Welcome to the beginning of a long journey into making South Africa organic again. Since 2016, Kandu has been working with the Fair Food Foundation and SAOSO to bring you the kandu community and kandu connect websites for farmers and producers who whole heartedly work with organic and naturally grown principles. We offer an insight into their work, thru media and important questions, making a visual expose into what it might take for such a producer to transcend naturally grown, and become legally certified organic.
We offer this portal to farmers who bring us good food, grown naturally, without herbicides, pesticides or genetic modification. We offer this portal to farmers who treat their animals kindly. And we offer it to all the numerous small enterprises who work with these farmers to ensure that their value-added products are also naturally grown.
The promo material keywords say "Naturally grown, Opensourced and Peer endorsed". 'Naturally grown', depicting the total absence of any chemicals or genetic tampering. 'Opensourced', depicting the invitation to all naturally grown farmers everywhere, to increase their crop production, and show us what's happening on their farms and in their kitchens, as living examples that other producers may learn from and aspire towards. And of course 'Peer Endorsed', as a method of bringing naturally grown farmers and other interested parties together, to ensure good farming practice on site, and reporting on all of it for customers to see and understand where their food is coming from.
We will only support farms and enterprises who work with and abide by naturally grown principles, because this is also about repairing natural environments.
Food is the beginning. Food is the foundation of all operations in life. As such, there is no confusion on the matter. The people need clean wholesome food, to fuel their strength, to heal their bodies and to fulfill their intelligence, so that they can fulfill their lives in greater health.
Some of the best stories are long, with many and many characters and twists of the plot. Here are some short summaries of key historical figures that have brought us all to this website.
a directory of producers committed to natural growing
The kandu.community is a directory, an online village of all things near and far that tend naturally. It is a network of naturally grown producers, their beautiful farms and talented enterprises and all of the gorgeous natural food and products they grow and create.
We connect you with "as organic as possible" producers, thru pictures and media, and answers to pertinent questions, as well as periodic site visit reports. In fact, it is hoped and encouraged that organic customers and enthusiasts might play a central role in helping to endorse the quality of their favourite local producers.
And so anyone who visits a farm, or purchases food from a contributor is encouraged to make a comment on the producer profile, and start the feedback loops that will eventually define our cleanest farm production methods and healthiest produce.
This is the meaning of Open Source. Everybody gets a chance to participate in making South Africa organic. For this we hope you might connect with each other, share knowledge, share seeds, take amazing photos for your produce, and let's coordinate a national effort for organic and natural food to be grown everywhere.
The kandu.community was built as an extension of the Fair Food farm management software that kandu had previously built. We suddenly found ourselves with a lot of naturally grown, small farm production data, which we had to get out of the server, and onto a public domain for marketing and sales... so this is how that happened. Built for the Fair Food Foundation's farming operation, and presented in a way that everyone can use it for their produce. If you will use it for your produce, please stay in touch and take part in the conversations that will shape how it grows... Thank you!
a Forum and Social Intranet for conversations with producers
Kandu connect is an opensource social application built by HumHub. It operates separately from kandu.community , and separately from kandu food. It features all of the basics of a community forum, beautifully laid out in a social media style, with profiles, networking, calendar eventing, and discussions, using the neat concept of "Spaces".
Using the Spaces feature, you can create a group of producers or customers from your area, and work together to start a local market, bulk buy together from another province, or any other ideas that'll get good food moving. We hope that it will be useful to help find answers, ask questions, share knowledge of what you have experienced and what you believe will help make South Africa more organic. If you have experience one of our contributors, you are encouraged to say how you feel and get the conversation rolling about good food production. You could even endorse your favourite producer, and help to build their reputation in the community. Any producers that wish to list their products on the kandu.community, must first have some convincing endorsements to help prove their commitment to naturally grown.
a simple web app for contributor profile updates
When your farm or enterprise has been endorsed by your community to be naturally produced and follow naturally grown principles, then kandu would be obliged to import your profile into the kandu.community directory. When this happens, you will be invited to find an extension of your profile at a private location at food.kandu.community. Here you will find a place to create a farm or enterprise profile, with a heap of quick forms that will help you get your crop or product data into the directory pages.
kandu food is a web application (a fancy website), which means in mainly designed to work on the internet. It does not work offline as yet, but we are working on this issue as it remains one of our main priorities. Web applications are essential to get the information flowing. Soon we hope to move forward with the next generation of this web app, will become an on / offline "progressive web application" which would work offline and across all devices. We've started working with nuxt.js and vue.js codebases for this.
If you are using this application, thank you and stay in touch with feedback and support as we grow. Opensource means that you can contribute ideas and motions and we'll make a plan.
the South African Organic Standards Organization
the South African Organic Sector Organization (SAOSO) is an independent body that has defined the standards of organic quality in South Africa, and is trusted by kandu.community to deliver on upholding them. We encourage all of the farmers who sign up here, to contact them and get involved in the Participatory Guarantee System (PGS), to help with our goals of growing 100% organic food, free of chemical enhancements or genetic modification. SAOSO has a wealth of knowledge on their website regarding supported principles and practices contained in its well earned label. For at least general knowledge, national organic standards remains excellent reading, so that where understanding is attained, informed choices follow. For health and nutrition, there can be no exception.
the official system for peer approved certification
Hard earned certificates of organic standards are expensive, exclusive, and can be devalued overnight by a reckless neighbour's chemical crop spraying. The institution governing the issuing of organic certification could even be corrupted and how will we know? And what would a certificate of organic standards even look like if it was hanging on the wall in the kitchen? Here arises the need for eyes and ears on the ground, an even an opensource protocol that will allow us to view a set of current photographs.
the PGS system (Participatory Guarantee System) breaks the risky methods of organic certification and offers a multinationally practised set of procedures that will allow for groups of producers in any area to form an inspection committee that can visit each farm and produce a report on quality standards.
Our aim is to promote the PGS system, because it promotes community, transparency, and every farm visit can be transcribed and made available to the public as one form of testimony to a producers efforts toward becoming an organic supplier. And PGS for creating an environment for open dialogue, between all the farmers in any particular area, as the land is its own continual entity, and everyone has to share the local ecosystem. Find a PGS logo and click on it for more information.
the very first version of the Fair Food Foundation
Partner Farmer was the original food security project which was grown and managed by Paula Osborn. It still lives today with a new name called the Fair Food Foundation. The project grew so rapidly that it needed to be managed with software, and so Partner Farmer became the centre of all of the technical builds that have led to this website.
The great pride and determination of the farmers behind the original Partner Farmer project are what gave rise to the need to manage their constant flow of data, and hence, kandu was created from this need, to manage over a thousand rural farmers, and empower them with market access, agroecology training and farming inputs support. The falling away of the Partner Farmer brand is simply cosmetic, as the farmers seen on the old partner farmer website are the same farmers supplying the newly formed Fair Food Foundation. The Fair Food Foundation is made up of all the Partner Farmer grower. They grow heaps of food for themselves, the sell in their communities, and even still sell onto external communities.
kandu·community
the kandu·community is a showcase of small farms and organic producers, working with nature, without chemicals, to produce wholesome food, encourage local variety and diversity, replenish topsoil and reward those who tend the earth.
Support local, small scale farmers.
Contact
Head Office:
Westville, Durban
Director: paula@kandu.co.za
Developer: shawn@kandu.co.za
Tech Support: tech@kandu.co.za
kandu·community
