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Grow your own food!
February 14, 2015
February 7, 2015
January 31, 2015
January 24, 2015
The potential for smallscale urban farming in India
Vol XLVII No. 24, June 16, 2012 | Henrik Valeur and Arshinder Kaur
Bibtex
Endnote
Web Exclusives
RIS
Google Scholar
Print
Email
Urban farming – providing the urban poor with possibilities of growing their own food – is a viable way to improve
Vol L No. 7
hunger conditions in cities.
February 14, 2015
SUBSCRIBE
Table of Contents
Zoom Cover
Henrik Valeur ([email protected]), is an architecturbanist and founder of UiD, www.henrikvaleur.dk / www.uid.dk.
Arshinder Kaur ([email protected]) is an environmentalist and founder of Eco & Agro Resource Management,
www.ecoagro.org.
Growing your own food in the city is becoming a global trend; from growing vegetables in recycled plastic bottles in a
From the Next Issue
Click here...
loft in New York or in a slum dwelling in Manila to community kitchen gardens in a posh neighborhood in London or in
a favela in Sao Paulo; people are experimenting with ways of becoming selfsufficient with food in urban settings.
Though this trend still accounts for only a fraction of the total food production in the world, it has the potential to make
Digital Editions of EPW Books
urban dwellers (especially the poor ones) less volatile to the fluctuating prices of the global food market and less
dependent on government subsidies. In addition, smallscale urban farming may also enhance climate change
A number of titles of EPW/Sameeksha Trust
resilience and reduce both the impact of potential future food crises and some of the environmental costs associated
Books are now available in digital version.
with current modes of agricultural production and distribution.
Please explore for details.
The case for urban farming in India
India is experiencing rapid urbanisation, fuelled by and powering economic growth. But this growth is not equally
distributed, partly because the integration into the cities of people trying to escape rural poverty is being resisted by the
people already living in the cities. Therefore, most rural migrants wind up in slum areas – or eventually in socalled
rehabilitation colonies – literally or figuratively located on the outskirts of cities, where opportunities are severely
limited. The upshot of this is that poverty, as such, is simply conveyed from one area (the rural) to another (the urban).
And this stands in stark contrast to what we can see in other developing countries like, for instance, China, where
several hundred million people, over the course of the past three decades, are reported to have escaped extreme
poverty by moving to cities (where they have found job opportunities in the manufacturing industry, on construction
EPW at New Delhi World Book Fair
sites, etc.).
Economic and Political Weekly
One of poverty's many shadows is hunger, and India's inability – or reluctance – to integrate its poor in the urban
will be at the
economy is also reflected in the fact that despite massive rural migration, India is among only 3 out of 81 developing
New Delhi World Book Fair
countries that have not succeeded in improving hunger conditions in the past 15 years, according to the 2011 Global
February 1422, 2015
Hunger Index Report.
Do visit us at
Hall No. H6, Stall No. 151
In fact, ActionAid, in its 2009 Scorecard Report, criticised India for having added 30 million people to the ranks of the
hungry since the mid1990s while Bangladesh, for example, has reduced that number by more than 10 million in the
Pragati Maidan.
past 10 years. This same report also claims that hunger exists in India not because there is insufficient food but
because people cannot access it.
What can be done to change this picture? We believe that the answer may be to provide the urban poor with
possibilities of growing their own food, either individually or in cooperation. And with an estimated quarter of a billion
undernourished people and a quarter of a billion people expected to be added to its urban population over the next
twenty years, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute from 2010, urban farming may have enormous
http://www.epw.in/webexclusives/growyourownfood.html
1/3
2/17/2015
Grow your own food! | Economic and Political Weekly
potential in India.
Several initiatives have already been launched but for this potential to be activated on a broader scale, we believe that
Current Statistics
the role of the government must (gradually) be changed from being a provider of “food security” to being a provider of
Time Series Data in Excel Files
“food sovereignty” a concept originally proposed by Latin American NOGs and recently adopted by the United Nations
available at
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
India Time Series Lite pages.
Instead of making poor people dependent on the governments' central food distribution systems, why not let them
produce their own food?
Review Issues
Special Issues
Enabling the urban poor to grow their own food would not only liberate these people from the dehumanising
experience of being dependent on government subsidies and significantly reduce food costs, which are taking up more
and more of their income, but would also improve their health conditions and provide them with occupational
opportunities, perhaps especially the women.
