This weekend part of our pavement became part of a movement and the only thing that I enjoy more that writing about Economics, is an experiment.
The idea comes from a Social Anthropology colleague Andre Goodrich and his team (which includes more colleagues, friends and students). The basic idea is that it takes time and resources to maintain a manicured lawn or nice flower bed, but you can spend that effort on a vegetable garden. Since it is on the pavement, passersby may take some of your produce, but that is the point. I can go and do volunteer work, or keep busy with some community sponsoring agriculture. Our plot is quite small and unlikely to change the way that food is produced, or make a difference to hunger. But maybe it is a start to making people think differently about urban agriculture in Potchefstroom. I'm quite keen to be involved in the garden and to see where / with whom the produce ends up.
You can watch a short video of our gardening story here.
The whole initiative has already drawn some attention. The Daily Maverick's Ivo Vegter has called it a dumb idea. And Andre has responded on Facebook.
If you want to get involved check out the pavement pimping page on Facebook or follow @AnonymousAgri on Twitter.
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