Every second terrace in Salt Lake has potted Lemons and Lilies but imagine a terrace growing enough vegetables to sell! Imagine a children’s centre setting aside space to grow vegetables. Imagine paddy growing next to our canals… 

Some units in our neighbourhood are going all out to grow organic vegetables — all so you can eat healthy and hopefully emulate the practice at home.

New Town’s CB Community Market, near Novotel, was inaugurated earlier this month but while most shops inside are yet to open, it is the roof that has taken the township by storm. The 7,000 sq ft terrace has been converted into a farm of sorts, making and selling fresh organic vegetables. 

At Ultadanga’s Bidhan Sishu Udyan, they are using up all available space in their massive backyard to grow organic vegetables. They aren’t compromising on children’s play area but every vacant patch, avenue and even their lake is being employed for the purpose. The produce is being sold at a Sunday market at the Udyan, alongside stalls from organic farms in Barasat. 

A kilometre-long stretch along New Town’s Bagjola Canal has been cleared of garbage and encroachment and now grows brinjals, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes and even rice. This Omnidel Green Village, which appears on the left when heading from Rabindra Tirtha to Eco Tourism Park, will start selling their produce from Poila Basiakh. 

Organic is the new buzzword and urban farming the new endeavour. 

Green revolution

“The CB Market terrace is a prototype we have created as part of the government’s Green City Mission. The mission aims to promote urban farming and we hope residents and corporate houses learn from it and replicate it on their own terraces,” says Debashis Sen, chairman of New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA), that is in charge of the market.  

NKDA is bearing the cost of the project and the implementation is being done by Owl Spirit, a company formed by the NGO Uthnau, that has experience in the field. “In 2014, we built an urban farm on the terrace of Siddha Town in Rajarhat. We had to discontinue after nine months after residents refused to pay for its maintenance but agriculture minister Purnendu Basu came to see it, liked it and helped us work on this CB Market terrace,” says director of Owl Spirit, Kunal Deb. 

Basu had also come to inaugurate the farmers’ market at the Udyan. “We have been growing organic vegetables since November last year,” said secretary of the Udyan, Gautam Talukdar. “Besides generating income by selling them, it shall raise awareness among our young members.”

As for Omnidel Green Village, it was started by Sourabh and Reena Sarkar, who live next to the Village and run the NGO Karmayog Foundation. They leased the land from NKDA in 2015 and have been developing it since then. “To date our fruits and vegetables are served in our langar. We have 60-70 people working for us and we ourselves consume the produce. But the village needs to sustain itself and so from mid-April we shall start selling them,” says Reena.

Farm in a city 

The units have had to overcome several obstacles before they could set up farms in urban areas.

♦ Space- The Udyan has 21 acres of land out of which they are squeezing out 3 acres for farming. “To make optimum use of space, we are replacing flowering trees with fruit and vegetable trees,” says Rishi Krishna De, assistant director, agriculture, administration, Barasat-Barackpore sub-division, who is helping the Udyan. “We are also laying meshes over a portion of the lake so creepers like gourds can be spread out.”

The New Town terrace has 800 baskets of plants. “New Town started out as a farmland and its development should not be at the cost of greens. Urban farming is the solution,” says Deb.

♦ Soil- The terrace farm uses cocopeat instead of soil to reduce the weight of its pots and hence pressure on the building. In fact, it has even replaced pots with the much-lighter wicker baskets. Cocopeat is the powdery material resulting from the processing of coir fibre.

“A three-ft wide pot full of soil would weigh 300kg but the same basket of cocopeat weighs 15kg,” says Nishambhu Sarkar, a worker on the terrace. Also, the baskets have been placed on wheels for easy movement. 

The folks at the Omnidel Village had to start by removing the garbage mounds, till the six-to-seven acre land and run tractors to level it. “We had experts test the soil and ascertain the kind of crops that would grow here,” says Reena.  

♦ The plants- Gourds, spinach, beans, cucumbers, carrots, brinjals are growing at all three centres but there are some plants that they are consciously avoiding.

“It is possible to grow rice, potatoes and onions on the terrace too but they will require tremendous space and water yet not produce proportionate yield,” explains Deb.

“For instance, we can grow gourds since people buy just one or two gourds at a time. But with potatoes they would buy at least 2kg at time. We cannot produce that much in the given space,” he says.

The terrace has solar panels overhead and so cannot grow plants that are too tall either. “So we’re growing dwarf papayas instead of regular papayas. And we’re growing three to four plants in the same basket,” says Deb.

