Development of Urban Agriculture in India: Public Policy Options

The cities in India are rapidly growing and the manifestation of urban crisis in a variety of areas viz., environment, food, energy etc. can be directly traced to the unbridled growth of cities. Urban landuse patters are changing dramatically due to the pressure of population and the role of urban fringe in supplying food, fuel, forage and industrial forest products, has declined considerably. Urban areas in India have emerged as the centres of impoverishing peripheral regions. The environmental crisis of the urban region has become acute and interlinked in complex ways to urban energy, landuse and the political economy of urban development. This paper looks at the nature of this crisis and the potential of urban agriculture in ameliorating the crisis. It develops an analysis of the nature of the crisis, reviews the different possibilities that exist in urban agriculture, discusses the constraints for effective implementation of agricultural programmes through institutional structures and finally develops policy options and strategies for promoting urban agricultures.