The Hortas Cariocas Program is a project of the City of Rio de Janeiro in partnership with dozens of local leaders from the city’s favelas, for the realization of community urban gardens. According to the 2010 census, more than 1.3 million people live in favelas in the municipality or 22% of the total population (6.2 million). Favelas are residential communities in which many are in a situation of socio-environmental vulnerability due to landslides, food, and financial insecurity, low self-esteem, situations of risk of urban social violence, etc.
In seeking to associate income generation and healthy food production, local community leaders (residents’ association presidents, school principals, etc.) contact the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Environment Secretariat to join the program. With adherence, the government guarantees financial aid for more than 200 local gardeners, in addition to tools, uniforms, individual protective equipment, seeds and seedlings, organic fertilizers, and the technical knowledge of agronomists. With labor and local knowledge, community work generates food and income. Of the total agricultural production (82 tonnes in 2020), half is destined for commercialization at subsidized prices, and the other half is dedicated to donations to the community itself – for daycare centers, nursing homes, shelters, orphanages, families in
situations of food vulnerability indicated by the residents’ association. Only in the community garden of Manguinhos, the largest community garden in Latin America, thousands are benefited.
In addition to generating income and food, another great advantage of the program is the interaction with the land. The creator and executor of the project, Julio Cesar Barros, comments that many go to the gardens to do “mental hygiene”, to clear the bush and interact with the land. According to him, “the carioca lost his rural reference, and we needed to restore in the children. [Nowadays] half of the gardens are in schools ”. There, hundreds of children take practical classes in the garden, in addition to curriculum classes such as math and even history. And of course, they eat vegetables without pesticides that they themselves planted, cared for, and watched grow. Although daily work is not mandatory, children love it. When they get home, these children encourage their parents to eat better, to have a healthier relationship with the land, and to rescue the rural reference for them. The production complements school meals, part of which is donated to the neediest families. Teachers are also benefited because in the gardens they have medicinal herbs such as chamomile and lemon balm that they “need to be able to hold their nerves”, jokes Julio Cesar.
The success of Hortas Cariocas is when the community garden asks for its emancipation from the program itself. Although they lose financial aid, they have the freedom to trade all their production and not just half. Generating income and producing food locally is an efficient way to generate a local economy, reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, encourage healthy eating, and other results directly linked to mitigating climate change.
The spaces occupied by the community gardens were marked by strong socioenvironmental vulnerability, especially in old dumps (areas of irregular garbage disposal) and landslide areas. With the occupation, residents now have access to these green areas and the dignity of being able to work for their own livelihood. It is in this way that the Hortas Cariocas Program structures its main objectives: to popularize the consumption of organic food, to prevent the occupation of vulnerable areas such as the ones above, to generate local income in the communities served, to stimulate agroecological agriculture in the city, to disseminate healthy eating habits and rural education in schools, reduce food security.
The project’s history goes back to a landslide event after heavy rain in 2006, where many were displaced. Instead of following the constant confrontation between public authorities and residents about the use of these risk areas, the Municipal Secretariat for the Environment bet on the project formulated by its agronomist Julio Cesar Barros. Thus, the first vegetable garden emerged in the same year, a collective social area of the community, where people support and protect. In 2021, there are already 49 vegetable gardens around the city, some of which have already been emancipated and commercialize all their production. Along with Julio Cesar, a huge contingent of association presidents, school directors, gardeners, supervisors, and many other partners work directly in the production of vegetables.
A mark of success is the emancipation of the vegetable garden, as said before. And a sad mark is leaving a garden for lack of results, whether due to lack of adherence or other reasons, the fact is interpreted as a reflection of the fact that you invested wrongly. Internally, as a program of the municipal government of a large city, such as Rio de Janeiro, Hortas Cariocas experienced some adversities. With the entry and exit of mayors in municipal administrations, things can get complicated. However, the biggest complications are now with the delay in renewing support contracts, an unprecedented crisis. The support of agronomists, cars, trucks, administrative assistants are essential for the program to work, data generation, seedling flows, assistance to gardeners, and the implementation of innovations such as a drip system that saves water resources and an aquaponics system combining fish and vegetable gardens with a capacity of 2 tons of tilapia in the first year.
The initiative is easily replicable in other cities around the world. The main criterion is to already have a local initiative, a mobilized group where the need to build a community garden in the community is already discussed. The partnership with the city hall or other public or private institution is carried out with financial assistance for those involved, technical training for planting and management of gardens, provision of equipment and material, etc. The social return is immeasurable.