When we came to the village 3 years ago, we discovered that there was so much deforestation happening and soil erosion was inevitable. Malnutrition levels, talk less of hunger due to poverty.
I decided to start my fruit tree planting from seed and vegetable garden, all organic. The sandy and barren soil have been making it difficult for anything to grow here. Therefore, we figured the best way would be to use animal manure and compost as these are environmentally friendly and very healthy for our bodies! We bought the vegetable seeds and started our nursery after making the vegetable beds as shown in the pictures.
We had to add some sawdust to the soil to improve its water retention capacity. We have roughly 2 volunteers whom we motivate by giving them a bit of money. The vegetables are shared among the women in my village, and some are given to our pigs. We chose to grow lots of spinach due to its high nutrient content because it’s a disease-resistant vegetable. Most pests don’t eat spinach. That way, we can grow 100% organic vegetables for our community.
In the garden, we have fruit trees growing too. We also distribute these tree saplings to different communities so that each household could have at least 3different types of fruit trees to fight malnutrition. I hope to impact more than one million people by 2030, especially with the distribution of fruit tree saplings.
Food security is very important in Africa, and that’s why every household must have a reliable food source because times are changing, population increases every minute, so food is likely to be scarce if we won’t produce our own.