GrowBox: How Micro Farms Could Feed a Nation
GrowBox is on a mission to empower South African communities to learn to garden sustainably in order to give their children access to healthier food and bolster food sovereignty in the region.
The initiative claims that equipping local people with the skills, resources, and support they need to cultivate organic, nutritious, and sustainable food gardens could end the crippling food insecurity faced by roughly 50 million South Africans at least half of every month.
With 19 million individuals in the country relying on social grants to support households of six to twelve members—many of whom are unemployed—these benefits stretch for only two weeks a month, leaving families in a downward spiral of food poverty and ill-health.
According to WHO, 27% of South African children now experience malnutrition up to the age of five. UNICEF warns that it is a generation held back by stunted growth due to long-term nutritional deprivation. It limits their ability to thrive and contribute to a productive workforce, damaging an already vulnerable local economy.
GrowBox believes that training a network of growers in some of the most deprived areas is the answer. It has developed what it calls “food security clusters” in under-resourced schools in communities and townships where networks of micro-farmers using sustainable practices can provide enough food to feed their school children every day. And with the surplus crops serving as an income generator for the school, the farmers can sell fresh produce to the rest of the local community.
Focusing on developing agricultural skills and fostering entrepreneurship among growers, GrowBox works in the most vulnerable communities of South Africa’s West Cape. Here, poverty and unemployment has led to a culture in which gangsterism and substance abuse is one of the biggest challenges to building a healthy economy.
The initiative has already created 26 food gardens where members can grow nutritious, organic, indigenous crops for their households. It has found that upskilling community members, especially mothers and grandmothers, to use its permaculture and recycling strategies can break the cycle of poverty, ill-health, and crime. It claims that it could positively transform the lives of millions of South Africans over the next five years. And its success could provide a template for other African nations.
Learn more about GrowBox.
Written by Gilly Smith
Photos provided by GrowBox
