Community food gardens sell their fresh harvest at Shoprite and Checkers’ Market Day
Community is urged to go organic.
Dithaka Dikopane Cooperative from Central Western Jabavu, Soweto, sold their fresh and organically grown produce directly to the public at Checkers Southgate on June 7.
This is an initiative by Shoprite and Checkers’ Market Day where selected community food gardens are allowed to sell their produce directly to the public.
Peter Madondo was accompanied by his colleague, Dudu Radebe, at the supermarket where they were selling spinach, carrots, beetroot, spring onion and cabbage.
“We are a team of 10 people who work in the garden. We are happy to get this opportunity to showcase and sell our produce. We promote organic food in the community and I’m glad to say the community is interested,” he said.
Sanjeev Raghubir, sustainability manager at the Shoprite Group said, “By improving food security in the communities that we are a part of, we are almost making these communities more adaptive and resilient to a changing climate.”
Shoprite is committed to ensuring food security in communities and supports more than 200 community food gardens and over 3 500 home gardens, which impacts almost 55 000 beneficiaries.
In the past year, more than 2 700 community members were trained in sustainable food gardening and the community food gardens collectively produced a harvest of more than 31 500kg, providing almost 100 000 meals.
