Marfell & Parihaka Community Gardens

Urs is a Community Gardens Coordinator for Sustainable Taranaki. Born in Switzerland, Urs came to Aotearoa as an exchange student creating a life-long connection. He lives with his New Zealand partner and their children on a rural property, which includes an established food forest. Now fluent in Māori, he has become immersed in several communities in Taranaki and is passionate about caring for the environment, advocating for the rights of Māori, and opposing capitalist frameworks and ideologies that diminish access and equity for specific sectors of our communities. These ideologies are ever-present in our discussions, and they drive his efforts in a number of different areas, particularly his community garden coordination role, volunteer work in the Parihaka maara kai and through selling produce at the Te Rūrū Coastal Market.

The following case study focuses on the Marfell Community Garden, where Urs established the garden after extended negotiations between the New Plymouth District Council and Sustainable Taranaki. Urs managed the negotiations for the 400m2 lot, which runs alongside the Mangaotuku Walkway, and work in the māra began in November 2020, forming part of Sustainable Taranaki's 'Food Secure Communities Plan' work. Marfell is a community where food security is often compromised, as one of the more socio-economically deprived suburbs in Taranaki, ranking in the highest-level deprivation category within New Zealand (Hales, 2003). The Marfell Community Garden was established here in 2020, creating the 14th community garden or orchard in the region.

Urs' political ideologies come to the fore immediately. He describes the land I'm standing on as having been 'claimed' by Council. He also describes several pā sites of relevance located around this plot, with the one closest to us being the historic Maungaroa Pā. He discusses the different tribal rights over time, reinforcing that Taranaki is a landscape of contested ownership and land claims.

Urs says they were offered other sites by the Council, some of which were landfills, but he rejected these because the soil required too much remediation to produce food. Urs adds that some sites like bowling greens are particularly bad because of the extent of chemicals used on the land. The Council provided a catalyst fund to Sustainable Taranaki to "feed the people", and Urs says the Council wanted this to happen in a more affluent area, but the Sustainable Taranaki team didn't want that. "We wanted it to be put in a lower socio-economic area". I imagine there was a perception on the part of the Council that more well-off people would have more time to contribute to the garden or more interest, but Urs says, "we just ignored that advice from Council". He explains that this is the poorest suburb in the area, "Marfell is exactly where we need to be".

It took ten months to acquire the site, which Urs cynically reckons wouldn't have taken as long if it was an oil drilling application. "It took a lot of effort with Council; even once we had the verbal go-ahead on this site, it still took another three months to get all the paperwork sorted", he explains. At that time, he arguably did the most important thing. He began with community engagement, just walking around the streets and talking to people to get their feedback. Urs knew a few people in the community, and they were "keen as". Getting that buy-in from the community was a requirement from the Council, and Urs said there was nothing negative, just concern about Pūkeko invading the patch.

Once the Council signed off, the mahi began. They needed masses of compost as the site was so degraded and compacted. It was hard work, but locals have stuck with it, and I note through their active Facebook Group that working bees and hui are continuing, the landscape is changing, and yes, the Pūkeko do invade the patch from time to time. Urs says relationships are the best thing coming out of the garden, "people who live close to each other, but may not have ever met each other".

All the decision-making is very communal, which I can see could create tensions in the future. Urs talks about the different practices and perspectives the community has in contrast to his desire to show them how they can work simply and at a scale they can manage, improving the soil and the garden's productivity. He explains that it's no use bringing down a tractor and ripping up the land to create as many rows as possible, which then are planted or harvested all at once. That creates peaks and troughs in workloads, "managing time, people and resources is a major factor". I note there is redundancy built into the model, as the idea is that the community will take ownership of the garden, and Urs will not need to be present as much.

Over the months since I visited the garden, I have watched the interaction of group members on Facebook. Urs's voice is fading into the background, and there seems to be a strong collective voice shared amongst key individuals who are keeping up the momentum. Urs occasionally chimes in with offers of assistance and to facilitate relationships to assist with the garden's development, but the transition to self-reliance has been achieved, at least in the short term.

Produce from the garden makes its way into the local community through three streams:

• • • • Kai from the māra is placed in the pātaka, and anyone can help themselves to it (other food from a supermarket, people's gardens, or other sources may also be placed in the pātaka).

      • Gardeners working in the māra take produce home with them.

      • People who might not be actively involved in the māra may also come into the garden and harvest some kai.

Urs says that these streams are all occurring independently, "that's not formalised, but perfectly ok for people to do so". Over a year, this approach has been successful, but it is too early to say how effective this is as a stable food source for the local community.

A Resilient & Diverse Community Food Economy:

Securing food futures in Taranaki Communities

Erin Withers | April 2021

Introduction

Community food initiatives like Marfell and Parihaka Community Gardens provide models of community control of resources and participatory democracy. Diverse community food economies provide a site to act!

Key Elements of Community Food Economies

• Vehicle for self-determined development and community economic revitalisation.

• Enhance a community’s ability to achieve food security and provide a food system that is accessible and participatory.

• Provides a space for the community to exercise choice and control over what they eat.

These elements serve as pointers to suggest small-scale food production initiatives act as social change agents benefitting the wider community.

Conclusion

The development of community food initiatives like Marfell and Parihaka help establish a more vibrant economy where the welfare and the quality of life of residents is more important than a drive towards a more efficient capitalist economy.

A community garden approach promotes economic opportunities outside of capitalist visions of the economy. Localised food economies help transform our thinking into what Wendell Berry argues that eating is inescapably an agricultural act.

Community food growing initiatives have the potential to simultaneously address issues of food resilience, food poverty, public health, social justice, and ecological health to local circumstances and regions. Community food economies help transform into what Gliessman (2016, p. 188) suggests as a kind of “food citizenship” that can be seen as a powerful tool for food system change.