Mail & Guardian | 21 Aug 09

By Kristin Palitza

With the back of her hand, she wipes beads of sweat from her forehead and adjusts her colourful headscarf that protects her from the sun. It is mid-morning, but Maggie Mbovu has already put in a good few hours of hard work, tilling the soil of her community garden.

Together with four other women, she has planted cabbages, carrots, onions and potatoes, which will soon be harvested and sold through an organic vegetable marketing scheme initiated and managed by non-governmental agricultural organisation Abalimi Bezekhaya (Farmers of Home).

“Before, we planted to have a little bit to eat for our families, but now [that I am part of the community gardening scheme] my life has changed. I am doing very nicely. It is hard work, but I enjoy it. It keeps me strong,” says Mbovu, while critically inspecting a head of cauliflower for pests in her garden in Fezeka section of Gugulethu.

As part of its livelihood creation programme that is aimed at reducing poverty and empowering communities, Abalimi Bezekhaya provides micro farmers with seeds, seedlings and manure as well as agricultural training and business skills. It also helps farmers to market and sell their produce in urban centres.

It is the NGOs goal to take small-scale farmers from survival level, at which they purely produce enough to feed themselves, to livelihood level, at which they generate a proper income from farming that sustains their families.

“When we say livelihood, we mean farming that is 50 percent commercially driven. People keep food for their families and communities, but also sell to earn money. That’s where Abalimi takes people. That’s where we put our flag,” explains Abalimi Bezekhaya resource mobilisation manager Rob Small.

Each community garden plot is 500 square metres, and farmers currently earn between R1,500 to R3,000 a month after costs, according to Abalimi. “Everyone told us it’s impossible to create a farming job on 500 square metres. Everyone said you need huge farms. Absolute nonsense. I’m hoping that others will notice. We need people to pick up the idea and go with it,” says Small.

He believes the farmers’ current income is still small compared to what they could potentially make. “They could be producing triple and quadruple of what they are producing today on the same size plot, but they need more training and more labour force,” says Small.

For small-scale farmers in rural and township areas, access to markets through which they can sell their produce is a major struggle because they lack transport to bring their vegetables into the urban centres where there is demand and buying power. That’s why, in February 2008, Abalimi launched Harvest of Hope, a marketing programme through which micro farmers sell boxes of organic vegetables to families in urban areas.

“We ask farmers to grow specific vegetables, such as carrots or beetroot, based on demand. That way, each bed [in their community garden] is booked in advance and all food produced has a customer by the time it is harvested. This assures farmers of an ongoing income,” says Small.

Every Tuesday, the produce is collected from about twenty community gardens in townships all over Cape Town. In the early morning, the farmers harvest their fresh vegetables. An Abalimi vehicle collects the produce and brings it to a central point in Phillppi where it is washed, packed into boxes and delivered to customers. A big box of organically-grown, seasonal vegetables costs R95 and a small one sells for R65.

To grow its customer base, Abalimi staff approached schools in and around Cape Town. Numerous families from about ten schools as well as a few groups at the University of Cape Town have signed up to the community-supported agriculture scheme.

Currently, Abalimi sells about 150 boxes each week. Half of the profit goes directly into the farmers’ pockets, while the other half goes to Abalimi to help run the organisation. “It’s a social business, along the lines of fair trade. Nobody gets rich here, and there is a possibility we might turn it into a cooperative later on,” explains Small.

Gladys Puza, a mother of five, who has 22 grandchildren and 24 great grandchildren, is one of the community farmers who benefits from Harvest of Hope. She supports most of her family from her income and the food she plants.

“Abalimi’s support is very good for us. Now we can get our vegetables to the city. We have a market now,” she says. “Before we didn’t have a place to sell our vegetables. Sometimes they got rotten because nobody did buy.”

Abalimi has big plans to expand the project. By the end of this year, the organisation wants to sell between 250 and 300 boxes of vegetables each week and 400 to 500 boxes by the end of next year. “Our goal is to sell 600 boxes per week by 2012. That would make us operational five days a week and make about R200,000 profit, which we will use to develop even more farmers,” hopes Small.

In total, Abalimi supports 3,000 farmers every year. 2,500 of them are home gardeners on subsistence level, while 500 operate community gardens in numerous townships around Cape Town, which are being trained to reach livelihood level. “It’s a real movement of organic micro farming among the poor,” says Small.

Paul Cohen, executive director of Cape Town-based Rural Education Development Corporation, believes Abalimi has created an important strategy to create food security in South Africa. “It’s very difficult for micro farmers to get access to a main market, partly because government isn’t promoting or incentivising small-scale agriculture,” he explains.

The Department of Agriculture, bound by international regulations of the World Trade Organisation, mainly subsidises large-scale commercial farming and monocultures, which is the growing of one single crop on one wide piece of land.

“Government focuses on macro-economic policies, which favour large, short-term profits rather than long-term sustainability,” says Cohen. As a result, small-scale farmers, who don’t have the capacity to produce large amounts of food for export and sale on global markets, are hardly considered in agricultural policy making.

Experts, like Cohen, believe market-driven agricultural policies on their own cannot create sustainable agriculture in developing countries, such as South Africa. He suggests government should integrate commercial farming with social and ecological aspects, such as creating food security and reducing carbon emissions produced through farming.

“We need to find a way to integrate issues of economy, land, poverty and health. We need to integrate poverty alleviation strategies with our current growth-driven economic policies,” says Cohen.

Abalimi Bezekhaya’s micro farming scheme might offer part of a solution to the problem. “With less than 100 Rand subsidy per farmer per month we train farmers to sustain a livelihood. Abalimi provides a model of what can be possible in all urban settings throughout the country,” says Small. “The model is there. It works and can be easily copied.”