From Cork to Nairobi : interesting correspondence (J. SLATTERY)

On April 3rd, 2009 I was invited to attend an EDA- symposium (Ethical Development Action) in Cork (Ireland), where I met John SLATTERY.  John sent me the following message :

“

> Hello Willem,
> You may remember I met you at the Ethical Development Action conference in
> Cork. Unfortunately I left it late to introduce myself and you were
> heading for home. I am a member of EDA and I also work full time,
> voluntarily for another small organisation in Cork called Africa Direct.
> We fundraise and support a number of small projects in Kenya.
> I had heard about your work in small gardening and wondered about applying
> it to two projects in Nairobi. One is a housing project in a slum area
> where shacks are being replaced with block houses. To avoid displacing any
> residents, the houses are designed with the same footprint area as the old
> shacks about 3.5 meters square. The finished house is 3 stories high, but
> to make them affordable they can be built incrementally one store at a
> time. The roofs are constructed of lahdi concrete beams and concrete slabs.
> So they have an open yard area on top which has a low wall about 3 blocks
> high. What I am wondering is the feasibility of growing vegetables on this
> in containers.

> The second project is an unusual slum area again outside Nairobi where the
> occupants own their site. The housing is still very poor shacks but they
> have a garden about 9 meters by 14 meters in which some already grow
> vegetables. They have piped water available.
>
> In both cases I would like to help them to develop vegetable gardening and
> then, if productivity makes it feasible, form a co-op to market their
> produce.

> You were saying you have contacts in Kenya. Is there someone could advise
> in the first instance on training people to grow vegetables and secondly
> whether the productivity from these small areas could generate an income?
> Regards,
> John Slattery

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2007 - Kitchen garden in Smara refugee camp (Tindouf area, S.W. Algeria) in the Sahara desert. Easy to duplicate in less hostile environment, even in slumps on a roof if container gardening is applied.

My contacts are at the University of Nairobi and they are interested in agriculture, not in horticulture.

Income generation for small-scale farms (gardens) is not necessarily depending upon the dimensions of the farm (garden), but on the nature of crops.  I feel in a position to give some advice if it comes to decisions.

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“ Thanks for your email. I’m afraid we haven’t made any progress. However I discovered that one of our partners has started giving “grow bags” and seeds to families in the slums to grow vegetables. We will have a student from UCC on work experience placement in Nairobi from April for 6 months and she will look at the success and possibilities of extending it. Our projects are going well. One in particular in Kitale deals with 300 very impoverished families. There is some land there on which they are growing some maize and again I will ask the student to look at vegetable growing there.
There may be a need for seeds for the grow bags project. Are there seeds available?
Many thanks for your interest.
Happy New Year,
John”

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2007 - Smara refugee camp in the Sahara desert. Give me a small piece of land in a slump and I transform it into a mini-oasis. Now, what about that ?

It sounds quite familiar that it takes time to start up some new initiative.  However, when one collects a good number of plastic bottles (soda, coke, juice etc.) and yogurt or other pots, one can start “immediately” growing vegetables and fruit trees (given that seeds are available).

I appreciate the use of “grow bags”, except if these are commercial ones.  I prefer grow bags made of ordinary plastic bags, in which vegetables can be grown perfectly.  One has only to put 2-3 bags inside one another and fill up the central one with potting soil or some local soil (with a handful of manure).

Container gardening can be done really everywhere, also in the slums.

As my action “Seeds for Food” is a huge success, I have a lot of free seeds for you and your people working in Nairobi.  Let’s see how we get them there.

Wishing you a lot of success,

Willem

Appreciation in Calgary

A message from Calgary (Canada) :

“I heard your interview on the Canada Broadcasting Corporation program ‘As it Happens’ and was astonished that seeds are not inexpensively available in developing nations! Fruits and vegetables are readily available here and grow in my backyard. I never knew these countries were short of seeds as well.

