James Eliot Lowell
IARD 4960 Reflection Paper
Summer 2015
International Experience
Oranjezicht City Farm
Over the summer break of 2015, I had the wonderful opportunity to intern with a small urban agriculture venture called Oranjezicht City Farm in Cape Town, South Africa. Oranjezicht City Farm is a small non-profit organization devoted to the promotion of food sustainability in terms of nutrition and affordability within the city limits of Cape Town. It also has multiple ventures within the organization to improve the livelihoods of local community members and outside rural farmers in the greater Cape Town area. While interning for Oranjezicht City Farm I was able to focus on a few small projects including Fair Food CSA and Harvest of Hope. My main objective was to pursue and create one of the first Community Supported Agriculture Projects within the area.
The first few weeks of my international internship was focused on working with Harvest of Hope. Harvest of Hope is another organization that partnered with Oranjezicht City Farm in order to promote the economic livelihood of poor rural residents through agricultural methods. They have farmers from the townships, destitute areas within the greater Cape Town area, grow many varieties of vegetables. These vegetables are organized into veggie boxes and distributed to specified pickup locations around the city of Cape Town. My role was to help organize a pickup location in the Oranjezicht community and market the selling of these boxes to the members in that community.
The remainder of my internship, and my main focus, was to establish one of the first Community Supported Agriculture projects in Cape Town. During this project, called Fair Food South Africa, I worked with farmer Eric Swartz in order to create an operable CSA on his 6 hectare farm. I developed a working financial model for Eric and Oranjezicht City Farm. I wrote a feasibility assessment report on the venture. I gave multiple presentations to the board of Oranjezicht City Farm, in order to establish this as a running program. I conducted research within the area, talked to many local and rural farmers, and even grew my own vegetables on the Oranjezicht’s local farm. The development of this CSA didn’t stop here. Much of my work came to produce Fair Foods and the details of much of my work can be found at
I also did other things for Oranjezicht City Farm such as work the local Saturday markets that sold produce and attend weekly board meetings for the promotion of the organic and nutritious eating within Cape Town. These other activities helped me to get to know the local community members within Cape Town and develop personal relationships with the people that were buying our produce.
The organization I travelled with was called Connect 123. They were extremely helpful in the transition between, the U.S. and South Africa. They provided me free expense travel from the airport to my accommodations. They also organized multiple events in order to meet fellow international students around the city of Cape Town. In Connect 123, you travel with a large group of students that have similar interests and live extremely close to you. So, even if you are travelling alone, you are easily accommodated with a group of peers in order to ease the transition into the country
Cape Town and Oranjezicht City Farm are wonderful places to conduct your international internship. They provided me with hands on experience as well as training in the field of my interest. Cape Town is an easy transition for those who only speak English fluently. It provides you with an ability to experience a different culture while at the same time experiencing comfort in similarities between South Africa and the United States.