As a young man growing up in Winterveld, a rural community approximately 50km north of Pretoria I did not appreciate the value of growing our own food. I remember we would wake up early in the morning before sunrise to go into the field to remove weeds. We hated this and saw it as an unnecessary chore and punishment by our parents, finding any excuse not to do this chore. As a young boy I could not imagine what we deemed unnecessary at that time would be a life and death issue for many people today. Food security or simply “being able to put food on the table” has become an international and intercontinental issue as more and more people are going without food on a daily basis. According to statistics it is estimated that more than 14m South Africans go without food regularly with the majority being children . This is a difficult statistic to define as hunger is subjective but the estimate is based on numbers of people who are not able to feed themselves daily (Steyn University of Cape Town’s Division on Nutrition). With around 17 million people dependent on social grants it is not surprising that this statistic is so high.
SCAT works in some of the most vulnerable and marginalised communities. With most of them being rural and in farmland it is a tragedy that people are going without food. This can be contributed to migrant labour, loss of traditional knowledge as people are diverted to industry to work and reduced available human capacity caused by urban migration. It was out of interaction with individuals and organisations within these communities that we were called on to intervene. SCAT’s programme to address food security and nutrition is aimed at empowering households to use available pieces of land within their yards and communities to produce their own food. The idea is simple yet time consuming, requiring people and money to make it work. We are also working against the ever changing climate and helping people to adapt to drought and floods depending on the regions where we work and sometimes simultaneously.
Our approach to food gardening is that SCAT together with our funded partner organisations identify individuals or groupings within a community with an interest in food gardening, train them to start their own food gardens and then pass the skill to others in the community. As a result, we have trained more than 300 individuals in 6 communities. In a number of other communities our grantee partners have also initiated their own food garden projects which are now becoming small scale agricultural enterprises. They have sourced funding from the Department of Agriculture, the Extended Public Works Programme and the Department of Social Development. These communities include Berlin and Qongqotha in the Eastern Cape and Atamelang in the Free State.
Two of the communities where SCAT has supported a food garden have established what have become flagship communal food garden projects, namely Kgatelopele Social Development Forum (KSDF) in the Northern Cape and CARE Alicedale in the Eastern Cape. KSDF has established more than 130 household gardens in Danielskuil whereas CARE Alicedale has established 10 communal gardens with more than 100 households benefiting. These are two good examples of how communities can come together and do something to improve the quality of their lives. In these two cases more than 200 households are able to grow their own food as a result of the SCAT food security project. In Ceres in the Western Cape Scat’s partner Witzenberg Rural Development Centre (WRDC) is feeding children from two crèches’ with their produce.
What have we learnt over the years? For each of these projects to succeed we needed to identify a champion food gardener with a passion for food gardening. In Danielskuil the SCAT partner found a passionate gardener Ms Sophia
Booysen and similarly in Alicedale and Cerers. These individuals have made it happen for their communal food gardens. Secondly, it helps to do a baseline assessment which includes a community and assets mapping exercise to inform the type of intervention needed. In the beginning we were naïve and had a big vision but we quickly learnt the importance of understanding the environment and what is available before we proceeded. Thirdly, we need funds to implement the project. By our own estimation it requires anything between R60 000 and R100 000 to establish a communal food garden project. Lastly, it takes time for food garden projects to be sustainable. It took KSF at least 5 to 6 years to reap the fruit of their hard work.
Fundamentally the land issue is a burning challenge for food security and for our country. As I write this blog there is raging debate in the country around access to land, especially fertile land that can be used for food production and other economic activities. In my opinion the real issue is about access to a commodity that can enable the majority of our people to make a sustainable living for themselves. In order to address the land, issue we have to deal with the more than 360-year legacy of apartheid. This does not mean that we should run away from the tough questions but rather that we must focus on the importance of putting food on the table as a basic human right. I keep imagining what we could achieve if we could replicate this model throughout the country, in the poorest of the poor communities and the impact this would make.
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