Improved Quality of Life of Urban, Retired, Elderly and Disabled Peoples with Soilless Vertical Farming Practices

Providing agricultural production to urban, retired, elderly, and disabled people at home with hydroponic vertical farming practices

The project, ‘Improving the Quality of Life of Urban, Retired, Elderly and Disabled People with Soilless Vertical Farming Practices’, supported by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA),  started with 50 people in the first stage in its first implementation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in the second year was expanded to 500 people after the pilot implementation in five different municipalities. The project aims to support disadvantaged groups, to ensure the access of urban people to cheap and healthy food, and to support academic studies. The selected beneficiaries of the project were retired people, people with disabilities, and elderly people living in the city centres. Beneficiaries were regularly followed up by academics from the Faculty of Agriculture at Sarajevo University. In the project, implemented under the supervision of the members of Faculty of Agriculture of Sarajevo University who worked as consultants, vertical hydroponic farming systems were established for the families, and in the first season, ten kinds of fruits and vegetables were grown, including  strawberries, colourful leaf lettuce, spinach, basil, tomato and celery. 

In the first stage, six months of prototype work and trial production were carried out with the project consultant for the vertical farming system. After successful results were obtained from the production, installations were set up for the pilot beneficiaries. In the second phase, a training, monitoring and support programme for beneficiaries was developed and launched by Sarajevo University, and the Production Implementation Guide was distributed to the project users after the training. At the final stage, Sarajevo University developed a plan for the development and dissemination of the system, according to the results and statistical data obtained after one year of the project’s implementation. 

The results obtained during the first applications were effective in disseminating the project, which expanded to other municipalities that were communicating with the project team of the Faculty of Agriculture of Sarajevo University. 

The advantage of this system is that it provides new, vertical and dense agricultural production systems, especially for small areas. It eliminates the problem of restricted areas for agriculture in urban environments, and can be used in areas such as balconies, house surroundings, small greenhouses and terraces. For example, the yield to be obtained in an open area of 10 m2 is obtained from an area of 1 m2 with vertical farming systems. Through this system, approximately 40 strawberry plants are planted on a 2 m by 30 cm board in an area of 1 m2, with a minimum yield of 12 kg, compared to the same number of strawberry plants in an open area of 10 m2. With vertical farming systems, a family’s food needs can be met by using only 18 m2. The project aims to create long-term economic sustainability for socially disadvantaged groups. The usage period of the system is a minimum of ten years. The benefits of the project can be listed as follows: