By Yerro S. Bah
Urban farming for women gardeners at Fajikunda Dumos is a matter of mix-farming. They cultivate cereals like rice and various types of vegetables at different times of the year.
A large number of these women usually converge at the rice fields in the eastern part of the Fajikunda Dumos, a settlement in the Kanifing Municipality, to grow rice, potatoes and onions.
The proceeds are used to meet the cost of basic needs on daily basis including money for food, water and electricity, and bills for shelter, education and healthcare needs.
For most of the women, their own way of fighting food-and-urban-poverty is to be involved in urban farming. “From sunrise to sunset, we are here in the gardens. I don’t even [have time to] watch television,” one woman said.
The fields are left open and animals such as goats and sheep roam around every day destroying their daily labor. The women have to spend the whole day (12 hours) in the fields to protect their crops.
But the intrusion of animals is not the only problem that the women face. Salt intrusion, lack of fertilizer, inadequate water supply, and proper fencing are among the many challenges that they face.
“Whenever the river is on high tides, especially during the rainy season, the salty waters penetrate our crop barriers and get into the fields, thereby destroying most of our seedlings,” Agie Mama Jatta, the President of the Njilan Faye Women Gardeners Association, said. “The salt water is very unfriendly to crops such as onions, rice and potatoes.”
“We need financial support to fence our garden, desalinate the area and install proper irrigation system to enable us reap the benefits of our labour,” she said.
Their own innovative way of fighting salt intrusion is by using sawdust and groundnut cells from Sarro at Denton Bridge. But Jatta said it is an “expensive” undertaking. Every bag of sawdust is free at Sarro but the transportation cost is seven dalasi per bag and young boys hired to offload charge five dalasi per bag cost.
“This is expensive for us, we need support,” Jatta said.
In an attempt to solve their own water crisis, some of the women said they have paid up to seven thousand dalasi (D7000) on digging ground wells.
The women said want a barrier erected between their garden and the river to prevent salt intrusion. “We are appealing for support from government through the Ministry of Agriculture or philanthropists,” Jatta said.
Despite these significant challenges, some of them had been able to make some money to meet some bills. “I have been able to pay school fees for all my children,” Jatta said.
