About the Pitch
Submitted By: Paraa BD
Name of the Solution: Terracity
The Pitch in One Sentence:
Korail lake-based farming as a solution to human-centric and productive urban land management employing the slum residents as skilled urban farmers.
Partner Organizations for the Project: Gulshan Society (land access & security), Sher E Bangla Agriculture University (Training and horticulture expertise), Korail Community based organizations (CBOs, NDBUS)
The Initiative in Video:
The Project on Social Media: https://www.facebook.com/paraabd
Summary of the Pitch
The challenge is enabling urban informal agriculture practices by the Korail slum residents and transferring the practice as a Gulshan/Banani lake based multistakeholder community farming and environmental management. A group of 92 farmers have been farming informally across 8,644 square meters alongside the Gulshan-Banani Lake adjacent to the Korail slum. The practice could be transferred across the entire lake periphery in a more organized and collective approach with Gulshan-Banani residents. The objective, is to address the challenges of informal practices by the Korail poor that are already in place and gradually transfer the localized practice into a lake-based community farming practice engaging and benefitting the different socio-economic groups of Gulshan-Banani and Korail slum. In the longer term, the knowledge and practice can potentially be transferred across city-wide farming initiatives and employ skilled urban poor as urban farmers.
What specific problem is this initiative trying to solve?
Affordability and unavailability of fresh, local produces, especially among the slum residents • Lack of training and access to urban adaptive technologies and horticulture expertise; farming jobs • Lack of resources and acknowledgement to informal agriculture practices among the poor • Challenges to access market and manage community owned supply chain • Poor human centric planning and environmental management of the lake and the neighborhood • Socioeconomic gaps and lack of socially inclusive community initiatives • Absence of land use policies and productive use of public and underused spaces
Details of the Pitched solution
Terracity is a social impact venture model aiming for a city-scale approach to urban agriculture. It is an urban system solution to food security, employment and environmental management by transforming available and underutilized spaces and roofs into urban farms. Paraa, a research and architecture studio, has been conducting urban agriculture action research; investigating and working with the poor informal communities as well as experts and wider stakeholders for the past eight years. With the research led knowledge and work experience produced through multistakeholder participatory approaches, Terracity is being developed as a social impact model. Korail farming practice and it’s potential to promote urban agriculture in the neighborhood is appropriate to implement and appropriate the model. The triple impact proposition of Terracity: – Food & nutritional security through local production & city-wide local supply chains: Creating a citywide network of communities and housing societies with their local vegetable shops as well as supplying fresh produce across vegetable markets, restaurants and outlets. – Environmental impact by enhancing city greening, and overall livability: transforming the concrete roofs and empty plots into green and productive micro vegetable farms by introducing urban appropriate design and agrotechnologies. – Economic/livelihood: Income generation and employment of urban poor, migrants and informal farming practitioners and interested growers to be trained, equipped and employed on rooftop farms offering farming services as paid jobs. On the other hand, land or rooftop owners will be incentivized for installing and sharing their spaces. The challenge & opportunity Megacities like Dhaka are getting bigger, population & food demand is also increasing at a high rate. Despite applying modern technology & harvesting methods the number of agricultural products has never been sufficient to meet the overall food demand of a city.1 The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact provides a fantastic roadmap to creating the infrastructure for urban food security and also excellent case studies to learn from as we establish this pilot venture. According to Paraa’s research across Dhaka and learning from global cases, the challenges and recommendations to city scale urban agriculture are summarized as: – Cultivable urban spaces: With green covertures reduced to less than 5% and concrete roof space covering more than 60% there is a need for productive roofs, guerilla and temporary growing practices on available urban spaces and public lands – Recognizing informal practices: Supporting informal practices, community initiatives, local food supply and access to market – No comprehensive training module: Skills for urban farming, rooftop gardening and community leadership building, regenerative, chemical free growing practices, use of agrotechnology – Unavailability of urban appropriate design & agrotechnology: agrotechnology and design solutions for affordable, replicable, highly productive farming solution, micro/rooftop farm – No land access/policy: Working with the municipalities and local govt. adapting a multi-stakeholder framework for human centric city planning, productive public space use, access open public lands, municipal resources & waste management. Where we are/Traction – Developing an adaptive and comprehensive urban agriculture training module: Terracity has been in conversation with Sher e Bangla Agriculture University and Department of Agriculture Extension. Both of the institutions are in developing phases for appropriate urban rooftop farming and DAE is providing training in a limited capacity. Terracity is planning to develop and test a comprehensive model by partnering up with such initiatives and also by recruiting team of agriculturists. The training module to be comprehensive to cover all the aspects from chemical free farming techniques, quality assessment, harvesting, processing and safe handling issues as well as training on good behavior and conducts. – Informal farming communities to train as professional urban farmers: Terracity has been working with the farming community of Korail throughout the last two years. Along the Banani lake 92 farmers are growing vegetables across a total of 118 plots of varying sizes for household consumption and some are also selling and sharing produces locally. – Terracity field research team have conducted series of workshops to map and understand the farming history and current practices of informal agriculture and also their willingness to be trained and taking farming as dignified profession. A community leaders’ group of ten farmers which include women farmers, have been formed to coordinate their farming activities and the training programs to be implemented. – Framework for monitoring and impact assessment: Paraa/Terracity is in collaboration with School of Environmental Science of Independent University Bangladesh (IUB) to develop framework and assess environmental and overall impacts of city-wide rooftop and guerilla farming practices. Once tested upon implemented cases the learning can be shared across public and policy domains and to strategize for scaling the impacts across cities in the advanced phases. – Campaigns, knowledge transfer and dissemination: A disruptive, pro urban / chemical free food and growing campaign strategy, utilizing social media tools, photos and films and case studies to spread the ideas. Document and disseminate the benefits, potential partnerships, and spreading the idea across cities in parallel, targeting the millennial generation.
Impact and Beneficiaries of the Pitched Solution
Supporting the ongoing informal practice with agriculture inputs and inventory: 92 farmers of Korail meeting household vegetable consumption of more than 350 slum residents Training on urban adaptive techniques & technologies and safe handling-processing, managing local supply chain, employing them to city wide farming initiatives as urban farmers: 20 farmers to be trained and employed Setting up and managing local supply chain of fresh produces: Income generation for the farmers, access to local produce for the neighborhood Environmental management: Greening, waste management, productive and human centric management practice of the lake Social cohesion: Collective farming as means of social cohesion and community building, bridging slum community and Gulshan society residents through sharing and celebration, engaging youths from both classes to monitor, document & disseminate
What city, village and upazilas are this solution impacting?
Gulshan & Korail slum in Dhaka 1212
Which division will this solution be impacting?
- Dhaka
What kind of support do you need to take your idea forward?
CSR Funds, Corporate Partnerships
how much funds do you need to get started?
BDT 5,00,000 – 10,00,000
About Paara BD
Paraa is an architectural studio, focusing on enhancing spaces for communities in Bangladesh through multi-disciplinary practice.
A) Establish a ‘School of Thought’ out of Paraa’s on-going practice and
research (advocacy, training, communicaAons, research and study)
B) Respond to each community’s rights and aspirations by researching their traditional architecture, living standards, social and environmental conditions.
C) Gain and share knowledge of the built and natural environment in Bangladesh by bridging communities of developed and developing
societies.
D) Encourage knowledge exchange through modern technology as well as developing innovative and participatory methods of engagement.