Nourishing the Planet

Drip irrigation system in Nepal. (Photo credit: IDE)

After Elizabeth Samhembere’s husband passed away in 2004, she struggled to feed her family. A small-scale farmer in Zimbabwe, Elizabeth had trouble getting water to her crops, and her children were too young to help with the labor-intensive task of irrigating the vegetables and strawberries she grew.

“I was making a paltry Z$80,000 (US$0.81) per week from selling small and miserable-looking strawberries, and that did not improve my livelihood,” Elizabeth explained in an interview for International Development Enterprises (IDE). “I continued living from hand to mouth.”

But Elizabeth’s crop—and income—improved significantly in 2005, when she received a donated drip kit, seed, and fertilizer through the Micro Irrigation Partnerships for Vulnerable Households project (MIPVH) of IDE, an organization working to alleviate poverty and hunger in Asia and Africa through technology and market access for small farmers.

Drip irrigation delivers water and fertilizer directly to the roots of plants through systems of plastic tubing with small holes and other restrictive outlets. By distributing these inputs slowly and regularly, drip irrigation conserves up to 50 percent more water than traditional methods, IDE estimates.  The water and fertilizer are also more easily absorbed by the soil and plants, reducing the risks of erosion and nutrient depletion. Usually operated by gravity, drip irrigation saves both the time and labor that would otherwise be needed to water crops, leading to larger harvest yields.

Since installing her own drip kit, Elizabeth has seen her income rise to between Z$1 million (US$10) and Z$4 million (US$40) per week. Both the quality and quantity of her strawberry harvest have improved, and she was able to expand her crop diversity by adding peas, carrots, and tomatoes to her garden. With training from the Zimbabwe Women’s Bureau, Elizabeth is also generating income by selling jam she makes from her strawberries.

Elizabeth’s family is eating better, both from the garden and because of the profit she makes from selling her produce. And she no longer worries about going into debt or needing to borrow money to make ends meet. “I am able to send my children to school with the income I now generate from the garden,” she said.

To learn about other ways that irrigation technologies are helping small-scale farmers improve their incomes and livelihoods, see Getting Water to Crops and Access to Water Improves Quality of Life for Women and Children.

Sylvia Banda, founder of Sylva Professional Catering Services, with her husband (Photo: Business Week).

Sylvia Banda was tired of seeing traditional Zambian meals, such as chibwabwa (pumpkin leaves) and impwa (dry garden egg plant) snubbed for Western-style foods in her country. As a result, she founded Sylva Professional Catering Services  in 1986 and in its success, created a market for local farmers and emphasized traditional cooking methods. Her business is presented by Winrock International as a model for other aspiring entrepreneurs to follow (see Innovation of the Week: Winrock International and Sylva Professional Catering Services Limited).

Ironically, Sylvia doesn’t officially own her business. Sylva catering is in her husband’s name because of lending policies that discriminate against women. Sylvia founded Sylva Professional Catering Training College in 2001 and Sylva Food Solutions in 2003, to respond to the growing need for skilled service employees and locally grown raw ingredients. Her training sessions teach farmers, mostly women, to grow traditional vegetables. Her catering and restaurant business purchases the resulting crops, ensuring that there is a market for the vegetables produced by the newly trained farmers. In this way, Sylvia is able to grow her business while keeping the majority of the profit within the community.

“When I first met some of these families, their children were at home while school was in session,” said Sylvia during a Community Food Enterprise Panel and Discussion hosted by Winrock International in Washington, D.C. in January. “They told me that they didn’t have money to pay for education. But after becoming suppliers for my business, the families can afford to send their children to school and even to buy things like furniture for their houses.”

Sylvia makes sure to follow up with the farmers that participate in the program and provide her restaurant with supplies, ensuring that they continue to follow her strict production standards, which include hygiene and consistent pricing practices. It also allows her to see the marked improvements to their daily lives that her partnership with them provides.

