# Promoting Urban Farming for Creating Sustainable Cities in Nepal
## 3 Materials and Methods
### Urban Agricultural in Nepal: Study Area  
Most urban dwellers in Nepal are first-generation urbanites. Agriculture is deep-rooted in their blood. Even the highly urbanized places, such as the town in the Kathmandu Valley, Pokhara, Birgunj, Biratnagar, Itahari, Dharan, and Butwal (Figure 8), emerged from recent agricultural places or have agricultural activities in the adjoining areas. Because of this historical nexus between urban development and farming, urban agriculture comes naturally to many of the residents in such cities. More and more urban residents in Nepal are creating rooftop and balcony farms for agriculture and gardening. In more dense urban centers, such as the cities in the Kathmandu Valley and Pokhara, thousands of residents have resorted to urban agriculture on rooftops, on balconies, and in backyards. Figure 7: Tomato growing in hydroponics at the greenhouse of the University of Central Missouri. Photos by [PERSON]. (**a–d**) This is soilless culture. Plants get essential nutrients from circulating /recycling water. Aggregate substrates are used to support plants. This application is useful for households lacking enough spaces to grow plants. Table 1 presents a summary of built-up in urban areas and agricultural land within all the urban areas in hectares in seven provinces and three ecological zones of Nepal. These data suggest that each urban area has some agricultural land, and, in each province, agricultural activities did not decrease when urban areas increased. Though many agricultural lands have been plotted to convert into the building sites, Table 1 indicates that farming activities are continuing in different places, such as balconies, backyards, and open spaces. Although the Nepal government redefined many existing rural councils and municipalities in 2017, several municipalities still retain their rural characters. Thus, it is obvious that they have more agricultural land than the built-up in areas. To look at the trends in urban farming between 2017 and 2021, we also looked at the urban farming in metropolises  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multicolumn{10}{c}{**Land Areas in Hectares in Various Provinces Occupied by Urban Agriculture and Urban Built-In Areas**} \\ \cline{2-10} \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Province**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Y2017**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Y2018**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Y2019**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Y2020**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Y2021**} \\ \cline{2-10} \multicolumn{1}{c}{} & **Agri** & **Urban** & **Agri** & **Urban** & **Agri** & **Urban** & **Agri** & **Urban** & **Agri** & **Urban** \\ \hline Koshi & 1662.39 & 480.35 & 1681.63 & 512.43 & 1672.53 & 546.01 & 1598.54 & 613.38 & 1593.52 & 577.07 \\ \hline Madhesh & 3431.91 & 508.75 & 3382.89 & 567.56 & 3455.33 & 558.83 & 3335.22 & 618.48 & 3253.35 & 671.21 \\ \hline Bagmati & 688.95 & 680.11 & 680.29 & 710.26 & 661.21 & 777.65 & 639.10 & 836.62 & 605.07 & 795.92 \\ \hline Gandaki & 332.74 & 199.98 & 317.37 & 210.07 & 319.42 & 232.93 & 320.02 & 260.56 & 288.87 & 228.23 \\ \hline Lumbini & 2080.54 & 385.29 & 2067.81 & 413.51 & 2052.55 & 442.18 & 1996.69 & 515.45 & 1999.27 & 513.26 \\ \hline Karnali & 225.12 & 54.91 & 193.78 & 57.41 & 201.49 & 70.77 & 179.79 & 97.36 & 151.29 & 74.59 \\ \hline Sudur Paschim & 1147.67 & 149.34 & 1132.58 & 172.81 & 1108.77 & 205.42 & 1072.49 & 251.84 & 1027.11 & 263.78 \\ \hline Total & 8387.28 & 3640.77 & 9456.35 & 2644.05 & 9471.3 & 2833.79 & 9141.85 & 3193.69 & 8918.48 & 3124.06 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabularand sub-metropolises because these large cities have been the major attraction centers from all over Nepal. Even in the large cities, we observed similar trends of urban farming (Table 2). In 2015, the UN Habitat, in cooperation with the Kathmandu Municipality, European Union, and a local non-profit ENPHO, published a 56-page-long training manual to help the urban residents cultivate urban agriculture. This manual, which was authored by Dr. [PERSON], is called the _Training Guidebook for Rooftop and Balcony Agriculture_[25].