Utilization of Home Gardens as a Community Empowerment-Based Edible Landscape to Combat Stunting

Home gardens as a community empowerment-based edible landscape can be used as a strategy for sustainable and resilient urban development. The objective of this research is to identify (a) benefits and challenges of home gardens as community empowerment-based edible landscape, and (b) the socio-cultural, economic, and environmental factors in the utilization of home gardens in Tomohon, Denpasar and Solo. The researchers conduct literature reviews and observation for one month. The benefits of a home garden are a source of various food and traditional medicine, a place of worship, supporting conservation, ameliorating the microclimate, improve health, education, recreational and aesthetic functions, strengthen social status, increase income and ties. The challenges are to overcome constraints such as (a) lack of knowledge, skill, advisory services, (b) limited access to farming inputs, and so on; and to take advantage of opportunities such as easy access, easy control of composition, products quality and quantity, and so on. Some strategies are proposed. Socio-cultural, economic and environmental factors that influence the home garden are grouped as internal factors (i.e. size, owner’s economic condition, perception, knowledge, skill, hobby, preference and consumption pattern, allocated time and energy) and external factors (i.e. regulation, culture and agreement, and environmental conditions).

Recycling Organic Materials to Improve Your Florida-Friendly Edible Landscape

This new 7-page publication of the UF/IFAS Environmental Horticulture Department is intended to educate homeowners on environmentally friendly ways to enhance soil fertility for vegetables, herbs, and fruits in the home landscape. It discusses strategies for recycling nutrients in place or via composting systems to create productive edible landscapes with less waste. Adopting these methods into your landscape maintenance routine will build organic matter and add nutrients to the soil naturally. Written by Terra Freeman, Tiare Silvasy, Lynn Barber, Tom Wichman, Esen Momol, Tina McIntyre, Jacqlyn Rivas, and Jen Marvin.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ep599

The Pear (Pyrus spp.) in Florida Home Gardens

Pears are a great tree to grow for an edible landscape or fruit garden. However, pears are not adapted to all areas in Florida, and only a few cultivated varieties will grow well here. An adaptation to warm winters (low chill hours) and disease resistance are the main factors for success. This new 6-page publication of the UF/IFAS Horticultural Sciences Department provides information to help homeowners select and grow pears successfully in Florida. Written by Juanita Popenoe, Ali Sarkhosh, and Dustin Huff.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hs1393

GREEN ROOF CONCEPT ANALYSIS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF URBAN FARMING PRACTICE IN CITIES

The emergence of urban farming mainly for food production is one initiative in developing a sustainable environment. This paper presents a brief conceptual review of the ideas, issues and imperatives in implementing urban farming on the rooftop areas. The concern is to investigate an alternative way for urban dwellers to achieve resilience through urban farming — the review is based on the theoretical background and concepts of the relevant constraints taken from various established references. The method adopts comparatives analysis explicitly through established texts and secondary data taken from previous cases. The significant examples include; (i) green roof as rooftop farming in ensuring food security and reduce carbon footprint in Singapore; (ii) urban farming as a culture in emphasizing the domestic food production and consumption in Japan; (iii) rooftop urban farming in fresh urban food production in USA; and (iv) rooftop is effective as edible landscape and not only serve for visual purpose only in Thailand. These cases will lead to localize the concept of rooftop urban farming. There also will be a strategy for the greening of the cities by intensifying urban farming. This paper envisions to extend and establish the conceptual discourse for implementing urban farming on the rooftop areas in Malaysia.

Residents’ Attention and Awareness of Urban Edible Landscapes: A Case Study of Wuhan, China

More and more urban residents in China have suffered from food insecurity and failed to meet the national recommendation of daily fruit and vegetable consumption due to rapid urbanization in recent years. Introducing edible landscapes to urban greening systems represents an opportunity for improving urban food supply and security. However, residents’ opinion on urban edible landscapes has rarely been discussed. In this study, questionnaire surveys were performed in eight sample communities in Wuhan, China, to collect the information on residents’ attention and awareness of urban edible landscapes. Results indicated that nearly one-third of the respondents were unaware of edible landscapes before the interview. Most residents thought that an edible landscape could promote efficient land use (57.26%) and express special ornamental effects (54.64%), but quite a few didn’t believe that growing edible plants in urban public spaces could increase food output (37.10%) and improve food quality (40.12%). Overall, 45.65% and 32.73% of the growers performed their cultivation behavior in private and semiprivate spaces, respectively. Lack of public areas for agriculture use was regarded as the main barrier restricting the development of urban horticulture by 55.86% of growers and 59.51% of non-growers. The residents were also worried about their property manager’s opposition, possible conflicts, and complex relationships with their neighbors. Food policies and infrastructure support from local governments and official institutions were needed to ensure the successful implementation of edible landscapes in urban areas.

OPTIMISING BALCONY FOR GREEN SPACES: APPLICATION OF EDIBLE BIOFAÇADE ON URBAN HIGH-RISE SETTING

The trend in vertical sprawl of building have initiated the experts in greening high-rise buildings in the urban setting. This phenomenon has been captured by many scholars in conducting studies on the benefits of greeneries in limited space in urban buildings, especially in the form of biofaçade as one of the Vertical Greenery Systems (VGS). Besides its cooling effects, biofaçade could be optimised as a vertical edible landscape, hence it could also address food security issue in the urban context. In a high-rise building, transitional or buffer space, such as in the balcony, is a space with less economic value. Regardless, thepresence of transitional space is important and could be optimised in the application of biofacade. This paper reviews the potential of biofaçade as one of the methods for urban greening in a limited space. However, there are many factors that need to be consdiered in growing edible plants on the balcony of highrise building. Those factors are the plant type and species, the climatic considerations in high-rise building setting, and the technical and maintenance issue.