The LAND Project is dedicated to supporting community-driven development–participatory agricultural development.  We stress the importance of food sovereignty and local autonomy over food production. A focus of our work is to engage in perennial development and energize youth.

Perennial Development

Despite two decades of post-apartheid development in South Africa, poverty rates and economic inequality are on the rise. National rural development strategies primarily focus on implementation of annual crops for increased agricultural market access. Like the annual monocultural agriculture they promote, these strategies rely on extensive external inputs for short-term results with little commitment to broader system investment or health. The work of the LAND Project is truly an alternative approach to these conventional strategies, one which reconceptualizes development toward a more wholistic understanding of growth and health of a community. This approach to development work focuses on growing the resources or capacities within a community – the roots of the community – for intentional and enduring change. Fittingly, we term this approach “Perennial Development,” as it parallels the principles of perennial agriculture. We use the principles of perennial agriculture – growth from deep roots which sustains regeneration, diversity of plants which provides diverse ecosystem benefits, and interconnectedness between all elements of the agroecosystem – to guide the work of the LAND Project.

Youth

The LAND Project places a special focus on the lives of children and youth, and the great potential they hold for their communities, and the potential their communities hold for them. Much of our work takes place in, and in collaboration with, local schools in the participating villages of the LAND Project.  Our partner, Kidlinks World, is hugely important in this work, bringing its experience in working in schools in disadvantaged settings in Johannesburg and elsewhere in the Eastern Cape.  We work with local schools to bring agroecology and nutrition into the curriculum in ways that are fun, informative, and community-based.

One way that we work with the children is through art, which we find they thirst for. One of our approaches is through creative place-making art projects. Kids at Manzimdaka loved the recent art competition (kids love competitions) we held on the theme of “What I like About Where I Live.”  The sight and sound of 150 kids drawing pictures in a single room was incredible!  Such intensity!  Such excitement!  We only had enough crayons and colored pencils for each kid to have two apiece — we didn’t expect that 150 would show up — so they were all racing around to borrow other colors from their friends.