OnEarth articles editor Jocelyn C. Zuckerman appeared on Public Radio International’s weekly Living on Earth show last week, talking to host Bruce Gellerman about “The Constant Gardeners,” her cover story about urban agriculture in Africa from our Winter 2012 issue.
"These people are living in real desperation,” Zuckerman says of the slum-dwellers that she visited in Nairobi, Kenya, and Ghana, “but they’re finding ways around it.” Some are growing vegetables in recycled grain sacks; others are watering their crops with wastewater.
An industrious Kenyan named Francis Wachira, who Zuckerman wrote about in her story, is raising 500 rabbits amid the traffic and billboards of downtown Nairobi. Wachira also talked with Gellerman as part of the Living on Earth segment.
People will grow max vegetables in recycled bags, proving the fact that human beings are very creative when it comes to real survival.