Sustainable urban farming: A case study on multi-crop vertical hydroponics
Keywords:
Tropical crops, Multi-crop Vertical Hydroponics, Prototype, Sustainability, Urban (food) supply chainAbstract
The concept of using chemical fertilizers and pesticides to enhance agricultural production is an age-old practice. Given the fact that food is a basic necessity, this paper tends to promote an urban-based sustainable solution to reduce the use of agrochemicals and water to grow vegetable crops. Though the idea of Hydroponics is known to the scientific world, the designed prototype of vertical hydroponics serves as an opportunity to minimize the space which makes it suitable in the context of Indian urban cities. Four different vegetable crops (Brinjal, Lettuce, Tomato, and Chilli) were grown in the prototype and it was observed that all the four plants in the hydroponics system grew faster with no agrochemicals and minimal economic costs ofmanufacturing. Given the situation when forests are consciously turned into agricultural croplands to meet the demands of the increasing population, this prototype can be expanded as a potential model to minimize forest degradation and provide chemical free crops to the larger population in the cities.
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