Thanks to you & your wife for taking on this project to distribute the tiny seeds that I’ve thrown away for so many years. I’ll already started drying mine and will continue to send them to you until you ask us to stop.

Greg Lynch
Calgary”

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Thanks Greg !

Urban gardens, family gardens and school gardens

For years we have been promoting family gardens (kitchen gardens) and school gardens, not to mention hospital gardens, in the debate on alleviation of hunger and poverty.  We have always insisted on the fact that development aid should concentrate on initiatives to boost food security through family gardens instead of food aid on which the recipients remain dependent. Since the nineties we have shown that community gardens in rural villages, family gardens in refugee camps and school gardens, where people and children grow their own produce, are better off than those who received food from aid organizations at regular intervals.

2007 – Family garden in Smara refugee camp (S.W. Algeria, Sahara desert), where people never before got local fresh food to eat

Locally produced fresh vegetables and fruits play a tremendously important role in the daily diet of all those hungry people in the drylands.  Take for instance the possibility of having a daily portion of vitamins within hand reach.  Imagine the effect of fresh food on malnutrition of the children.  Imagine the feelings of all those women having their own kitchen garden close to the house, with some classical vegetables and a couple of fruit trees.

No wonder that hundreds of publications indicate the success of allotment gardens in periods of food crisis.  See what happened during World War I and II, when so many  families were obliged to produce some food on a piece of land somewhere to stay alive.  In those difficult days allotment gardens were THE solution.  They still exist and become more and more appealing in times of food crisis.

2008-10-25 – Allotment gardens Slotenkouter (Ghent City, Belgium) at the end of the growing season

There was no surprise at all to read, since a few years that is, about a new movement in the cities : guerilla gardening.  Sure, different factors intervene in these urban initiatives, be it environmental factors (embellishing open spaces full of weeds in town) or social ones (poor people growing vegetables on small pieces of barren land in the cities).

Today, some delightful news was published by IRIN :”Liberia: Urban gardens to boost food security” :

“MONROVIA, 19 January 2010 (IRIN) – Farmers are turning to urban gardens as a way to boost food security in Liberia’s Montserrado County, where just one percent of residents grow their own produce today compared to 70 percent before the war.

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The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is targeting 5,000 urban residents of Montserrado, Bomi, Grand Bassa, Bong and Margibi counties, to encourage them to start market gardens or increase the amount of fruit and vegetables they grow on their farms. Participants had to have access to tools and some land.  The aim is to improve food security and nutritional status while boosting incomes, said project coordinator Albert Kpassawah. Participants told IRIN they plant hot peppers, cabbage, calla, tomatoes, onions, beans and ground nuts. Health and nutrition experts in Liberia say increasing fruit, vegetables and protein in people’s diets is vital to reducing chronic malnutrition, which currently affects 45 percent of under-fives nationwide.

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FAO assists primarily by providing seeds and training in techniques such as conserving rainwater and composting. The organization does not provide fertilizer, insecticides or tools – a concern to some participants. “You cannot grow cabbage without insecticide. It doesn’t work,” Anthony Nackers told IRIN.  Vermin, insects and poor storage destroy 60 percent of Liberia’s annual harvest, according to FAO.  And many of the most vulnerable city-dwellers – those with no access to land – cannot participate at all, FAO’s Kpassawah pointed out. But he said he hopes the project’s benefits will spread beyond immediate participants, since all who take part are encouraged to pass on their training to relatives, neighbours and friends.  And there is ample scope to expand techniques learned from cities to rural areas, he pointed out. Just one-third of Liberia’s 660,000 fertile hectares are being cultivated, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

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Let us express our sincere hopes that FAO will soon be able to show to all aid organizations that sufficient food production can be secured by the population of any developing country.  What is possible in urban areas of Liberia can be duplicated in any other country.  What can be achieved in urban gardens, can also be done in rural family gardens.  Why should we continue to discuss the alarming problem of those vulnerable children suffering or even starving from chronic malnutrition, if  school gardens can be a good copy of the successful urban gardens in Liberia?