Still looking to expand her business model in a way that empowers her employees and local farmers, Sylvia recently released a Zambian cookbook, complete with a list of the nutritional benefits of each homegrown ingredient. She also uses her growing national notoriety to work with NGOs to increase funding for farmer training and support and plans to turn the Sylva Guest House into a full service restaurant and hotel.

Caterpillars (seen here being sold by a street vendor in Uganda) are an important source of food for many people in Central Africa, providing not only protein, but also potassium and iron. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

I’ve had the opportunity to try some traditional—and tasty—local foods while I’ve been traveling in Africa, including amaranth, breadfruit, matooke (mashed banana), posho (maize flour), groundnut sauce, spider weed, sukuma wiki (a leafy green), and a whole lot of other vegetables and fruits with names that I can neither remember nor pronounce.

One thing I haven’t tried yet is found all over Africa and, in addition to being a food source, it is also considered a pest—grasshoppers. As I was walking through a market in Kampala, Uganda I noticed women “shelling” what I thought were beans, but upon closer inspection the baskets sitting between their legs were full of wriggling grasshoppers. As they sat, chatting with one another and the curious American, they were de-winging the insects so that they could be either sold “raw” or fried for customers.

Despite the yuck factor many of you reading this might have for eating insects, grasshoppers, crickets, termites, and other “bugs” can be a nutritious source of protein, vitamins, minerals,

and other nutrients. According to the results from a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization workshop in 2008, caterpillars are an important source of food for many people in Central Africa, providing not only protein, but also potassium and iron.

Collecting and selling insects can also be an important source of income, especially for women in Africa. And as climate change increases the prevalence of certain insects, they become an even more important source of food in the future.

Leonard Birahira is a recent beneficiary of Heifer International. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

This is the final in a four-part series on my visit to Heifer International projects in Gicumbi District in Rwanda.

Leonard Birahira has been connected to Heifer International in Gicumbi District for the last seven years, but only recently as a beneficiary of their projects. He’s been using his carpentry skills to help build stalls for farmers to keep their animals, a requirement for all Heifer beneficiaries, and just last month received his own dairy cow as part of Heifer’s projects  in Rwanda. Dr. Dennis Karamuzi, the Director of Programs for Heifer Rwanda, told me that he’s looking forward to seeing this family in two years. Right now they live in a mud house, without electricity or running water, things the other Heifer beneficiaries we visited were able to get after they began raising cows and selling milk.

And Heifer’s work is now being recognized—and supported—by the Rwandan government. In 2008 the government instituted the One Cow Per Poor Household Program, which aims to give the 257,000 of the poorest households in the country training and support to raise milk for home consumption.  But Heifer, says, Dr. Karamuzi, is also building an exit strategy by connecting farmers to cooperatives, which can organize and train farmers themselves.

For more on Heifer International’s work in Rwanda, please see the following links: Rwanda Sustainable Dairy Enterprise Development Project and Miracle Cows in Rwanda.

Madame Helen has five cows and uses methane from their manure to cook all her meals with a biogas unit (photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

This is the third in a four-part series on my visit to Heifer International projects in Gicumbi District in Rwanda.

In addition to milk and income, dairy farmers also get another important resource from their cows—manure. While raw manure can be composted for use on crops, cow dung can also be a source of fuel for households.

Madame Helen Bahikwe, another farmer in Gicumbi District, began working with Heifer International in 2002. She now has five cows—and an excess of manure. With a subsidy from the government as part of the National Biogas Program, Madame Helen built a biogas collection tank, which allows her to use the methane from decomposing manure to cook for her 10 person family. She no longer has to collect or buy firewood, saving both time and money and protecting the environment. The fuel is also cleaner burning, eliminating the smoke that comes from other sources of fuel.

And according to Mukerema Donatilla, another farmer we met, biogas “helps with hygiene” on the farm because they can use hot water to clean cow udders before milking and for cleaning milk containers.

Both Mukerema and Madame Helen had to contribute about $USD 700 for the materials to install their biogas units, while the government contributed about $USD 400. With funding from SNV, a Netherlands-based organization and the Rwanda Ministry of Infrastructure, the government hopes to have 15,000 households in the country collecting and using biogas by 2012.

