Conceptualising and implementing two community gardening projects on the Cape Flats, Cape Town

Abstract

Two community gardening projects in the Cape Town Metropole, South Africa, were studied in terms of how their intended outcomes were conceptualised by programme stakeholders, and how programme implementation was perceived by the intended beneficiaries. Following a broadly qualitative approach, data collection methods included individual and group interviews, participant observation, and reviews of programme records. A model of short-term, medium-term, and long-term outcomes, as perceived by programme management and staff, was elicited. Gardeners generally were positive about the service delivery of the programme, and identified the provision of food for their households as the major change that the programme introduced in their lives. They achieved some savings on household food purchases, and improved their nutrition somewhat. They also reported some income generation, but they perceived it as too little. Finally, respondents were very positive about a range of social benefits obtained from participating in the projects.

Keywords:

• urban agriculture
• urban poverty
• programme theory
• programme implementation

1. Introduction

The role of community gardens in alleviating hunger and poverty among urban poor people has come under scrutiny in the last 20 years or so. Holland (2004:291) defines a community garden as a green space managed (and perhaps developed) by a neighbourhood community in which agricultural activities take place. Quite a number of potential benefits have been claimed for community gardens (Karaan & Mohamed, 1998; Ngome & Foeken, 2010; Wakefield et al., 2007): improved health (through better access to food and improved nutrition); reduced vulnerability to food insecurity; increased social capital; strengthening of social relations; creation of a cash income; and poverty reduction (Reuther & Dewar, 2006; Thornton, 2009). Indeed, the benefits claimed for these gardens are so numerous that the field could do with some systematisation and clarification of what is supposed to happen as a result of communities engaging in this kind of activity. The first author's involvement with two such projects in 2009 in the greater Cape Town area provided an opportunity to do just that.

All programmes contain a set of assumptions of (a) how they are supposed to be implemented, and (b) what they are supposed to achieve. In Bickman's (1987:5) words, these assumptions constitute a ‘plausible and sensible model of how a program is supposed to work’, and are generally referred to as its programme theory. Rossi et al. (2004:64) gave a more elaborate description: ‘The set of assumptions about the manner in which the program relates to the social benefits it is expected to produce and the strategy and tactics the program has adopted to achieve its goals and objectives’. Thus two main elements can be distinguished in the overall programme theory: process theory (point (a) above), which maps out the intended services and organisation of the programme; and impact theory (point (b) above), which describes the cause-and-effect sequence between what the programme does and its social benefits (outcomes or impacts). Too often these assumptions about process and impact are not articulated and/or tested explicitly, and we believe that programmes, and their evaluations, benefit substantially from attempts to elucidate their underlying assumptions and thinking. This was one of the first tasks we set ourselves in this study.

The initial impetus for the study of the gardening projects was more conventional: to conduct a process evaluation of the two projects, in terms of who the beneficiaries were, and their perceptions of service delivery and programme organisation.

In this paper we therefore discuss two elements of an evaluation of the two gardening projects: an explication of their underlying assumptions (programme theory); and an investigation of how they were implemented.

The non-governmental organisation Abalimi Bezekhaya was established in 1983 in the Cape Metropolitan Area to alleviate malnutrition and poverty in urban poor communities through the establishment of community gardens. At the time of the study it received sponsorship from a long list of organisations.3 It supported a number of gardening projects on the Cape Flats, serving a total of 1976 gardeners, and delivered programme activities such as the following:

•	supplies organic agricultural inputs;
•	runs two non-profit nursery projects in Nyanga and Khayelitsha where gardeners buy inputs at low cost;
•	trains gardeners each year through a four-day basic organic vegetable-growing course; provides, as a follow-up to the training, additional on-site training and support by field officers; and
•	supports the community gardeners with maintenance and fixing of infrastructure such as fences, storerooms, and boreholes.

The present paper focuses on two gardens: the Fezeka and Scaga (Siyazama Community Allotment Gardening Association) projects. Fezeka was started in 1999 in Gugulethu, and Scaga in 1997 in Macassar, Khayelitsha. Both gardens initially were started by grandmothers and mothers, to provide food for their households. Abalimi became involved at a later stage, and provided support to quite a few projects, as outlined above. Gugulethu and Khayelitsha are two townships approximately 25 to 30 km to the southeast of Cape Town's central business district, and it is where the urban poor live. Unemployment in Khayelitsha stood at 51% in 2001, and at 56% in Gugulethu, while the figure for the Cape Town Metropole was 29% (Cape Town, 2001). Most residents live in informal dwellings with limited assets. Karaan & Mohamed (1998:69) painted a picture that would not be too different at the present: high levels of poverty and unemployment; poor quality of public space; lack of community facilities; housing shortages; and so forth. Reuther & Dewar (2006) argued that these prevailing social conditions made community urban agriculture a possible feasible livelihood strategy in these areas.