And even though opportunities are most urgently needed among the poor, urban farming may also be promoted among
other segments of the urban population, as is being done when school children are taught how to grow food in organic
kitchen gardens or when ordinary citizens are engaged to grow food in public parks. Both of these examples stem from
Mumbai but other examples can be found in other Indian cities.
How can urban farming be implemented in India?
In order to enable urban dwellers to produce fresh and nutritious food, free of chemicals and pesticides, we propose
that the following two actions be considered:
Review of Rural Affairs: June 29, 2013
With Indian agriculture growing slowly,
employment in agriculture too has been
increasing at a low rate. Urban employment has
not expanded rapidly enough to provide work for
the growing rural population. So, is the rise in
nonagricultural employment in recent years
driven more by distress than demand? Three
articles in this edition of the Review of Rural
Affairs look at aspects of this issue.
A couple of related issues that are examined are
the growth of “noncultivating households” and
the movement of wages of agricultural labour.
Read Review of Rural Affairs
1. The establishment of pilot projects and learning centers, where knowledge and experiences can be evolved and
For All Review Issues
shared, and where different crops and cultivation methods can be tested and adapted to local conditions, including new
methods like hydroponics, a soilless form of cultivation that has, however, experienced certain difficulties in India due
to high costs and climatic challenges. Moreover, a testing of the quality of the local soil and water, as well as different
forms of construction such as roof gardens with bees, fruits and berries, scaffoldinglike structures on building facades
for vegetables and medical herbs, and spaces in between buildings for chickens, cows and other livestock.
The pilot projects and learning centers ought to be based on ecological principles and may be run by local
communities, volunteers and nongovernment organisations. However, there is certainly going to be a need for
financial and practical backing from municipal authorities.
2. The allocation of land for individual/community gardens, especially for the poor. This may not only help to alleviate
problems such as malnutrition and unemployment but may also help urban planners to control slum development. In
addition, as cities develop and prosper, these pockets of “undeveloped” land could potentially constitute huge future
assets for the city.
EPW iOS and Android apps
In Europe, for instance, allotment gardens have existed since at least the beginning of industrialisation/urbanisation in
the early 19th century, when millions of poor rural migrants were suffering from malnutrition and diseases due to the
The EPW iOS app for iPad and iPhone is now
appalling conditions of life in the cities. In order to improve the situation, pieces of land were provided for them to grow
live in the App Store. An updated version of the
their own vegetables. While many of these socalled “gardens of the poor” were located on the outskirts of the city,
Android app (Version 2.0) is also available on
today they often occupy attractive locations inside the city and are venerated by their current tenants, who may now be
the Google Play store.
welltodo people. In Berlin, for instance, an estimated 15% of the city's land is currently being used for urban farming;
this includes around 80000 allotment gardens.
The implementation of urban farming is, however, facing multiple challenges, the most critical of which may be land
scarcity/high value of land in cities. However, land for urban farming could be provided in the same way as parking
spaces are being provided; by reserving a certain percentage of a building plot for “food space”.
This is not the only challenge, though. Other challenges include contaminated soil, lack of sunlight due to cramped
conditions, water scarcity and low quality of water. Solutions to these challenges can be devised where needed.
Recent Comments
Most read
Furthermore, urban farming may be instrumental in promoting the recycling of both nonorganic material, like plastic
containers and construction elements, and organic material, like kitchen garbage, which may be composted and used
for fertilisation. Other means of organic fertilisation include plant extracts, composted excrement from animals like
chickens and cows (manure) and, perhaps more controversially, composted excrement from humans (humanure).
In areas without toilet facilities, human excrement is a source of environmental pollution and diseases; this is especially
a problem in dense urban areas. However, this excrement can be recycled through composting toilets, which do not
require expensive sewer systems; this might very well prove to be a viable solution for slum areas.
binod
poorly informed editorial...first premise is
wrong majority of people don't want
federalism according to recent survey..agree
that NC and UML are reluctant federalist but
Madhesi are becoming just...
If composting toilets were to be installed in slum areas it would not only improve sanitation in these areas but would
also be a way of providing fertilisation. And if land were then to be allocated for farming, through which the primary
skills of many slum dwellers, i.e. their knowledge and experience of farming, are put into use, this would come to
http://www.epw.in/webexclusives/growyourownfood.html
Consensus Stymied in Kathmandu · 5 days
ago
2/3
2/17/2015
Grow your own food! | Economic and Political Weekly
represent a holistic and ecologically sustainable solution. And perhaps it could even serve as a model for the rest of the
city?