Danielle (left) with Mukaremera Donatilla (second from left) and Holindintwali Cyprien and their family. (photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

This is the second in the four-part series on my visit to Heifer International projects in Gicumbi District in Rwanda.

Holindintwali Cyprien is a 40-year old farmer and livestock keeper in Gicumbi District, outside of Kigali in Rwanda. But he hasn’t always been a farmer. After the genocide in the 1990s, he and his wife, Mukaremera Donatilla, 40, were school teachers, making a about $USD 50.00 monthly. Living in a small house constructed of mud, without electricity or running water, they were saving to buy a cow to help increase their income. And when Heifer International started working in Rwanda almost a decade ago, Cyprien and Donatilla were chosen as one of the first 93 farmers in the country to be Heifer beneficiaries. Along with the gift of a cow, the family also received training and support from Heifer project coordinators.

Today, they’ve used their gift to not only increase their monthly income—they now make anywhere from $USD 300-600 per month—but also improved the family’s living conditions and nutrition. In addition to growing elephant grass and other fodder—one of Heifer’s requirements for receiving animals—for the 5 cows they currently own, Cyprien and Donatilla are also growing vegetables and keeping chickens. They’ve built a brick house and have electricity and are earning income by renting their other house.

Although Heifer trained them how to collect water with very simple technologies using plastic bags, Cyprien took the training a few steps further and installed his own concrete tank. In addition, Cyprien has enough money to invest in terracing his garden to prevent erosion, a necessary farming practice in this very hilly area.

And today, Cyprien is going back to his roots and making plans to teach again—this time to other farmers. He wants, he says, “the wider community to benefit from his experience.”

Danielle (center) with Dennis Karamuzi (left) and Heifer beneficiary,Holindintwali Cyprien (right). (photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

This is the first in a four-part series on our visits to farmers working with Heifer International in Gicumbi District, Rwanda.

Recovery is a word you hear a lot in Rwanda. From public service announcements on television to billboards—it’s the motto for a place that just 15 years ago was literally torn apart by genocide. More than one million were murdered in 1994 as ethnic strife turned neighbor against neighbor in one of the bloodiest civil wars in African history.

Recovery—and healing—are also things I heard a lot about during my visit with Heifer International Rwanda. “Heifer is helping a recovery process,” explained Dr. Dennis Karamuzi, a veterinarian and the Programs Manager for Heifer. Heifer started its projects in Rwanda in 2000 in a community in Gicumbi District, about an hour outside of Kigali, the capital. This community was especially hard hit by the genocide because it’s close to the border with Uganda. Residents who weren’t killed fled to Kigali for safety.

In the years following the genocide, Gicumbi District is making a comeback thanks, in part, to Heifer International. Heifer International works with farmers all over the world, helping them develop sustainable agriculture practices, including providing livestock and training farmers how raise them.

Heifer began working in Rwanda in 2000, but their start was a little rocky. At first the community was suspicious of the group—because they were giving farmers “very expensive cows,” says Holimdintwoli Cyprien, one of the farmers trained by Heifer to raise dairy cows; they didn’t understand how the group could just give them away. Many community members thought that it was a plot by the government to have them raise livestock and then take them away, a remnant of the ethnic rivalry between the Hutus and Tutsis that started the conflict there in the 1990s. And Heifer has certain conditions for receiving cows—including that farmers build a pen and dedicate part of their land to growing pasture—which made people skeptical, especially when they were used to letting animals roam freely to graze on grass. But as people began seeing the results of Heifer’s training, they become less suspicious and more interested in working with the group.

Heifer introduced a South African dairy breed, known for its high milk production, because, according to Dr. Karamuzi, “no stock of good [dairy cow] genes” was left in the country after the genocide. And he says that these animals help prove “that even poor farmers can take care of high producing cows.”

And these animals don’t only provide milk—which can be an important source of protein for the hungry—and income to families. They also provide manure, which provides not only fertilizer for crops, but also is now helping provide biogas for cooking to households raising cows in the country as part of a the National Biogas Program.

