Micro-farming among the poor Cape Town

Hello everyone, once again! 

I have attached our Friends newsletter # 37- I think its the best one ever. It has good photos, lots of news and a feature called "Men's gardens in a Woman's movement- Do they work? "  

Its worth the download time to read and enjoy. 

Your donations are always deeply appreciated. The micro-farming movement among the poor in Cape Town is a world class model which proves once and for all that food and cash poverty can be entirely overcome, on organic micro-farms not bigger than 100m2 to 500m2,  built on tiny pieces of useless wasteland, forever. 

Right now we have a delegation of farmers from Freetown in Sierra Leone studying the model. We are getting farmer and even government delegations (can you believe it?) from around SA applying to study our model.

It works  !!!  

We do not need mega Green Revolution industrial super-forced crops and animals to feed the world. This is absolute nonsense believed by some leaders, scientists, economists, business people and thoughtless consumers, who seem to live on another abstract planet.. 

Please do come and visit on a Tuesday morning 9am-12pm when in Cape Town - just let me know you are coming. I do the tour every Tuesday. Info below.  

All the best, as always, Rob - ever aspiring super-micro-farmer :) 

Info on Tours: Tours go out every Tuesday , usually from 9am-12pm, except for public holidays,  VERY heavy weather, taxi riots and popular uprisings J , or if overbooked and if no one is available to conduct them.  We normally begin at 9am at the BP garage, corner Wetton Rd and Rosmead Ave, Wynberg and finish by 12pm. Read the story on http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportID=82899   to get an idea of what you will see and hear. See also the attached/linked  article/s & or newsletter/s.

 These tours are for Friends of Abalimi,  and are free of charge, although donations are always much needed and very welcome.   Please see the donations form in the newsletter which will be handed out after the tour,  to see the options to donate.

The tour is “no frills” so please bring own snacks and refreshments and make sure to bring all-weather gear as well. It can be boiling hot one moment and  rainy and cold with gale force wind the next. 

Please let me know if you are coming..
 
My emergency contact number is 082 3319133.  
 
Best regards
 
Rob Small
Resource mobilization for ABALIMI
 
www.abalimi.org.za
www.harvestofhope.co.za
www.farmgardentrust.org

• Friends newsletter # 37 (PDF)
  

Dear Friends of Abalimi via Global Giving,

this is just to say a HUGE and earnest thank you to all who have donated over the past months .

There is nothing more fertile than a gift well given, except perhaps the gift we get from good healthy farmyard manure !!! :)

And your gifts are truly living rain to our work among the poor in Cape Town.

The micro-farmers are very busy planting the new season's crops and the gardens are looking beautiful and abundant- beacons of hope and joy in a sea of poverty and desperation for formal jobs which do not come. Unemployment in Cape Town is growing - the gap between rich and poor is so wide we get culture shock daily !! Unemployment stands officially at around 30% with more formal jobs being lost daily, even while the very healthy GDP of the formal SA economy earns good profits for the few.

Since we won our Impumelelo Gold Award (see previous report) , we have had at least 10 other agencies countrywide ask if they can come to study our model, with more making queries all the time.

So please do continue to assist us to keep our model thriving and growing so that it can be copied everywhere.

We believe that we are the first in South Africa and possibly in the whole of Africa to prove empirically that fresh food hunger and cash starvation in urban centers is entirely avoidable, even in the worst situations. Hundreds and thousands of uneducated, unemployable people - with your help - are right now setting up and running their micro-farms on very very tiny plots, on wasteland, at home and in community gardens, sustain-ably and cheaply. And these tiny micro-farms , built on any bit of wasteland, are also creating hundreds of genuine permanent self-help jobs among the unemployable for the first time in South Africa !!

Remember that there is no farmer in the world- especially big farmers - who can survive without a minimum of permanent subsidized support. And this goes also for family micro-farmers among the poor, who need so little -only ZAR 100 per month or USD 13 per month - to provide the essential services which they cannot afford.

So thank you one and all, all and one, for your kind and excellent support.

I look forward to posting more reports in future and wish you all the very best !!

Rob Small

P.S. dont forget to come visit on a Tuesday morning 9am-12pm, every Tuesday, if you are in Cape Town. Tuesday is market day and visitors day combined!!