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Urban farming new mantra
The Telangana Horticulture Department is all set to launch a unique campaign to increase the green cover as well as provide organic vegetables daily to the city residents.
Hyderabad: The Telangana Horticulture Department is all set to launch a unique campaign to increase the green cover as well as provide organic vegetables daily to the city residents.
Dubbed as ‘Own and Produce Your Oxygen’, the mass awareness campaign intends to encourage the citizens in twin cities to adopt Urban Farming.
Explaining the twin benefits from the programme, Horticulture Department Commissioner L Venkatrami Reddy said the city has been witnessing increase in pollution affecting the health of people.
“An effective way of tackling it is to increase green cover wherever possible and to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide by increasing oxygen in the city’s atmosphere,” he added. However, this could not be done only by the civic bodies growing avenue plantation, developing lung spaces like parks and other green belts in the city. Taking into consideration these aspects, the department had hit on the idea to encourage the Urban Farming in the twin cities.
Nearly, 40 lakh households in city and an equal number in its suburbs have an estimated potential of producing more than 50 lakh kg vegetables per day through the urban farming. “Each apartment or individual houses could produce a minimum of about 10 to 15 kg vegetables and fruits,” Venkatrami Reddy said.
“The potential capacity to produce more than 50 lakh kg vegetables and fruits by the households in twin cities and in the suburban areas should be garnered by adopting urban farming,” he averred. This would increase the green cover releasing the much-needed oxygen into the atmosphere.
At the same time, the residents could get the much-needed organic vegetables and fruits which would enable them to keep up their health, the official said.It was against this background that the department had created a separate Urban Farming Division (UFD) to create awareness, provide necessary training as well as distribute 12 kinds of vegetable seeds to those interested to take up urban farming on the terraces of their apartments and individual houses to develop kitchen gardens.