There are no such constraints at Omnidel, that is even growing paddy. “For this we have used System of Rice Intensification (SRI) that optimises the output with minimal water, land and other resources,” says Reena. 

The Udyan has plans of growing lots of fruits but De has a concern. “At present the centre is open to all and I worry anyone may walk in and pluck the fruits,” he says.

♦ Lack of an ecosystem- The spirit of organic farming does not allow killing insects. “We shoo them away from leaves but do not kill. In actual farms, this works out fine as predators eat them up and maintain an ecological balance but would that happen three storeys above the ground?” asks Deb. Not taking a chance, they have released frogs, lizards and chameleons among the plants. 

All the construction work in New Town makes the plants dusty and so they wash the leaves frequently. Light pollution is also a worry. “Unlike in a rural belt, city lights are on all night and they reflect on our terrace, attracting insects. We get way more pest attacks on this terrace than in a natural environment,” says Deb. 

Arun Kumar Ram, a worker on the terrace, says it gets hotter there than on farms as the concrete floor is unable to absorb the heat. “So we have set up mist machines to spray on the plants and reduce the temperature,” he says. 

At Omnidel, attempts are on to harness the forces of nature and use electricity. “We also run yoga, satsang and music classes but stay open only from sunrise to sunset. Electricity is used only for pumps and a few LED lights that remain on at night for security reasons,” says Reena.

♦ Organic additives- “The reason farmers had shifted to using chemicals is because chemical fertilisers make plants grow faster and chemical insecticides kill insects much faster than organic ones,” reasons De. “Chemicals are also easier to procure — they can be bought from the market and a small quantity yields huge results. But they are toxic for the people eating such plants.”

But he has a solution. “We shall keep four cows whose milk, urine and dung will be used to make organic insecticide and fungicide,” says De. When asked about the law against keeping cattle within the city, he said four cows would not amount to a cowshed and that they would not be allowed to pollute the campus.  

The New Town terrace is making organic pesticides by rotting 10 types of leaves like neem, nishinda and karabi. “We’re making fertiliser with ghee, milk, curd, cow dung, cow urine, coconut water, sugarcane juice and bananas,” says Uttam Rudra, a worker.

♦ Fish farming- The Udyan’s Sunday market has a stall by Tona, a brand that sells organic processed items like spices, jams and also fish and meat. “The fish are kept away from hormones and antibiotics and the chicken, goat, turkey, rabbit and quail eat herbal supplements with their diet instead of chemical ones,” says a founder director of Tona, Sonali Sengupta. Tona is the name of a village in Bhangore where integrated organic farming is being carried out since 2000. 

De says the Udyan’s lake is being prepared for organic fish farming too. “There will be koi, magur, singhi, basa, rui, katla,” he says.

♦ Compost- The terrace is already rotting its garden waste to make compost fertiliser but they are eyeing a much bigger target. “We want residential buildings of the neighbourhood to give us their organic waste to turn into compost,” says Sanghamitra Mukherjee, an expert in the field of waste management, who is helping Owl Spirit.  

But convincing residents would be difficult, says Mukherjee. “It’s called the Nimby syndrome, where ‘nimby’ is an acronym for ‘Not In My Back Yard’. Everyone knows waste management is important and wants it enforced but no one wants it to happen in their immediate surrounding. They don’t want to put up with the stink that the rotting compost would produce, for instance.”

She says maybe they could start a system of buying the waste from residents. “It wouldn’t add significantly to their kitty, but may just work as an incentive. Like how no one throws away old newspapers as it fetches a small amount upon resale,” says Mukherjee. 

Price is right

New Town’s CB Market has a stall on the ground floor that sells the organic produce but residents are welcome — in fact encouraged — to go to the terrace and take a look before making their purchase. The three-storey building has a lift that should be in use soon. 

At Ultadanga’s Bidhan Sishu Udyan, the organic market opens at 8am on Sunday and lasts till stocks run out. Prices are around 15 per cent more than regular vegetables. 

At the New Town terrace, NKDA is subsiding the produce. “Every three months our staff would visit the supermarkets in the township and note down the prices of organic vegetables there. We would then sell our products at 20 per cent below the average market rates,” says Sen. 

Customers seem upbeat. “I bought spinach, beans, tomatoes and would have bought even more items had my bags not got so heavy,” said Anita Nandy, a Kankurgachhi resident who had gone to buy vegetables at the Udyan. “I’m fed up of eating chemical-laced, adulterated food and I’m relived that organic markets are opening up now.”

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