[Photos] The invisible urban farmers of Mumbai

As the urban farming discourse in India has been expanding over the past few years, the limelight is often on upwardly-mobile urban citizens who take up farming for recreational, environmental, spiritual or economic reasons.
In this photo feature we explore Mumbai’s lesser-known urban farmers – from the natives of Aarey to the migrant farmers working on the city’s railway farms and, most recently, the women sanitation workers who’ve turned to farming in suburban housing societies.
Excluding low-income groups, marginalised communities and indigenous people from the urban farming dialogue leads to a higher probability of the erasure of their contribution, from research, policy and planning.

More than half the world’s population is projected to live in cities by 2050. This raises the question about the availability of green spaces and resources. The Covid-19 lockdown rekindled the interest of urban residents to grow food in their own terraces and gardens. The benefits of edible gardens, like cooler and cleaner cities, healthier ecosystems, and healthier bodies, resurfaced in conversations. The urban farming discourse has been expanding over the past few years. But in the prominence of this discourse are urban people from the middle and upper class with access to technological innovations.

In Mumbai, the financial capital of India, shadowed by the limelight on urban farming, are some invisible and unrecognised farmers. Low-income groups, people with marginalised identities and indigenous people face exclusion in this dialogue. This leads to a higher probability of the erasure of their contribution, and expulsion from research, policy and planning.

The Aarey Milk Colony was originally a 3,000-acre forested area in the middle of Mumbai. The colony was demarcated as a no-development zone in 1949. The area has been home to 27 tribal villages or padas for centuries. Over the years, the land has been used to accommodate various real estate and urban infrastructure projects. As of 2020, around 600 acres of the milk colony land is demarcated as forest, by the government.

Parts of the tribal villages and their farmlands have disappeared gradually. The natives of this urban forest are generational farmers, fishers and livestock rearers, and the most affected by constant concretisation and urbanisation. All indigenous farmers in Aarey pay a minimal annual tax of one rupee per gunta (approx. 1000 square feet of land).

Prakash Bhoir is a farmer, tribal activist, environmentalist and renowned Warli painter. Bhoir’s family grows vegetables, flowers and fruits on their 1.5-acre farm outside their house in Aarey forest’s Kelti pada. Aarey lies on the edge of Sanjay Gandhi National Park at the heart of Mumbai. All indigenous farmers in Aarey pay a minimal annual tax of one rupee per gunta (approx. 1000 square feet of land). Bhoir points to his farm across the stream. “Water from cow baths and excreta from the Aarey Colony’s cattle sheds comes directly into our farms and also acts as manure. Women from the community sell their fresh produce at the high-rise buildings around the locality. Photo by Prateek Pamecha. — Prakash Bhoir is a farmer, tribal activist, environmentalist and renowned Warli painter. Bhoir’s family grows vegetables, flowers and fruits on their 1.5-acre farm outside their house in Aarey forest’s Kelti pada mainly for subsistence. Aarey lies on the edge of Sanjay Gandhi National Park at the heart of Mumbai. Bhoir points to his farm across the stream. “Water from cow baths and excreta from the Aarey Colony’s cattle sheds comes directly into our farms and also acts as manure. Women from the community sell their fresh produce at the high-rise buildings around the locality. Photo by Prateek Pamecha.

In other hidden farms of Mumbai, agricultural migrants from north India work on the government-owned railway land and cultivate vegetables to cater to the needs of city dwellers. Since 1975, Indian Railways began putting its vacant land to use under the scheme ‘Grow More Food’. Intended to protect its surplus land from encroachment and to prevent new slums from developing, the policy allowed railway employees belonging to Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe/Other Backward Classes and Economical Weaker Sections, to cultivate seasonal vegetables on a five-year lease of 4,000 rupees per acre per year. Some of these employees, in turn, hire agricultural migrants to cultivate and oversee these railway farms.