Urban agriculture has the potential to shift the narrative highlighted by Statistics South Africa that more than 1 million households have severely inadequate access to food and that two-thirds of households that experienced hunger are in urban areas.
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Evergrow has socio-economic strategies to curb the negative impact of food insecurity and poverty through urban agriculture.
”We are determined to mitigate poverty challenges in South Africa.
“We have established more than ten community gardens, through our strategy of repurposing fallow community assets such as local schools and yards behind halls and churches,” says one of the co-founders Andile Gcaza.
Gcaza started the business along fellow bio- scientist, Phetole Raseropo in 2018 after identifying a gap in the market to use science and technology to help emerging farmers grow their vegetables.
They started off by growing just under 25 000 seedlings on a four metre by four metre space.
After conducting in-depth research on ways to create a positive impact with their business, they realised that there’s a food security challenge that urban agriculture can curb.
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“We learned about the challengers faced by emerging farmers. After unpacking all this, SA was hit by the pandemic which highlighted the importance of food security and growing our own food,” said Gcaza.
Now the business retails over 200 000 seedlings monthly which translates to just under R450 000 in annual revenue. In the financial year 2021/22 it was retailing 40 000 seedlings monthly and has doubled operations through green economy innovations under the Department of Science and Innovation.
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Their business has grown from one hectare to two and this has allowed them to employ more people – their staff complement has grown from three employees to 12, specifically onboarding young people into their operation.
As the business continues to grow, they see an opportunity in exporting seedlings to international markets. “We are a nursery and there’s an opportunity for us to export our seedlings internationally,” said Gcaza.
Agricultural technological advancements are transforming how farming is done and providing farmers with solutions for their challenges.
“We see how other agripreneurs across the world are using agrivoltaics, which merges farming the land as well as farming the sun to build more sustainable agricultural ventures,” he said.
Innovations like agrivoltaics make it possible for land and crops to benefit from solar panels.
The business leaders are planning to use agrivoltaics because the old buildings they transform into communal gardens often don’t have electricity.
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“We have seen the burden on the business when it comes to using a generator.
“We are revisioning our operations by leveraging green energy, the upfront costs will be a bit of a challenge but over time we could significantly reduce the financial burden on the business,” Gcaza said.
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