The project aims to introduce an alternative in terms of sustainable development based on the production of food in poor communities with great demographic concentrations to alleviate the situation of those populations at risk, acting positively on issues of social, economic and environmental relevance.
The project aims to set up community garden nuclei in the east side of the city of São Paulo, in an effort to improve the living conditions of those more afflicted by the social scourge, involving them in a participatory project through the creation of job opportunities, vocational training for participants and their dependents and the systematic generation of income with the selling of the produce obtained with the project.
Its scope of action is chiefly concentrated in the east side of the city of São Paulo, an area characterized by a high concentration of unemployed, the low schooling levels of its residents, high crime rates and for the lack of job opportunities for youths and teenagers. Income and urban-jobs generation, adding value to the produce of the community gardens and the social integration of the communities with the environment are the project’s main working axes.
Social Aspects
Health: With regard to the population’s health, to the extent that the gardens complement an individual’s basic diet by providing fresh foods of recognized nutritional value containing fibers, vitamins and other indispensable components for an adequate diet, there diminishes the prevalence of diseases, whose occurrence is due primarily to the body’s low resistance caused by an unbalanced diet, not to mention the fact that we provide food to people or families that, situated below the poverty line, simply cannot afford a single meal a day. Naturally the water to be used in the irrigation is to meet top quality sanitary standards, whether it be obtained from deep wells or from setting up water treatment utilities to enable the use of superficial waters.
Occupation: The current joblessness that afflicts some 1.9 million people in the São Paulo metropolitan region constitutes, in the context of extreme poverty in which this population is immersed, a perfect breeding ground for violence, which insidiously creeps in, opportunistically occupying empty institutional spaces, where the public power, for lack of objective policies, has given ground to crime. The mere lack of occupation in densely populated areas is in itself a catalyst for domestic violence, alcoholism and other malaises.
Economic Aspects
The demand for agricultural workers in olericulture is about ten times higher than the state’s average for other main crops. Apart from being highly labor intensive, seasonality in the demand for workers is very low in this sector, with activities being evenly distributed throughout the months of the year, ensuring that both work and production will be practically constant throughout the process. There is thus the generation of labor intensive work and income in a metropolis in which 20.4% of the workforce is unemployed.
One must also consider that the production of food in community gardens can be further improved by tapping into low-cost inputs such as tree trimmings or domestic organic waste, which can be transformed in organic fertilizers, adding economic value to what now accounts for an environmental liability for local governments.
Environmental Aspects
Among the environmental benefits resulting from the implementation of a policy geared toward the development of community gardens one may include:
- Increased soil permeability with the subsequent reduction of drainable rainwater volumes in both the areas defined for the implementation of the projects and its environs;
- Increased subterranean water reserves owing to a greater infiltration of rain water;
- Decreased production of methane gas in sanitary landfills caused by the anaerobic decomposition of organic waste, a gas which is a cause of greenhouse effect;
- Increased green areas;
- Prolonged useful life of sanitary landfills by way of using organic residues to make compost;
- Beautification of urban landscape.
