Alternative Assignment: Urban Farming--Rabia Javed

Urban farming can be defined as the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in towns or cities. In other words, it is the process of growing crops and raising animals within towns or cities. The benefits of urban farming include the abundant availability of fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat products. Many people are involved with urban farming due to its advantages of fresh food and the huge amount of food availability. Some difficulties with urban farming may include having a hard time finding a sufficient amount of land to grow the food. It can also be expensive to buy the amount of land needed in order to begin with urban farming. Overall, the food consumed by urban farming leads to better health and nutrition and it is better to consume food production from urban farming rather than industrialized food.

There are a couple of places around the world that follow thru urban farming; some of those places includes Havana, Cuba, Mumbai, India, Beijing, China, etc. In Havana, most of their food productions are done by urban farming. In 2002, about 3.4 million tons of food was produced in the urban gardens. Then, in 2003, many Cubans decided to expand their urban sector because so much food was produced in 2002. In Mumbai, they experienced a huge growth in their population due to economic development; the amount of people continued to increase. So, in this area, urban farming was difficult to follow thru on due to the huge population and they had to deal with real estate developers for the land. But, Dr. Doshi had come up with innovation techniques of farming which the people could follow thru on. In Beijing, there was a land increase within two years. So, they decided to adapt the concept of urban farming. Changing to this technique, helped to improve the quality of the food rather than the quantity of the food which was good because this meant better nutrition for the people.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_agriculture