Cape Town — How do we make sure people don't go hungry while also building community, urban biodiversity and using what some consider waste? One way to do it is to make sure that urban communities that have been marginalised due to Apartheid and a continued lack of investment in their communities are reconnected to the skills needed to grow their own food.
Founded in 2008, School Environmental Education and Development (SEED) is an award-winning non-profit at Rocklands Primary in Mitchell's Plain, Cape Town and has pioneered permaculture initiatives in the local community and underresourced schools for the past 14 years. The practice of permaculture focuses on creating sustainable ways of living and self-sufficiency.
Statistics South Africa reports that the country is food secure at the national level but not at the household level. At least 20% of South African households had inadequate or severely inadequate access to food in 2017 and this varied by province, population group, and size of household.
Mitchell's Plain already faces high rates of unemployment and poverty leading to substance abuse, gang violence, a lack of income, and early entry into parenthood for young people. Through permaculture programmes, SEED helps alleviate poverty in the community and surrounding neighborhoods. In addition to providing nutritious food, it also offers a pathway to employment opportunities.
According to the SEED website, "it has worked alongside teachers to develop a programme that addresses the need for inspiring learning environments and for teaching materials that link on-ground work to the curriculum while feeding hungry learners. In addressing these issues, we have found that our work responds to the accelerating crisis of the environment and also offers solutions to challenges like the need for dignified sustainable livelihoods, local food production, and community resilience".
The non-profit aims to partner with local communities by educating people about localising food systems, growing micro-economies, building their own resilience, and giving unemployed youth a chance to succeed. SEED puts an emphasis on the power of agriculture to foster self-sufficiency. It encourages its alumni to diversify and increase crop cycles on small land holdings.
In its 12-week programme, the focus is on sustainable and self-sufficient food production. By taking inspiration from nature, it develops harmonious farming systems that incorporate diversity, resilience, natural productivity, and sustainability. They teach the alumni how to adapt to climate shocks. Founding Director, Leigh Brown, said after the chaos of the water crisis, Covid-19 crisis, and vulnerabilities in the food system, they decided to increase their support and training for people on how to grow food.
The farming methods they use are simple, low-cost, soil-building, water-saving, and environmentally friendly, and produce high yields of fresh, nutritious food.
Permaculture looks at how to grow food, build houses and create communities, and minimise environmental impact at the same time. Its principles are being constantly developed and refined by people throughout the world in very different climates and cultural circumstances.
The Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning also supports the students with stipends for transport and work wear for the job shadowing portion of the programme.
Lance Witbooi, an alumnus of SEED, explained the principles of permaculture and how they use this farming method.
According to Witbooi, permaculture encourages us to be resourceful and self-reliant. He also explained that they incorporate the use of crop rotation, a practice of planting different crops sequentially on the same plot of land to improve soil health, optimise nutrients in the soil, and combat pest and weed pressure. He added that "legumes are important in crop rotations because they reduce weeds". Crop rotation, according to Permaculture News, "enriches the soil by working with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil." The central idea is to have the crops themselves sustain soil health, rather than planting the same crop year in, year out, and then repairing soil health through fertilisers, pesticides, and herbicides. Crop rotation is beneficial to even the smallest vegetable patch as evidenced by the abundance in the garden".
He said that the programme's alumni are also taught how to set up their own gardens.
In addition, resilience is at the core of the teachings. They have constructed buildings using local materials, such as an outdoor classroom, a compost toilet, and a clay rocket stove. Brown says this type of stove uses less firewood. Cooking over solid fuels like wood and charcoal remains so pervasive that it is considered a major driver of deforestation and climate change, along with contributing to respiratory and other health problems. Brown added that replacing traditional wood-burning stoves in sub-Saharan Africa with cleaner technology could offset carbon emissions.
Hilary Julies explains that when she was diagnosed with diabetes and bipolar disorder, she felt defeated. She decided to quit her job. And on top of that, she had to take care of eight children in her extended family. "While I was starting to complain about stuff getting expensive, I opened the local newspaper, and there was an article on SEED," she said. "And when I read the article, it spoke to me. And it's like, okay, this is what I need to do in terms of where I'm going with my life. So I applied, I came here, and I loved Applied Permaculture Training (APT)."
"I simply loved the values, the principles of applying permaculture. And for me, that was okay, I'm learning everything, and I'm starting afresh. I've got a new outlook on life. As soon as I became a permaculturist, I felt that there was more, I didn't get enough of this so I initially applied for the course that I'm doing now … So that to me was like a big wow because I had found my niche ... Permaculture is not just about growing plants, it's also about resilience. I had to deal with all of my issues, I had to get to know myself before I could get to know the plants I had. And it gave me now that resilience to say well, I actually have coping mechanisms when I now have to deal with things", she added.
"When it came to resilience, that was great for me because now I got to do I got to make soap I got to experiment with things and stuff like that I learned here to make my own toothpowder. I learned here to make my own mouthwash. By the way, I'm not buying in the store anymore. I'm using it, my kids are using it. I'm saving on that because in June I got the ingredients for it. I'm still using it is still so it saved me quite a lot of money in regard to that."
"So I've got a container garden which I'm putting in people's old pots in my backyard and I'm planting in. We're harvesting from there, right now I've got nice strawberries and nice tomatoes coming up."
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Julies talked about SEED's Easy Peasy seedling trays. As part of its mission to make organic vegetables more accessible, customers can buy organic vegetable seedlings at an affordable price. They are grown naturally and packaged without the use of pesticides or other treatments.
"These are 2x24 trays with seasonal themes. We don't grow out of season, everything that we grow is within the season. I believe that is the reason God put things in seasons, you know, is oranges in the winter, because you need the vitamin C, there are watermelons in the summer because you need the water, you need need to keep hydrated."
Educational programmes are not the only SEED projects currently running in the community as they also run a kitchen that benefits their community. Brenda Marley Quinn, a jack of all trades, said that she started Marley's kitchen in 2019. The kitchen provides a healthy lifestyle, especially for children, "because what you put in your mouth, will determine your way forward."
According to UNICEF, more than a third of children under five in South Africa are suffering from undernutrition or are obese. Food scarcity, feeding infrequency, and a lack of dietary diversity are serious impediments to healthy levels of child nutrition.
Through Marley's kitchen, the community, school children, and alumni are able to get meals at a decent price. The kitchen steps in to help children to access nutritious food and an improved diet. This results in improved immune system function, reduced infection risk, and increased cognitive development.