At the time of the evaluation Fezeka had six members, five women and one man, and Scaga had nine members, all women. The projects have similar characteristics: they each cover about 5000 square metres, which are divided into individual plots where the gardeners produce vegetables for their own consumption and sales, and another section which is owned by all gardeners, and is specifically for contract farming. One branch of Abalimi, Harvest of Hope, markets and sells farmers' produce in the form of a weekly organic box scheme. It contracts with the farmers in advance, guaranteeing to purchase their produce, and buyers (‘members of Harvest of Hope’) sign up for the box scheme and pay for weekly delivery of vegetables.

Karaan & Mohamed (1998) have evaluated Abalimi's gardening promotion activities, while the Scaga project has the distinction of being evaluated at least twice, as summarised by Reuther & Dewar (2006). Their paper focused on the project's economic performance. The present study takes a somewhat different approach, as we indicated above: it systematically examines the programme's conceptualisation, and provides or considers views of important stakeholders on its implementation.

2. Methods

We followed a broadly qualitative approach, in which programme staff and community members were primary data providers. Interviews were conducted with Abalimi management – the resource mobilisation manager, operations manager, and Harvest of Hope manager – as they were key stakeholders who had to perceive some benefit in having the study conducted. These individuals were particularly instrumental in the development of the programme's theory, the first objective of the present study. In addition, they had to give permission for the first author to access programme facilities, records, and resources (see below). Programme staff who were interviewed included two extension field officers and one garden centre field worker, and they were asked about their respective roles and how they deliver services to the gardeners.

A second data source was programme records, such as the Abalimi website, bi-annual newsletters, gardeners' register, and informal reports held at the office. These were used to provide data on the programme's background, its support services, beneficiaries, programme implementation, and service delivery. The information contained in these records was checked via interviews with programme managers, to confirm, clarify, and authenticate the information contained in the records.

Thirdly, the Fezeka and Scaga gardeners were major data providers. Three data collection methods were used in this regard: participant observation, interviews, and focus group discussions. Gardeners gave full and informed consent for all three procedures, as there was no reason to keep any information from them.

The first author participated in gardening activities with the gardeners at least once a week for 12 weeks. Notes were recorded soon after each gardening session, and included observations about the activities of the gardeners, their appearance, verbal and physical behaviour, and movement of people in and out of the gardens. The interactions with the gardeners provided rich information about the programme from an insider's perspective, and the trust that developed in this way gave us confidence about the reliability of the data collected.

All 15 gardeners from the two gardens furthermore were interviewed individually to elicit their views on their activities. They were asked about their perceptions of how the projects benefited them (e.g. ‘Has gardening improved/enhanced your health? If so, how?’); what worked and what did not (they were asked, for example, to rate Abalimi's performance on 10 service areas, such as the provision of seed and fertiliser); if their needs were satisfied (e.g. ‘Do you have enough vegetables to eat from the garden?’); and how the garden projects could be improved (‘What did you like/dislike about the project?’; ‘What problems are you facing in the project?’). An interpreter was employed to facilitate the interviews with the gardeners at Scaga garden project, as the first author did not speak isiXhosa and gardeners could not speak English. At Fezeka all gardeners spoke English well. The interviews were held in the respective gardens, and typically lasted 25 to 30 minutes each. A semi-structured interview schedule was employed, and notes were taken by the first author as the gardeners answered the questions.

Finally, two focus groups were conducted following the individual interviews: one with the Fezeka gardeners, and one with the Scaga gardeners. Five gardeners participated in the respective groups. The groups were presented with the information that emerged from the interviews, and were asked to reflect on it. The topic areas covered in the discussion were the same as in the individual interviews. All the questions asked were open-ended and the responses were written down as each question was being discussed by the group. The meetings took approximately 30 to 45 minutes for each group.

3. Results and discussion

We discuss the findings of the study in two parts: first, the programme theory that emerged, focusing on its impact theory as outlined above; and second, the questions related to the implementation of the programme.