Stay tuned for blogs about our visits with three farmers who received cows from Heifer International.

Making metal silos for grain storage (photo credit: FAO)

In some parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, where more than 265 million people are hungry, more than a quarter of the food produced is going bad even before it can be eaten because of poor harvest or storage techniques, severe weather, or disease and pests. In the United States on the other hand, food is actually being thrown away by the billions of kilograms (and contributing to 12 percent of total waste), putting stress on already bursting landfills and contributing to the emission of greenhouse gases—in the U.S. landfills are one of the biggest sources of methane, accounting for 34% of all methane emissions.

To prevent the loss of crops after they are harvested in Africa and elsewhere, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is implementing education and technology providing projects. In Kenya , the FAO partnered with the Kenya Ministry of Agriculture to train farmers to take steps to reduce maize crop loss to mycotoxin, a devastating result of fungi growth.

And in Afghanistan, the FAO recently provided household metallic silos to roughly 18,000 households in order to improve post-harvest storage. Farmers use the silos to store cereal grains and legumes, protecting them from the weather and pests, and post-harvest losses dropped from between 15 and 20 percent to less than one or two percent.

Recognizing the need to protect harvest in Africa from weather, disease, pests, and poor storage quality, the African Ministerial Council on Science & Technology is promoting research to analyze and promote various technologies and techniques to prevent post harvest waste and improve food processing. And ECHO Farm, in the United States, where Danielle and I spent some time in August, collects innovations of all kinds to help farmers at all stages of cultivation, including after the harvest. Making these innovations accessible to farmers all over the world is ECHO’s mission and we were able to see a demonstration of a number of post-harvest loss prevention techniques that are both simple and affordable.

And progress in waste reduction is being made in the United States, as well. This year San Francisco became the first U.S. city to mandate that all households separate both recycling and compost from garbage. The Department of the Environment expects this single piece of legislation will result in a 90 percent decrease of household waste in local landfills.

Food collection organizations like Urban Harvest collect food from restaurants, grocery stores and cafeterias that would otherwise be thrown away and deliver it, free of charge, to local food providers for low income families and the homeless.

Minimizing greenhouse gas emissions is a central theme at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen this year as GHG concentrations reached a record high last year. With landfills producing large amounts of greenhouse gases, and as food prices continue to rise worldwide, the reduction of food waste is an inescapable necessity for people everywhere, from restaurant owners in New York City to maize farmers outside Nairobi, Kenya.

(photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

This is the third in a three-part series of blogs about my visit with DISC project schools in Mukono District, Uganda. You can read the first two by clicking here and here.

One thing you immediately notice upon meeting Edward Mukiibi and Roger Serunjogi is their passion for kids and agriculture. Their eyes both lit up whenever they talked about the students who are part of DISC, Developing Innovations in School Cultivation, a project they founded after graduating from Makere University in Kampala. When we met Edward, he had just gotten back from the World Food Summit in Rome, where he was representing Slow Food International’s Youth Delegation. He works during the week at the Ugandan Organic Certification Company. Roger is a school teacher and administrator at Sunrise School, where DISC launched its pilot project in 2006.

Edward says that after fulfilling their goals of being able to go to university, he and Roger wanted to “help other people realize their dreams.” And they wanted to spread their “passion for producing local foods to the next generation.” By focusing on school gardens, Edward and Roger are helping not only feed children, but are also revitalizing an interest in—and cultivation of—African indigenous vegetables. The schools don’t use any hybrid seeds, but rely on what is locally available. Students and teachers at DISC project schools are taught how to save seed from local varieties of amaranth, sumiwiki, maize, African eggplant, and other local crops to grow in school gardens. They learn how to both dry the seeds and how to store them for the next season. With support from Slow Food International, DISC is establishing a seed bank to, according to Edward, “preserve the world’s best vegetables.”

Improving nutrition is especially important for boarding school students, who eat all of their meals at school. These children come from all over Uganda and DISC tries to make them feel at home by growing varieties of crops that are familiar to them from both the lowlands and highlands. According to Edward, “a child needs to see what she’s used to” in order to appreciate its importance.

