June 2026
Rooftop edible gardens can address urban challenges related to food security, heat stress, and livelihoods. The Chennai Urban Farming Initiative (CUFI) has promoted growing chemical-free vegetables and greens. Beyond improving access to fresh food, these gardens have contributed to community well-being, environmental awareness, and cooler urban spaces. The initiative highlights the potential of edible gardens as a practical and community-driven approach for building climate-resilient cities.
Chennai, like most Indian cities, is rapidly expanding at the cost of its agricultural and ecological assets. This expansion has critical environmental and social implications concerning food security, loss of livelihood, and climate change. Chennai also experiences high levels of heat stress due to the combination of elevated temperatures and humidity.
These shocks and stresses disproportionately impact the city’s population. Communities living in informal settlements, resettlement colonies, and homeless populations are particularly affected due to limited access to nutritious food, green spaces, and climate-resilient infrastructure. Simultaneously, urban residents, especially children, are becoming increasingly disconnected from food-growing practices, local biodiversity, and traditional food systems, such as the cultivation and consumption of greens (keerai). These interconnected social, environmental, and climatic challenges necessitate a locally appropriate, low-cost, and community-driven approach that can improve food access, enhance thermal comfort, and strengthen urban resilience.
Urban agriculture is emerging as an important nature-based solution for cities, addressing multiple resilience and climate challenges. Within urban agriculture, rooftop farming offers a practical alternative for areas where land availability is limited. Over the past decade, an urban farming movement, largely driven by the urban middle class, has gained momentum in cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, and Chennai, further accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Government programmes on kitchen gardens such as Poshan Vatika and the Tamil Nadu Green Schools Programme often lack the financial and technical support needed to sustain such efforts over time.
Recognising the role of edible gardens in addressing urban resilience and climate-related challenges, the Chennai Resilience Centre (CRC) conceptualised the Chennai Urban Farming Initiative (CUFI). CUFI was first identified as a flagship project in the Chennai City Resilience Strategy, released in 2019 under the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Programme. The initiative was subsequently refined and has been implemented across the city since 2021.
The Initiative
CRC launched the Chennai Urban Farming Initiative (CUFI) with the objective of building resilience to climate change, particularly rising heat, while creating healthy and self-reliant communities by improving food security and livelihoods among the urban poor in Chennai city.
The major activities under the programme include:
- Deploying mobile vegetable garden kits (MVGK) in public schools, Anganwadis and low-income communities.
- Training teachers and project partners in garden establishment and maintenance, while providing continuous maintenance support.
- Creating green livelihoods for women from low-income communities through the Madras Mali programme.
- Monitoring and evaluating project impacts for learning, course correction and scaling up.
Mobile Vegetable Garden Kits
CRC establishes edible gardens using mobile vegetable garden kits. Each kit contains grow bags, organic potting mixture, vermicompost, ten varieties of vegetable and greens seeds, and neem-based bio-pesticides. These kits are modular, portable, space-efficient, and scalable, enabling gardens to be established even in small spaces. The seeds included in the kits were selected for their suitability to local climatic conditions, short duration to harvest (particularly for greens), and nutritional value for school mid-day meals.
Through CUFI, garden kits have been distributed to government-run Anganwadis, government-aided schools, public homeless shelters, and low-income communities in Chitra Nagar, Besant Nagar, Ramapuram, and Perumbakkam.
Training and maintenance support
CRC provides comprehensive training and ongoing maintenance support to all institutions and communities participating in CUFI. In-person training sessions cover topics such as soil preparation, seed sowing, plant care using bio-fertilisers, water and heat management, harvesting, and seed saving for the next crop cycle. Practical demonstrations are also organised, where participants learn to set up grow bags and prepare organic pesticides.
Maintenance support is further strengthened through a WhatsApp platform, which functions as a monitoring and feedback mechanism. Participants use the platform to ask questions, share experiences, and support each other. CRC also supplies maintenance kits, containing potting mixture, vermicompost, seeds, and bio-pesticides, to institutional beneficiaries whenever required.
Creating Green Livelihoods through Madras Mali
Alongside promoting kitchen gardens, CRC collaborates with the Tamil Nadu Urban Livelihoods Mission (TNULM) to train women from low-income communities, organised under self-help groups, in organic gardening practices. The programme includes training in organic cultivation, business development, and marketing. Upon successful completion, participants receive certification. Since 2022, approximately 245 women have been trained through this initiative.
This initiative led to the creation of the Madras Mali brand in 2023. Through this platform, CRC connects trained women gardeners with clients seeking gardening support services. CRC has also undertaken periodic campaigns during 2023, 2024, and 2025 to promote the initiative. The first campaign, launched in January 2023, encouraged edible gardening among middle and upper middle-class households in southern Chennai through collaborations with resident welfare associations such as Residents of Kasturba Nagar Association (ROKA), Valmiki Nagar, Radhakrishnan Nagar, Gandhi Nagar, and AGS Colony. Residents were offered mobile vegetable garden kits along with support services for waterproofing and drip irrigation. More than 67,000 residents viewed the campaign. Follow-up online workshops conducted between March and July 2023 attracted 169 participants.
The second campaign, launched in January 2024, focused on promoting trained Madras Malis as professional gardening support providers. It utilised search advertisements, YouTube videos, and display campaigns across Google networks, generating approximately 893,000 views and 57,500 clicks.
