Kyari to Kitchen: Training Urban Vulnerable Women to Farm

This report documents an 18-month-long initiative to improve nutrition security among women in Delhi’s informal settlements. Launched in November 2021, the project mobilised residents across eight sites—Bhalswa, Mahipalpur, Hanuman Camp, Shahbad Dairy, Wazirabad, Ambedkar Basti, Kusumpur Pahari, and Krishna Kunj—supporting women to grow vegetables in pots, rooftops, and other small spaces despite limited land, water, and resources. Participants received seeds, tools, organic manure, and training in chemical-free cultivation, with support from local farmers and community facilitators.

The report follows women such as Mashuda, Poonam, and Savita as they adapt to growing food in urban conditions, reusing discarded containers, experimenting with crops, and incorporating homegrown greens into family meals. The report situates urban farming within wider inequalities of gender, poverty, and access to nutritious food, highlighting how women often eat last and least, even when food is available. Meeting their families’ and their own nutritional needs extends women’s responsibilities from the kitchen to the garden, from cooking to cultivation. This initiative also expands the archive’s geographical focus from rural to an urban setting where one’s status as a migrant worker (who constitute considerable numbers in Delhi’s informal settlements) is an index of poverty and nutritional insecurity. Distance from arable land, traditional crops, and cheap grains further exacerbates these conditions.