Grow your own greens and save the city

Grow your own greens and save the city
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Imagine you are able to grow vegetables and fruits in your backyard or terrace garden. You would not only get pesticide-free, tasty, organic greens but also contribute towards a cleaner environment in the City.

Urban horticulture doesn’t just have an aesthetic value. It can be a source of employment for the displaced; address nutritional needs, use biodegradable urban waste, improve urban ecology, and help recycle urban wastewater.

What’s more, you don’t need a sprawling backyard to achieve all this. Terrace, verandah or even window boxes could be used to grow plants. In a bid to popularise urban horticulture, the International Water Management Institute and the AME Foundation have launched the ‘Cities Farming For The Future’ programme.

The programme will concentrate on awareness-creation and provide training for urban horticulture. Jayanagar, J P Nagar and Banashankari areas have been selected as pilot areas for the project.

The Foundation will hold events to publicise it among residents as well as policy-makers and NGOs. Environmentalist Dr Vittalrajan says: ‘‘If 10 per cent of the residents in these areas grow vegetables in their backyard, we will see a drastic change.’’

The programme will also concentrate on reviving agriculture in peri-urban areas, which were once considered to be as sources of food supply for the urban areas.

‘‘Pollution and waste from urban areas is affecting the surrounding areas the food chain, leading to the presence of high levels of heavy metals, and pesticides in the vegetables we consume,’’ said agricultural scientist Dr Shiv Shankar. Magadi has been selected as the pilot area for implementation of the programme in a peri-urban setting.

Farmers will be trained to adopt eco-friendly methods using biodegradable waste as manure and making wastewater fit for irrigation. For details, call 26699512/26699522.