High costs of living are driving some tamariki in the eastern Bay of Plenty to start their own home gardens to help their parents pay the bills.
They have been taking part in a programme run by Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa for primary schools called māra kai, which teaches tamariki how to get involved in horticulture, particularly gardening.
Māra kai aims to ensure the next generation won’t feel the money pressures their parents are under by having their own gardens and cutting whānau costs that way.
David Tawhi from Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa, who is helping to lead the māra kai, is happy that an opportunity like this exists as it is something he would have loved to have done when he attended school in Whakatāne.
“It is great to see our children here working the gardens and awakening the teaching of old,” Tawhi says.
The māra kai started last November, as an idea from Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa to turn available land into food gardens as a teaching pathway for primary schools around the eastern Bay of Plenty.
Two schools for starters
The land would also become a community garden and support existing services run by Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa.
At present there are two primary schools involved, Allandale and Te Paroa of Whakatāne. These schools visit once a fortnight to work the māra. They are picked up and dropped off at school and healthy lunches are provided by Te Tohu o Te Ora Ngāti Awa, and their programme runs for two to three hours. The children are taught when to plant and what types of vegetables and fruits need to be planted and how to care for the soil and plants.
The gardens are just out of town going toward the Whakatane airport near the Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa campus. The garden is 50sq m, and cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, pumpkin, silverbeet, potatoes, kumara, carrots, and kale are a few of the vegetables grown.
Growing their own kai in a cost-of-living crisis.
Connecting to the planet
For over 30 years Shane O’Leary has been the face of community and school garden projects around the eastern Bay of Plenty and when it comes to getting his hands dirty in the māra kai garden he doesn’t hold back.
“When I see children picking some food plants, that is when they are connected with the planet. That connection with the food is that direct connection with the planet and a reminder that we are a part of this,” O’Leary says.
Besides, gathering knowledge from Rongomātāne, the god of agriculture, there is an even bigger reason for the māra kai initiative. The cost of food has risen. For example, a pumpkin can be found for sale for $9.50 while the price of petrol in some places is $2.40 a litre. Meanwhile, home mortgage interest rates have also risen with inflation up over 7% this year.
Costs out the gate
“It’s really hard for us here and around the world. Living costs have gone out the gate. But here is an initiative for families to find a way to get through it all,” Tawhi says.
And Misty- Lee Flavell, also part of māra kai kaupapa and staff at Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa, has also seen her community struggling to make ends meet.
“With the inflation on kai at the moment a lot of our people are struggling to feed their tamariki, and we are trying to teach our tamariki this next generation to become self-sufficient,” she says.
Today the tamariki were harvesting pumpkins and were keen to take some home.
This is aimed to be a new start among their own families as they say they are all determined to start their garden patch at home to help their parents to pay the bills.
Te Tohu o Te Ora o Ngāti Awa is calling all schools in and around Whakatāne to see if they would like to be part of the māra kai.