Kurt Ackermann

Kurt Ackermann works through food and farming to build more resilient urban communities.

He is the executive manager and founding trustee of the South African Urban Food & Farming Trust, which supports collaborative urban food gardens, social farms and markets to build social cohesion and collective agency within and across divided urban communities. He is also co-founder of the Oranjezicht City Farm and OZCF Market.

Kurt’s work includes finding ways to scale the impacts of urban social agriculture to other cities and countries, working to understand how community food growing changes the dynamics of resource use, social cohesion and community safety. This has led to the development of design principles for urban social agriculture applicable across places, cultures and projects.

Kurt is also active in strengthening multi-stakeholder engagement within the food system as a member of the Community of Practice in Food Systems Governance and of the Food Systems Working Group for the City of Cape Town. In 2020 he led production of the Food Dialogues event with 28 diverse speakers from across the food system and published the Food Dialogues Report.

Since 2019 the SA Urban Food & Farming Trust, has partnered with the GRG's Environmental Entrepreneurs Support Initiative to provide support to developing entrepreneurs. Kurt is also a mentor within the Oribi Village incubation programme for social entrepreneurs working in the food system, and teaches a master class on Theory of Change within that programme.

Further information:

SA Urban Food & Farming Trust profile video (2020)

Food Dialogues highlight video (2020)