Srinagar Residents To Soon Grow Their Own Food As Kitchen Gardens Become Mandatory

o cope up with the shortages of vegetables and fruits during shutdowns, the Srinagar Municipal Corporation has made farming within the premises of houses mandatory.

In a newly released notification, the civic body has advised people to grow vegetables and fruits in open spaces around their homes to beat the shortages caused during emergency situations, such as the current lockdown.

Srinagar Residents Will Now Grow Their Own Food

Residents of Srinagar often face difficulty in getting essentials like vegetables and fruits due to curfew and prolonged strikes in the Union Territory. The city also faces difficulties when the Srinagar-Jammu highway, the only all-weather road linking the valley to the rest of the country, closes due to snowfall or landslides.

To address these issues, a public notice issued by the office Joint Commissioner Planning has made it mandatory for all citizens/families (in Srinagar) to use detached portions of their residential houses for growing vegetables and fruits.

Apart from this, the notice also mentions that all future proposals for residential building permits in the city shall include a plan for vegetable farming.

The notice advises architects and engineers, responsible for drawing maps and municipal plans, to submit proposals on behalf of the applicants, and compulsorily indicate vegetable gardens and fruit orchard as part of their proposals.

Kitchen Gardens Can Help Reduce Movement Of People During Emergency Situations

The SMC notice also mentioned that while all items of daily use cannot be produced at home, growing kitchen gardens and planting fruit trees can reduce unnecessary movement of people outside their homes during a pandemic or other emergency situations.

Further, Joint Commissioner of Planning, Ghulam Hassan Mir further, said that they would write to the horticulture and agriculture departments to provide seeds and other necessary assistance to households to encourage greenery.

Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir Agriculture Department has been promoting kitchen garden activities for many years now. The department has been providing high-quality seeds and saplings along with kitchen garden tool kits at subsidized rates to encourage people to take to this activity.