Covid-19 has pervaded every aspect of our lives; and although we may feel the various impacts in different ways, there is one factor that affects majority of the population: food. In order to ensure continuous sustainability of the Forest Gardens and the security of famers, ERuDeF has rolled out a series of training videos to farmers to provide seasonally important instructions, while continuing to follow the health and safety guidelines for COVID-19 placed by the government.

Some of the training videos include: Nursery site selection, pretreatment of seeds, preparing soil mixtures for tree sac, sowing in tree sacs and bare root nursery amongst others. These videos are aimed at giving clear instructions to farmers so they can keep moving through the Forest Garden program and ultimately be successful. These nurseries will help them nurse vegetables, medicinal and economic trees which will go a long way to solve the problem of hunger. Farmers should comfortably stay safe at home during periods of disasters and have their forest gardens serve as their super market.

 The 2008 Global Financial Crisis left an additional 100 million people hungry.  During the 2014/2015 Ebola outbreak, families’ abilities to harvest and sell food was directly impacted by quarantine and stigma. The connection between natural disasters and food security is a big challenge to the entire universe.  Families living in hunger and poverty are in a vulnerable position as the virus threatens trade, economies and food systems.

Forest gardens farmers in Cameroon have been very successful in Agroforestry (Forest garden) practices because of the training they have been getting from the TREES staff.

Staring down at COVID-19 and the effects of training in the different project sites, the farmers are grateful to TREES/ERuDeF for the support through these tough times. They are promising to keep up the best in the program while staying safe.