Smallholder farmers mend a broken food system
"Our children do not have to look after us. We are not a burden on them."
DESPITE the adversity of a hot and often dry climate in the rural areas, a network of farmers regularly supply fresh, nutritious food for their own households as well as surplus for sale at markets.
On Wednesday afternoon Biowatch together with the group of farmers launched a new publication at Durban Botanic Gardens.
Titled Agroecology is best practice: Biowatch’s work with smallholder farmers the book centres around rural farmers, Doris Myeni and Rhoda Mvubu who farm using traditional practices that they learnt from their parents.
Their success, even when the rains failed, is due largely to the fact that they apply farming principles that work in partnership with nature.
“Without the agroecology practices that I learnt, it would not have been possible to have fresh produce from my garden.”
“Agroecology is a way to work towards food sovereignty where the control of seed and land remains in the hands of farmers, and the land is used in an ecologically sustainable way. Agroecology is not a single system or set of practices. Rather, it is about applying a set of principles learnt from nature to create farming systems that are unique to each farm,” said Myeni.
Myeni and Mvubu who both work with Biowatch South Africa say they have been learning, sharing and applying agroecology practices on their farms that make the best use of their natural resources, while also protecting and replenishing those resources.
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On her rocky, soil-poor and water-scarce plot at Esikhalenisomthonga, Myeni says she was still picking greens and vegetables late into the recent drought, able to meet most of her large household’s fresh produce needs.
Mvubu also said she had rich green crop fields deep into the drought, even though all the fields around her were struggling to grow in the hot, dusty winds.
Another Biowatch-supported farmer Selinah Mncwango, who grows more than 40 varieties of fruit, herbs, and vegetables on her homestead and also raises cattle, sheep, chickens, and goats said: “Our children do not have to look after us. We are not a burden on them.”
Agroecology encompasses a holistic science; a practice; and a movement with a bottom-up approach to creating just, ecologically sustainable and viable food systems. Agroecology is an approach to food production that works in harmony with nature and ecosystems.
It builds on local cultures with their unique expressions of knowledge and practice that have developed over millennia around the world. Agroecology promotes food sovereignty, which is the right of peoples to access and control the resources they need, to be able to choose the kind of food they eat, produce and buy.
The book is available electronically on the Biowatch website: www.biowatch.org.za Hard copies are available and can be ordered off the website or by calling Allison Myeza on 031 206 2954.
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