Small Plates

The lean months have started. Kids scrounge maize kernels that have dropped from grain silos and storage sacks. Roasted and served on a tin lid, the snack holds them over lunch.

By providing input loans at Mziza, AWP ensures that farmers and their families avoid this situation. Club members continue to rely on the harvest from 7 months ago. The effects of food security on their families go far beyond what we can observe.

Getting Going at Mphombe

Chiefs and lead farmers met at Mphombe to discuss the way forward on food security in their village. The leaders expressed the community's struggle to provide food throughout the year. The most vulnerable tend to run out of food first. That means widows, children and the elderly lack food when they need it most.

The challenge of accessing capital for their farmers was also brought up. Leaders agreed that if the farmers knew how to plan and how to use their local resources, farm yields would increase. Importantly, many farmers don't believe that compost can provide sufficient soil nutrients to grow their crops. Leaders realized that the use of compost was not uniform among farmers, which leads to varied results.

We agreed on a strategy that would help farmers minimize their farming costs by using local resources in the best way possible. Fertilizer would be reduced in favor of compost, but farmers would need to be trained in how to make and use compost first. Use of pesticides would be stopped by maintaining clean, brush-free environments surrounding their gardens.

Fruits of Food Security

We are now seeing good results from our maize storage trial. Last year, ten farmers volunteered to store maize at the AWP office. Together they stored 63 bags, or about 7,000 lbs, of maize. Seven months after the harvest, they have taken the first 2 bags back to meet food shortages at home.

The purpose of the trial was to see if farmers could avoid food shortages by keeping maize in a controlled storeroom. It's very easy to sell maize when it is stacked in your living room. Vendors on bicycles pass through the village offering to trade grain for second-hand clothes, soap, or even salt. Usually the farmer loses on these trades. But if maize is out of sight, it's difficult to misuse.

Now that we have seen the maize last for seven months, and we expect it to last a further 5 months, we know that this kind of storage arrangement helps farmers. The farmers are grateful for the opportunity as well, but they know that they should put even more grain into storage. The farming club will have to work on how to build their own storage to meet this need.