At both day and boarding schools, students work with school chefs to learn how to cook foods—giving them the opportunity to understand food production literally from farm to table. And unlike most other schools in Uganda, DISC project schools get local fruits with their breakfast and can harvest their own desert at lunchtime. DISC is planning the “Year of Fruits” for the next school year, which begins in January or February depending on the school—each school will be planting its own fruit trees on campus.

Roger explained that in addition to the monkeys who live around Sunrise School and who like to eat some of the crops from their garden, the biggest challenges for DISC involve transportation and equipment for the schools. Because DISC doesn’t have its own vehicle, the coordinators, who need to evaluate gardens and make sure that the children are actually getting the food they help grow, often have to scramble to find transportation. And they lack good ways for the schools to communicate with one another about disease outbreaks and other problems.

But as the project receives more interest—from teachers, students, parents, and policy-makers (the local extension officer for the National Agricultural Advisory Services is a member of the local Slow Food convivium)—and more funding, they’re likely to overcome these challenges and make farming a more viable option for youth in Mikuni and other parts of Uganda.

Milk stored in plastic bags sealed with candlewax to sell at the market.

By Abby Massey

As we’ve seen throughout Danielle’s travels, livestock is an important source of food, income, and culture for many people in sub-Saharan Africa. Livestock can also be a means of preserving local genetic diversity and a defense against climate change (see The Keepers of Genetic Diversity, Maintaining Links to Tradition in a Changing World.)

In Kenya, for example, the dairy sector alone accounts for 14 percent of the agricultural Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and smallholder farmers account for 80 percent of total marketed milk—making the ability to process dairy an essential defense against losing money on spoiled milk. Additionally, processing milk ensures access to its nutritional benefits while also reducing the risks of food borne illness.

Though it’s a top commodity, milk’s journey to the market is not an easy one, especially when the market is hours away, as most are in sub Saharan Africa. Unpasteurized milk can easily spoil by the time it gets to market, so pasteurization, which requires the milk to be heated to a specific pointthereby killing pathogenic bacteria, is key. Reducing the number of harmful bacteria means that it won’t spoil as fast, allowing for milk to make it to the market unspoiled—increasing income and consumer base.

In Nairobi, Kenya, Danielle Nierenberg met a farmer, Margaret Njeri Ndimu, who is seeing an increase in her income by selling her goats milk in plastic bags sealed with candlewax. She learned this process through a training program provided by the Mazingira Institute. This very simple means of processing her product makes it easier to manage and sell, allowing her customers to purchase small quantities of the perishable milk in portable containers.

According to Innovations for Agricultural Value Chains in Africa produced by the Meridian Institute, unpasteurized milk is more popular with consumers than pasteurized milk because of the significant cost difference. And many farmers couldn’t afford to pasteurize their milk, or even have access to facilities that could pasteurize their milk, even if they had a consumer base that could afford to purchase it.

A project implemented by the FAO and WHO promotes the use of the lactoperoxidase system (LP-s)—where an anti-bacterial compound is mixed into unpasteurized milk, allowing farmers to keep it safe for longer periods of time. With the application of the use LP-s, milk will last 5-6 days in refrigeration (+4°C or +39°F) and up to 4-7 hours at high temperatures (from 31 to 35°C or 87.8 to 95°F), allowing the farmer time to transport milk to market.

An East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) project also recognizes the benefits farmers see when they gain access to improved processing and preservation of their dairy. It encourages farmers to join cooperatives (See Innovation of the Week: Farmers Groups and Cooperatives) so that instead of processing the milk alone, farmers can turn to group owned and run refrigerated milk collection centers, significantly reducing the financial burden of the process. The milk is then transported to a milk processing facility and sent to market. EADD has projects in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda that not only provide help with processing, but also training and extension.

Proper milk processing is not only important for health reasons; finding ways to preserve a product as perishable as milk makes it more marketable and increases income, improving the livelihoods for smallholder dairy farmers and their families.

Abby Massey is a Food & Agriculture intern with Nourishing the Planet.