3.1 Programme impact theory

Figure 1 reflects the underlying programme theory as understood by programme staff. Summarised, the cause-and-effect sequence is as follows: a key ingredient of the Abalimi programme is the provision of training for the gardeners, which includes the elements we referred to above. Our discussions with staff, and examination of documentation, identified four learning outcomes that were expected: improved skills and techniques; knowledge; awareness; and attitude of the gardeners. The programme assumes that these aspects will be applied to gardening, in order to in achieve short-term, medium-term and long-term outcomes. In the short term, the gardeners are expected to produce vegetables that will fulfil a survival function: they will experience improved nutrition, have healthy food to eat, will sell extra produce to earn extra cash, and will start saving. In the medium term, the expectation is that more vegetables will be produced, thereby improving household food security, self-reliance and income generation (subsistence and livelihood phase). The long-term outcome is where the gardens become economically viable and sustainable, as sales and reinvestment increase (commercial phase). The ultimate outcome is poverty alleviation.

Figure 1: Programme theory for the community gardening programme.

The question now arises as to how plausible this theory is: how likely is it that this sequence of events will bring about desired outcomes? To answer this question, we turn to prior research and relevant evaluations (Donaldson, 2007).

According to Saldivar-Tanaka & Krasny (2004), earlier community gardening movements focused primarily on food production whereas the more recent community gardening movements incorporated aspects of community development and open space in addition to agriculture. Thus the long-term outcomes envisaged for community gardens have been extended to include aspects such as increased physical activity (Wakefield et al., 2007), utilisation of natural resources (Moller, 2005), and community development (Holland, 2004).

In South Africa, urban agriculture has been promoted in the post-apartheid era as a strategy for poverty alleviation (Thornton, 2008). Karaan & Mohamed's (1998) performance assessment of the Abalimi programme, and studies on Scaga reported by Reuther & Dewar (2006), showed that a number of programme participants started gardening as a survival strategy to supplement real income, to achieve food security, to save on food budgets, and to generate income – certainly in line with the programme theory depicted in Figure 1. In 2007, Bourne studied three Abalimi-supported garden projects: Fezeka and Masithandane in Gugulethu, and Masibambane in Philippi. Respondents from this study similarly indicated that extreme poverty and starvation were the main push factors that led them to join the community gardening programme (Bourne, 2007).

Gardening projects therefore are developed for different purposes, depending on the community's local needs. The Abalimi programme theory, as reflected in Figure 1, clearly focuses on some of these: improved access to food, nutrition, income, food security, and, ultimately, poverty alleviation. In our interviews programme staff indicated that they regard the commercial phase as secondary to the survival and livelihood outcomes, as one could expect. Obviously it does not exclude the possibility that other outcomes might feature as well, such as for example improved social ties. We will show below that this is indeed one of the positive outcomes the gardeners themselves perceive as a result of participating in the programme.

One of the major benefits of eliciting the impact theory of a programme, as it exists for stakeholders, is that it systematises outcomes in terms of short-term (those one may expect to happen quite soon after participating in the programme), medium-term, and long-term outcomes (those that can only be achieved some time after it has been in operation). Most of the outcomes discussed so far have been of the long-term variety, such as poverty alleviation and social capital creation. Such outcomes are often difficult to measure for any individual programme, even though they are typically the reasons for its existence. In their paper, Reuther & Dewar (2006) gave at least two examples of short-term outcomes for urban agriculture projects: savings on food expenditure; and improved nutritional value of food consumed. We believe it is useful for the programme, and for their evaluations in particular, to have a clear understanding of the time sequence of these outcomes, to know when one can expect certain outcomes to happen. The programme theory we reflect in Figure 1 shows short-term, medium-term and long-term outcomes, and how these are linked to the ultimate outcome of interest, poverty alleviation.

A second, bigger question to ask about plausibility of impact theory is the following: is there any evidence from the literature that gardening projects contribute to the reduction of poverty and malnutrition? The answer, from a number of studies (see for example Rogerson, 2003), seems to be a cautious ‘yes’. Drescher (2001), for example, stated that potential exists for gardening projects in Southern African cities to reduce poverty and malnutrition; Saldivar-Tanaka & Krasny (2004) found that they reduce poverty by creating jobs and small-scale businesses, and Kantor (2001) that they help low-income consumers to supplement their diets with home-grown produce. Thornton (2009:19), in his study of such a project in Peddie, believed that ‘the case of the MCGP proves that households in marginalised communities can cooperate and use vacant land to produce in bulk for the formal market’.

