Roof Top Farming

As we know that when population increases the land resources goes on decreasing as many of the land is covered for settlements and other human purposes. This effects can easily be observable in urban areas. Growing urban  populations depends on limited resources for their fundamental needs. So, they need to well utilize the limited resources. The highly demanding of basic requirement is going up so it is getting expensive even for basic needs like food. Thus to increase the food production urban dwellers come up the idea of growing food in the accessible roof top. This type of farming system is recognized as roof top farming. This is also known by the name green roof or urban farming particularly. Roof Top Farming is known as "Kausi Kheti" in Nepal.

Roof Top Farming

Roof Top Farming or Green Roof (Living roof) is a roof that is partially or fully covered by vegetation planted over a growing medium placed above waterproofing membrane so that moisture don't effect the roof.

Benefits of Roof Top Farming

Benefits of the Roof Top Farming are of two kinds. They are socio-economic benefits and ecological benefits. They are listed below.

Socio-ecological Benefits

It is small scale source of food for urban citizen.
It is the farming producing food based on the taste and nutrient content.
It is suitable way to create spaces for vegetable and fruits in highly populated and dense settlement areas.
Fresh vegetable can be obtain.
Nice way to farm vegetable in own roof when vegable price rise in the market.
Low labour entensive work.
Working in garden during moring and evening provide physical movement & peace of mind thus helps to live healthy urban life.

Ecological Benefits

Roof Top Farming, a fantastic idea that not only meet the growing demand of food production, along with this the system support in ecological system and contribute to bring balance between socio-economic as well as ecological context. The ecological benefits from the Roof Top Farming can be summarized as -
Reduces storm water runoff.
Improve the air quality.
Minimize the cost for cooling house as it minimize the 'Heat Isaland  Effect', condition in which urban absorb energy and trap heat in the atmosphere.

How to do Roof Top Farming?

For Roof Top Farming the first requisities is to have an accessible roof. You can then place vessels or container with hole around (especially below) for aeriation and removable of excessive moisture for simple type and in mini scale Roof Top Farming. For doing some Roof Top Farming in some broad way or in a micro (sometimes mega) scale then the structure of the building or srtucture above the roof should be design in such a way that it is raised above the roof forming container like structure with concrete or anyway with the system of well drainage & irritating facilities so that it would be helpful for both watering and removal of excessive of water. This given method is mainly include for farming based on green roof methodology that involves the soil and fertilizer also utilizing composte prepared from kitchen degradable waste. Some other way be like hydroponics i.e. no need of soil all the nutrient required for the plant is dissolved in water and supply accordingly based on plants need equivalent to nutrient available in fertile soil. Sometime organic aeroponics are also be used as a medium for the plant growth. Farming on hanging container is another method of farming which can be taken into consideration.