Urban agriculture means growing of plants and the raising of animals within and around cities. The most impressive feature of urban agriculture that separates it from rural agriculture, is that it blended into the urban economic and ecological system. With rising populations, the manner in which we farm must include technology to feed this aggressive demand.
In the current scenario of depleting water resources world over, hydroponics has an advantage over traditional farming since it consumes about 90 percent less water, requires no pesticides, and provides better yield.
Benefits of urban farming,
1. Use of urban residents as workers:
Most cities in developing countries have difficulties to create sufficient formal employment opportunities for the poor. A large part of the people involved in urban agriculture is the urban poor. Women form an important part of urban farmers since agriculture and related processing can often be more easily combined with their other tasks in the household.
2. Reusing urban resources:
They also have increasing problems with the disposal of urban wastes and wastewater and maintaining air and river water quality. Urban agriculture provides a strategy to enhance urban environmental management. Using organic waste as compost and urban wastewater for irrigation.
3. Improves marketing and economy
Agriculture plays an important role in enhancing urban food security. Since the costs of supplying and distributing food to urban areas based on rural production and imports continue to increase. But it does not satisfy the demand, especially of the poorer sectors of the population. Urban farming can balance this situation to an extent. Thus urban agriculture contributes to local economic development.
4.Direct impacts on urban ecology
Urban agriculture is not only a part of the urban ecological system but also plays an important role in the environmental management system. There are more wastewater and organic wastes in urban areas because of growing populations. Due to this the disposal of wastes has become a serious problem. But, urban farming can help to solve such problems by turning urban wastes into a productive resource
“Sriram Gopal the founder of Future Farms. It is a company focusing on the nascent field of hydroponics and aquaponics. They develop farming technologies suited for tropical climates. Sriram is pinning his hopes on an urban farming revolution. where the new-age farmers would be people who would be comfortable handling the computers and sensors that are part of the hydroponic set-up. They designed rooftops in the cities as the harvest field.” which is explained through his speech in TEDtalks
“Surely we have a responsibility to leave for future generations a planet that is healthy and habitable to all species”- Sir David Attenborough
Urban farming can improve your lifestyle in terms of food you consume. Thus improve your productivity and helps to achieve financial independence and can foster your early retirement.
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Photo by Arnaldo Aldana on Unsplash