When we first conceived urban agriculture as a potential theme, we were aware of some known initiatives across country both in urban and peri urban areas. However, it was heartening to see the wonderful response – individual efforts; efforts galvanised by State support; social media enthusiasm in scaling up citizen’s participation.
Urban agriculture started worldwide in response to a crisis – for example in geographies like Cuba, where every possible space was converted into food productive areas to deal with shortages. In some cities from developed economies it was conscious effort to recognising green spaces. In developing countries embarking on rapid urbanisation as a development approach, the result was spiralling concrete jungles and urban slums. However, few local Governments conscious of green lung spaces pursued suitable landscaping within cities. Similarly, some interventions were designed and implemented – to support rural livelihoods while arresting distress migration to unsustainable and choking cities.
The impetus came from eco conscious citizens movements to pursue growing and eating healthy. The concepts like food miles, healthy organic vegetables appealed to all which gave birth to pursuing hobbies like roof top gardening. etc and optimising use of limited spaces. An attempt has been made in this issue to show case a few examples.
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6. Urban home gardening movement in Kerala Role of social media collectives
Anita Pinheiro
12. Creating new avenues in vertical gardening
Archana Bhatt, Vipindas P and Abdulla Habeeb
15. Food and livelihood security in urban -rural hinterlands
Ajay Kumar Singh and Archana Srivastava
19. Urban farming for healthy life
Rundan V
23.In the news
25. Knowledge management for urban agriculture – Leveraging the lessons learned
Vincent A and Saravanan Raj
30. New Books
31. Sources
32. Homegrown harvests Bringing food security to an educational campus
Deborah Dutta and Amrita B Hazra