Paradoxically, the solution to many of the problems related to the rapid and pervasive expansion of cities, including the
fact that the producers of food are being pushed further and further away from the consumers, accordingly increasing
Danish
the costs of transportation and storage, may be the integration of natural landscapes and processes, ecosystems and
The politics of discrediting Indian minorities
ecological agriculture in these cities. This could also come to compensate for the widespread deforestation and
in NaMo era & forcing them to be apologetic
massive loss of biodiversity caused not only by expanding cities but also by the application of increasingly mono
for the acts of medieval, Mughal & modern
cultural and chemicalintensive methods in industrial farming.
rulers in the garb of nationalism is a step
ahead in making...
We believe that this would not only make cities more liveable, but would also make them powerful allies in the fight
against poverty and hunger, climate change, pollution and resource depletion.
Tweet
12
Like
The Charlie Story · 6 days ago
1
35
Comments
EPW looks forward to your comments. Please note that comments are moderated as per our comments policy.
They may take some time to appear. A comment, if suitable, may be selected for publication in
the Letters pages of EPW.
User login
0 Comments
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economic research and analysis, and
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does specific research studies on India's
Style Sheet
macro economy...
320321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai, India 400 013
Phone: +912240638282 | Fax: +912224934515 | Email: [email protected]
Designed, developed and maintained by Yodasoft Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
http://www.epw.in/webexclusives/growyourownfood.html
3/3
Home
Grow your own food! | Economic and Political Weekly
Archives
Subscription
RSS
About Us
Contact Us
For Contributors
Search
Search
ISSN (Online) 23498846
Editorial
Home
Commentary
Book Reviews
Perspectives
Special Articles
Specials
Web Exclusives
Postscript
More
Web Exclusives
Change Text Size
A A
A
Free Issues
Grow your own food!
February 14, 2015
February 7, 2015
January 31, 2015
January 24, 2015
The potential for smallscale urban farming in India
Vol XLVII No. 24, June 16, 2012 | Henrik Valeur and Arshinder Kaur
Bibtex
Endnote
Web Exclusives
RIS
Google Scholar
Urban farming – providing the urban poor with possibilities of growing their own food – is a viable way to improve
Vol L No. 7
hunger conditions in cities.
February 14, 2015
SUBSCRIBE
Table of Contents
Zoom Cover
Henrik Valeur ([email protected]), is an architecturbanist and founder of UiD, www.henrikvaleur.dk / www.uid.dk.
Arshinder Kaur ([email protected]) is an environmentalist and founder of Eco & Agro Resource Management,
www.ecoagro.org.
Growing your own food in the city is becoming a global trend; from growing vegetables in recycled plastic bottles in a
From the Next Issue
Click here...
loft in New York or in a slum dwelling in Manila to community kitchen gardens in a posh neighborhood in London or in
a favela in Sao Paulo; people are experimenting with ways of becoming selfsufficient with food in urban settings.
Though this trend still accounts for only a fraction of the total food production in the world, it has the potential to make
Digital Editions of EPW Books
urban dwellers (especially the poor ones) less volatile to the fluctuating prices of the global food market and less
dependent on government subsidies. In addition, smallscale urban farming may also enhance climate change
A number of titles of EPW/Sameeksha Trust
resilience and reduce both the impact of potential future food crises and some of the environmental costs associated
Books are now available in digital version.
with current modes of agricultural production and distribution.
Please explore for details.
The case for urban farming in India
India is experiencing rapid urbanisation, fuelled by and powering economic growth. But this growth is not equally
distributed, partly because the integration into the cities of people trying to escape rural poverty is being resisted by the
people already living in the cities. Therefore, most rural migrants wind up in slum areas – or eventually in socalled
rehabilitation colonies – literally or figuratively located on the outskirts of cities, where opportunities are severely
limited. The upshot of this is that poverty, as such, is simply conveyed from one area (the rural) to another (the urban).
And this stands in stark contrast to what we can see in other developing countries like, for instance, China, where
several hundred million people, over the course of the past three decades, are reported to have escaped extreme
poverty by moving to cities (where they have found job opportunities in the manufacturing industry, on construction
EPW at New Delhi World Book Fair
sites, etc.).
