Food security cannot be put on the back burner and there is a real need within our communities.
This according to City of Cape Town’s Mayco Member for Urban Management Grant Twigg, when he visited Mamre on Friday 16 July.
About 720 urban farmers from different areas have resumed their agricultural training after their course was temporarily placed on hold and the schedule revised following the latest adjusted alert level 4 regulations.
“With the rampant unemployment and hunger that persist in our communities as a result of various lockdown levels due to the pandemic, the urban management directorate went back to the drawing board to revise its initial urban agriculture training programme,” Twigg pointed out.
The revised training programme commenced on Monday 12 July and will run until 30 July, they took great care to put measures in place to safeguard participants.
Some of the measured the Metro implemented to safeguard participants includes: one-on-one practical training at the beneficiaries’ homes, six beneficiaries will be trained per day.
This means that 80 beneficiaries will be trained per week, with four beneficiaries trained by one facilitator at a time, and two hours of training will be conducted for every beneficiary.
Training topics include understanding farming requirements and uses and farm elements, the preparation of organic compost, natural pests, disease control and organic sprays.
He added: “With the disturbing scenes of civil unrest and the total disregard for the law under the guise of unemployment and poverty, urban farming is beneficial to society as it can be applied in our daily lives for the consumption of food.”
At the end of the training, an evaluation will be conducted with the participants to achieve a better understanding of the agricultural environment, the importance of planning, especially regarding farming operations, understanding land as an economic unit and its role to sustainable farming and knowledge and skills required to conduct sustainable gardening or farming.
“We cannot sit back and do nothing,” Twigg concluded. “As a caring Metro we will provide tangible alternatives to our communities such as this urban farming initiative, which will allow residents to start their own food production units in their backyards.”
