The Chennai Urban Farming Initiative (CUFI) is working to promote gardening on rooftops and vacant urban spaces across Chennai, India. They aim to build a sustainable and local food system, make healthy food more accessible, cool the city, and create jobs for vulnerable populations.
One aspect of CUFI’s programming involves partnering with day care centers and schools to build organic, edible gardens. These gardens teach students about food systems, organic farming practices, botany, and composting. Children as young as two learn about colors, shapes, and identifying vegetables. The produce that students help grow is then incorporated into their school meals.
“The children seem to love the taste of the spinach they grow—they normally hate spinach,” Krishna Mohan, Chief Resilience Officer of Chennai, tells Food Tank.
The gardens are designed to improve the health of the whole community. Mothers can visit the spaces when they pick their children up from school and are often inspired to start their own gardens at home, where they grow medicinal plants and herbs.
CUFI also distributes Mobile Vegetable Garden Kits to families across Chennai, ensuring that women-led and other vulnerable households receive priority. These kits contain all of the necessary materials for people to start their own gardens, encouraging a broader cultural shift toward urban farming. Beginner gardeners can join a supervised WhatsApp group for advice, guidance, and to build relationships with other gardeners across the city.
In addition to improving health and facilitating food systems education among young people and families, urban farming can also have positive impacts, particularly on women and other marginalized groups, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
CUFI partners with women’s self-help groups, training women in vegetable gardening and putting them in contact with people who need help creating gardens and will pay for their services. “For women, urban farming presents an opportunity to earn a dignified livelihood, contributing to women’s agency and their empowerment,” Mohan tells Food Tank.
CUFI’s projects can also improve mental health. Urban farming “improves mental health and well-being not just for people engaged in the farms but also for those seeing/visiting it on a regular basis,” according to Mohan. Researchers at MacEwan University found that spending time at urban gardens improves mental wellness, fostering feelings of altruism, serenity, and connection with nature.
Urban gardens, particularly those on rooftops, may support the development of cooler, more sustainable cities as well. Mohan tells Food Tank that rooftop gardens can reduce the temperature of rooms by up to 7°C. This temperature drop can reduce the need for air conditioning and is “a huge blessing in affordable housing schemes where most people cannot afford air conditioning.” In a city that, according to Weather Underground, has recently experienced temperatures close to 40°C, a seven degree drop makes a significant difference.
But creating a more sustainable city and benefiting the community, the Initiative is not without challenges. While CUFI is funded by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre and has government support, Mohan tells Food Tank that the project must increase in scale to ensure its continued existence. Policy change is needed “to provide incentives for urban farming to flourish within urban centers.” According to Mohan, policy change will require more data, and more data will require funding that allows CUFI to run for another two years.
“We have a dream,” Mohan shares with Food Tank. “To ensure that every rooftop in Chennai has an edible rooftop garden.”
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Photo courtesy of the Chennai Resilience Centre
