Neighbourhood greening and improved safety
The establishment of the gardens has transformed vacant lots full of weeds and waste into green, flourishing areas that are a visually appealing element in the neighbourhood. As described in the sections health and social interaction, the gardens offer a space where farmers can relax, reconnect with nature, find a purpose, and forge friendships. Although the gardens do not have a specific infrastructure for offering recreation to visitors, it is a public space that customers and others are welcome to enjoy.
“[People] can feel free to relax here, [they can] join us to harvest, people bring their kids.” (Ana Maria, Jardim Produtivo)
“After constructing the garden, everyone who lives around here, ah they loved it! Cause, the landscape improved, and the safety too.” (Eliane, Vila Pinho)
A farmer at Vila Pinho also claims that the garden has prevented informal settlements in the area, and calls for more recognition from the authorities for their contribution to keep the area free from construction.
“They should appreciate it, because this here, if we weren’t here, doing gardening and planting here, it would have already been invaded here, people would already have done like over there, that over there is all invaded […] People arrive and the area is empty so they build houses.” (Edna, Vila Pinho)
She also says that the municipality sometimes constructs housing as a measure to prevent informal constructions, and that the gardens thus have an important role to preserve urban public space from both illegal and legal constructions.
The terrains where the gardens are situated used to be places where criminals dealt drugs and threw away dead bodies. The farmers assert that the areas have become safer after the implementation of the gardens.
“This used to be a place for killing people, bury bodies here, drug area, you see? So, we are taking care of it.” (Cristina, Vila Pinho)
“Before, this was a vacant lot, where people threw away everything, construction material, everything! Dead animals… and lots of weed. […] It’s good here, it’s been worse, every day they killed two, three, but not anymore. [...] It’s among them, you know, […] nobody is bothering us.” (Ana Maria, Jardim Produtivo) “Here, they say that it was a place where people were doing drugs, killing each other. Cause you know that in a place where these things happen, there’s a lot of wrong things, there’s death, there’s robbery.” [Is this still happening?] “Now there’s no more of that because we are here. They left, they removed them from here. […]The garden cleaned up. Thank God they left and we entered.” (Edna,
Vila Pinho)
Climate, biodiversity, and waste management
The direct relation between producer and consumer has many positive effects on the climate. Since most sales are carried out at the garden entrance, the need for packaging, storing and transportation is greatly reduced or even eliminated. The farmers reuse materials both for decorative purposes and to cope with different challenges. One of the farmers saved his harvest during the dry season thanks to a roof that he made from material that he found, and another has found a way to prevent erosion in his sloping plot with the help of old wardrobe doors that people throw
away. Furthermore, all farmers make homemade fertilisers and pest remedies out of farm resources.
“We don’t use any agrochemicals, nothing. So I’ve learnt to make a remedy called ‘biogel’, one does what the others do. […] It’s a kind of compost, a liquid, that we always make. It contains a lot of things, it has cow manure, plants, kale leaves, milk, molasses from sugar cane, cow liver… […] This biogel […] makes the plants green and healthy.” (Raimundo, Jardim Produtivo)
While the gardens do not produce their own manure, there is potential to create recycling processes on a wider scale and build synergies between diverse urban activities.
“The manure, we buy it at neighbouring farms […] currently, we are also buying an organic product, a compost, from a person in Betím, a neighbouring city.”
(Silvio, Vila Pinho)
“This manure that is there at the Gamileira exposition… […] They [the municipality] don’t have anywhere to throw it and we also need manure, you know, so it’s good.” (Edna, Vila Pinho)
“I get manure from the chicken farms, where they sell chicken, the guy gets it for me and I give him bedding for the chicken, sawdust from wooden sticks.”
(Gilberto, Jardim Produtivo)
Vila Pinho and Jardim Produtivo are managed agroecologically and use no agrochemicals in their production. Nor do they use machinery. The only farmer statements regarding biodiversity concern different types of pests, which would probably not be (as) present in a production system that uses chemicals. Moreover, the crop diversity is likely to be beneficial to wildlife, and based on my observations during the garden visits it indeed seems to be a refuge for wildlife.
5.2.3 Summary
The urban farmers gave both broad and deep accounts of the gardens’ multiple functions and contributions on various scales. One farmer summarises some of the main benefits of the garden:
“Now what was wrong is right, because here the garden helps people and even eradicates people’s hunger. One sells the vegetables, makes money and buys food. One eats good vegetables that are not treated, and one distracts the head, all of that is good.” (Edna, Vila Pinho)
The farmers also mentioned various other socio-economic functions such as social interaction and preservation and dissemination of knowledge and culture, as well as urban-environmental aspects such as the recycling of some urban resources and the contribution to safer and greener neighbourhoods. The following subchapter will look more into how the municipal departments/institutions work with UA and whether the work reflects the farmers’ stories.