Economic and Political Weekly
One of poverty's many shadows is hunger, and India's inability – or reluctance – to integrate its poor in the urban
will be at the
economy is also reflected in the fact that despite massive rural migration, India is among only 3 out of 81 developing
New Delhi World Book Fair
countries that have not succeeded in improving hunger conditions in the past 15 years, according to the 2011 Global
February 1422, 2015
Hunger Index Report.
Do visit us at
Hall No. H6, Stall No. 151
In fact, ActionAid, in its 2009 Scorecard Report, criticised India for having added 30 million people to the ranks of the
hungry since the mid1990s while Bangladesh, for example, has reduced that number by more than 10 million in the
Pragati Maidan.
past 10 years. This same report also claims that hunger exists in India not because there is insufficient food but
because people cannot access it.
What can be done to change this picture? We believe that the answer may be to provide the urban poor with
possibilities of growing their own food, either individually or in cooperation. And with an estimated quarter of a billion
undernourished people and a quarter of a billion people expected to be added to its urban population over the next
twenty years, according to a report by the McKinsey Global Institute from 2010, urban farming may have enormous
http://www.epw.in/webexclusives/growyourownfood.html
1/3
2/17/2015
Grow your own food! | Economic and Political Weekly
potential in India.
Several initiatives have already been launched but for this potential to be activated on a broader scale, we believe that
Current Statistics
the role of the government must (gradually) be changed from being a provider of “food security” to being a provider of
Time Series Data in Excel Files
“food sovereignty” a concept originally proposed by Latin American NOGs and recently adopted by the United Nations
available at
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
India Time Series Lite pages.
Instead of making poor people dependent on the governments' central food distribution systems, why not let them
produce their own food?
Review Issues
Special Issues
Enabling the urban poor to grow their own food would not only liberate these people from the dehumanising
experience of being dependent on government subsidies and significantly reduce food costs, which are taking up more
and more of their income, but would also improve their health conditions and provide them with occupational
opportunities, perhaps especially the women.
And even though opportunities are most urgently needed among the poor, urban farming may also be promoted among
other segments of the urban population, as is being done when school children are taught how to grow food in organic
kitchen gardens or when ordinary citizens are engaged to grow food in public parks. Both of these examples stem from
Mumbai but other examples can be found in other Indian cities.
How can urban farming be implemented in India?
In order to enable urban dwellers to produce fresh and nutritious food, free of chemicals and pesticides, we propose
that the following two actions be considered:
Review of Rural Affairs: June 29, 2013
With Indian agriculture growing slowly,
employment in agriculture too has been
increasing at a low rate. Urban employment has
not expanded rapidly enough to provide work for
the growing rural population. So, is the rise in
nonagricultural employment in recent years
driven more by distress than demand? Three
articles in this edition of the Review of Rural
Affairs look at aspects of this issue.
A couple of related issues that are examined are
the growth of “noncultivating households” and
the movement of wages of agricultural labour.
Read Review of Rural Affairs
1. The establishment of pilot projects and learning centers, where knowledge and experiences can be evolved and
For All Review Issues
shared, and where different crops and cultivation methods can be tested and adapted to local conditions, including new
methods like hydroponics, a soilless form of cultivation that has, however, experienced certain difficulties in India due
to high costs and climatic challenges. Moreover, a testing of the quality of the local soil and water, as well as different
forms of construction such as roof gardens with bees, fruits and berries, scaffoldinglike structures on building facades
for vegetables and medical herbs, and spaces in between buildings for chickens, cows and other livestock.
The pilot projects and learning centers ought to be based on ecological principles and may be run by local
communities, volunteers and nongovernment organisations. However, there is certainly going to be a need for
financial and practical backing from municipal authorities.
2. The allocation of land for individual/community gardens, especially for the poor. This may not only help to alleviate
problems such as malnutrition and unemployment but may also help urban planners to control slum development. In
addition, as cities develop and prosper, these pockets of “undeveloped” land could potentially constitute huge future
assets for the city.
