WORKSHOP URBAN MICRO-FARMING AND HIV-AIDS Johannesburg/Cape Town, South Africa 15-26 August 2005

Urban Agriculture projects and HIV-Aids; Abalimis experiences

By Rob Small, Christina Kaba and Sindi Mahusa-Mhlana ABALIMI BEZEKHAYA Cape Town, South Africa

July 2005

INTRODUCTION TO ABALIMI BEZEKHAYA AND ITS ACTIVITIES. ABALIMI BEZEKHAYA (Planters of the Home) is a registered civil society organisation founded in 1982. Abilimi has a core of 12 permanent staff and an additional group of about 14 contract staff and volunteers, who work on the Board and on associated Special Projects that directly enhance core delivery effectiveness1. ABALIMI is based at the Agri-Business Place in Phillipi, Cape Town and in two nonprofit Peoples Garden Centres (supply and training) in Nyanga and Khayelitsha. ABALIMI runs two core programmes: a. the Urban Agriculture Programme (UAP) b. the Cape Flats Greening Programme (CFGP). The UAP and CFGP currently support about 200 community agriculture and environmental projects and approximately 3000 home gardens (vegetable and recreational) throughout the townships in Cape Town. The most important associated special projects currently underway are The Schools Environmental Education & Development project (SEED, since 2000), which capacitates teachers to develop and utilise school gardens as outdoor classrooms. The Agri-Business Place Phillipi, a new partnership project (since June 2005) which aims to provide all round services to emerging agricultural entrepreneurs. ABALIMI supports approximately 100 urban agriculture projects and 2000 home vegetable gardens every year. The majority of the urban agriculture projects are Community Allotment and/or Communal Gardens run mainly by women (average age: 35 yrs plus) based in school yards and in a few servitude (commonage) areas. Another type of urban gardens supported by ABILIMI are the Institutional gardens: gardens initiated by institutions in support of their own core programmes (e.g. outpatients gardens at clinics or educational gardens at schools). The majority of the ABALIMI-supported gardens have been initiated by community groups or individuals as part of a survival and/or subsistence strategy to cope with poverty. In Cape Town and surrounding there is a growing movement for Urban Agriculture and Urban Greening, represented by the Vukuzenzela Urban Farmers Association (VUFA), the School Environmental Teachers Association (SETA) and an emerging Green Streets Association. ABALIMI provides support to this movement, through the ABALIMI Core Programmes and associated Special Projects, including the following activities (or Key Result Areas): Project Implementation: delivery of actual projects on the ground, with infrastructure. Resource Supply: subsidised and free start-up agricultural and horticultural inputs to gardens Training: basic training in gardening , with long term on-site follow-up (intermediate and advanced training is now being developed)
See the ABALIMI Friends Newsletter and Website for more info on Abalimis activities and a list of donors and funders.
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Organisation Building: facilitation of Savings Mobilisation and Horizontal Action Learning Networking: facilitation of partnerships in order to add value to all movement initiatives (agricultural or non-agricultural) and linkage to lobbying organisations and networks. ABALIMI itself is not a lobbyist, but only inputs into lobbying formations. Research, Monitoring & Evaluation: facilitation of RME in the movement and development of RME tools for the movement and for internal evaluation and Action Learning. Financial & Organisational sustainability for ABALIMI: HRD, Resource Mobilisation, Accounting and Management of ABALIMI to ensure that ABALIMI remains effective as service provider to the movement.

