A group of people from the Mi Barrio Neighborhood Association, from Los Olivos, in Geneto, together with the Social Welfare and Environment areas of the City Hall of La Laguna, is promoting the creation of the first productive and edible forest in the town, a permaculture model that imitates the natural structure to create agroforestry systems that produce food, while regenerating the soil and combating CO2 emissions. The project will make it possible to expand the current Municipal Network of Community Urban Gardens and will merge both systems to facilitate participation and achieve the social and environmental objectives of the local program.
With this initiative, the incorporation of this methodology in the Network will be put to the test, a local program with high demand, which seeks new publicly owned land to reach all the districts and which, with three facilities already in full operation, has clear social and environmental objectives, reasons that have led to its inclusion in the framework strategy La Laguna: Municipality in Transition 2030.
The program to promote this public Network wants to take advantage of the “accredited psychosocial, therapeutic and active aging benefits of the model, while committing to generating community and intergenerational links, and promoting agroecology, environmental awareness, recovery of abandoned land, sustainable development and food sovereignty, recalled the Councilor for Social Welfare, Rubens Ascanio.
“As we are seeing in the orchards of San Bonito, Cho Canino and San Matías, all with waiting lists and very good community results, these spaces allow us to respond to a wide variety of needs that go beyond purely food, such as psychosocial, cultural or health ones,” he said. In fact, he explained, “they are an increasingly common resource in the care of the elderly group and constitute an important tool to combat loneliness and certain pathologies.”
