Living Soils Learning Farm reflect on successes
The Living Soils Community Learning Farm, launched in March 2019, has over the three year span harvested a remarkable total of 15.9 tonnes of vegetables and planted 30 varieties.
The project, launched with the aim to make a meaningful impact in the three identified focus areas of food production, young farmer skills development and community security has reviewed its progress.
A partnership between Woolworths, Spier and the Sustainability Institute, the project has since the first crop had been planted in August 2019, increased and grown tremendously and after starting on a hectare of land, the project now boasts with cultivating 30 vegetable varieties, from the former 12 varieties and now grows it on 1.2 hectares of land.
In 2020 the harvest yielded 7.2 tonnes of vegetables and in 2021 just over 8 tonnes. Almost 1/3 of the total produce harvested have been donated to food insecure families and individuals in efforts to address food security.
“The project grows dense vegetables that are needed to make nutritious meals. The produce goes to various beneficiaries that include the feeding programme at the Sustainability Institute that provides daily meals to 200 children within the Lynedoch Valley.
“Produce also goes to the Pebbles project that distributes over 1200 meals a day to Early Childhood Development Centres, and afterschool centres in the Cape Winelands area,” said Rirhandzu Marivate, Project Manager for Living Soils.
Additionally, since the outbreak of Covid-19, household and adult food insecurity has increased within the Stellenbosch area, as in other parts of the country, and Living Soils saw the importance of addressing direct household food security.
Initially supporting 400 families through the Lynedoch Valley Collaborative, produce still goes to over 100 households that receive vegetable boxes or their food through soup kitchens in Lynedoch and Vlottenburg. The Small Things Fund also receives produce to support food insecure university students,” Mr Marivate added.
The relevance of projects such as these, is highlighted by the fact that Woolworths extended financial support for an additional year towards the Living Soils programme. “Our partnership with the Living Soils Community Learning Farm addresses a key component of our approach to addressing food insecurity in a way that is empowering others to grow their own food in alignment to our regenerative farming programme as well as builds skills and support the local community’s food security needs,” said Zinzi Mgolodela, Woolworths Director of Corporate Affairs.
The project also aims to train and develop unemployed youth and women, who have a passion to address food security in our country. The full-time staff has increased since the project’s inception and farmer interns are on board to gain training through working with the experienced farmers.
Together they all benefit from skills development in various areas, such as sustainable farming practices, business entrepreneurship, personal development, biodiversity and environmental management as well as tractor training.
Many of the interns and young farmers have been employed elsewhere, or have started their own small-scale farms back home. Interns such as Eldrich October and young farmers such as Nontombi Mtwazi are an inspiration.
Reflecting on where the farm started and the work that needed to be done to get the land ready for planting, the team has taken great strides through regenerative farming and applying the principles of Farming for the Future.
“Spier graciously provided the project a piece of land – a fundamental and foundational requirement for farming. The field was overgrown with kikuyu and there were no farming activities for quite some time. From our Farming for the Future guidelines, the first step was to determine the status of the soil through grid sampling, and to evaluate the available irrigation.
“The soil needed a lot of attention to get it to the minimum level that would be suitable for vegetable production. We also determined where the higher and lower potential areas of the field were and started growing vegetables on the higher potential areas. The team did a really good job and within a year we could see a remarkable difference.
“The biggest achievement was to see how the students embraced the methodology of collating scientific data, interpreting the data and then applying the required action to improve the soil,” says Kobus Pienaar, Woolworths Farming for the Future expert.
Spier has a vested interest in the Lynedoch community, and for them Living Soils and the past three years embody all that is possible in a next generation of agriculture. “The project has grown from a strong collaboration of unified partners with common purpose to a community filled with generosity of spirit enabled by the sharing of knowledge, skills and experience,” reflects Heidi Newton-King, Spier’s HR and Sustainability Director.
“The last three years have been challenging, firstly given the complexity of the problems that we are trying to address as Living Soils, and secondly establishing the project while faced with the COVID-19 pandemic. There are many moments to be proud of, but the most notable achievement these past three years is the growth, empowerment and agency that the team has taken up, particularly our junior farm managers, who started as interns and have now firmly taken on leadership roles and ownership in running the learning farm,” reflects Marivate.