Don’t we underestimate the role container gardening can play in food production (see <http://containergardening.wordpress.com>) and the pleasure children can find in growing fruit trees and vegetables in plastic bottles.  Pure educational reality !

We count on FAO to take the lead : instead of spending billions on “permanent” food aid, year after year, it would be an unlimited return on investment if only a smaller part would be reserved to immediate needs in times of hunger catastrophes, but the major part spent at the world-wide creation of urban and rural family gardens.

We remain in FAO’s save hands. We wonder what keeps United Nations to envisage a “Global Programme for Food Security” based on the creation of kitchen gardens for the one billion daily hungry people who know that we have this solution in hand.  Let us spend more available resources on “Defense”, the one against hunger and poverty!

Collecting seeds of dragonfruit and tree tomato for development projects

Dragonfruits and tree tomatoes can be bought in supermarkets or fruit shops.

Dragonfruit is grown on the cactus Hylocereus :

• Hylocereus undatus (Red Pitaya) has red-skinned fruit with white flesh, the most common “dragon fruit”.
• Hylocereus costaricensis (Costa Rica Pitaya, often called H. polyrhizus) has red-skinned fruit with red flesh
• Hylocereus megalanthus (Yellow Pitaya, formerly in Selenicereus) has yellow-skinned fruit with white flesh.

The fruit contains hundreds of black, shiny little seeds sitting in the pulp.  One can wash out the tender pulp in a fine sieve and dry the seeds on a plate (not on paper).  They usually germinate around two weeks after shallow planting.  Dry seeds can be sent to us (Beeweg 36 – BE9080 ZAFFELARE (Belgium).  We offer free seeds to different development projects in the drylands, thus enabling hungry people to grow fresh fruits in a sustainable way.

Dragonfruit (Hylocereus undatus) growing on a climbing cactus

Cross-section of dragonfruit with black seeds in white pulp

Shiny seeds in rests of white pulp after sieving

Seeds germinating on houshold paper

The tree tomato grows on a Cyphomandra betacea tree.

Oval fruits only look like tomatoes.  The juicy orange pulp with purply red seeds can be washed out in a fine sieve by squeezing the pulp under running tap water.  The dark colour of the seeds (anthocyanins) disappears gradually until they are brownish.  Seeds can be dried on a plate (not on a paper).  Seedlings develop quite easily in humid potting soil.

Dry seeds sent to us (see address above) are offered for free to development projects in the drylands, where these tree tomatoes bring fresh food full of vitamins to the local people.  Thus, anyone can contribute to alleviate hunger and malnutrition in this world.

Tree tomato (Cyphomandra betacea), an interesting fruit to be grown at the largest scale in the drylands. The tree should be incorporated in reforestation programs.

Cross-section of tree tomato with orange flesh (juicy pulp) and dark red seeds

Seeds of tree tomato sit on their small stalk

When purplish red anthocyanins are washed out the seeds turn brownish

All contributions of dragonfruit seeds and tree tomato seeds are most welcome.  In the name of all the people affected by drought and desertification, suffering from malnutrition, hunger and poverty : Sincere thanks !

Send seeds in separate envelopes

Our most sincere gratitude for all those lovely people sending us seeds.  We feel really happy with this response.

With a lot of regret we have to throw some of these valuable seeds on the compost heap because we receive them as a mixture of 2-3 different species in one single envelope.  Therefore, our recommendation to send the seeds, species per species, separately.  Of course, one can group these different envelopes in one packages or a bigger envelope.   Thanks for understanding.

Germinating avocado seed in a cup cut from a yoghurt pot

Seeds for allotments and refugee camps

Read at : Sheffield Univ. – Environment Division

www.shef.ac.uk/environmentdivision/gyo

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Producers of ‘home grown’ food can gain psychological and physiological benefits through physical activity and improved nutrition, as well as through self empowerment, engaging with nature, and participating in communal activities. Lack of physical activity and low intake of fruit and vegetables is linked to poor health, but little is known about how the health benefits of physical exercise and fruit and vegetable consumption relate to their environmental setting. Studies of these benefits have often focused on particular social groups such as the elderly or those with mental illness.

