I believe the Solomon Star was kind enough to publish a letter of mine on Sunday in which I wrote about the possible use of hydroponics as a means of growing some food crops at Langalanga, given the lack of land and a shortage of natural resources.

I had some practical experience of seeing how hydroponics helped to sustain the people on the rocky, barren island of Ascension in the midst of the South Atlantic.  It happened that part of my remit as Chief of Police on the island of St Helena meant posting some of my police personnel there and I had the opportunity of visiting the island and saw for myself how the local community, mainly personnel of the Cable and Wireless station, managed to grow enough food despite the barren conditions.

I can also relate how Phillip Bradford, a fellow Rotarian in Honiara, once gave me some large, delicious tomatoes which he had grown in a bag of sawdust and watered with a nutrient solution.

I also know of a successful enterprise in Kenya where food gardens have been created in slum areas using hessian bags.

Let me explain (and for which I will quote).

“In Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, residents have found a new way of responding to the challenge of food insecurity. In the heart of the bustling, informal settlement they are championing an unusual form of urban farming: the sack gardens of Kibera.

These urban farms consist of a series of sacks that are filled with manure, soil and small stones that enable water to drain. From the tops and sides of these sacks, often referred to as multi-storey gardens, farmers in Kibera grow kale, spinach, onions, tomatoes, vegetables and arrowroot.

The concept is a recent initiative of the National Youth Service (NYS), a government agency that promotes youth affairs through the ministry of devolution and planning. The approach is seen as a cheap and healthy solution to food insecurity and runaway unemployment in Nairobi’s slum. Kibera has thousands of sack gardens spread across 16 villages in the slum, according to Douglas Kangi, principal agricultural officer on the Urban and Peri-urban AgricultureProject at the ministry of agriculture. The government plans to introduce the initiative to Kisumu and Mombasa counties.

At Kambi Maruu, one of the villages in Kibera, young farmers start their day at around 8am, in the open field where they have their sack farming project. They water the plants, weed and prune them where necessary and spray them with insecticide.

Ramadhan Abdulrahman, 25, is one of these farmers. Before being contracted by the NYS to take care of the vegetables in a local sack garden, he was unemployed. Today he earns a stipend of 6,592 shillings per month and saves up to Sh1,200 per week.”

What can be achieved so successfully in Kenya can easily be replicated at Langalanga, I’m convinced, and in other parts of the Solomon Islands where there is poor soil, or simply sand, and I would encourage the community at Langalanga to give the growing methods a try.

 

Further information on the Kibera project, including photographs of the food gardens, can be obtained via turning to Google.

Yours sincerely

Frank Short