Before launching the third campaign in July 2025, selected Malis underwent additional upskilling sessions on marketing, business development, and the preparation of eco-friendly products such as grow bags, organic pesticides, and plant growth supplements. The campaign highlighted climate resilience, convenience, and women’s empowerment while targeting middle-income urban households in South Chennai through bilingual English-Tamil communication materials. The campaign generated 641 enquiries, several of which converted into repeated orders for the Malis.
Since 2023, sixteen trained Malis working as gardeners have collectively earned nearly Rs. 5,00,000.
Monitoring and evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation have remained central to CUFI since its inception. CRC uses field observations, surveys, and focused group discussions to assess parameters such as crop yield, physical and mental well-being, innovations adopted, and challenges faced by participants. These findings support programme improvement, learning, and scaling efforts.
Impact and benefits
CUFI is currently active in approximately 144 Anganwadis, ten schools, two resident welfare associations, and the Perumbakkam resettlement colony. Gardens established in Anganwadis and schools have produced around 340 kg of keerai and vegetables, which are incorporated into mid-day meals. The programme has also trained 247 teachers, children, residents, and staff in chemical-free rooftop gardening practices.
The initiative has generated several social, nutritional, environmental, and economic benefits.
Increased access to chemical-free food: CUFI gardens in schools and Anganwadis provide access to fresh, chemical-free greens and vegetables that supplement mid-day meals. In many institutions, these gardens serve as the only source of iron-rich greens available to children. Teachers have also reported savings from reduced vegetable purchases.
Gardens as Educational Spaces: At Anganwadis, children learn to identify vegetables, greens, colours, and shapes through the gardens. In schools, the gardens are used to introduce children to agricultural and ecological concepts.
Improved mental well-being: CRC established gardens in 55 Greater Chennai Corporation homeless shelters during 2021–2022. Approximately 78 per cent of shelter coordinators observed reductions in stress levels among residents and improved social interactions through collective gardening activities.
Strengthening community cohesion: The initiative has encouraged greater interaction among mothers, children, and Anganwadi staff. Community members contribute plants, participate in garden maintenance, and share harvested produce. Children are also motivating families to grow vegetables and greens at home.
Encouraging environmentally responsible behaviour: Participants have started adopting innovative and sustainable practices such as reusing PET bottles for drip irrigation, repurposing old containers as grow pots, and composting organic waste.
Women’s empowerment through Green Livelihoods: The Madras Mali programme has enabled women from low-income communities to take up flexible livelihood opportunities through gardening services. Many of these women are employed for the first time and have developed confidence and independence through their work.
Greener and cooler roofs: In 2025, CRC collaborated with Okapi Research and Advisory and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras to study the heat adaptation potential of rooftop vegetable gardens in three schools. The study, conducted between July and October 2025, found that:
- Rooms below rooftop gardens were on average 1–2°C cooler than rooms below exposed roofs.
- Surface temperatures on rooftops with gardens were lower by 8–12°C on average.
- Stronger cooling effects were observed during late afternoons and evenings.
These findings highlight the potential of rooftop vegetable gardens as a sustainable and multi-functional strategy for enhancing urban resilience.
Key learnings
Several important lessons have emerged from implementing CUFI over the last five years:
- Long-term sustainability depends heavily on community ownership and active involvement.
- Anganwadis have shown better continuity because gardening aligns with the existing Poshan Vatika mandate.
- Grow bags are preferred over conventional soil beds because they reduce terrace load, avoid water stagnation and offer flexibility.
- Consistent maintenance is essential for gardens to deliver heat mitigation benefits.
- Programme design must remain flexible to meet varying community needs.
- Government support is crucial for permissions, policy integration and scaling up.
- Multi-disciplinary partnerships have played a key role in programme success- The most critical partners are Okapi Research and Advisory, an IIT Madras incubated company, that provides strategic advisory support and leads impact evaluation and Sempulam Sustainable Solutions who lead the training programs and provide the garden supplies.
Conclusion
Urban edible gardens can contribute significantly to creating more sustainable and resilient urban communities. Their role in improving food access, reducing urban heat, generating green livelihoods, and encouraging circular economy practices is especially relevant for dense tropical cities such as Chennai. Increasing recognition from governments and development organisations, combined with supportive policy frameworks, could help scale such initiatives across cities in India.
References
Aishwaryaa, R., "Change in land use pattern has intensified urban heat island effect in Chennai," The Hindu, 24th June 2024. Available at: https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/chennai/change-in-land-use-pattern-has-intensified-urban-heat-island-effect-in-chennai-says-study/article68324281.ece
Kumar, P., Rai, A., Upadhyaya, A., & Chakraborty, A., "Analysis of heat stress and heat wave in the four metropolitan cities of India in recent period," Science of the Total Environment, 818, 151788. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151788
Rao N., Patil S., Koduganti M., Singh C., Mahalingam A., Poonacha P. and Singh N., "Sowing Sustainable Cities: Lessons for urban agriculture practices in India," IIHS UPAGrI Project, Bengaluru, 2023.
Akshaya Ayyangar
Lead – Environmental Policy and Governance, Okapi Research and Advisory and Senior Researcher at Chennai Resilience Centre Urban Thottam and Resilient Chennai Email: akshaya@resilientchennai.com
