Spoegrivier Food Gardening Project
Early days as seen through the eyes of Jacobus Lewis in 2006:Spoegrivier is a small settlement found 22 km West of the N7 route between Cape Town and Namibia, via the Garagams turn-off. Springbok is 87 km to the North of the turn-off and Garies 30 km to the South.
The service area of Spoegrivier Adive Office is essentially Spoegrivier’s community, but links are established with other advice offices and development agencies to develop and support other areas in the surrounding region.
The Spoegrivier community consists of 180 families, 40% of which receive government grants and old-age pensions, 20% are school-goers, 10% of the group between the ages of 18 and 35 are economically active and 30% are unemployed. The down-scaling of mining activities, with subsequent retrenchments, contributed to the high unemployment rate which, in turn contributes to growing problems in the community.
There is moral decline among young people due to lack of training and job opportunities.
There are high incidents of tuberculosis and an increasing number of children between 0 – 16 years as well as aged people now suffer from malnutrition. This is due to the absence of a balanced diet, and particularly, a lack of fresh vegetables. Suppliers are not from the local area, which is why vegetables are unaffordable and not regularly available.
At the 2004 Annual General Meeting of the Spoegrivier Advice Office, the need for a vegetable gardening project was raised. The purpose of the garden was to:
- produce vegetables and fruit at affordable prices
- use local labour for this project.
A project committee was established and the Advice Office co-ordinator wrote a business plan, which was sent to the Department of Land Affairs. In May 2005, the Department and some engineers paid a visit to the Advice Office. They verbally indicated approval of the business plan and took water and ground samples for testing.
The advice office committee and staff then started talks with the local municipality to get approval for the planting area for the food garden project, as well as fencing of the water point for control over possible damage to the pump. The municipality responded positively.
The engineer from the Department of Land Affairs visited the site together with the Advice Office committee, to measure the garden area and thus determine the amount of material that would be required.
The list for the supply of infrastructure development material was sent to the Advice Office for authorization, and work contracts to secure local labour, were also given to our committee and staff.
