Centre for Education & Documentation
and
Academy of Architecture,
on behalf of KICS
invite you to
A Sharing Session on Urban Agriculture
Climate Changes Cities – recycle waste, grow food, save water
on Friday, 8th August, 2008
at Academy of Architecture, Rachna Sansad, Sayani Road, Near Ravindra Natya Mandir, Mumbai
The Programme will be moderated by Ajay Nayak, Managing Editor, Indian Architect & Builder Magazine
Ø Urban Agriculture and Organic City Farming
¨ Bharat Mansata, from EarthCare Books, will present his learnings, while researching the book Organic Revolution which will be released this week. He will make a brief presentation of his work on Organic Farming in Cuba.
After the Soviet Union collapsed and the US tightened its embargo Cubas Organic Revolution began suddenly, under compulsion. A decade later, in 1999, the Swedish Parliament presented the Right Livelihood Award, or Alternative Nobel Prize, to GAO, the Cuban Organic Farming Association for showing that organic agriculture is a key to food security and environmental sustainability.
More recently, The Living Planet report (2006) of the WWF and the Global Footprint Network declared: Cuba is the only country on earth to attain sustainable development!
Not only has Cubas food production greatly increased, its economy, health, energy efficiency and water security are all big gainers. Urban migration has reversed. In 2006, Havana city grew 3 million tons of food!
The Cuban experience showed that the organic approach not only enhanced its national food security, productivity and diversity to better meet the nutritional needs of all the people but also enabled vital other ecological, social and economic benefits. Holistically adopted, it can revitalise society, enhance human health and the environment, and safeguard future generations.In the current raging debate over rapid urban-industrial uprooting of farmers, here is one example the world cannot ignore.
(Excerpts from the book)
In the present crisis of unprecedented rise in oil and food prices, the Cuban experience proves that urban agriculture can be a valid alternative as far as food and diet is concerned : yield is high, produces are of good quality, free of any toxins, and growing ones own fruits, vegetables and leafy greens incite city dwellers to consume more of these fresh and healthy products.
¨ CEDs film City Farming is a 18 minutes documentary on organic agriculture in Indian cities.
The film features: Dr. Ramesh T. Doshi, the first Indian city farmer who has developped a huge garden on his Jamunotri terrace in Bandra, Mumbai; Vivek Chitle, Snehlata Shrikhande, and Jyoti Shah who are all engaged in agriculture farming in the city of Pune.
They highlight the advantages of city farming in improving living conditions:
– Benefits for health are tremendous as fruits and vegetables are produced without any chemical inputs such as pesticides or fertilizers.
– In addition of recreating an essential link between city dwellers and nature, terrace farming beautifies cities which are otherwise dominated by grey buildings and pavements.
– Last but not least city farming helps tackle global warming by reducing GHG emissions generated by the use of fossile fuels when food is tranported from distant areas by trucks, trains or even planes.
¨ Snehlata Shrikhande, one of the protagonist in this film, is a Pune-based activist dealing with urban waste management since the early eighties. She is also involved in numerous and varied applications of vermiculture biotechnology, a cost effective, convenient & environmentally safe solution for recycling of bio-degradable waste. She will show how they reuse waste to make compost and produce food in their urban homes.
At a time when the campaign to segregate garbage has run aground, as, in terms of management, private agencies prefer the automated one truck approach, city farming can be viewed as a first step towards recycling of organic wastes.
¨ Inspired by Dr. Ramesh T. Doshi, Preeti Patil has created a terrace garden at Mumbai Port Trust with the employees of the central kitchen. She and Roshni Udyavar have also launched a project of city farms by Mumbai street children in August 2004. She is the technical coordinator of this project.
P. Patil considers urban agriculture as a possible form of socio-economic and environmental management of resources in a community as the locally produced fruits, vegetables, and flowers can be sold in the retail markets of the city and provide economic support to street children.
Environment and socio-economic issues are closely interlinked. [ ] City farming by itself is a very beneficial activity. [ ] On the other hand street children are highly talented. (Their) latent creative abilities need to be tapped in order to make them productive, economically independent and free from the exploitation in society.
(Extracts from: Development of City Farms by Street Children. A pilot project to improve the socio-economic condition of destitute children throught integrated environmental management ,
http://www.streetchildren.org.uk/reports/developmentofcityfarms.pdf )
Ø Permeable pavers : a move towards Water Harvesting instead of Flooding
Valerie Fernando (Intern from RITIMO at CED) will present some documentation, and pictures on Permeable Pavers, to help harvest rain water, rather than flood the streets!
¨ Pervious pavements (permeable or semi-permeable surfaces) are alternative to impermeable asphalt and concrete. They help prevent floods as they reduce the amount of runoff by allowing storm water to pass through surfaces that would otherwise be impervious. Water can either infiltrate into the ground if soil permeability rates allow, or be conveyed to other storm water systems by an under-drain.
¨ The two broad categories of alternative pavers are paving blocks and other surfaces including gravel, cobbles, wood, mulch, brick, and natural stone.
¨ The use of such alternative pavements is particularly relevant in Mumbai City which has experienced dramatic floodings in 2005. Nowadays, we observe a generalisation of the use of effective paving blocks in large parts of the city.
Ø Discussion: What is stopping us?
Knowledge in civil society as well as in academic circles on these issues are clearly not sufficient per se to get things changed.
Community issues and prejudices have to be addressed and the do good approach needs to be informed by other community and society level concerns.
In the context of global warming, it is making more sense to get people to
a) compost wet garbage and recyled dry waste
b) grow some food even in a small way
c) influence their societies not to go for impermeable paveing of their compounds.
Knowledge in Civil Society or KICS is a forum for conversations amongst activists and academics on issues relating to science and democracy. We invite you to join in the forum.
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