Community gardens in Villa Canales (Guatemala City metropolitan area)

Community gardens run in Villa Canales, south of the Guatemalan capital, by the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food (MAGA) together with the municipality: 26 gardens involving 650 households, growing tomatoes, lettuce, beans and medicinal herbs alongside pineapple, strawberry and papaya. MAGA extends the same framework to family and school gardens — as of 2017, more than 5,000 family gardens, 164 school gardens and 6,500 community gardens through rural learning centres. In the metropolitan area the work also reaches zones 7, 8 and 15 of Guatemala City and San José Villa Nueva.

Neighbouring households work a single plot together. MAGA extension staff run training in growing techniques and hand out seedlings, while the municipality helps with access to land. The gardens run alongside family and school gardens under the same framework.

A publicly funded support scheme: government provides seedlings, training and help with land, while participating households do the growing and harvesting. Produce goes to their own tables, with any surplus shared locally.

An example from a country with chronic malnutrition, where community gardens are scaled together with family and school gardens. Because a plot is shared among neighbours rather than carried by one household, labour and watering are spread. The same support reaches 150 waste pickers at the landfill site at kilometre 22, showing the target group is the low-income urban population without land.

The municipality helps with access to land; the form of the arrangement is not stated in the article.

Web articles and features that cover this case.

• ArticleFamilias cultivan sus propios alimentos（Prensa Libre、2017年10月3日） ↗prensalibre.com