Category — India

Proposed project an entry in the Mahindra Spark the Rise Project Championship.

Project Implementation Examples

The idea of School Garden was conceptualized and set up at Loyola Composite Pre-University college with the help of one organization, that funded this project. An Eco-Club was formed, comprising of 16-18 students from 8th and 9th standards, to maintain the terrace garden and this was a huge success. These students have displayed initiative and enthusiasm in maintaining the garden on their own and are very involved that they reach out with questions and related problems they face. These students have been supported by their teachers and have been able to harvest 3 kilos of greens within 30 days of starting the project. Vegetables harvested from this project have been directly diverted to their mid-day meal preparation, which is an achievement in itself. This has fostered a green community within the school today.

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In the field.

“Our research was conducted with 35 farming families across eight sites.”

Team: John Brett, Jessica Cook, Dr. Debbi Main, Kate Oviatt

Excerpt:

Of the 35 farm families interviewed, only one reported growing crops primarily for personal consumption. Most indicated that they may consume a little of their produce, but reported that they buy most of their food. Farm families that grow crops exclusively for personal consumption are likely to have other means of employment and, therefore, spend less time working in the field–which is probably why we didn’t run into more subsistence farmers in the field. Once crops are harvested, the majority are sold through one or more of the many distribution options available to Delhi farmers.

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Bangalore produces over 2000 to 3000 tonnes of waste everyday. The centralized government composting plant can handle only 500 tonnes per day. The rest reaches dumps that are illegal.

In just five years the Daily Dump team has helped over 4,500 customers in Bengaluru to compost household waste in terracotta pots, and these customers keep around 5,522kg of organic waste out of landfills every day. What is remarkable about Poonam Bir Kasturi’s waste management process is its simplicity, and the cleverly designed terracotta pots add a touch of earthiness to it.

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Bangalore urban farming. Photo by Kimm St Thomas.

Bangaloreans are starting a movement to grow organic food for their families.

By Mari Marcel Thekaekara |
New Internationalist
Nov 25, 2011

Excerpt:

Before it hit the headlines in the mid nineties, as a high-tech international ‘IT city’, which Bangalored jobs from all around the globe, Bangalore was known as ‘India’s garden city’, a pensioner’s paradise. It was a charming little town, sleepy and laid back. Everyone took pride in their gardens. Even now, apart from the terrible infrastructure because the city couldn’t cope with the huge influx of people who flooded in to run the IT centres, the old parts of Bangalore town are still charming. Quiet, safe neighbourhoods filled with trees, flowers, cottages, tiled roofs, and nice old houses: generally a far nicer city than Mumbai, Delhi or Kolkata.

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Community Farm at Nana Nani Park. Photo by Urban Leaves in India.

“The importance and requirement for urban agriculture will only grow in the coming years as transportation costs keep increasing,” says AK Das, senior assistant director, National Horticulture Board.

By Nidhi Nath Srinivas and Pk Krishna Kumar
Economic Times India
18 Nov. 2011

Excerpt:

NEW DELHI | KOCHI: Delhi-based homemaker Shaifali Chikermane had had enough of vegetables laced with deadly chemicals and deceptive sheen. So she decided to take matters into her own hands. Literally so, because just a few months later she has a spread of 25 pots with garlic, onion, green spinach, red spinach, peas, cauliflower, chillies, ginger and herbs growing on the terrace of her 800 sq ft flat.

Chikermane belongs to an expanding tribe of city dwellers across the country who have taken to growing vegetables and reducing dependence on the marketplace. These urban farmers are using every inch of available space for growing fresh vegetables that are salubrious for household budgets as well, especially in these times of raging food inflation.

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How will South Asia cities be fed?

By Kranti Prakash
Bihar, India
Email: kranti_prakash@hotmail.com

How will South Asia cities be fed? – Is an important question demanding attention due to rapidly growing urban population of the sub-continent. Urban and peri-urban organic agriculture is one set of activities resulting in grater food production, improved livelihood opportunities for urbanites and the enhanced environmental qualities of cities. During last decade in south Asian countries people have been experiencing rural growth rate of 17% but urban growth rate of 30% more than 6 thousand cities are in South Asia. Nearly 50000 villages have merged into cities due to urbanization. Millions of farmers had to abandon their age old practice of farming. Prices of fruits and vegetables are growing manifold.

