# Promoting Urban Farming for Creating Sustainable Cities in Nepal
## 3 Materials and Methods
### Urban Agricultural in Nepal: Study Area
The guidebook contains knowledge and information about the usefulness and benefits of balcony and rooftop agriculture, human needs for nutrition, the daily needed quantities of fruits and vegetable for an individual, the best location for balcony and rooftop farming, and the most suitable types of plants and vegetables for urban farming (Figure 9a,b). The manual also includes lessons about the suitable types of soils, compost, irrigation, trellises, good and bad insects, and insect control and the various techniques and technologies for urban agriculture. A training workshop in Nepal conducted in cooperation with the United Nations Framework Climate Change Conventions (UNFCC), with 250 participating families, found that rooftop farming can cover 50% of domestic vegetable consumption needs and avoid 110 metric tons of carbon dioxide emission reductions per year [26]. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Year**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Land Area (Hectares)**} \\ \cline{2-3}  & **Agriculture Area** & **Urban Built-Up Area** \\ \hline
2017 & 1236.97 & 566.23 \\ \hline
2018 & 1227.43 & 590.87 \\ \hline
2019 & 1202.38 & 631.73 \\ \hline
2020 & 1161.66 & 674.72 \\ \hline
2021 & 1152.56 & 682.69 \\ \hline Total & 5981.00 & 3146.24 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Agricultural land areas within the urban border and urban built-up area (hectares) in metropolitan and sub-metropolitan cities in Nepal. Figure 9: (**a**) Terrace agriculture in Kathmandu, Nepal. Photo by [PERSON] (with permission). (**b**) Terrace agriculture in Kathmandu, Nepal. Photo by [PERSON] (with permission). In Nepal, urban agriculture can help provide many benefits to the city residents, including food security, food self-reliance, savings in food expenditures, and income supplementation for the families. In addition, urban agriculture can help reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases and provide other environmental benefits, including waste reduction and minimizing road congestion. This practice can also help to provide safeguards to counter the unpredictability of the food supply due to road damages, border blockades, and pandemics. Except for a few well-established cities, most of Nepal's new urban centers were just reclassified by the government and still retain many rural characteristics. Many residents are still practicing agriculture in small tracts of land, while they have been classified as urban residents. Similarly, as urban areas grow, the adjoining agricultural lands also begin to gradually join urban life. These areas are often called peri-urban areas. Because of these differences in urban traits, the urban agriculture practice and potential will also be different in these areas. In denser and more mature urban areas, urban agriculture will mainly happen on rooftops, on balconies, and in yards in the building lots, whereas in the newly urbanizing and peri-urban areas, in addition to these locations, urban open spaces can also be used for urban farming. As shown in Figure 8, unlike in the overly crowded Kathmandu Valley and other large towns such as Nepalgunj, Pokhara, Birgunj, Dharan, Itahari, Biratnagar, and other areas, many areas are legally defined as urban after they met the population threshold. These legally defined urban areas do not have the urban infrastructure, services, and amenities, and they often continue to have rural characteristics. In Figure 9, the black areas represent the true built-in urban area, and the pink area represents the administrative boundary of the urban areas. This suggests that there are many areas that can be called _\"ruralopolises\"_, where urban and rural areas are intermingling, forming an urban-rural continuum. In these areas, community farming or open-area farming activities are possible. Open areas can be used for urban farming with deep-rooted trees on deep soils. Deep-rooted trees help sequester carbon and restore atmospheric carbon in the soil.