Applying the food sovereignty framework to community food gardens in Johannesburg enables a more multidimensional and multi-scalar analysis of gardens than previously found in the South African UA literature. In Chapter 7, I consider the contribution of gardens to the environmental sustainability of the food system, starting with how they reuse and recycle resources such as water, waste and packaging. I review research findings, including the contribution of gardens to each of the six elements of food sovereignty, as well as the challenges that limit their contribution.
Concepts, literature, and methods
The food sovereignty framework
One of the most vocal critics (or skeptics, to use his own words) of food sovereignty has been Henry Bernstein. McMichael acknowledges the utility of the provocative questions he raises in the further development of food sovereignty. Part of the strength of the food sovereignty framework lies in the complex interrelationship between its various components.
Urban agriculture literature review
However, the overlap between the two discourses – in terms of the changes they seek to promote – is clear. In conclusion, Section 3.6 reviews the literature on UA in Johannesburg and identifies some gaps that need to be filled. While this may be an overestimation of the current impact of UA in Gauteng, it provides important recognition and.
To date, however, many components of the Food Resilience Program are still theoretical or in the early stages of implementation. I then briefly explore some differences between the way UA is approached in the Global North and the South. This section discussed two of the most important debates in the literature on OA: its importance or ability to nourish the cities, as well as its radical or neoliberal nature and outcomes.
The next section now turns to the review of the UA literature as it pertains to the six elements of food sovereignty that were outlined in the previous chapter. In each of the following subsections, I review the literature on UA that relates to one of the six elements of food sovereignty used in this research. As in other parts of the world, growing vegetables in South African UA projects does not necessarily translate into consumption.
Almost all of the literature on UA suggests that it has the potential to improve food security and nutrition. Given the low productivity of many South African UA projects, this is not surprising. Where community food gardens can produce enough to sell food to surrounding communities, they contribute to the localization of the food system (Lewis, 2011).
Research Methodology
Before explaining these research instruments in more detail, the next section will provide an overview of the two case study gardens. In the immediate vicinity of the garden there is a large secondary school, an informal church, a butcher shop and a number of informal businesses including a barber shop and a snack vendor. During my fieldwork, no community member expressed interest in becoming a member of the garden.
The garden shares the property with a building that houses the regional offices of the municipal department. As with Vunani, there were multiple versions of the garden's origins, but again, they included a community development worker from DSD, in 2006. Most of the people who actively worked at the garden, whether members, casual workers or volunteers, were in their thirties or forties.
Income, access to food, passion, community service volunteer, knowledge acquisition, therapy/. relaxation Table 1: Overview of case study gardens. The two case study gardens were among the largest community gardens I saw in Johannesburg, outside of the larger “food empowerment zones” in the city of Joburg. They included representatives from the Department of Social Development (DSD), the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (GDARD) and several NGOs.
Sometimes my participant observation took me out of the gardens as I attended events with the garden participants.
Status at garden Pseudonym Status at garden
This is where my extensive reading of the literature and my fieldwork came together. My strategies of validating triangulation and gathering comments from interviewees contributed to the trustworthiness of the research. However, power relations were by no means straightforward, nor were they static over the course of the research.
While some garden members accepted me as one of their own, other garden participants continued to see me as an outsider. My role with the gardens was not to uncover a single objective truth, but rather to try to understand the gardeners' perceptions. Naturally, I took these actions consciously and reflexively, observing and analyzing the effects as part of the research process.
Most of the limitations encountered in this study can be grouped under the banner of language. Most of the gardeners were able to communicate with me in English, although one man in Vunani spoke virtually no English. A final limitation of the study was the perception of bias, or more specifically, unequal treatment of garden participants.
True, at that moment I realized that I usually work in the garden department for other people, but that is because one of them was assigned as my informal supervisor when I first came to the garden.
Research findings
Access to sufficient, healthy and culturally appropriate food
Many of the gardeners in both gardens had grown up in rural areas, in homes that produced most of their own food. However, because it was located on a bus route, some of the passers-by might have lived further away from the garden. As far as I could tell, none of the participants used fresh herbs from the garden when cooking at home.
Despite the waste, the gardeners didn't seem to take many of the tomatoes home to eat. One of the gardeners in Sekelanani realized they could improve. their growing schedule: “I'd like to grow things, you know, that can support the garden. Despite these limitations, lower prices, larger batches and freshness of garden produce have contributed, at least slightly, to this.
The garden therefore did not produce enough to affect the food security of the area, but it did contribute to the dietary diversity of its customers. If the garden participants regularly ate a wide variety of the produce grown in the garden, they would be able to meet many of their nutritional needs. Several months later, I noticed one of the gardeners coughing at Vunani, and told her about the lengana plant.
However, a sense of nostalgia regarding certain plants was evident among some gardeners.
Sustainable producer livelihoods and local economies
The chapter concludes by considering some of the factors that limit the contribution of gardens to local economic sustainability. Most gardeners in both community gardens said one of the reasons they joined was that gardening reminded them of growing food as children. As with Vunani, land and infrastructure were provided free of charge, along with some tools, seeds and other items.
The school paid R4000 (about $313) for the training, which was then divided among the members of the cooperative. When a corporate sponsor agreed to support the garden for two years, they provided salaries for three casual workers (for a few months) and about R4700 (about $368) per month for six members of the cooperative. However, given the small size of the box, he would not be able to dry much of the surplus produce available at the height of summer.
In addition, planning challenges surrounding the construction of new infrastructure by the corporate sponsor left large areas of the garden unplanted for months. Customers were unfamiliar with some of the more unusual vegetables, such as artichokes, which had been planted in Vunani by NGOs and volunteers. But this also means that the garden's potential revenue streams are limited to the foods customers are already familiar with.
They had a stall at weekend markets as well as occasional, one-off markets and events - all of which required one of the gardeners to work weekends.
Environmental sustainability
Over time, Vunani's gardeners were able to run pipes from one of the taps to the lower part of the garden. Instead, they were located at the top of the garden and municipal water was pumped into them. Indeed, in the early days of the garden, they burned the weeds, which led to conflicts with the neighbors because of the smoke.
It runs under high-voltage wires and therefore cannot be used for buildings, but in the past residents of the area did not do that. As with water use, recycling practices did not align with the garden's environmental philosophy. The environmental health risks at Vunani did not seem to attract any attention from the organizations supporting the garden.
During this time the garden paid back a large portion of the sponsorship money to the sponsor for these 'services'. Throughout the sponsorship period, the garden produced less than normal due to the absence of gardeners in the fields for training and delays in infrastructure construction that prevented planting. It would have been difficult to identify any serious health risks in the garden before the start of the month.
For Sekelanani, sharing knowledge was a stronger part of the garden's culture, even when there was conflict between group members.
Food system localisation
This chapter examines the case study gardeners' contributions to the three aspects of localization identified above. At Vunani, one of the gardeners told me about a customer who showed up at her house on the weekend, when the garden was closed, to request spinach. At Sekelanani, one of the gardeners would complain about customers trying to haggle for lower prices.
However, the vegetables in the garden formed only a small part of the gardeners' diet (see chapter 5 on food access). Even small changes, such as a sign on the fence outside the garden, were subject to city approval. At the community level, the gardens contributed to local control in two ways.
One of the gardeners from Vunani told me: “This is the first garden here in this community. Although the gardeners themselves were more focused on the community's food security, they also appreciated the educational or inspirational value of the garden. One of the gardeners invited the children from a nearby daycare to visit the garden so she could teach them about plants.
One of the gardeners told me that she wanted to host training sessions for the local community so that they could feel more involved in the garden, rather than wanting to take over.