RESULTS OBTAINED Important results obtained by the core programmes include: Relative nutritional security at household level: most of the gardeners are producing seasonal organic vegetables which impact on nutritional security and health at household level. People may still be hungry, but are less at risk of disabling nutrition-related disease2. HIV-AIDS support: This is growing naturally out of the impulse for nutritional security. Neither ABALIMI, nor the movement it supports, have a developed programme or policy for HIV-AIDS support. However, there is a programme emerging out of the movement itself, which begins simply with a regular and free seasonal supply of fresh vegetables by the community gardeners themselves to families and organisations in their communities which are struggling to feed people with HIV-AIDS. Furthermore, institutional gardens (at clinics and at NGO care centres) are beginning to emerge which could become permanent supply sources of fresh organic vegetable to patients. Income from sales of surplus vegetables: the community gardens (who are mostly at early-mid subsistence level) have been known to save between R1000R20 000 per year in their bank accounts. These savings are irregular and often under-declared. Most of the savings are used for essential cash-based items like fuel, school fees, transport etc. Group savings are normally kept until year-end and distributed among the members as a sort of Christmas Bonus. There is also
Empirical studies on the nutritional impact of seasonal organic vegetables at household level have not been done. Only anecdotal evidence and personal testimony from hundreds of gardeners exists to prove this fact.
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a trend within the community garden associations to use the group savings for setting up internal micro-loan schemes to members or for bulk buying of inputs or equipment. Much more needs to be done to facilitate Savings Mobilisation in the movement, whereby the community projects can collaborate to pool savings and thus obtain leverage in the cash economy. Job creation: ABALIMI has established through empirical field studies and action-research that one job can be created for every 250-500m2 of wasteland converted into gardens, selling organic vegetables to the local community at street prices (worth 1300-R1500/month after costs) or to the Cape Town retail market at premium prices (worth up to R 3000/month). These facts have been communicated to the movement and are being taken seriously, although few people are yet willing/or able to put in the 7 days per week/365 day per year effort needed to achieve own job creation and job security. There is still a broad-based feeling that there must be an easier way. Social benefits: group organic gardening generates important outcomes among the urban poor3. Among these benefits are the individual and group empowerment among women (and also men if they are awake enough to their feminine side) whereby women have entirely assumed leadership of the movement, with good men in support roles. Because of this empowerment, women are able to hold their family and community culture together, while the men go off looking for the mythical job.

LESSONS LEARNT Taking the development continuum into account Interventions with regard to setting up urban agriculture projects should be clear about their objectives and the development level of the groups they will be working with. In this regard ABALIMI has now developed, from field experience, a draft Sustainability Index (SI)4 which tracks the development continuum of community farming projects, with measurements, from survival level into subsistence level, into livelihood level and finally into commercial level.. Linked to the SI is a field worker career path and a gardener/farmer career path, capable of taking even illiterate people through a continuum to gain accredited capacities at trade certificate level. Programme designers should design interventions which are level appropriate: each level in the development continuum has its own requirements and sustainability criteria. This will avoid the mistake being made here in South Africa where agencies are still trying to create commercial growers in quick-time, out of people who are not yet competent at Subsistence or Livelihood level, and who are often unclear if they even want to be farmers at all. The most important kind of gardens to start with are the survival and subsistence gardens, which enable nutritional security. These gardens can only be sustainable if land, water and fertility inputs are functionally free or extremely cheap, as there is little or no cash available in families at survival or early subsistence level for purchasing inputs. Accordingly, technologies should by low cost and simple although high fertility, energy and water efficiencies must be achieved.

3 Also on this subject -other than one or two studies done some years ago- little field research has been implemented due to lack of funding. However, anecdotal evidence and personal testimony from members in the movement make it crystal clear that the social impacts are substantial 4 The SI will be made available freely once it is finalised (by Mid July 2006)

