Does intensive food production work?
This paper on “War on Hunger” reports on the excitement of and impact on rural households who implemented their organic food gardens in 2006. On top of this, there is the economic and social value to households – and the nation – of reduced child stunting.

An unexpected way out – “in my own four corners”
“My bags were already packed”, says Mrs Ntombolundi Zitha of Upper Ngqumeya village near Keiskammahoek in the Eastern Cape. “I had reached the end of the line – I just had to find a way of providing for my ailing mother and four children. I had no idea where I would go, or what I would do, or whether there was anywhere I could find a job. My bags were already at the door when BRC came with this idea of the home food gardens.

Border Rural Committee (BRC) is an NGO which has for many years assisted ten villages in the area with development initiatives and to obtain compensation for losses due to the Betterment Scheme implemented in the 1950s. In 2004, BRC had initiated a process in Cata, a village across the valley from Upper Ngqumeya, to stimulate homestead food production. MaTshepo Khumbane ran ‘mind mobilisation’ processes and ‘helicopter planning’ in Cata for a week. Ever since then, BRC’s Mrs Zanele Semane has carried this flame of hope with the village women. Now they are spreading it to other villages.

“This is for people who have nothing, but who want to get something from their own efforts,” says Ntombolundi. “One doesn’t need money to be part of this. We use natural things to grow our vegetables, like manure, and we spray with aloe for pests. We are not investing our money to buy seed and fertiliser.” Ntombulundi’s neighbours share her view.

Virginia Magwanca feels that: “the great thing about this is that we don’t need to depend on anybody else. We want our children to get educated, but we want to support them in this without having to go and find a job somewhere else. They need us here, at home.”

This concept of “my four corners” (referring to the corner poles of her own yard) is echoed in every village where the Water for Food Movement philosophy takes root. The women delight in the freedom of becoming highly productive in her own yard, where she has full control and can stay close to her children at the same time.

Men tend to agree, for various reasons: “It is good that it is in the yard, because I can still work on it late if I have to go somewhere else during the day,” says Zwayise Sethinde.

“My whole family is interested now”, says his neighbour. “My wife and children are helping me now, whereas in the past I worked alone in the garden. It is exciting everyone, because we are getting so much more from our efforts. It’s double-double, our yields are much much better and we can now produce right through the year, instead of summertime only.”

“We want to expand this to our lands, too, so that the development of the whole area can take place. We want our children to grow up with the understanding that one needs to work for what you get,” adds Themba.

“We are getting much better produce now that we are digging deeper. We started in March 2006, and we were already eating spinach in April – in the past it would take three months before we could get anything.” “The water harvesting is important, because now we can also plant in winter, as the water is kept in the trenches, instead of just running past and away. Now we have food all the time,” rejoices Ntombulundi.

“We started with seedlings from BRC, but now we don’t even have to wait for someone to bring seedlings from East London, we just make our own,” says Virginia.

Joyce Makhanthu, Chairperson of the Development Committee is amazed: “I am selling vegetables now and getting money for school fees. Later, I just know that one can even build a house with these vegetables that costs nothing!”

She is so right, because this is exactly what Theresa Molotsi in faraway Jane Furse in Limpopo Province achieved in the early 1980s. From total desperation about how to help her hospitalised malnourished child, MaTshepo Khumbane opened Theresa’s eyes to see how she could establish one of these no-cost food gardens. Step-by-step she could – firstly – save her child, then gradually expanded her garden and started selling from home, and later started buying-and-selling a range of vegetables, snacks and other consumables. Indeed, she not only expanded her house, but about ten years later she had enough cash to buy a second-hand vehicle. And her formerly malnourished son has by now studied at College!

The plight of many

City-dwellers often find it unthinkable that, while our pulsating modern economy grows in leaps and bounds, such small interventions could be so significant for the majority of people in our country today. Yet the statistics confirm this:

“Half of SA survives on R20 a day” reads the headline in the “BusinessReport” of Thursday, July 13 2006. “Despite the low level of income, collectively, these households generated R129 billion of the economy’s household expenditure in 2004”, reports financial research group Eighty20. “That spending represented 15% of the economy’s total household expenditure of R839 billion, according to Reserve Bank’s 2004 household expenditure report.”

The seemingly small efforts of these almost invisible poor households are important to us as a country through their sheer numbers.

“The analysis showed that 60 percent of the 5.2 million households where individuals were living on less than R20 a day, were in rural areas. It showed that 1.3 million of those households in rural areas were unable to meet their daily food needs,” although “seven million children receive child support grants and 11 million South Africans receive social grants.”

The seemingly small efforts of these households are also important because of the direct and immediate way in which it improves their access to food and thus, control over their own lives.

Clearly, Ntombolundi’s desperation is the desperation of many other families in the rural areas.

Further, the research showed that “a total of 15 million, or 36% of children in the country live with both parents, and the rest live with one parent or without any.” The families from Upper Ngqumeya are giving voice to the desire of millions of families across the country who wish to be together, so that they can provide a safe haven and a home for their children to grow up cared for, disciplined and loved – ready for a full productive life.

Small wonder then, that one meets with so much enthusiasm in villages like Cata and Upper Ngqumeya, who have discovered that, through this seemingly small thing, they can take control of and improve their lives.