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The Daily Journal |
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Vegetable Business -a Way Out of Poverty By Dorcas Chileshe PEMBA, Zambia - A simple skill introduced to help rural women to grow vegetable is proving to be a powerful tool in fighting poverty in Pemba district, a remote region about 300 kilometres south of the Zambian capital Lusaka. The hope is that it can be replicated nationally. Peasants like Powder Maumbi used to harvest and sell about 30 bags of maize, Zambia’s staple crop, each season, at about 50,000 kwachas (about 14.3 U.S. Dollars) per bag. Now, the mother of four says she regularly earns 10,000 kwachas (about 2.9 U.S. Dollars) per week from selling vegetables -onions, tomatoes, rape (a form of green veg-etable) and cabbages. Thus, she is better able to buy other foodstuff to supplement her family’s diet. “I like vegetable farming because it allows me to earn money almost every day. I no longer beg for money from my husband to buy my daily needs as I used to do. I now have wings and I am able to pay my children school fees,” says Maumbi. Richard Fuller, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) representative in Zambia, says his organisation is supporting the programme to fight famine that has affected the en-tire southern province where Tonga district is situated. Tonga district is in the south of the country, on the border with Zimbabwe. Before famine heightened in parts of Zambia in 2000, the province was the country’s maize belt where peasants used cattle to plough huge farms. The loss of these animals to an infectious disease led to severe hunger in many households, prompting PANUKA, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) to extend its service to the community. PANUKA, ‘awake’ in the Tonga language, was formed in 1999 and initially focused on a literacy programme helping out school children and adults to read and write. But it decided to extend its wings to the hunger reduction programme following the famine that resulted from the disease that killed thousands of cattle in the district. PANUKA Executive Director Vyness Lawrence says the organisation decided to help women grow vegetable as it provides income all-year round unlike other seasonal crops, like maize. One of Africa’s poorest nations, Zambia’s economy has been battered by external shocks and failed domestic policies. According to the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report, the decline in the prices of copper has caused high indebtedness while variable weather conditions which have led to serious drought and floods have been partly responsible for the problems. The economic problems are also reflected in a severe decline in the quality of education and other social con-ditions. According to a recent Monitoring Achievement Survey conducted by the government, only 2.4 percent of the pupils in grade six are able to read. Some 15 percent of the children in the school going age have no access to basic education and only 37 percent of grade seven pupils progress to grade 8 and only 20 percent move on to grade 10. Life expectancy has dropped from 43 years in 1995 to 37 years in 2000 and malnutrition in children under five years has increased from 35 percent in 1991 to 55 per-cent in the same year. The need to empower women here is particularly critical as most of the women in this district are in polygamous marriages where they have no control over their hus-bands’ property or income. Lawrence says she felt the need to change the scenario by empowering the women financially. Targeting women in the programme was encouraged be-cause the majority of them are poor and strive to secure food for their families even in difficult times, says Fuller. According to him, the vegetable growing programme fitted perfectly well within the country’s mandate to reduce hunger levels by 50 per cent by the year 2015 as declared by the 1996 FAO World Food Summit. FAO initially provided farming inputs such as water pumps, barbed wire fences, tomato, onion, cabbage and carrot seeds to 26 families to help them start their vegetable farming. After selling the crops, the women are expected to gen-erate money to meet their daily needs as well as buy seeds to continue with farming. The number of benefi-ciaries is likely to grow since newcomers are encouraged by the all-year income that the vegetable farmers earn. According to the women, vegetable farming has reduced hunger in the region. “A lot of people used to sell their bags of maize cheaply to unscrupulous businessmen just to help them pay for school fees as well as meet daily needs. Most of them could sell all the maize and starve but this practice has lessened as people now sell vegeta-bles instead of the staple food,” says one woman. The activities of unscrupulous businessmen are facilitated by poor infrastructure such roads and bridges which make it difficult for farmers to get their produce to market and are thus forced to sell to dubious middlemen at cheap prices. This has led to a virtual collapse of the agriculture sector. Men whose wives have benefited from the programme say PANUKA project has helped to heal the wounds of losing herds of animals to the disease. They say the loss of the animals forced many people to migrate to urban areas since they never imagined there could be a way out of the famine. “Many people have run away from this area because they are afraid of cultivating big fields using hoes after their cattle died. Some of us are happy that we are able to hire ploughs using the money we are earning from vegetables,” says one man. Despite the success of the programme, some women have complained about the bad road between their vil-lages and the Pemba Boma, the nearest trading centre, located about 30 kilometres away. The bad road makes it difficult for them to take their vegetables to the market. “At times we are forced to exchange our vegetables with items which we do not really need because we do not want our crops to go to waste,” says Dale Nzila, a vegetable farmer. Apart from this programme, FAO is also supporting PANUKA to start a pig project in the area from which 50 women will benefit initially. There will be additional beneficiaries, depending on the success of the first phase. FAO is supporting similar programmes in various parts of the country. At the national level, government also has come up with a five-year strategic programme called Food Security PACK aimed at reducing the number of people affected by hunger in all 73 districts of Zambia. This programme gives out drought resistant seeds on credit to enable women to plant food crops. The women are expected to pay back the seeds or crops. If they fail to pay they are removed from the programme. But some of the intended beneficia-ries accuse government of not de-livering the seeds and other farming inputs on time. “Last season they gave us seeds very late and we didn’t have a good yield and many people have failed to pay back,” says a woman who pre-ferred anonymity. Project director Fridah Luhila has confirmed that 50 per-cent of the beneficiaries did not pay back the loans because they did not receive inputs on time. She appealed to government to show commitment to this programme if Zambia is to reduce hunger levels by at least 25 per cent by the year 2015. She feels Zambia will not manage to beat the 2015 deadline because poverty levels are too high in the country. Seventy per cent of Zambians live below the poverty line. PANUKA Executive director Lawrence shares the sentiments. “Unless gov-ernment starts pumping enough money in the agriculture sector, reducing hunger levels by 50 percent will remain a pipe dream for Zambia,” she says. |
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