Agro-ecological farming in Southern Africa

Dear friends,

You may or may not be interested in this. It is a good news story from Africa and we can use more of those.

As some of you know, I work for the national office of The United Church of Canada where I am responsible for coordinating relations with partner organizations in eight Southern African Countries (South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia) and responsible for food security and food sovereignty programming, much of the latter of which we do through our membership in the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB). I am actually writing this from Windhoek, Namibia where I am currently visiting a partner. (Farming at Koliswa farm is a part-time occupation at present although I wish it could be otherwise. Someday...) The African organizations that I work with do varied work including human rights research and advocacy, peacebuilding, conflict resolution, urban and rural community development, and HIV/AIDS remediation.

In recent years, I have had the pleasure of working in partnership with the CFGB on "conservation farming" projects in Zimbabwe with a Zimbabwean relief and development organization. Conservation farming is a particular agro-ecological approach to farming that teaches small-scale farmers to make better use of their immediate environments to farm sustainably and achieve ongoing food security. Instead of relying on expensive, dependency-building external inputs such as chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides and mechanization, farmers learn to maximize what's available to them in nature (mulch, animal manure, compost) and which can be turned into increased crop yields through pothole planting, discrete applications of manure and compost, and generous applications of mulch. In Zimbabwe, and in a region of the country that suffers from chronic drought no less, conservation farming (CF) has resulted in crop yield increases of up to 400 percent including with the staple food crop in the region, maize (white corn).

CF is labour intensive to be sure. But families in this part of the world tend to be large so there are many hands to share the work. 

Use of CF tchniques are transforming entire communities. Farmers are encouraged to used open-pollinated seeds and to save seeds which are held in trust in village seed banks. Each farmer donates 10 percent of his/her seed to the bank which, next growing season, gives the seed to another farmer who commits to trying CF. With money earned from the sale of surpluses, farmers can pay school fees for their children, improve their houses structurally, buy a bicycle to transport their crops to market, and generally invest in their communities, thus raising levels of socio-economic wellbeing. Visiting these communities and talking to farmers who are benefitting from CF, one senses the personal power and self-confidence they have gained through their achievement of food security for their families and communities. They are, in effect, on the path to achieving food sovereignty as they continually build their capacity to use their livelihoods to feed themselves on a sustainable basis, contribute economically to their communities, and determine their own local and regional agricultural policies. 

We are working on attracting other partner organizations in Southern Africa that focus on rural community development to consider promoting CF in the communities where they work. Interest is growing. In February we held a "training of trainers" workshop in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. It involved small-scale farmers from Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa. The seeds were planted to spread CF techniques in many regions of these countries. More workshops are planned.

One wonders why CF techniques are new to Africa at all. I think probably they aren't. They were likely practiced in past centuries prior to the debilitations of colonialism which linger in many surreptitious ways. Somewhere along the way a disconnect was created, perhaps at the time when Western societies and cultures introduced (with some pressure) the beginnings of an industrial approach to farming, with all its expensive and environmentally damaging inputs.

This process hasn't stopped. With massive funding from the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, Sub-Sahara Africa is now a target for AGRA -- the African Green Revolution in Agriculture. It promises to end hunger by increasing crop yields through more and better conventional agricultural practices and the introduction of GM seed varieties. It didn't really work in India in the 1980s (in fact it's now linked to large-scale soil degradation, farmer suicides, and other adverse impacts), so why do they think it will work in Africa?

And so the battle wages -- between humble, small-scale farmers who are increasingly fighting to achieve food sovereignty through CF-like approaches to farming, and Western corporate industrial agriculture that would place the locus of agricultural policy setting in boardrooms and legislatures far, far away.

PS: This summer at Koliswa Farm we will be hosting a growing project -- 35 acres of organic feed corn -- the proceeds of which will be donated to the Canadian Foodgrains Bank. All are invited to participate even if only to join us for potlucks at planting and harvesting time. Contact me, Gary, for more information.