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Urban Agriculture: Definition, Presence, Potentials and Risks, and Policy Challenges

Urban agriculture has an important role to keep the ecosystem and environment system around urban areas. It helps to recycle the organic wastes as well as to limit the wastewater. You can start to do urban agriculture from your home. Before that, let’s discuss everything about urban agriculture: definition, presence, potentials and risks, and policy challenges.

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About Urban Agriculture

In a simple definition, urban agriculture is planting a variety of plants around the urban areas or cities. You can plant flowers, fruits, vegetables, crops, and many more. It is also better if you can raise chicken, ducks, or any kind of productive animal. Urban agriculture also emphasizes on the way to manage waste to keep the environment healthy. For example, organic wastes are processed into compost, limit the use of plastic, and recycle the unused products. One of the outputs of urban agriculture is organic vegetables and fruits.

Urban Agriculture Development
Urban agriculture develops rapidly due to the rise of urban areas. It seems hard to find a healthy soil to grow plants. The soil is transformed into buildings and any public areas. At the same time, the level of waste is increased significantly from chemical wastes into plastic waste. Urban agriculture comes as one of the solutions where urban people use their space to grow some plants and raise animals. The planting process is based on an environmentally friendly method. People who want to start an urban farming at home can follow the simple steps below.

See also: Utilizing Vertical Farming as Sharing of Office Space
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Preparing the Land to Start an Urban Farming 
You don’t need to have a large land only to start urban farming. You can use your front or backyard and plant something beneficial there. If you don’t have a backyard you can use some urban farming methods such as hydroponics, aquaponic, planting in a polybag or recycled materials, and many more.

Preparing the Plants 
Growing Homegrown Vegetables
You may grow anything around your home. For a more effective urban agriculture, you can grow a variety of vegetables and fruits such as spinach, strawberries, berries, carrots, potatoes, kale, and many more. It is better if you grow plants that you eat every day. You can also grow some herbs and spices around your small garden. Edible flowers and specific green leaf plants are also an excellent option. Those plants are not only useful for accessories but they are also useful for filtering dust so you get clean and fresh air. It is okay to grow the plants from the seed or buy some young plants and then take care of them until you get the benefits from them. 

Taking Care of Your Plants in Urban Agriculture 
You are not allowed to use any harmful products only to boost the growth of your plants. You must take environmentally-friendly gardening methods such as taking care of your plants with compost and clean water. The idea is how to grow the plant as healthy and fresher as it can.
Harvesting the Plants

One of the benefits of applying urban farming is that you can do a self-sufficient model at home. You can harvest your food from your backyard. The most important thing is that you get healthy and cheap food.

The Urban Agriculture Potential and Risks 
Urban agriculture has a great prospect in the future. People need to eat healthy food from healthy ingredients. At the same time, they also need to live in a good and healthy environment. Urban farming can improve the quality of the soil as well as air and water. Due to the need for healthy ingredients, more people start to grow plants organically and sell the harvest.

Policy Challenges 
One of the challenges in developing urban agriculture is on its policy. It might not be a problem if you only grow the plants for your consumption. If it is for business, you need to make sure that the process is 100% organic. You need to register the business and get a tax number to confirm that you are selling organic products.

By learning from the urban agriculture: definition, presence, potentials and risks, and policy challenges above, you are ready to start urban farming at home whether for self-sufficient or business. It seems that applying urban agriculture is simpler than the ordinary methods and you get enough healthy food to consume for the entire beloved family.