Urban Agriculture: Need, Benefits and Challenges

Vivek Kumar Gaurav*

¹ Environmental Researcher, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

*Corresponding Author: Vivek Kumar Gaurav, Environmental Researcher, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India.

Received: April 23, 2021; Published: December 01, 2021

The pandemic COVID-19 has raised the concern about the extreme vulnerability of urban settlement to unprecedented global risks and crises. The limited and restricted mobility due to the lockdown within the city or across the borders has led to the realization of the need to strengthen the local food production beside the long conventional channels of food supply system. The current scenario is motivating the discussion to encourage shorter channels for food supply system, creating a platform for the Urban agriculture. The approach of urban agriculture has been well recognized and encouraged by the scientific communities worldwide. The urban agriculture contributes in fostering healthy dietary options, pro-environmental behaviour, better food security, curtailment in wastage of food due to logistic reasons, reduction in the use of preservatives and most importantly small-scale local units can be inclined efficiently toward organic production, resulting in improved soil health and associated ecosystem. Moreover, during the lockdown, bloggers, journalists, and influencers have written explicitly about the therapeutic values of being in nature like gardening, growing vegetable and fruits etc. The increasing pro-environmental behaviour can also be evaluated by the flood of social media posts related to nature and gardening in the reference to the better overall health, significantly including mental health.

Citation

Citation: Vivek Kumar Gaurav. “Urban Agriculture: Need, Benefits and Challenges". Acta Scientific Agriculture 6.1 (2022): 01.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Vivek Kumar Gaurav. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.