across the world, are concerned about the growing competition for land and water and incompatible land use. They try to discourage food production in urban areas in the belief that, in addition to competing for scarce valuable land, it contributes to problems of public health. Raising animals is especially discouraged. In stark contrast, the Cuban government has actively supported urban food production, especially in the capital, Havana.
Going to town with agriculture
by Catherine Murphy, DOWN TO EARTH, 15 January, 2001
THIS PAPER DESCRIBES how cities can be transformed from being only consumers of food and other agricultural products into important resource-conserving, health-improving, sustainable generators of these products. In particular, agriculture in towns, cities and metropolitan areas can convert urban wastes into resources, put vacant and under-utilized areas into productive use, and conserve natural resources outside cities while improving the environment for urban living. Agriculture within urban and peri-urban areas is defined as a common and beneficial land use. This paper also gives examples of urban agriculture programmes which help alleviate poverty while creating these benefits.
Urban agriculture for sustainable cities: using wastes and idle land and water bodies as resources
by Jac Smit and Joe Nasr, Environment and Urbanization, 01 October, 1992
This paper discusses how urban agriculture is promoted in Havana as a means of addressing the acute food scarcity problems that developed when Soviet aid and trade were drastically curtailed in 1989. It describes the contributions which Havana\'s 26,000 self-provision gardens make to household nutrition and income and to communities\' environmental quality, drawing on research which included interviews with a range of households engaged in urban agriculture, and discusses what lessons can be learnt from this experience.
Havana\'s self-provision gardens
by Angela Moskow, Environment&Urbanization, 01 October, 1999
Cities are generally thought of more as consumers than as producers of food. Yet from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Victory Gardens of the Second World War, cities down through history have consistently demonstrated that their soils, if carefully husbanded and tended, can be tilled. As the food needs of the cities have increased as their populations swell, increasing interest has come to focus on this potential; it has been estimated that some 85 per cent of the vegetables consumed by residents of Chinese cities are grown within the urban municipalities. In the excerpt on this page, from a report delivered at a food-energy workshop in Addis Ababa, Dana Silk of CIRED (International Research Center on Environment and Development) in Paris provides an overview of the potential for urban agriculture. On the facing page, Yue-man Yeung, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Geography, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, presents case studies on the use of urban agriculture in three Asian cities: Shanghai, Lae, and Manila.—Editor
Growing Vegetable\'s and Hope
by Dana Silk, WORK IN PROGRESS, 01 October, 1986
During this workshop, entitled Women Feeding Cities, we critically reviewed 15 cases presented by the participants in order to identify key issues in gender and urban agriculture. Also a priority agenda was developed with important aspects and actions that will need attention when integrating gender in future urban agriculture research activities, training activities, policy development and action planning and implementation. We discussed the concept of mainstreaming gender and identified effective strategies for mainstreaming gender in our own projects, RUAF and Urban Harvest. The review of case studies on gender and urban agriculture also resulted in the identification of improvements needed in the gender-differentiated framework and related tools that were applied in the case studies.
WOMEN FEEDING CITIES : GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN URBAN FOOD PRODUCTION & FOOD SECURITY
by Jointly organised by ETC-RUAF and CGIAR-Urban Harvest, ETC-RUAF and CGIAR-Urban Harvest, 20 September, 2004
  1. Terrace Gardening: The New Buzzword of City Folk
  2. "Climate Changes Cities- recycle waste, grow food,save water"
  3. Behold Africa's new urban farmers
  4. Urban Agriculture Reaches New Heights Through Rooftop Gardening : AN ALTERNATIVES’ PROJECT

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