Others are not completely convinced that the poor derive much benefit from urban agriculture (Crush et al., 2010). Webb (2000), for example, questions whether food production has had a nutritional impact on the diet of the urban poor. Oldewage-Theron et al. (2006) and Reuther & Dewar (2006) argue that gardening projects cannot be the sole solution to hunger and poverty, but they agree that gardening projects should be considered as one of the many possible ways to alleviate hunger and poverty. One of Reuther & Dewar's conclusions perhaps summarises the state of affairs best:

The experience in Khayelitsha reveals that the potential of urban cultivation in low-income townships in South Africa in terms of poverty alleviation and empowerment is still uncertain, although evidence suggests it may have significant benefits both in economic and social terms if practised under the right circumstances. (2006:118)

We turn to the circumstances within which these two gardening projects are practised in the next section.

3.2 Programme implementation

We tried to answer a typical set of questions related to programme implementation, and will discuss these in turn.

3.2.1 Who are the gardeners who participate in Fezeka and Scaga projects?

Fifteen gardeners participated in the two projects at the time of conducting the study, nine in Scaga and six in Fezeka. All of them were unemployed, and 14 were women. Five of them had no additional income, while the others received a pension or a grant in addition to whatever they made from the gardens. Nine were older than 60 years. Women are also in the majority in the overall number of people supported by Abalimi: of the 1976 gardeners registered in 2007, 736 (37%) were men and 1240 (63%) women. In addition, 37% were older than 60 years.

When the Fezeka project was started it had 30 members; currently it has only six members. The Scaga project started with 25 members, and now it has nine members. According to the resource mobilisation manager, this is a situation they face in all of the gardening projects supported by Abalimi. Examination of the records kept by Abalimi on their projects confirmed this: some gardening projects started with 30 members, but now have nine or fewer members. Two projects had only one member and three projects had only two members. The resource manager explained this in terms of the three phases envisaged for these programmes: gardeners want to move to the commercial phase prematurely without first attaining the subsistence and livelihood outcomes. Thus their primary concern is with generating an income almost immediately, without considering the benefits of producing food for their own consumption first. Reuther & Dewar (2006) discussed a 2003 study of Scaga, which found only eight active members, none of whom were in the project five years earlier. Bourne (2007) mentioned the same problem.

3.2.2 How do the gardeners perceive the services offered by Abalimi?

We asked the respondents about a number of aspects related to their participation in the programme. Concerning the four-day basic gardening training that Abalimi offers, all confirmed that they received it before they started gardening. They expressed satisfaction with the training provided, and all of them indicated that the training assisted them in producing food on their own plots. Through the provision of subsidised inputs, Abalimi supports gardeners through the provision of free inputs in the form of seedlings, organic fertiliser, manure, and gardening tools. However, since 2008 all garden projects were required to pay for all the inputs supplied to them by Harvest of Hope for the contracted plots. An exception is manure, which is very expensive, and Abalimi pays 50% of the cost of manure and the gardeners pay 50%. However, in some cases Fezeka gardeners reported that they had purchased their own manure directly from the suppliers. Evidence from the interviews and participant observation showed that Abalimi extension field officers assisted the gardeners with follow-up training, gardening advice, and guidance. These officers also provided guidelines that specified the number of plants to grow per square metre for each vegetable and the number of weeks each vegetable took to be ready for harvest. Twelve out of 15 gardeners indicated that the extension field officers and garden centre field workers had provided valuable services. The gardeners also expressed appreciation for the quick response time whenever there was need for fixing and maintenance of infrastructure, such as when boreholes needed attention.

Marketing the produce, as supplied by Harvest of Hope, was well received by the gardeners. Harvest of Hope collects the vegetables from different garden projects including Fezeka and Scaga. The vegetables are taken to the packing shed where they are cleaned, bundled, and packed into boxes. Afterwards, the boxes are taken to places such as private schools around Cape Town where they are sold. The gardeners are then allocated their incomes from the sales profits after all running and input costs are deducted. Typical comments from the gardeners about this aspect of the programme were:

Harvest of Hope is doing a wonderful job of selling our vegetables.

Our vegetables were rotting in the garden with no one to sell to, people in the community came to buy once in a while and they only bought one or two bunches but now Harvest of Hope is selling the vegetables for us.

