Agro-Gym is an exercising circuit that uses human-powered agricultural tools to increase the production of healthy food sustainably.
Long description
Agro-Gym is a social innovation pilot project that combines exercising with the sustainable management of community gardens. It aims to potentiate spaces of urban agriculture as places for social interaction by engaging the surrounding community in its maintenance and care. It has been designed and implemented on a community garden on the periphery of São Paulo, Brazil.
It provides residents from the neighborhood with access to physical activity in an exercising circuit that uses human-powered agricultural equipment to facilitate the farmers’ heavy work and increase their productivity, therefore, generating a win-win situation. On one hand it stimulates people to exercise and take better care of their health also by having access to organic food, and on the other hand it boosts the production of organic fertilizers and crops. The tools that are part of the Agro-gym ensemble are: a pedal-powered shredder machine (composting), a manual water pump (irrigation system), digger shoes (de-compact the soil), a double bucket (carry materials), a sifting station (sifting fertilizer and soil) and a two-man shovel (digging soil) and the complete circuit takes around 1 hour to be completed.
Agro-Gym is a zero carbon emission project and it also has a great potential as an environmental educational tool, since its users can learn in practice about the ecology of a garden and its systems: irrigation, composting, fertilizer, beds, among others. The project is open source and our goal is to replicate it in community gardens in around Brazil and Africa specially São Paulo and Nairobi.
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