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Reap What You Sow -Eat What You Grow! 10th-12th December 2011, Mumbai

From Urban Leaves:

The aim of hosting this seminar is to give faces to names, learn some amazing gardening secrets from experienced practitioners, interact and meet all those like minded people across the country with whom we have been sharing our joys of harvests, sharing tips on composting, sowing and reaping up till now on e–groups and networking sites.

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“This papaya when ripened to near orange on the tree tastes as sweet as a mango. It’s always been so – guaranteed! Perhaps because of what it grows in.”

By Siddartha
194 photos

“My guess is that for a terrace garden with about 200 sq ft of 1 foot deep, good quality composted raised bed with the best designs et al put together – you should with easy effort reap more than half a kg of edible matter every day. Definitely possible in winter, other seasons might be little less.”

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A cow in Hyderabad, a city of over 4 million people.

“We have a produce of more than 100 litres of milk daily and distribute it not only in this area but also adjoining ones,” says Darogha Yadav, manager of the cattle shed behind Inorbit.

By Rahul Devulapalli
Times of India
Oct 14, 2011

Excerpt:

HYDERABAD: In the backyard of IT hub of Hi-Tec City is another flourishing industry, that of cattle farming. There are an estimated 30 big and small cattle sheds in Madhapur area alone and several more in adjoining areas. The owners, now big realtors and businessmen, are unwilling to use this land for anything else apart from rearing their cows and buffaloes. Owned largely by the local Yadav community, these cattle sheds are almost invisible as they are tucked away from the hustle and bustle of Hi-Tec City.

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Urban Leaves: community farms in Mumbai

Urban Leaves Documentary
Reap what you sow, Eat what you grow,
Film made by Suma Josson.
(Must see! Mike)

Dedication by the filmmaker Suma Josson:
August 28th was my mother’s birthday. It is 2 months since she passed away. Daughter of a farmer she was a kitchen gardener growing her own vegetables and fruits wherever she moved. She carried the garden within her and the garden contained her energy. I know up there she is tending and watering a garden filled with the light of regeneration and hope. Let’s turn more earth organic in 2011.

Articles from the India Times celebrating Kitchen Garden Day

Mumbai goes green on the terrace

By Anahita Mukherji
India Times
Aug 28, 2011

Excerpt:

MUMBAI: Planning to turn farmer? There’s no need to leave the city. Join the growing tribe of urban farmers, who grow their own food in every nook and cranny available to them in space-starved cities.

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There are Aavla and Curry Leaves (kadipatta). Photo by author.

Garden by the Bay – Purvita’s terrace garden

By Anuradha Shankar
Urban Leaves in India
Aug 9, 2011

Excerpt:

Little did I know that the house itself was on the terrace of the building, and I had to climb five floors to get there! It had been a long time since I had climbed five sets of stairs, but as I huffed and puffed my way up, I couldn’t help admiring the old wooden staircase and the beautiful entrances that adorned the houses. I was welcomed by Purvita with a big smile, and we at once hit it off, even though this was the first time we had met!

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Thiruvananthapuram, formerly known as Trivandrum, is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. Referred to by Mahatma Gandhi as the “Evergreen city of India”. Photo: Kowdiar Palace, the residence of the Maharajah of Travancore in Trivandrum.

25 grow bags will be given to each household

The New Indian Express
Aug 01, 2011

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The State Horticulture Mission-Kerala is embarking on an ambitious mission, that of extending vegetable farming to as many households and areas as possible.

The project would see the launch of rooftop vegetable farming in nearly 15,000 households under the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation and municipalities under it. It would be formally inaugurated on Tuesday.

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Vriksha Nursery Blog
July 10, 2011

Excerpt:

Looking outside the windows of outbound trains in Mumbai have always been disturbing hoards of slum dwellers all along the track mooning you, open gutters heaps of garbage, swines, rats … and nestled among all this are the farms that produce roughly 40% of Mumbai’s spinach, fenugreek, coriander and other local greens. Plants like radishes, bananas, paddy are also cultivated on these farms.