We did not have any transport to carry our vegetables to the market, but Harvest of Hope is providing the transport and selling the vegetables for us.

Although generally satisfied with the Harvest of Hope services, about one-half of the gardeners identified low returns earned from Harvest of Hope sales, and the inappropriateness of some of the seedlings that they are supplied with, as sources of concern. Low income levels from gardening contribute to the instability of the groups, as people quickly look elsewhere for a source of income. Reuther & Dewar (2006) regarded a guarantee of sufficient income as vital to the viability of such a programme, and this concern therefore strikes at the very reason for its existence.

It is worth pointing out that this could be a reflection of a mismatch of perceptions of the programme theory between programme staff and beneficiaries. Staff expect the sequence of outcomes to be as reflected in Figure 1, where beneficiaries have to go through the three levels of outcomes sequentially. Gardeners, on the other hand, want to produce an income from the very start of their gardening efforts, since this is an important reason why they joined (confirmed by Mohamed & Karaan's [1998] participants). In the view of programme staff, this is premature to focus so quickly on the commercial phase. Thus to increase the hold that the programme has on its beneficiaries, it might be necessary to revisit this assumption, to bring commercial benefits to beneficiaries earlier than what is envisaged at present. It seems to us not too difficult to do this, as a facilitated discussion between staff and gardeners might go a long way to reach an understanding about expectations and what is ‘realistic’.

Gardeners reported that they are sometimes given seedlings for vegetables such as eggplant and kale that they are not familiar with and they do not prefer to eat. Although these vegetables are grown for commercial purposes, if they are not sold the gardeners and their households do not eat them, and they are left to rot. This further reduces the income they generate from their labour. In the light of the gardeners' expectation to generate an income sooner rather than later, it might be worth their while to consider producing more vegetables with a known commercial value.

3.2.3 What programme effects do the gardeners perceive?

Although the present study was not framed as an outcome study, and therefore cannot make any definitive claims as to programme effects, we nevertheless felt justified to ask the gardeners about what they perceived the major benefits to be. This is weak evidence of effects, but the perspectives of programme participants are nevertheless of value in trying to find out more about what the programme is achieving. After all, they are the ones who should be able to tell us what differences the programme has made in their lives.

According to the gardeners, the main achievement of the two gardening projects was in combating hunger, by enabling the gardeners to provide food for their households. This finding is entirely consistent with current research, such as for example Onyango's (2010) findings in Orange Farm outside Johannesburg, and Ngome & Foeken's (2010) findings in Cameroon. The findings extend to developed countries as well, as Wakefield et al. (2007) showed in Toronto, Canada. Twelve out of 15 gardeners we interviewed in our study indicated that their main reason for joining the garden projects was the fact that they wanted to reduce hunger in their families and the garden projects have managed to achieve this. One woman said:

The main reason why most of us joined gardening was because we were hungry and had no food in our homes, but now we are happy because we can put food on our tables.

The focus group discussions further confirmed the importance of this aspect, and gardeners used the focus group discussions to explain that this was the reason they were still participating in the projects. The ability to provide food for their families clearly is a particular incentive when people are jobless and have no income.

As a consequence of having an extra source of food, their households could save money on food expenditure, supporting Mohamed & Karaan's (1998) and Wakefield et al.'s (2007) findings. One gardener said:

… I no longer go to [name of supermarket] to buy carrots, spinach, cabbage and onions because l have them in my garden. When l do not have enough in my garden, l exchange with my colleagues, l give them what l have and they give me what they have.

The gardeners reported that they have learnt to eat healthily from the Abalimi community gardening programme, similar to what Wakefield et al.'s (2007) gardeners claimed. From the interviews and observations, the gardeners in our study placed great value on eating vegetables as part of every meal for health purposes. While the link between participating in community gardens and nutrition is intuitively attractive, Webb (2000) has asked for some caution. He discussed three studies in Southern Africa that made this link, but argued that they were methodologically flawed, and unable to substantiate that households who gardened were in a better nutritional state than households who did not. In our case, we of course cannot state this link unequivocally, as we have no direct measure of nutritional status of participants and their families, other than what they told us. A different study is required to answer this question.

The final outcome we asked about was income. We have indicated already that they regarded this as too low, and we were able to calculate, with their input, that they received less than R150 per month per each gardener from the Harvest of Hope sales. Webb & Kasumba (2011) found a similar (and worse scenario) in Queenstown: only 9.5% of their informants realised a small saving on their annual household income through urban gardening. Our respondents also earned some income from their individual plots, according to our calculations between approximately R15 and R45 per week. It would seem as if these sales make more of a difference than the Harvest of Hope sales. As one gardener said:

We are making very little money from this garden especially from Harvest of Hope, but l get a better income from my own plot and it makes a difference.