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2007 - Creating family gardens and offering people our free seeds is a major step towards sustainable development, even in the refiugee camps in the Sahara desert. Why don't we offer a small garden to every refugee family ? Who is against ? Who steps forward ?

The paragraph above describes the major benefits of growing your own food in allotment gardens.  Key words are :

1. Physiological benefits: physical activity, improved nutrition, improved health
2. Psychological benefits: self empowerment, engagement with nature, participation in community.

In fact, these benefits also go for family gardens (kitchen gardens), school gardens and hospital gardens.  One can imagine that extraordinary improvement in nutrition and health can be achieved if people in the drylands and in refugee camps would be enabled to grow their own food, be it in allotment gardens or in community gardens.

I remain confident that international aid organizations and NGOs, sooner or later, will set up programmes and projects to install these types of gardens to combat hunger and malnutrition and to assure food security in hostile environments.

Plastic bottle gardening in Iraq (Dr. Andrew ADAM-BRADFORD)

Growing plants in plastic bottles has a number of remarkable advantages, among others :

1. Significant saving of water
2. Less negative effects of soil factors
   
3. Easier control on plant growth
4. Keeping plastic out of the environment

Interested people go to my blog http://containergardening.wordpress.com, where a number of photos show how performing this technique can be.  That was certainly recognized by Dr. Andy ADAM-BRADFORD, when writing :

“I am using some photos from your site on plastic-bottle
gardening, during the delivery of a session tomorrow on food
production in refugee camps. The workshop, funded by UNHCR, is in Iraq
and for a NGO managing a camp on the Syria border.
Your examples are great resources for teaching and illustration.
Many thanks, sir.
Best wishes,
Andy.”

http://www.adambradford.eu/

Dr. Andrew Adam-Bradford Ph.D. is a Geographer, Researcher and Independent Development Practitioner specialising in natural resource management, urban and peri-urban agriculture, disaster risk reduction and political ecology.

Meeting human need and environmental sustainability by means of design, innovation, adaptation and appropriate natural resource management

http://www.shef.ac.uk/environmentdivision/gyo

Grow Your Own: health risks and benefits of producing and consuming your own food in urban areas

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It gives me a happy feeling knowing that colleagues appreciate my work.  Now, let me hope that those responsible for improvement of living conditions in refugee camps (UNHCR, WFP, Red Cross, …) will give it a try and see how health problems (lack of fresh food, vitamins, children’s deficiencies …) can easily be solved by applying container gardening in very hostile environments, like the desert.  Seeing is believing !

The Big Green Idea on Facebook (Brigit Strawbridge)

A few minutes ago I  joined Brigit STRAWBRIDGE’s BIG GREEN IDEA charity on Facebook after reading :

The Big Green Idea

Brigit Strawbridge’s charity, dedicated to showing people how sustainable living can be easy, healthy, inexpensive and fun

The BGI has gone all contemporary and has a facebook page in the “causes” section. Would love it if anyone who has a facebook account could join as a supporter!!!

We hope to develop this and a forthcoming “You Tube” presence to get the message out to a different audience

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/152409?recruiter_id=30891122

And perhaps share it with friends???

Thank you

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Strongly recommended !

Nice message from the UK (Brigit Strawbridge)

Received this nice message today :

“ I would really like to help you by sending seeds or whatever else might help you further your aims with Seeds for Food. I run an environmental charity http://www.thebiggreenidea.org/ and already have a few boxes of seeds that people donate for us to give to people in the UK and I’m sure my trustees would be happy for me to pass at least half of them on to you.

I am also involved in a green internet forum where I made a post yesterday about your charity  http://bit.ly/6PWmE8 –  and I think we could probably get a lot of support from its members.