EPW iOS and Android apps
In Europe, for instance, allotment gardens have existed since at least the beginning of industrialisation/urbanisation in
the early 19th century, when millions of poor rural migrants were suffering from malnutrition and diseases due to the
The EPW iOS app for iPad and iPhone is now
appalling conditions of life in the cities. In order to improve the situation, pieces of land were provided for them to grow
live in the App Store. An updated version of the
their own vegetables. While many of these socalled “gardens of the poor” were located on the outskirts of the city,
Android app (Version 2.0) is also available on
today they often occupy attractive locations inside the city and are venerated by their current tenants, who may now be
the Google Play store.
welltodo people. In Berlin, for instance, an estimated 15% of the city's land is currently being used for urban farming;
this includes around 80000 allotment gardens.
The implementation of urban farming is, however, facing multiple challenges, the most critical of which may be land
scarcity/high value of land in cities. However, land for urban farming could be provided in the same way as parking
spaces are being provided; by reserving a certain percentage of a building plot for “food space”.
This is not the only challenge, though. Other challenges include contaminated soil, lack of sunlight due to cramped
conditions, water scarcity and low quality of water. Solutions to these challenges can be devised where needed.
Recent Comments
Most read
Furthermore, urban farming may be instrumental in promoting the recycling of both nonorganic material, like plastic
containers and construction elements, and organic material, like kitchen garbage, which may be composted and used
for fertilisation. Other means of organic fertilisation include plant extracts, composted excrement from animals like
chickens and cows (manure) and, perhaps more controversially, composted excrement from humans (humanure).
In areas without toilet facilities, human excrement is a source of environmental pollution and diseases; this is especially
a problem in dense urban areas. However, this excrement can be recycled through composting toilets, which do not
require expensive sewer systems; this might very well prove to be a viable solution for slum areas.
binod
poorly informed editorial...first premise is
wrong majority of people don't want
federalism according to recent survey..agree
that NC and UML are reluctant federalist but
Madhesi are becoming just...
If composting toilets were to be installed in slum areas it would not only improve sanitation in these areas but would
also be a way of providing fertilisation. And if land were then to be allocated for farming, through which the primary
skills of many slum dwellers, i.e. their knowledge and experience of farming, are put into use, this would come to
http://www.epw.in/webexclusives/growyourownfood.html
Consensus Stymied in Kathmandu · 5 days
ago
2/3
2/17/2015
Grow your own food! | Economic and Political Weekly
represent a holistic and ecologically sustainable solution. And perhaps it could even serve as a model for the rest of the
city?
Paradoxically, the solution to many of the problems related to the rapid and pervasive expansion of cities, including the
fact that the producers of food are being pushed further and further away from the consumers, accordingly increasing
Danish
the costs of transportation and storage, may be the integration of natural landscapes and processes, ecosystems and
The politics of discrediting Indian minorities
ecological agriculture in these cities. This could also come to compensate for the widespread deforestation and
in NaMo era & forcing them to be apologetic
massive loss of biodiversity caused not only by expanding cities but also by the application of increasingly mono
for the acts of medieval, Mughal & modern
cultural and chemicalintensive methods in industrial farming.
rulers in the garb of nationalism is a step
ahead in making...
We believe that this would not only make cities more liveable, but would also make them powerful allies in the fight
against poverty and hunger, climate change, pollution and resource depletion.
Tweet
12
Like
The Charlie Story · 6 days ago
1
35
Comments
EPW looks forward to your comments. Please note that comments are moderated as per our comments policy.
They may take some time to appear. A comment, if suitable, may be selected for publication in
the Letters pages of EPW.
User login
0 Comments
Economic and Political Weekly
Login
Share ⤤ Favorite ★
Sort by Best
Start the discussion…
Subscribe for Newsletter
Be the first to comment.
Select the newsletter to subscribe or
unsubscribe.
EPW Newsletter
✉
Subscribe
d
Add Disqus to your site
Privacy
Email: *
Subscribe Unsubscribe
Terms & Policy
Circulation
Advertisement
EPW Research Foundation
Terms and Conditions
Refund and Cancellation
Why Advertise in EPW?
EPW Research Foundation is involved in
Copyright
User Registration
Advertisement Tariffs
economic research and analysis, and
Privacy Policy
Delivery Policy
Announcements / Appointments (PDF)
does specific research studies on India's
Style Sheet
macro economy...
320321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai, India 400 013
Phone: +912240638282 | Fax: +912224934515 | Email: [email protected]
Designed, developed and maintained by Yodasoft Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
http://www.epw.in/webexclusives/growyourownfood.html
3/3
