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URBAN AGRICULTURE & VERTICAL FARMING

    Introduction 

    Urban Agriculture and Vertical Farming is a proper mix for a developing world in the terms of food and its security. It also works as an escape for poverty. 

    Urban Agriculture

    Urban Agriculture or farming takes place in urban areas.  It is a cultivating process which helps in distributing food across the urban areas. Urban Agriculture is not only about distributing food but it can also involve animal husbandry, aquaculture, agro forestry, urban beekeeping and horticulture.  

    Metropolitan agribusiness can reflect fluctuating degrees of monetary and social turn of events. It might be a social development for practical networks, where natural producers, “foodies,” and “locavores” structure informal organizations established on a common ethos of nature and network comprehensive quality. These organizations can advance while getting formal institutional help, getting incorporated into neighborhood town arranging as a “change town” development for supportable metropolitan turn of events. For other people, food security, nourishment, and pay age are key inspirations for the training. In either case, more straightforward admittance to new vegetables, organic products, and meat items through metropolitan horticulture can improve food security and sanitation. 

    This makes a city stronger and flexible to supply chain disturbances. It also gives benefit to social and educational system in different ways for the better future 

    Several Kinds of Urban 

    Agriculture

    The few common types of agriculture are stated below which can easily be executed in any place at any time. These not only cost low but also works as a quick process to execute. 

    1. Backyard Garden:  

    Backyard gardening is one of the traditional concept which means growing of food in the house property itself. It also gives an opportunity to a person to increase the bond by sharing food. 

    1. Street Landscaping: 

    It is a kind of gardening which is done on any living street which is used for several purposes. 

    These can also be maintained by the person who lives closed to the area.  

    1. Tactical Gardens: 

    These are kind of gardens which can be built using small spaces for gardening and is an easy process to deal with. 

    1. Green Walls: 

    This is a way in which the internal and external walls of a particular place are used for growing food.  

    1. Animal Husbandry: 

    Animal husbandry is a way of producing food by raising animals. This is a process used by some citizens for their living. for eg. Chicken. 

    Vertical Farming

    Vertical farming is a different kind of farming in which the crops are grown in stacks vertically. It regularly joins controlled-condition horticulture, which means to improve plant development, and soilless cultivating procedures, for example, aquaculture, hydroponics, and aeroponics. Some basic selections of structures to house vertical cultivating frameworks incorporate structures, steel trailers, burrows, and surrendered mines.  

    The cutting edge idea of vertical cultivating was stated by Dickson Despommier in 1999. 

    Dickson was an educator of Public and Environmental Health at Columbia University.  

    Despommier and his understudies thought of a plan of a high rise ranch that could take care of 50,000 people.  Although the plan has not yet been manufactured, it effectively promoted the possibility of vertical farming. Current utilizations of vertical farming combined with other best in class advancements, for example, particular LED lights, have come about in more than multiple times the harvest yield than would get through customary cultivating methods. 

    There have been a few distinct methods for executing vertical cultivating frameworks into networks, for example, Paignton, Israel, Singapore, Chicago, Munich, London, Japan,  and Lincolnshire. 

    Vertical cultivating innovations face monetary difficulties with enormous beginning up costs contrasted with conventional ranches. In Victoria, Australia, a “theoretical 10 level vertical homestead” would cost more than multiple times more per cubic meter of arable land than a conventional ranch in country Victoria.  Vertical homesteads additionally face huge vitality requests because of the utilization of advantageous light like LEDs. In addition, if nonsustainable power source is utilized to satisfy these vitality needs, vertical ranches could create more contamination than conventional homesteads or nurseries. 

    Different Ideas to Perform Vertical Farming: 

    1. Building Based Vertical Farms

    Building based vertical farming is executed in places and areas which are not in use. For example, a place in Chicago is used for farming which is now known as “The Plant”. In rare cases the new sites or buildings are also used for the same purpose. 

    2. Shipping Container Vertical Farms: 

    Shipping Containers are a most popular way of executing vertical farming. These shipping containers provide systematic and modular areas which can easily be piled up and can save the space. These containers are equipped with LED lighting and other essential necessities. 

    Deep Farms

    These are the farms that are built from underground tunnels or mine shafts which are not in use.  The advantage in this type is that the temperature is suitable and constant for the growth of the crops.  It is not only cheap but also can produce more food than other farms on one particular piece of land.  

    These farms can also be built near water grounds which eventually helps in giving benefits of water supply. 

    The first underground farm is claimed to be built by the company “Growing Underground”. 

    The above given image is of an abandoned tunnel in South Korea, which is now is used for vertical farming. 

    Deep Farms: Tunnel 

    Is This The Future Of Urban Cities? 

    Yes, Metropolitan cultivating, both vertical cultivating or cultivating on empty open spaces, can be a good route for guaranteeing food security in India and around the globe later on. Despite the fact that nations like Europe, the USA, and Singapore have just executed vertical cultivating and are managing huge undertakings for future concerns, India despite everything has far to go as it is confined to just barely any personal responsibility driven tasks. Institutional help, attention to the advantages related with metropolitan farming, and monetary and innovative help from the administration can just pull in the city occupants and help them to push ahead with the idea of metropolitan horticulture in India. Dynamic development of metropolitan horticulture can go about as a metropolitan recovery apparatus for the urban areas by giving social association and expanding openings for work and natural advantages to the metropolitan zones over the globe. Hence, to battle the difficulties related with fast increment in populace, the subject of “metropolitan farming” is by and large firmly checked by researchers, city organizers, and the feasible horticultural network for a superior future.