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Bangladesh: Economic, environmental and other benefits of urban gardening

‘Promoting urban gardening by the urban poor in four cities’

By Nilratan Halder
Financial Express
October 27, 2022

Excerpt:

The latest news, not covered by the major newspapers published from the capital city, is that the FAO will finance an urban gardening programme in Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) and Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) areas, Narayanganj and Gazipur city corporations. Proshika Manobik Unnayan Kendra will be in charge of the technical and logistics support for development of as many as 5,000 urban gardens in these four city corporation areas.

Earlier the FAO provided similar support to rooftop gardening in the capital. This time, the urban gardening or farming programme is expected to be extensive and cover both urban and peri-urban available spaces for growing supplementary foods in order to lessen dependence on vegetables and fruits in particular from the kitchen market.

Many people are likely to dismiss the idea of producing a substantial amount of such foods in a highly crowded city like Dhaka. This is because the concept of gardening to them is not at all clear and, therefore, ludicrous. But urban farming is no figment of imagination, it is real and can adequately synchronise with the prime minister’s emphasis on using all available spaces for producing food in order to ensure the country’s self-sufficiency in food or food security.

The concept of urban gardening in its broader sense encompasses not just the practice of cultivation of leafy and other vegetables as well as fruits but also animal husbandry, aquaculture, agroforestry, urban beekeeping and horticulture. A few young entrepreneurs by now have successfully developed cattle and dairy farms in the peri-urban areas. Similarly development of urban vegetable farms and orchards is quite possible on fallow lands in such areas. Such farms definitely have an edge over their counterparts in far away districts in processing and distributing foods in and around urban areas.

Read the complete article here.