Urban Women Grow Food in Sacks

Danielle Nierenberg writing at Nourishing The Planet about Nairobi’s Kibera slums:

Anywhere from 700,000 to one million people live in what is likely the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa. And despite the challenges people here face – lack of water and sanitation services, space and lack of land ownership are the big ones – they are thriving and living...We met a “self-help” group of female farmers in Kibera who are growing food for their families and selling the surplus to their neighbours. Such groups are present all over Kenya – giving youth, women and vulnerable people the opportunity to organize, share information and skills and ultimately improve their well-being while giving them a voice that otherwise would not be heard. The women we met were growing vegetables on what they call “vertical farms or gardens.” But instead of skyscrapers, these farms are in tall recycled sacks filled with soil, and the women grow crops in them on different levels by poking holes in the bags and mainly planting seeds and seedlings of spinach, kale, sweet pepper and spring onions...The women told us that more than 1,000 women in their neighborhood are growing food in a similar way...These small gardens could produce big benefits in terms of nutrition, food security and income. All the women told us that they saved money because they no longer had to buy vegetables from the markets or kiosks, and they claimed that the vegetables were fresh and tasted better because they were organically grown – but that sentiment also might come from the pride of growing something themselves...

COMMENT: It always amazes me what people can accomplish using a little help and a great deal of ingenuity.