Cities without Hunger Brazil is working to develop sustainable agriculture projects in urban areas across Brazil. The project works to transform empty lots into vegetable gardens and employs people to work in these gardens, generating a source of income and a consistent source of healthy food.
Hans Dieter Temp, Founder of Cities without Hunger Brazil, started the project to address the widespread hunger he saw across São Paulo. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 27.6 percent of Brazilian households (21.6 million) experienced food insecurity in 2023. “We have a lot of middle class and rich people here, but at the same time, in the same space, we have a lot of poverty,” Hans Christian Temp, son of Hans Dieter Temp and Manager of Investor Relations and Distribution at Cities without Hunger Brazil tells Food Tank. “There’s huge inequality in the same space.”
When Dieter Temp started the project his first task was to find spaces to use for the gardens. “We focus on at least 8,000 square meters,” Christian Temp tells Food Tank. “We make these big urban farms, use local manpower, and start to supply local communities with cheap food.”
Christian Temp explains that, after about a year, the gardens are typically well-established enough to support all the people working there. Each garden employs about 30 to 40 people and, in addition to a steady income, they receive benefits through the organization.
“This creates the opportunity to have better housing, better food access, maybe education for their children…rights that everyone needs to have,” Christian Temp tells Food Tank.
They now have 33 urban farms with over 500 people working at the different sites. Furthermore, they helped start and run 65 school gardens, producing over 80 tons of food per year and serving over 60 students daily. Christian Temp says that they have become one of the main producers of food inside the city of São Paulo.
The school gardens project is another initiative of Cities without Hunger Brazil. The project turns unused grounds on school property into gardens, transforming vacant lots into hubs for food systems education. Students learn how to grow and harvest food, understanding all the steps it takes to produce food and becoming familiar with diverse vegetables. “The kids love to plant and harvest,” Christian Temp tells Food Tank. “It is always an event.”
The project also helps to ensure that all students have access to at least one nutritious meal each day. “Most of the kids in these poor neighborhoods, their school meal is the only guaranteed meal most of them have that day,” Christian Temp tells Food Tank. “We need to make this meal as nutritious as possible.” Staff from Cities without Hunger Brazil work with teachers and chefs, ensuring that they understand how to use the gardens as educational spaces and utilize the produce to make healthy meals.
One of Cities without Hunger Brazil’s current priorities includes hiring a local, representative staff. Christian Temp tells Food Tank that they want to “hire people from the local communities to work in the administration of the foundation… because it’s not for us, it’s for their community.”
The vision is to “expand this model not only for Brazil, but for other countries,” Christian Temp tells Food Tank. “We have the information; we have the technical skills in Cities without Hunger to be able to solve this problem in any place of the world. We only need the support, and the people will have the good will to do it.”
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Photo courtesy of Cities without Hunger Brazil
