Pat Featherstone
Soil for Life
Since 2002, Soil for Life has been offering training and assistance to people who aspire to grow food in their homes and to groups of gardeners engaged in community food growing projects. They have worked with a number of poor communities on the Cape Flats, which has poor soil that is difficult to grow food in.
Soil for Life focuses on teaching gardening methods that revolve around healthy and fertile soil, which is packed with microbial life. Their techniques are designed to provide high yields of top-quality food, even in the smallest of spaces. Soil for Life teaches gardeners how to sustain their gardens with little or no money by providing training on how to produce their own future garden inputs such as seed, seedlings and compost.
Gardeners in poor urban communities are taught how to grow food, allowing them to contribute toward feeding their households even if they are not able to find employment. In addition to this, the organization promotes community networks between gardeners as a means of selling and bartering produce and creating support systems within communities.
Soil for Life's focus is centered around gardening methods that promote the cultivation of healthy and fertile soil, enriched with microbial life, which in turn produces high yields of top-quality food. This means that no chemicals are released into the environment during the cultivation of food, and the soil’s fertility can be maintained for future generations. Bringing food production closer to where people live reduces the emissions associated with transportation, and decreases the chances of food being damaged in transit.
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