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The efforts of a handful of residents has transformed a small patch of land at the Nana Nani Park at Girgaum Chowpatty into a flourishing community garden

By Shilpa Sachdev
The Times of India, Mumbai
July 16, 2011

A year back the Nana Nani Park at Girgaum Chowpatty was just a regular place where senior citizens would come for a walk in the morning, an evening jog or for some fresh air. But today, a collective of the residents in this part of South Mumbai are running their own community garden in this park. An idea that germinated a year back is now ripe with a variety of vegetation grown using organic farming techniques.

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Before and after on Vipul’s terrace.

The beginning of a kitchen terrace garden

By Anu Shankar
Urban Leaves
July 10, 2011

Excerpt:

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Kitchen Gardens? Chances are, you would conjure up an image of an independent house surrounded by a patch of land, a section of which is filled with veggies. At least, that’s how it was for me. I remembered one of my uncle’s houses, where we had a bit of land behind, where my grandfather enthusiastically planted carrots and cabbages. It was terribly exciting for a city girl like me who had never seen vegetables being grown before, and I spent almost every minute of my holiday peering at the plants and seeing if they had grown yet!

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Dr B.N.Viswanath conducting a workshop on Terrace Gardening at AME, Bangalore.

The Garden City Farmers

Nirmala Govindarajan,
The Times of India
Jun 4, 2011

Software professional S Laxminarayan, too, joined hand with the Garden City Farmers as treasurer to help increase the green cover of the city. “I am a mechanical engineer, and when I first met Dr Viswanath three years ago, I started out by fabricating boxes to grow greens. Now, our intention is to reach out to a wide spectrum of people in Bangalore who can help increase the green cover — the middle class population, children in government schools and in time, slum dwellers too, so they can grow veggies in the limited space in and around their homes,” says Laxminarayan adding, “We’re also exploring the possibility of growing organic veggies like tomatoes, brinjals and creepers instead of ornamental plants in public parks.

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V. Y. Wilankar in her terrace garden in densely populated urban India.

With bursting populations and high food prices, the food security of urban dwellers is approaching a crossroads

By Nisha Kumar Kulkarni
Beyond Profit
May 19, 2011

Excerpts:

Sustainability, however, remains a challenge for urban agriculture, as does its scalability.

“People throw around the word ‘sustainable’ a lot in our field,” says Peters. “Urban agriculture is absolutely sustainable in the sense that it does not require the inputs of fossil fuels or chemical fertilizers.”

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Nearly 200,000 farmers have committed suicide in India over the last 10 years

But the mainstream media hardly reflects this.

Nero’s Guests is a story about India’s agrarian crisis and the growing inequality seen through the work of the Rural Affairs Editor of Hindu newspaper, P Sainath.

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Green revolution Gynaecologist Deepali Prabhat and entrepreneur Vipul Sanghvi prepare compost soil at Maharashtra Nature Park. Photo by Vikas Munipalle.

Across Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru, a movement is taking roots: citydwellers growing food on terraces, balconies and wall spaces.

By Sunaina Kumar
Tehelka Magazine
Apr 2, 2011

Excerpt:

There is nothing unusual about the Bandra street — cramped, grimy, choked by traffic — that Adrienne Thadani lives in. Up above, though, on the terrace of Thadani’s building, the cheerily painted walls offer the perfect setting to her rooftop garden. Here grow crisp lettuce, cucumber, spinach, okra and ripe red cherry tomatoes. The fresh fruits and vegetables here look sprightly, as if a testimony to the audacity of hope.

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The children were first shown how to loosen the soil and clearing it of stones

Organic Conversations blog
Dec. 2010

Excerpts:

For the last couple of weeks, some of us at the Bangalore Terrace Gardens (BTG) group had been discussing the possibility of community farming with children and today we finally made a start.

It was interesting to watch the children in such a setting. They were keen to help, yet unsure of how to proceed. As one mother shared, ‘ They are so eager to help then why are they being so hesitant to step on the soil or make furrows, etc?” And as we realised, it holds an important learning for us – that the disconnect between today’s children and the earth around them is so real that unless we make efforts like this to familiarise them with it, they will fail to see any connection at all.

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