Africa: One road to reducing poverty is through farming

If the crops starve – so will the people! But if farmers achieve a good harvest and earn money, they bring prosperity to the whole community.

The soil of Africa has the potential to feed all the people living on the continent, but it needs the farmers to practice good agricultural techniques. That is the goal of the Rockwool Foundation’s projects in Tanzania. Over the past three years these projects have helped smallholders to use new methods, enabling them to grow more food and earn more money.

Around 75% of the world’s poor live in rural areas and most of them depend, directly or indirectly, on agriculture for their livelihood. Economic analyses show that growth in the agricultural sector is twice as effective in reducing poverty as growth in other areas. This is one of the reasons that the Rockwool Foundation has chosen to support the improvement of small-scale farming. If the farmers earn more money, it helps the entire community. The money they earn is used, for example, to buy new tools, or to make housing improvements – or perhaps to buy new locally made clothes. Such spending strengthens the basis for broad economic growth in the local community. The farmers in the RIPAT project are putting their backs into getting the new methods to work – and their labour is already beginning to bear fruit. The farmers are organised into groups of around 30 people. Each group receives support from expert consultants provided by the project.

New knowledge for Mwanaidi

Mwanaidi Hamis is one of the farmers participating in the project. She is 65 years old and lives in the village of Majimoto. Despite the fact that in African terms she is quite elderly, she is still a very active farmer. She proudly showed her farm when she received an unannounced visit from representatives of the Rockwool Foundation. Mwanaidi Hamis explained how the project had made a big difference to her life by the virtue of the new knowledge she had gained through membership of her group. During the visit, Mwanaidi showed her guests her new banana field and the goat she had on loan for breeding from the project. The goat is a new breed, and it brings the prospect of goat’s milk and more meat.

Mwanaidi Hamis in front of her house with its new, watertight roof. Despite her relatively old age (65 years), she is an accomplished farmer who has had the courage to try out new methods of cultivation and new crop types.

Before the RIPAT project, Mwanaidi grew no bananas at all. The new bananas, which the project has taught her to grow, have enabled her to pay for a new roof for her house. Now she can be sure of staying dry indoors when it rains. At the same time, house improvement work such as this can provide employment for local craftsmen. Mwanaidi Hamis is far from being the only such example. When the project started the participating farmers had on average only six banana plants each, of a traditional local type. Most of them did not grow any bananas at all. Now, less than three years later, the farmers have on average established more than thirty commercial banana plants of improved varieties.

A woman on her way to market in Arusha with bananas.

Farmers often go hungry

Approximately one in three Sub-Saharan Africans are undernourished – and many of these people are farmers. But things do not need to be this way. Current yields are often only 10-20% of the potential production of the farmers’ fields. The opportunities for more efficient farming are enormous. Another farmer, Japhet Mrefu Saiveraki, can testify to that. Japhet is a hard-working farmer, 46 years of age. He has a wife and three children. He, too, received a visit from the Rockwool Foundation.

Farmer Japhet Mrefu Saiveraki with his wife Celina and his new milking cow of good stock.

Japhet explained that before the family joined the RIPAT project, the household had been a discontented one – for there had not been enough food to go round. When his wife and children had empty stomachs, trouble and discord were never far away. Japhet enjoys the tranquillity that has come to the family with the RIPAT project. Now there is far more food than the family can eat. Japhet is proud to say that he can now afford to pay for schooling for his children. He has put up a hen-house and established banana fields. With the profits he has made, he has been able to buy a fine new milking cow. Through the RIPAT project, the cow has been inseminated with semen from a bull of a good milk-producing breed. If a female calf is born, Japhet will be able to produce lots of milk in the future.

Japhet also explains that the project has taught the family to keep their accounts in better order. His wife is happy to produce the exercise book which shows figures for purchases of fodder and sales of products.

When asked what he plans to use his future earnings for, he replies: “We would like to have a new and better house, and we also want to be sure that our children get a good education, and that they grow up healthy.”

Hungry and thirsty plants

Drought is often blamed for starvation in Africa. It is true that the rains are very unreliable in the dry parts of the continent, but if the crops are thirsty, it is often because the rain that does fall is not utilised very well. A large proportion of it runs off the fields and is wasted. In the first place, this is because the rains often falls very hard; but it is also because the fields are often not cultivated in such a way as to ensure that the water is absorbed into the soil. This can be remedied – if farmers are taught how. It is also important to be aware that the soil in Africa is more often hungry than thirsty – in the sense that often there is a greater lack of plant nutrients than there is of water. The soil has been starved of plant nutrients for many years, partly because the farmers could not afford to buy fertilisers, and partly because they did not have the knowledge and skills to manage and conserve the soil fertility on their farms. Starved soil produces starved plants, and starved plants are too weak to profit from rain, sun and warmth. So when the crops are starving, so in the end are the people, simply for lack of an adequate harvest.

Japhet Mrefu Saiveraki and his wife Celina proudly showed their new banana plantation. Although, Japhet has more than 230 banana plants in his fields – he is still expanding.