In all of the studies conducted on community food gardens, unintended benefits could be identified. Our respondents said that gardening has created opportunities for them as unemployed people to occupy themselves and do something productive. One typical comment was:

It is because I am not working so l thought it is better to come and do something productive and to occupy myself in the garden than sitting at home doing nothing.

The gardening projects also provide supportive social and recreational spaces for the gardeners. Indeed some studies showed that gardeners view gardens as social and cultural gathering places rather than as agriculture production places, such as the Latino gardeners in Saldivar-Tanaka & Krasny's (2004) American study. Pull factors that draw gardeners to the garden include the recreation they experience, social networks that are formed, and a sense of community involvement. The garden has been a place to go during the day, an activity outside the home to keep the older women who no longer have full-time jobs busy. Push factors that encourage the gardeners to get out of their houses exist as well, such as the opportunity to escape their problems:

My house is so overcrowded and noisy; I stay with nine people in a small house. Gardening helps me to get out of the house and have a peaceful and wonderful space away from home.

Gardening is also a physical activity that provides exercise. The gardeners indicated that gardening has provided continuous exercise and keeps them fit, similar to the views of Webb & Kasumba's (2011) gardeners in Queenstown and Wakefield et al.'s (2007) Canadian gardeners. Our respondents stated that physical labour keeps them strong and healthy as they aged. An 86-year-old gardener said:

I am so fit, active and healthy because I am always exercising in the garden. Everyday l woke up early to come to the garden except when I am not feeling well. I enjoy gardening because it keeps me active and fit.

To summarise, in the opinion of the gardeners themselves, four changes could be identified as a result of participating in the community gardening programmes: they have managed to reduce hunger in their homes; they and their families experience improved nutrition; they save on household food purchases; and although too small, they earn some income. From their perspective, and we reiterate that it is only from their perspective, a steady income generation was not created, and neither were jobs created. On the other hand, however, they were very positive about a range of social benefits they obtained from participating in the projects.

4. Conclusion

Many social programmes fail because they are poorly conceptualised or not properly implemented (Donaldson, 2003). In the present study we considered these two programmatic aspects as they relate to community gardening projects, and we believe they are important to consider if we want to improve programme delivery. Traditionally implementation assessments fulfil such a formative role, as they provide rapid feedback to programme staff and management about service utilisation, service delivery, and programme organisation. This we have done in the second part of the paper, and the findings contain much useful information that can be used to strengthen the implementation of the gardening programme.

As far as we could ascertain, no-one has addressed the conceptualisation (or programme theory aspect) of gardening projects before, and our paper therefore is a modest first step in this direction. Although community gardening programmes seem simple and straightforward in terms of how they are supposed to work, closer inspection quickly shows that they are more complex than would appear at first glance. The explication of the causal sequence implicit in the projects we worked with (Figure 1) serves as a good illustration. Thus we believe there is much to gain from investigating this aspect of community gardens more closely, as it may very well lead to an adjustment of goals and expectations (outcomes), towards what could be regarded as ‘realistic’. In addition, such common understanding of programme conceptualisation will contribute substantially to an understanding of the evaluations conducted on gardening programmes, as it will systematise and order the evaluation questions asked and answers given from the research.

We conclude with a number of observations on the present findings. In the two projects we studied, beneficiaries were all women, with one exception. This is a pattern in urban agriculture that repeats itself all over the world (Onyango, 2010). Landon-Lane (2004) suggests that urban agriculture is an attractive source of food and income for women, especially in cultures where their traditional role is to feed their families. Ngome & Foeken (2010) quote research that expands on this: urban agriculture attracts more women than men because it allows women to engage in activities that resemble their primary household tasks, and that can be done close to home. In addition, initial capital requirements are low. In our study, gardeners explained that most of them were household heads with a responsibility to fend for their families, and that the gardening project assisted them to do this.

