Enhancing fruits and vegetables production through urban horticulture with the active participation of women and youth Bangladesh is characterized by a high rate of urbanization due to rapid rural urban migration and natural increase of population growth. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of 148,460 square kilometers. Many people who started to migrate in urban areas have created an enormous pressure on the existence of cities and this influenced the growth of many high-rise buildings and slums in most of the major cities of Bangladesh. Most importantly, people who are coming to the cities for their livelihoods do not have tenure of land, and thus, they start to reside anywhere they find vacant. Need of accommodation and other basic services for these increased people is causing rapid depletion of open and green spaces and water bodies and imposing acute pressure on urban land and water resources. Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan (RAJUK, 2016) reported that within 10 (from 2006 to 2016) years, Dhaka city’s agricultural has land reduced from 42 % to 30 %. In the case of Khulna city, the decrease of agricultural land is 49% from the year 1998 to 2012 (KDA, 2018). This rapid reduction of agricultural land and green spaces is not only imposing threat to the food and nutrition security but also creating excessive heat stress and water crisis in different cities and the country. Although the agricultural land area is decreasing rapidly, the country needs to feed the huge population in the major cities with very limited resources. Therefore, it is essential to think about the possible alternative options to ensure food and nutritional security for the urban population. By 2050, nearly 70% of the projected 10-billion people will live in cities (United Nations, 2018), and one that cannot be ignored when envisioning a sustainable food and nutritional security.
To feed these huge urban populations, especially for a country like Bangladesh where agricultural land crisis is severe, urban horticulture approach can be a promising and potential option to meet up the future food security challenges. Urban horticulture is broadly defined as the cultivation (in any form) of fruits and vegetables in urban environments (i.e., the region surrounding cities, rooftop, veranda, and homestead). It can provide diverse healthy foods (i.e., fruits and vegetables), inclusive and equitable food access (i.e., fill the gaps in urban pocket areas and buffer zones), and environmental benefits (i.e., carbon sequestration and decrease heat stress). Although there is no replacement for large-scale agriculture, urban horticulture offers a resourceful strategy to help feed the world and meet nutritional requirements in more environmentally, socially, and economically responsible ways. When evaluating the potential of urban horticulture, the community is experiencing the unavailability of quality planting materials and healthy potting mixer to grow fruits and vegetables. Thus, it is a great challenge for us to ensure the supply of quality planting materials and growing medium to make a sustainable urban horticultural approach. In addition, the urban community should be trained to develop their own garden with a limited number of resources (area, water etc.), which is also essential for the sustainability of this approach. Considering the community participation approach, women and youths are the most promising part to get trained for the sustainable horticultural approach. Women are the most important component of human resources who need attention for their development because around 49 percent of the population of Bangladesh is female.
There is a close relationship between the status of women and the socio-economic development in any country. In addition, the youth should be addressed properly, as about 50 percent of the present working force of Bangladesh is youth. If we can ensure the active participation of women and youth in sustaining the urban horticulture approach through entrepreneurship development, it will be a great opportunity to ensure a balanced socio-economic development of the country. Therefore, the proposed project engages both the women and youth for the socio-economic and development of the country through the sustainable urban horticulture management practices. However, it is important to identify and quantify existing formal and informal urban horticulture for analyzing the potentiality and growth of urban horticulture. It is hard to find open space for large-scale horticulture activities in crowded cities like Bangladesh and Nepal. Thus, it is assumed that many individual urban dwellers are practicing horticulture through rooftop gardening. Advanced remotely sensed earth observation data and techniques can be utilized to identify and quantify existing rooftop gardens as well as the type of horticulture practice. GIS-based modeling will be helpful to identify and quantify suitable locations for potential urban horticulture using various factors including rooftop and ground surface area, rooftop condition, land use types, and other factors. Capacity development of women and youth for urban horticultural practice and management to ensure food and nutritional security is one of the key interventions of the project. Urban horticulture approach will contribute to food and nutritional security by supplementing the daily food and nutrition requirement by reducing pressure on market demands. Against the above-mentioned background study, the project aimed to increase the horticultural production in the densely populated cities of Bangladesh and Nepal, which will contribute to food and nutritional security for the community people and create a positive impact on urban socio-economic status through the women and youth entrepreneurship development.