By Rana Nasser Eddin | Project Member
During this year, we launched our “From the Rooftops” community garden project. This project has been in the works since early 2020, when we began a series of meetings with an advisory collective comprised of alternative farmers, urban gardening collectives, food activists and others to conceive and launch a community garden on our 1700 sqm rooftop. Our goal has been to create a sustenance network that connects the current zeitgeist of revolutionary groups thinking of food sovereignty, with the farming history of the Jisr-el-Wati area - an overwhelmingly agricultural land before its industrialization and subsequent gentrification. Based on horizontal and decentralized forms of organizing, the garden has been a collective labor around which to imagine an economic logic alternative to the mono-cultural and monopolistic ideals that have brought the country to the brink.
Back in April 2021, we officially announced the project with a 3-day forum on food sovereignty and agriculture policy. The symposium was co-organized by our partners in the project, the Socio-Economic Action Collective (SEAC), and featured panelists from Lebanon, Palestine, Tunis, Greece, and the US. The symposium set the theoretical, political, and practical grounds for the project and beyond.
Following the symposium, and through a couple lockdowns, we managed to break ground on the roof and start the planting process in August. We have been working jointly with a collective of carpenters and technicians to build our first wave of planters using reclaimed and recycled wood. We are also experimenting with different insulation and irrigation techniques that steer away from plastics and other plant contaminants, all while insuring water preservation.
We have teamed up with another local cooperative, Buzuruna Juzuruna, whose work focuses on sustainable agriculture production and education, as well as preservation of heirloom seeds and local planting traditions. They have provided their expertise along with local seeds and soils to have plants in bloom by the spring. Along with SEAC and Buzuruna Juzuruna, we are setting up a seed bank exchange, as well as establishing the center as a pick-up point linking farmers directly to costumers. Together with our partners, we will launch our series of workshops, planting sessions, and seminars by next March.
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