I was in Haiti as a guest of a missionary couple from Minnesota who conducted gardening classes in Porta Prince and the surrounding areas teaching the Square Foot method. It was one of the first countries where I learned that when people say, “We’re so poor we have nothing to make compost out of,” you can look around and see they actually have an overabundance of material, they just haven’t identified it and don’t know how to make it into compost. As we know from the SFG India project, compost is the true secret to a successful garden.

But, back to Haiti. As we toured the outlying areas, bouncing around in the back of a jeep over rough county roads, I was introduced to several CARE staff members. They were not only interested, but fascinated by SFG. They could easily see the potential for all of the people that they were there to help. As I held workshop after workshop for the farmers throughout the country explaining the advantages of SFG, I could see continual nods and smiles and a general agreement. Despite the difference in languages they seemed to understand very quickly the disadvantages of single row gardening, and yes, even in Haiti, all the farms and backyard gardens were planted in rows spaced a meter apart. It was amazing. I would ask them through the interpreter, “If the plants could be 6-12 centimeters apart in the row, why did the next row have to be 100 centimeters away?” They would turn their heads, look at each other, smile, shrug their shoulders, and say in Spanish, “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

I’ll have to learn that phrase in Spanish; Might come in handy some day. I also met a few Peace Corps people in Haiti who volunteered to be my interpreters. The more days we spent together, the more excited they got at the possibility of also teaching SFG. Several of them recognized immediately that this could work in just about any country they’d ever been in or could think of. They then said that in a few days the head person of all gardening and agriculture for CARE was coming and they wanted me to wait and meet her. To make a long story short, we met and she was very excited and very desirous of doing something with all this new knowledge. She wondered how we could spread the word around the world quickly and effectively. She reiterated that most of the people they deal with are illiterate and poor, and they don’t have any facilities, land, money, or experience.

We all agreed that pictures might be the answer, and I thought of developing a very simple brochure that could show in almost pictorial form how to make, plant and grow a Square Foot Garden. In addition, we would cover the subject of compost and how to make it. Then I had an idea.

Why not put this booklet in the form of a comic book? Everyone reads the funnies, everyone love comics, and kids learn to read from picture books and then comic books. If we could get a good artist to draw the characters, perhaps in several different styles for different areas of the world, we could then develop a very simplified booklet and translate it into many different languages. Everyone loved the idea, and I thought, “This is really going to be it - this is my dream come true.” The director of agriculture invited me to come to the Philippines the following Spring to present my idea at a national convention of all the CARE agricultural and horticultural agents from all over the world. I was very excited about the prospect and started developing all the ideas and working out all the details. She said, “Just to make sure, when you get back to the states, stop in New York City and go to the headquarters and see so and so, and get approval from the tower.”

I did go, but I didn’t get approval. Everyone in the tower seemed to be rather cool, if not cold, to the idea of SFG. I could never quite understand why. Unfortunately I never went to the Philippines, never presented the idea, and never made the comic book. In the meantime, every organization is still out there trying to teach the world how to do it the American way, with plows and machinery, gasoline, pumps, pipes and all of the technicalities and chemical fertilizers that we like to use in our agriculture. I later learned that because SFG was so simple and so inexpensive, it might easily destroy a large corporation or foundation with many staff members and that depends on fund raising, big budgets, large staffs, lots of equipment, lots of everything. If it could be taught from a simple comic book, you would no longer need all of the trappings of a large enterprise or operation. Perhaps SFG was too simple and easy.

So be it, but it doesn’t mean the idea of a comic book approach is dead. If an existing worldwide organization doesn’t want to do it, we’ll do it ourselves. So that’s the idea. Describe SFG in a pictorial way with few words, showing basically how the system works, the advantages of the system, and how to do it yourself including the composting. Then assemble the comic book, have it printed and decide how it’s going to be distributed. Perhaps an advanced copy of this would receive a better reception at some of the large worldwide organizations. There seem to be so many of them, some religious and some just humanitarian. Perhaps even some governments could be involved in this. The funding would be minimal compared to so many of the grandiose worldwide schemes.

This idea could also apply right at home for organizations that are starting community gardens, or want to have gardens in prisons, or at shelters for battered women. It would certainly work for Habitat for Humanity houses.

Well, that’s the basic idea. My questions for you are, What do you think of the idea?, Will it work?, How should we go about doing it?, and Can you help?

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