Brazil: In São Paulo’s cityscape, community gardens prompt a new food paradigm
We have hundreds or even thousands of unutilized or underutilized spaces
by Sibélia Zanon, Translated by Maya Johnson
Mongabay
22 September 2023
Excerpt:
But night turned into day for Almeida in 2013 when he began planting seeds in the gardens of the NGO Cidades sem Fome. “After I started working with the soil, my health improved. My heart is full when I come to work in the morning, I’m excited to get here as soon as I can.”
Cidades sem Fome, or Cities Without Hunger, has created agricultural projects in more than 80 urban spaces and school gardens across São Paulo. The largest of them is the one at the Maria de Lourdes Rosário Negreiros school, where it has thrived beneath transmission lines run by power utility Enel since 2018, covering nearly 1 hectare (2.5 acres) in the eastern borough of São Mateus.
“Cidades sem Fome’s purpose is to transform unutilized spaces inside large cities like São Paulo into places to grow food like we have done here,” says project creator Hans Dieter Temp.
“We have hundreds or even thousands of unutilized or underutilized spaces — spaces that become liabilities not only for the surrounding communities, but also for the city and the people who own the properties. It’s a problem for everybody,” Temp says. “When we started here, it was just a field full of dengue-carrying mosquitoes. We had an outbreak of chikungunya in the region because these are closed areas, walled in. The grass grows high, people toss away plastic cups, bottles — all sorts of trash that ends up filling with water” and becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