If you were to make a list of the ten top types of seeds you need, what would they be? Also, what about tools etc?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes,
Brigit Strawbridge “

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I replied immediately to Brigit’s mail and put a link to THE GREEN LIVING FORUM (see Blogroll in right column) :

Dear Brigit,

Thanks for your appreciation and offer to cooperate.

I wish you a lot of success with your charity.  Nice to hear that you intend to share some seeds with our  action.

A few seconds ago I registered at The Green Living Forum and I will put a link to it on my blog www.seedsforfood.org.

Probably we can exchange some more ideas at the Forum to raise interest in our actions and gain support from its members.

It’s rather difficult to come up with a list of “top seeds” as the collected seeds are going to projects in different climate zones.  But seeds of “tropical fruits” are of course particularly welcome because they go to projects in the drylands, which are normally the poorest ones.

Up to now we are not interested in tools because of the transport costs, but we are working at it.  Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could offer our “old” tools (still functioning !) to those who can’t afford to buy some ?  I agree, people say it’s better to buy them at the local market, but then we need to collect funds again and that’s against the principle I have built in after many years of experience in development aid and charity (after doing so all those years, I refuse to beg for money).  Most people feel a certain “fatigue” when asked to donate money for development aid because they don’t see any progress.

I see progress speeding up when creating family gardens and school gardens, for these assure a lot of sustainability, people producing their own fresh food and improving their soils and environment.

Experiment to show that people in the drylands can grow avocado seedlings in a mini-greenhouse made out of two yoghurt pots.

Kids in developing countries can do this at school, learn a lot about plant growth, produce young fruit trees at school, take the seedlings home at the start of the summer holidays and plant “their” fruit trees at home, thus contributing to reforestation and production of edible fruits for the whole family.  Isn’t that nice ?

Let’s join hands and make life of the poorest better by giving them a chance to eat some fresh food every day.

Just thinking at all those hungry kids out there !

Willem

Prof. Dr. Willem VAN COTTHEM
Honorary Professor University of Ghent (Belgium)
Beeweg 36 – BE 9080 ZAFFELARE (Belgium)
willem.vancotthem@gmail.com
http://desertification.wordpress.com
http://www.seedsforfood.org

Help us with willow cuttings

Cuttings of Navajo Globe Willow (Salix matsudana ‘Navajo’)

As we are setting up tests with drought-resistant varieties of trees to be introduced in refugee camps in the desert, we are looking for small cuttings (20-25 cm, 8-10 inches) of the Navajo Globe Willow (Salix matsudana ‘Navajo’).  We would be very grateful receiving some cuttings to compare their drought tolerance.

2009-11-08 Cuttings of the Navajo Globe Willow in a plastic bottle and a glass to induce root formation

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‘Navajo’ is a very hardy tree, adapted to high desert climates, round-headed upright and fast-growing, spreading, large, deciduous, long lived tree, medium-sized, 20’ to 70′ tall and wide.

The tree seems to be sheared into a perfect ball. Its branching habit results in a characteristic globe shape: a broad, rounded, perfectly symmetrical crown spread of mostly fifty feet. Young 15’ tall trees start showing the rounded crown.

Slender leaves are bright green, lance-shaped, 2″-4″ long, turning yellow in fall.

Unlike most willows, this variety is popular in high desert and drylands because it is drought-tolerant, adaptable to a wide range of soil conditions

The name of the ‘Navajo’ variety of the Globe Willow is probably synonym with ‘Umbraculifera’.

The Navajo Globe Willow is related to the Corkscrew willow (Salix matsudana ‘Tortuosa’).  Cuttings of this Corkscrew Willow would also be welcome.

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2009-11-23 Two weeks later a lot of roots are developing and the first branches are shooting

Please send some cuttings to:

Prof. Dr. Willem VAN COTTHEM
BEEWEG 36
B 9080 ZAFFELARE (Belgium)