Comments on: What Urban Rooftop Gardening Could Do For The Middle East

By: CBiradar

CBiradar — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 22:10:39 +0000

Afri_geka and Arwa, do you have any success story since this posted in last 2011? I will be relocating to Amman next month. I am thinking about your idea ‘urban gardening on the flat roof tops to combat food insecurity in the middle east’ I have great success in here in Norman on backyard gardening, we had plenty of harvest even hard hit drought last year. Thanks -Chandra

By: afri_geka

afri_geka — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:17:56 +0000

Composting could be a way, but even this needs some knowledge/experience. We are talking about poor and thus food insecure urban dwellers in overcrowded cities with no gardens and often no backyards. Knowledge about agicultural practices is often lost within the new generation. There is a need for composting methods in a small scale (micro technologies)that can be used on a household level, usually on their rooftops. The needed material must be available in the area, best if for free/recycled. The same goes for the water problem.

By: Arwa Abuarwa

Arwa Abuarwa — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:56:59 +0000

Thanks for your comment Afri_geka and you make a great point about lack of good quality soil or fertilizer but what about composting?? People tend to eat a lot of fresh food in the OPT so surely there is the possibility to compost, which not only creates better quality soil but also fertiilizer

By: afri_geka

afri_geka — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 19:21:51 +0000

urban gardening on the flat roof tops to combat food insecurity in the middle east, especially palestine, is an idea i strongly support. what I experienced as main constraints were access to good soil, organic fertilizers and water, to make the output reach a certain volume to fill the consumption gap. otherwise the motivation level can be quite low amongst the city dwellers, even if they are food insecure. any low-technology solutions for that?

By: Roxanne Christensen

Roxanne Christensen — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:50:43 +0000

New urban farmers in the US and Canada are having success with SPIN-Farming, which is an organic-based small plot farming system that outlines how to make money growing in backyards, front lawns and neighborhood lots. It can also be adapted to rooftops. SPIN provides everything you’d expect from a good franchise: a business concept, marketing advice, financial benchmarks and a detailed day-to-day workflow. In standardizing the system and creating a reproducible process it really isn’t any different from McDonalds. By offering a non-technical, easy-to-understand and inexpensive-to-implement farming system, it allows many more people to farm commercially, wherever they live, as long as there are nearby markets to support them. A free calculator that shows how much farm income can be made from small plots is available at the SPIN website – http://www.spinfarming.com/free/