About | Soil for Life

About Us

One of the remarkable things about Soil for Life’s story is how many people have been positively impacted. Since 2002, we have taught over 8,250 people how to grow wholesome food using natural methods that build healthy soil and improve biodiversity.

Introduction

Soil for Life provide training and support to individuals that want to grow food at home as well as to groups of gardeners involved in school and community food growing projects. All of the gardening methods we teach centre on building healthy, fertile soil that is packed with microbial life and able to give high yields of the best quality food – even from the smallest of spaces. Our gardeners are taught how to sustain their gardens with little or no money and how to provide for their own future garden inputs such as seed, seedlings, and compost.

We place a lot of emphasis on promoting community networks between gardeners – both as an avenue for selling and bartering produce from the garden and for creating support systems within communities. Our work is not just about gardening and food. It is about ‘growing’ whole people who have the skills and confidence to explore their creativity and resourcefulness and use this to help themselves on many fronts – from earning their own money, to improving their values and standards, creating healthy families and building bridges of goodwill in their communities.

Our Vision

A healthy world, where people work in harmony to build healthy soils, grow nutritious food and heal the planet.

Our Mission

Soil for Life’s mission is to teach people how to create sustainable food gardens that build healthy, fertile soils and promote maximum production of nutrient-rich crops in any available space.

Why we do what we do

The earth is facing an unprecedented environmental crisis which is severely impacting the health of our planet and the lives that exist within it. One of the many consequences of the crisis is food insecurity. Food insecurity is driven by the inability of households to buy food and also by their lack of access to nutrient rich food. Limited access to nutritious food in the correct quantities has multiple impacts including malnutrition, child stunting, and increased vulnerability to infectious and chronic disease.

Many resource-poor communities lack basic essential services, and have high levels of pollution and overcrowding. Apart from posing risks to health, these factors contribute significantly to soil pollution and environmental degradation. Even when households have options to grow food, yields are poor and lack essential nutrients due to the poor quality soil they are grown in. Our hope for a healthy world rests on re-establishing the harmony between the earth and its people.