Why Green Roofs May Be Answer to Tamil Nadu’s Tomato Blues
Sourced from The Times of India
Unaffordable and scarce staple vegetables like tomatoes and onions provoke public anger and challenge political strategies that merely use perceptions to manage voters. The current prolonged price spiral driving tomatoes out of everyday recipes — at anything between Rs 90 and Rs 200 a kilo — is a headache for governments, leaving them clutching at intervention solutions that have rusted over time.
A tomato crop is not a long range prospect, raising the promise of adding to Chennai’s supply through gardens and rooftop producers. There are anecdotal stories of Chennai residents augmenting vegetable supplies with a green roof, while community gardens such as the one in Kasturba Nagar, drew volunteers to work on a large patch.
Caught in the headlights of a price surge, the Tamil Nadu government, like many others, has been talking about alternative supply mechanisms including the public distribution system and mobile vending. But it seems not to have pitched its own Chennai urban horticulture and rooftop garden initiative of 2019 under which the Greater Chennai Corporation, smart city bodies and NGOs were to collaborate on robust horticulture pilots in Chennai corporation schools.
Consider the prospects of that particular plan dating back to just before the pandemic. The Chennai Resilience Centre (CRC) would select 15 schools approved by the GCC to have 2,000sqft food gardens. In Phase 2, this would be scaled up to 15 model urban agriculture farms. Parents of students would be trained to set up rooftop gardens at home, and eventually, there would be farms in 281 corporation schools, 700 private schools and 600 corporate premises.
From the Living Architecture Monitor
