With growing urbanization, peri-urban agriculture is emerging as a significant contributor to the farm and needs to address the opportunities and challenges associated with promoting peri-urban agriculture in a sustainable manner.

Peri-urban agriculture has significantly established itself as an interface between rural and urban transitional economy. Opportunities: 1) Reflects the changing consumption patterns → House → Urban areas spend more than 40% of income on milk, fruits, vegetable etc. 2) Urban employment → handles the unemployment in urban areas (5%) → migrant jobs. 3) Serving the nutritional needs of the city. 4) Easing food inflation in urban areas (9%). 5) Push to food processing industries → farm gate processing of 'value' added urban eateries like ragi puffs etc.

Challenges: 1) Land and water requirements → huge vertical and horizontal encachment of urban lands. 2) Quality issues → polluted water and pesticide use. 3) Difficulty in access to credit to peri-lumber farmers. 4) Polluted urban cities → devase crop yields. 5) Raw materials like fertilizers, livestock feed etc. → rural predominance. Nevertheless, peri-urban agriculture can increase the sphere of urban influence, ease urban poverty, and increase food and nutritional security.

— RITIKA