India: Building ‘backyards’ better – an approach for urban agriculture in India
Every disaster calls for a plan to recover from the damage caused
By Avinash Bhingarde
The Hans India
Aug 30, 2020
Excerpt:
Vibrancy and success of UA (urban agriculture) will largely rely on support from policy and governance. Urban planners and decision makers should be able to work efficiently with a clear guidelines and directives on UA. Currently, since UA is neither recognized as valid land use category nor suppressed through regulations and land use control, it is not receiving the due attention and support of any sort. This sadly results in UA falling through the cracks of typical governance structure or is subject to confused and conflicting jurisdictions.
Thus, UA needs institutional recognition and calls for multi-stakeholder agency with relevant sectoral governments, civil society organizations, community associations and individuals. The innovative experiments in various activities related to UA will need validation and authorization by experts, before its promotion and large-scale adoption by many. Similarly, the processes like identifying suitable crop mixes, crop rotations, inputs, pest control measures, harvesting methods, seed extraction and storage, processing, etc. become most effective when learned from peers. Hence there needs to be an institutional hybridization for supporting UA.
