Pinelands' Market Garden

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Pinelands Market Garden makes business and breaks stereotypes

Pinelands Market Garden is a business founded in 2015, focusing on small-scale, organic, bio-intensive production of fresh greens and vegetables. Their approach presents an alternative to standard South African agriculture, which much like the US’s agriculture is dominated by the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, GMO crops and monocultures. Pinelands Market Garden operates out of suburban gardens, where garden space surrounding home and offices is turned into a hot-spots for growing fresh, organic vegetables. This approach scientifically reduces the footprint of vegetable transport and refrigeration costs, as well as creating urban food resilience.

Market gardening, which basically involves growing food intensively on small plots of land, has its roots in 20th century Paris, where market owners developed the system in order to produce and supply city-dwellers with fresh vegetables year-round. Recently, the concept has been gaining popularity in North America and Europe where a new wave of young urban farmers is emerging. One of the key aspects of making this business model viable, is using garden space efficiently and working with nature, so that you can harvest as much produce from the land as possible. And indeed, the garden produces enough to fill a weekly, pre-ordered box of seasonal vegetables that is supplied to local customers. There is enough to sell at a local market on Saturday mornings, and to restaurants.

Perhaps the bigger struggle, however, is the water shortages Cape Town faces. The past two years have seen the lowest rainfall on record. As market gardening has been modelled on areas with plentiful water, adapting the business model to drought has been crucial, and an ongoing endeavour. Rain water storage tanks were installed in 2016, and drought-resistant vegetables planted, all while educating the customers on how to eat according to the seasons. The backyard is an example of environmentally sound food production. I am certainly glad to have come across Pinelands Market Garden in my exploration of food production, and I hope to see both the garden and the business thrive.

(Adapted from an article published in the Permaculture Magazine on the 23rd June 2017, written by Chloe Williams)