Page 23 - Plastics News November 2017

FEATURES

of Yaoundé I Faculty of Medicine. She’s already dreaming Food security and respect for the environment
of having her own vegetable patch at home. “My mother Beyond the benefits of increased yields, J2D_Afrique’s
is an agronomist. I plan to grow my organic fruit and efforts to promote urban agriculture among households are
vegetables, to make my contribution to food security aimed at contributing to the fight against climate change.
and the protection of the environment,” the doctor said
eagerly. Householders are the end users of plastic bottles that
are issued by breweries, or contain imported products. In
In front of the group of around twenty participants, 2012, Cameroon’s Ministry of Environment and Ministry of
Tchapmi revealed that one of the reasons she feels inspired Commerce issued a joint decree — which came into force
by the project is because, “urban agriculture can also be a in 2014 —banning the commercialization and import of low
natural way of brightening up our living conditions.”With density plastic bottles.
these words, she hit upon another of the objectives that
J2D_Afrique’s coordinator is striving to meet. Yet the State is proving incapable of enforcing the decree.
J2D_Afrique is counting on citizens to clean up the
Urban agriculture produces better yields.
environment instead. “Sustainable development isn’t only
Given the scarcity of fertile land in the urban environment, about developing smarter machinery and equipment. It’s
urban agriculture using discarded plastic bottles has also about man,” Jean François Kondzou said.
emerged as a potential alternative in Yaoundé, a city which
Kondzou’s strategy involves moving around to bring urban
is facing demographic pressure. “Young people come to the
farming techniques to a wider audience. Through visits
cities to look for work. It’s becoming urgent to build more
to orphanages and several centers for young people in
housing and the pressure is such that the peri-urban areas
distress, J2D_Afrique endorses, “urban agriculture for the
are starting to disappear,” Kondzou explained. His theory
satisfaction of physiological needs because, by producing
is clear: “when we speak about urbanization, we’re talking
their own vegetables in used plasticbottles, households
about houses. Building houses means using concrete, and
and young people can guarantee their own food security,
concrete is not good for agriculture.” While land that used
and help protect the environment.”
to be cultivable is increasingly being paved over, there is
no drop in the amount of food that needs to be produced. The presence of agronomist engineer Serge Bitjah among
For J2D_Afrique, the solution lies in growing vegetables the participants at the urban agriculture workshop is
out of kits made up of old plastic bottles and rice sacks. therefore no surprise. Recruited to work on a project to
To produce the substrate required for this type of urban support the fight against fungal diseases in the coffee
agriculture, soil is bought from the outskirts of Yaoundé industry launched by Ministry of Agriculture, he can now
at a cost of around 1000 FCFA (US$ 1.79) for a 50kg bag. see a possible career in urban farming.

Plastic bottles are attached to each other with string, Initially attracted by its aesthetic appeal, and the
forming a ladder-like structure, which is hung upon reduced use of pesticides, Bitjah stressed that “it’s
the wall of a beneficiary’s house. As for the 50kg sacks, possible to envisage a type of urban agriculture that’s
these are left in the outside corners of the house. These productive enough to make commercialization viable,
sacks offer a competitive advantage when it comes to while at the same time securing the provisions needed
growing vegetables. Whereas an African eggplant seedling by the household. And all this under the attentive eyes
planted on a horizontal surface takes up around 1m², 24 of the children who benefit from learning sustainable
seedlings can be arranged within a ‘sack garden’ of 80 to development techniques within the home.”
90cm by 1m².

23 N ovember 2017 Plastics News