Most of the gardeners in the present study were older than 60 years. When asked about the age demographics, they thought that younger people are put off by the little money that can be earned. Moller (2005), who studied gardening in the Eastern Cape, found the average age of gardeners to be 67 years, with a similar explanation: South African youths are not interested in gardening, they value instant cash and they do not want to do ‘dirty’ work. Thornton (2008) expressed it slightly differently: that youth in the Eastern Cape regarded agriculture as ‘not modern’, and therefore not attractive. Similar patterns have been found in other countries, such as in the USA (Saldivar-Tanaka & Krasny, 2004) – but not by Ngome & Foeke (2010) in Cameroon.

The attrition rates in gardening projects have serious implications for the programmes, both in implementation and outcome. Instability in group membership is a threat to the viability of any project, but gardening projects in particular. Production levels and sales are affected, and resources and efforts are wasted. People are trained continuously, but they are not in actual fact benefiting from the community gardening programme. In Bourne's (2007) opinion, people drop out of these programmes when bored, tired, discontented, or when they get something more worthwhile to pursue. Reuther & Dewar (2006) argued that people abandoned gardening if and when they found employment.

A long list of studies produced findings on income generation and job creation that echo the findings from our investigation. Crush et al.'s (2010) survey of urban agriculture projects in Southern Africa found that few households derived an income from the sale of food produced. Bourne (2007) studied gardening projects supported by Abalimi and concluded that they did not create jobs or generated substantial income for their members. Karaan & Mohamed (1998) argued that it is widely believed small-scale gardening did not prove to be financially viable if all actual and real production expenses are taken into account. According to Reuther & Dewar (2006), several researchers have found that urban agriculture provides very low returns. Their economic analysis of Scaga confirmed that, after six years of existence, the garden's production and earnings fell far short of initial expectations. In their opinion the potential of the gardeners to overcome household poverty was limited because no evidence was found of a single gardener in Khayelitsha who derived a full income that was sufficient for subsistence from gardening. Thornton's (2008) study of gardeners in the Eastern Cape also confirmed that they were receiving a measure of subsistence from their gardening activities, but their activities were not reaching their full potential to create an income. It was rather social grants that provided the primary source of household income for the poor in the areas studied. Finally, Webb & Kasuma (2011:35) concluded that ‘as far as employment and income generation are concerned, the benefits associated with UA [urban agriculture] remain very modest’.

A final concluding comment relates to the social benefits associated with participation in community gardening projects. In a study of urban vegetable gardens on the Cape Flats, Bourne (2007) concluded that the primary driving forces behind the Abalimi-supported gardening projects were social, rather than economic. A number of these benefits have been identified. Authors such as Slater (2001) and Rakodi (1988) have drawn attention to the particular ways in which women might gain from participating in community gardening. Slater claimed that gardening in a group empowered women in a number of ways: they found solace from traumatic experiences in the activity; and they exercised more control over household food consumption – even to the extent of taking political and social action (which may be a partial explanation of why women dominated the projects we studied). Rogerson's (2003) overview of urban agriculture also identified the specific effects on women, as well as aspects such as community-building and effects on a city's ecology as social benefits. The gardeners we interviewed come close to a similar conclusion, namely that the gardens have not been of much benefit in bringing in income, but they carried on because gardening enabled them to interact socially and have created a sense of belonging and satisfaction.

In terms of the programme theory we developed in Figure 1, to reflect the conceptualisation of the programme by its primary stakeholders, it is clear that some outcomes are achievable sooner than others. Improved household food security and improved nutrition through healthy eating seem realistic expectations, but not income generation, increased savings, and job creation (see the references to income generation above). In addition, a number of potential outcomes are absent. The most notable is the absence of social benefits, as discussed above. This would mean that the theory has to be expanded to include this valuable outcome of community gardens as well. Developing programme theory is an iterative process, where evaluators and stakeholders move back and forth between assumptions about the programme, and what is known about such programmes from the literature. An exercise such as this draws attention not only to what can be readily agreed upon, but also what is missing – a substantial contribution to how a programme is understood by its various stakeholders, and also to the design of an evaluation. For urban agriculture programmes it might be a mistake to focus solely on aspects such as income generation, job creation, poverty reduction, and nutritional benefits, as this will overlook what gardeners could gain from participating.

Reuther & Dewar (2006) asked the difficult question as to whether urban cultivation should be subsidised on account of its social benefits, rather than the lofty long-term outcomes it claims. The best that one can say at present is that enough poor people are attracted to this form of gardening to indicate that it is worth continuing with them, even if the long-term benefits remain obscure, and difficult to study.

Notes

³See http://www.abalimi.org.za/NL37Roll-of-honour%20.pdf