ABALIMI targets to bring all community farming groups to the Livelihood stage, characterized by a mix of self provisioning and commercial activities at the garden centre as well as other value-adding initiatives (e.g. restaurant, compost production, vegetable shop, etcetera). Access to land and water; subsidized inputs It is an absolute fact that agriculture anywhere in the world cannot survive without being subsidised (via price controls, special loans, cross-subsidies or grants). Agriculture is not a normal straight-line business that merely adds value to cheap raw material. Thus survival and subsistence gardens and farms must also be subsidisedespecially by provision of free land and very cheap or free water and organic fertiliser. The poor, for their part, are usually happy to work hard physically, together. People are often also prepared to pay for their seed, which can be cheaply supplied from decanted bulk stock. Permanent non-profit and wholesale supply centres are critical as a first step: without supply of cheap or free resources, there will be no gardening or farming of any sort, ever. There is no farmer on this planet that pays the full cost of their inputs. There is absolutely no need for large areas of land to achieve nutritional and relative food security at household level. One square meter of sprouts or fresh quick growing greens can make the essential difference to one person as far as nutritional security is concerned. Even 10-20 m2 of intensive organic garden can supply base-line nutritional security to one family of 5-6 souls and 100 m2 can provide all fresh greens a family needs year-round. Water can be recycled, harvested, conserved in the soil and deployed through drip lines or equivalent. Only 34 litres per square meter per day is needed during dry periods. If there is no rain and no surface water, invest in wells or boreholes. If there is no water at all, get a job elsewhere or invest in a coffin. Production aspects Free access to bio-mass/organic municipal waste (we are not talking about human faeces) is essential and relationship with stock owners -particularly cattle owners- is vital. ABALIMI is about to start a campaign for one cow-one garden. One cow produces 10 tons of manure per annum, if kraaled overnight. This is enough to supply up to 1ha of community garden with all annual fertility requirements. Of course, small livestock should also be included, but small livestock, like fruit, is something that has a tendency to vanish if not kept under armed guard. But vegetables and cows (and goats) are less vulnerable to vanishment. It is easy to begin organic gardening at a basic level, but to progress takes study and time and commitment to develop the required skills. Organizational and institutional aspects The consumer culture mindset, where people perceive land-based lifestyles to be backwards, and group dynamics, leading to disruption of production, are probably the two most important limiting factors to the development and continuity of agricultural projects and growth in the movement.

However, we are learning to facilitate the inevitable organisational crises in such a way that they are learning and growth opportunities, not failures. The main tool used is Horizontal Action Learning Exchange, where the gardeners analyse problems and decide on solutions themselves. Group wisdom usually finds the right way, if everyone can be properly heard and group process is not diverted by dominant individuals. There has to be a number of service providers who supply what the gardeners and associations do not have, with a good understanding of the requirements of each level in the development continuum. As far as nutritional security/HIV-Aids is concerned, there has to be a nutrition education component to ensure that the quality of the food is not destroyed in the (over)cooking process. ABALIMI still has to find a permanent partner in the nutrition education sphere, but in the mean time we work with a few different organisations. Once micro & meso models have been developed and tested by civil society organisations (social entrepreneurs), the State should adapt and test the models on a macro scale. The State is functionally no good at innovation, but once an innovation has been trialed and tested the State has the capacity to apply it. As an alternative to the State, the movement itself can take to scale provided it is well organised and sufficient funding can be obtained. The movement can enable itself through Horizontal Action Learning, Savings Mobilisation and cheap MicroLoans between members and Local Economic Trading Systems (LETS)5 Community Investment Programmes (CIPs) use all the above tactics, to incentivise communities to design and execute own development programmes which address the full range of community needs, including food security through urban agriculture6. Ongoing grant finance from enlightened funding agencies is vital to keep the development process in the movement rolling, by investing at all levels in the development continuum, and using the tools and approaches mentioned above to finalise in detail a sustainable model for food, nutritional and cash security7 for permanent local livelihoods and jobs (with urban agriculture as a key component!!), which the State could then take to scale.

For more info on LETS, see: www.ces.org.za For more information on CIPs, contact Dr Norman Reynolds at marketnr@iafrica.com Food security does not necessarily lead to cash security e.g. a farmer can eat very well and have no cash- and cash security does not automatically lead to food security e.g. a rich man may starve his family. Food security and cash security do not always equal nutrition security e.g. there are millions of fat people who live on starch and meat. At survival or early subsistence level the focus is on nutritional and food security. When moving to Livelihood and Commercial levels, reaching cash security too gets more emphasis.
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