Delhi govt to revive plans for urban farming

The scheme was announced in April 2022 , but the programme stalled after IARI faced delays in gaining permissions, said the Delhi government

Environment minister Gopal Rai on Thursday said the Delhi government plans to revive its urban farming scheme — which looks to promote the growing of vegetables on Delhi’s rooftops and balconies — adding that training workshops for the programme will commence in September.

Environment minister Gopal Rai said training workshops will be carried out by the state forest department. (HT Photo)

The government had announced the scheme in April 2022, but the programme stalled after Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) at Pusa Road, the institute they approached for technical assistance, faced delays in gaining permissions from the Centre for the same, Rai said.

The training workshops will now be carried out by the state forest department.

“As the land available for plantation purposes reduces, we will increasingly require more land, and urban farming provides each household with an option to grow crops on their rooftop or balcony. Each workshop will be conducted in batches of 30, with two workshops to be held simultaneously in each ward, where RWAs will be taught how to grow different vegetables,” Rai said.

“We plan to revive this initiative and launch it in September. Trials had so far been held, but the programme was yet to start as we needed an expert agency to carry out training at the ward level and conduct workshops. We were in talks with IARI, but they required permissions from the Centre and this had already led to a delay,” he added.

Responding to Rai’s remark, an IARI official, declining to be named, said the Delhi government did not sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the institute. “We were ready to conduct workshops, but an MoU was never signed. Until that had happened and funds were allotted, we could not do workshops,” the official said.

The Delhi cabinet had approved the urban farming initiative in June last year, with chief minister Arvind Kejriwal announcing that this will create up to 25,000 green jobs in Delhi. Kejriwal had said following cabinet approval, experts were going to be hired, with 400 awareness workshops and 600 entrepreneurship training programmes planned across the Capital.