August 3, Lalitpur

UN-HABITAT in collaboration with Lalitpur Metropolitan City, and with funding support from Fukuoka Habitat Institute is “Promotion of Urban Agriculture through Rooftop Farming” in ward no 15 of Lalitpur. With technical support from HASERA Agriculture Research & Training Center & Story Cycle, the initiative aims to promote urban agriculture for ensuring access to healthy food and improving food security for vulnerable households in urban areas, integrated with raising awareness on regreening our cities, rainwater harvesting, and organic waste management at community level.

In a three-day training organized at Namuna Machindra Secondary School, Deputy Mayor of Lalitpur Metropolitan City Ms. Manjari Shakya Bajracharya unveiled the mobile application “Karesa” designed and built to provide technical support to individuals interested in urban agriculture. She also highlighted the importance of rooftop farming in household waste management, pollution control, and urban beautification.

Ms. Pragya Pradhan, Habitat Program Manager of UN HABITAT Nepal emphasized that the project objective to reduce the unforeseen food crisis during disaster, to empower and strengthen household level sustainable waste management and to link urban farming and products from urban agriculture with market with technology. She highlighted the importance of awareness about the environmental issues at the school level, engaging with children and youth to preserve urban environment with the urban agriculture demo garden established at Namuna Machindra School’s rooftop to play a crucial role, in leadership of School’s principal Mr. Radhakrishna Mahat. The school has also established Eco Club for the management of the rooftop garden.

In the 3 days TOT organized at Namuna Machindra school at 26-28 July, different aspects of urban farming viz. women entrepreneurship, local practices in urban gardening, international status and practices of urban farming, urban hydroponics, use of light trap pheromone trap, pest management, different methods of urban composting, urban garden design and management, mixed farming, vertical farming etc. were covered. Mr. Govinda Sharma, lead trainer with Mr. Bibek Dhital, Ms. Maheshwori Bista, Ms. Deepika Gyawali, Mr. Saurav Dhakal and Mr. Nischal Pokhrel provided hands on training in the demo farm, which was participated by 47 urban farming enthusiasts from all wards of Lalitpur.  Ms. Rasmi Kadel, participant from Ward. No 23 as her learnings shared the usefulness of the training in making congested city life greener, productive and joyful, promoting healthy eating by reducing consumption of inorganic pesticide contaminated food stuff, and make use of the leisure time more productive.