With the rising prices and decreased nutritional value of store-bought vegetables, the alternative may lie in our roots, quite literally. According to Harmony Khoza, from the Seriti Insitute, South Africans would be wise to return to their farming and gardening traditions. These skills he said, were well known by elders but have since been forgotten.
“We want communities to be able to make food for themselves, we saw during covid’s hard lockdown people did not have money. We want people to be able to sustain themselves, so we have a project where we help and educate people on how to plant, it can be just to sustain yourself or even sell. Our grandparents used to do agriculture. They knew how to plant and live off the land,” he said.
Khoza was speaking at an agriculture training session held at Emshukantambo Secondary School in Pimville on Wednesday morning. The initiative was part of Seriti Institute, along with other organizations’ efforts to help the school build a garden that would support its feeding scheme, as well as teach community members essential gardening skills.
