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COMMUNITY GARDEN EXPORTS TECHNOLOGY TO PACIFIC

Brisbane's Northey Street City Farm is assisting a development project in the Solomon Islands

by Russ Grayson

In Brisbane, the imaginative inhabitants of Northey Street City Farm have developed an innovative composting system. It consists of a number of mesh cylinders, perhaps three metres in length by a metre and a half diameter, that hinge open to accept organic wastes. Add garden waste and water, roll the cylinders along as needed, and in a few weeks the gardeners have compost ready for the nursery and garden beds.

Just three hours flying time across the Coral Sea, in Honiara, Solomon Islands, the central markets generate a huge amount of food waste each day. To Honiara Council, this is a waste problem.

Northey Street City Farm's innovative compost rollers

Now, two Australian women, an enthusiastic group of Solomon Islanders attached to the Kastom Gaden Association (KGA; 'Kastom' means 'customary' and 'gaden' is Pijin for 'garden') and funding from the British High Commission is bringing together Honiara Council's market wastes with Northey Street's compost tumblers to turn the waste into fertiliser. This will be used on organic food gardens that will produce for the Solomon Island's first organic home delivery service. The compost will also supply a nursery, to be managed by the KGA's Fred Limia, from Maliata Province, that is planned for the new project. Overseeing compost production will be another Malaitan, Freda Ruka, the project's Green Waste coordinator.

Tash Morgan, a woman with environmental qualifications who works with Brisbane's Northey Street City Farm, in 2004 oversaw the construction of the compost rollers which were temporarily housed at project adviser, Tony Jansen's home garden until the site is readied for them.

A site for production and education

The site is owned by the National Olympic Committee which is building a new youth centre and sporting facilities and is close to Chinatown, a ramshackle district of galvanised iron and timber buildings and dusty streets along which are located the retail businesses of Honiara's Chinese community. Landscaping for the development has been contracted to the KGA, which is turning the site into an educational landscape that follows the course of an exercise track. Contractor, David Collaustin, another Malaitan, is constructing the track for the KGA.

Nicholas K Beia, a Solomon Islander decended from Gilbertese immigrants and member of Honiara's Bahai community is managing the landscaping. Recently returned from training in Israel, Nicholas is overseeing the installation of a number of eduational components that together will result in a botanic garden of useful species.

"Here, near the street, we will plant a block of exotic fruit trees where the long grass now grows", he says. "Further along the track we will plant indigenous fruit and timber trees. Food gardens will also be planted and at the top of the slope we are making a 'medicine wheel' garden. It is circular and divided into nine segments, one for each province of the Solomon Islands." A local, indigenous healers association has expressed interest in the medicinal garden and project managers hope they will make use of it.

Northey Street's composters will support food production

Part of the site for the tree plantings has been cleared and has been planted to beans to improve soil quality and prevent the soil washing into the creek during heavy tropical downpours. The flat land above is being prepared for the Northey Street City Farm compost rollers and a row of curing bays in which the compost will be left to finish. It will be used in the gardens supplying the home delivery service and in the project's nursery.

There is more to the project than the educational landscape, however. The KGA is part of the regional Melanesian Farmer First Network (MFFN) that has participating organisations at Tari in PNG's Southern Highland province, in Bougainville and Vanuatu. Nancy Malu, the KGA worker from the distant Santa Cruz islands who is the project coordinator, will manage an agricultural retail outlet where processed spices and other agricultural products produced by MFFN members, as well as the produce of members of the KGA's national seed saving and distribution organisation, the Planting Material Network (PMN), will be sold. An area of a new building equipped with an air conditioner will be set aside as a cool room for the food box scheme.

"Fresh vegetables and fruit, grown in the compost produced in the rollers, will be distributed through a weekly food box scheme that will operate like a community supported agriculture (CSA) project", said Australian project adviser and associate of the TerraCircle (www.terracircle.org.au) development consultancy team, Emma Stone. Emma, who trained with the Australia's Seed Savers Network in Byron Bay, has a long association with the KGA, earlier serving to improve the operation of the PMN and, later, returning under the Australian government's Youth Ambassador scheme.

"The project has its origins in the 2002 PMN national conference", says Emma. "Farmers wanted assistance with marketing. We hope to provide this in the form of the home delivery service and the development of value-added products based on the processing of farmer's produce".

Most of the Solomon Islanders involved in the project have been through the KGA's farmer field school at the project's farm at Burns Creek, Honiara. The school attracts students from all over the archipelago who attend for a period of weeks or months to acquire skills in low external input sustainable farming, seed saving and poultry keeping, most of which can be used to produce income.

The project takes the KGA into new territory. To date, the work has focused on improving rural food security and the associated area of nutritional health. This is its first urban project. For TerraCircle, the development consultancy set up by ex-staff of the Australian aid NGO, APACE and others who joined later - the Honiara project draws on urban experience gained in Australia as well as previous project work in the Solomons.

It is Northey Street City Farm, however, that has been instrumental in delivering the composting equipment that will feed the gardens that the project depends on.

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PAGE UPDATED... Thursday, 7 June 2007