Nicholas Ramunenyiwa is an FTFA Ecopreneur and farmer in Limpopo. He tells us how he got into grassroots community gardening and what it is like to build food security in his home province.
What does an Ecopreneur do?
Currently, I’m running a lot of the FTFA food gardens in Limpopo, and now play an important role in the Grow Your Own initiative in the province. Grow Your Own allows people to grow their own food and I’m delivering seeds and seedlings to different farmers – individuals and also commercial farmers. I’m enjoying it. When I’m facilitating, I gain experience from the farmers’ questions. That’s what I like the most. Everytime I run a workshop or engage with farmers, I’m gaining. I even tell the farmers that we must both gain: They gain from me, I gain from them. I’m a farmer as well as an Ecopreneur, so the knowledge is helpful. I farm sweet potatoes.
At the beginning of lockdown, FTFA launched the Grow-Your-Own initiative and has received almost 5,000 applications for seedlings and seeds. These are being distributed around the country.
How has COVID and the lockdown affected your job promoting grassroots food security?
Today, I collected seedlings and did a workshop with five local farmers to develop a food garden, and everyone was wearing a mask. When I start workshops, I also measure their temperature. Limpopo doesn’t have many [COVID] cases yet, so I’m not afraid for now. And the beneficiaries, they’re so happy. It’s like this COVID-19 has helped the people with their gardening. When lockdown started, people didn’t just sit on their hands. They are working hard in Limpopo.
How did you become an Ecopreneur?
Back in 2017, I was working at a community centre in Limpopo and as a community project, we applied for funding from Shoprite. After this, FTFA approached me – I had knowledge of farming – and asked me to work with them. In 2018, I started to work with FTFA and now I’m involved in a number of FTFA’s programmes, such as food gardens, this Grow Your Own initiative and their EduPlant programme, which plants food gardens in schools.
What do you do when you’re not travelling the province helping people with their food gardens?
I’m very busy, but I like to be busy rather than just sitting around. In my spare time, I garden. I’ve loved gardening from a young age. My mom, she used to wake me up early in the morning to go to the farm to do the maize meal. That’s where this love started.
If you’d like to support the work our Ecopreneurs are doing to support vulnerable communities across South Africa, reach out to us today.
