Community Gardens and Food Security

I left this article sitting in my e-mail from this past December. After working in a community food project that hosted a community garden, I've been alert for other stories of community food initiatives.

This article (hosted on the awesome Common Dreams site) had one excerpt that stood out:

Urban agriculture projects like this issues like food insecurity, ill health and poverty are addressed. As in the rest of Africa, women in South Africa are the backbone of the small-farmer agriculture. The Philippi project will benefit women who are responsible for looking after the sick of the community, who earn a living through selling their vegetables and who look after their grandchildren who are left behind when their parents die of AIDS. It also addresses environmental issues as the farmers are taught how to re-use grey water (mostly used for personal hygiene and for washing dishes).

This is another frame for looking at food as a catalyst to solve other issues. The City of Cape Town is in a partnership to develop the Philippi project. We should work to get more support here at home for community food projects. This is one of those articles, although different in specifics, illuminates the concept of a glocal community (thinking GLobal, acting loCAL).

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/12/29-2

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