Brazil: ‘Food security is security’: Brazil’s urban farm success story
Brazil’s vulnerable communities embrace urban farming as food insecurity rises during the COVID-19 pandemic.
By Charlotte Peet
ALjazeera
6 Mar 2021
Excerpt:
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Every week, Ezequiel Dias, an urban farmer, knocks on the doors of his community’s red-brick, makeshift houses with a delivery of fresh sweet potatoes, pumpkins, onions, cabbage and herbs.
He checks to see if the families require additional help. Some need facemasks, others need soap. But few are hungry. Many of his neighbours – the majority of whom are informal workers, who make up approximately 60 percent of Rio de Janeiro’s labour force, with little-to-no savings – have been unable to work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 44-year-old Manguinhos resident knows the grim reality well. Many years ago, he too was at rock bottom. “I was unemployed for five years, helpless, with my family at home to feed,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Then suddenly, the Manguinhos vegetable garden project appeared and turned my life around,” he added.
The Horta de Manguinhos project (Manguinhos vegetable garden), an urban agriculture initiative and Latin America’s largest community farm, is helping at least 800 families survive the coronavirus outbreak, as well as employing more than 20 local workers at a time when Brazil grapples with a pandemic-battered economy.
