Located at the top of the Northern Territory, West Arnhem Shire Council has initiated a three year training program to establish market gardens in its communities of Gunbalanya, Warruwi and Minjalang.
Many communities in the Shire have a long history of market gardens, dating back to mission days. Their reintroduction will mean that fresh fruit and vegetables will again be grown locally by local people, and will then be available for sale and distribution throughout the community.
Council’s new Market Garden Officer, Alex Debono, will support each community garden team. He said the program will directly employ a trainee in each community, who will work with a team of CDEP (Community Development Employment Program) participants.
“Gunbalanya already has its garden up and running,” he said. “Established in 2007 under the guidance of an experienced agriculturalist from Queensland, the team is currently working hard to get this year’s crops going.
“According to team member Daniel Nawirrid, the garden is ‘almost good’, with watermelon, corn, sweet potato, rockmelon, cucumber and pumpkin having been sown. Bananas have also started to flower and some paw paw is being harvested.”
Alex said the Gunbalanya garden team see the immediate goal of the garden being to provide fruit and vegetables for sale in the local shop and to grow good, healthy fruit for Council’s existing programs, such as Aged Care’s Meals on Wheels. The team would also like to see healthy bananas and paw paw being provided to schoolchildren during their lunch breaks.
“The garden is also something for the garden teams to be proud of and they want to make the garden look beautiful so the whole community can see the good job they are doing,” Alex Debono said. “In the long term, the Gunbalanya garden team would also like to experiment with growing bush tucker plants such as long yams, red apples, white apples, billy goat plums, green plums, orange plums, dry season black plums and wet season black plums.”
Alex Debono said the gardens at Warruwi and Minjalang will be planted in the next couple of weeks, with new fences having just been erected.
The program aims to provide long term employment for community members when the CDEP program comes to an end in 2011 by selling produce to community stores and potentially the local tourist market.
The skills that are learnt in the garden can also be taken back to participants’ own yards and taught to their families to encourage growing food at home.
For further information contact Alex Debono on (08) 8979 9444.
