Section of the Zambezi River in Western Zambia. Credit: Friday Phiri

By Friday Phiri
MONGU, Zambia, Apr 12 2017 (IPS)

Ivy Nyambe Inonge, 35, is the treasurer of Mbeta Island Integrated Fish Farm in Senanga district. Her group won the first prize in Zambia under the Cultivate Africa’s Future (CultiAF)  Expanding Business Opportunities for African Youth in Agricultural Value Chains in Southern Africa. She is excited at the prospect of what 5,000 dollars can do for her group, and ultimately, the whole community of Mbeta Island.

“As women, we endure the most burden on behalf of the family,” she says. “That’s why we are excited at this opportunity availed to us, firstly through participatory research in fish processing methods, and now business grants.”

By research and business grants, Inonge refers to a symbiotic relationship between the CultiAF research project focusing on post-harvest processing of fish to reduce losses and its complimenting agribusiness component seeking to generate and test novel, creative and bold business models in the fish value chain.

The two projects are jointly funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC)  and the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR) and implemented by the Department of Fisheries and the Africa Entrepreneurship Hub (AEH), respectively.

According to the group’s winning proposal, they want to turn the 60,000 fingering capacity Malengaula lagoon on the island into a fish pond, and integrate it with livestock and vegetable production. The idea is to have an uninterrupted source of income, which is not the case at the moment due to a number of reasons.

Apart from the annual ninety days statutory fish ban, dwindling fish stocks in the Zambezi River due to climatic changes such as drought and inappropriate fishing methods persist, requiring alternative approaches as described above. Inonge believes their decision to move into fish farming integrated with crops and livestock “is an opportunity to develop a reliable source of income and a platform to become our own bosses.”

The youth and women dichotomy

Africa is the youngest region in the world. Youth make up more than two thirds of Africa’s population, yet they are more likely than adults to be unemployed. The story of women is well documented with global statistics estimating that they are responsible for more than 50 percent of food production worldwide. In Africa, the figure is higher, at 80 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

However, while agriculture is said to hold the greatest potential for global transformation to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a key constituency – youth and women – are conspicuously missing in the processes. This problem is particularly acute in developing countries like Zambia where they face limited access to financial resources hindering their potential for upward mobility, skills and experience to run successful businesses.

This contrast has brought about renewed interest in interconnected ways to meet not only the growing global food demands, but also poverty eradication. One innovative way recommended is agribusiness value chains to stimulate youth and women participation in agriculture and harness an increasingly educated and entrepreneurial workforce to drive growth and create jobs.

In terms of policy, African countries have it all covered. The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) – an Africa-wide agriculture-led development plan – is one such robust blueprint with a strong component on youth and women’s participation.

According to Estherine Fotabong, Director of Programme Implementation and Coordination at the African Union’s technical Agency, NEPAD, CAADP remains an inclusive initiative providing the drive to address food and nutrition insecurity, as well as unemployment, particularly of youth and women, through access to markets and opportunities to expand agribusiness.

And the CultiAF Expanding Agribusiness value chains in Southern Africa, could be putting to reality this CAADP goal. “The main objective is to increase youth participation in the Agribusiness value chain through creative ideas,” explains Dr. Jonathan Tambatamba, Coordinator of the project. “The idea is to develop ways that will help youth get attracted into agriculture and stop seeing it as a profession for the retired.”

With a core team of international, national and local partners established to support emerging entrepreneurs, the process has advanced and now at entrepreneurship training and mentorship stage.

“For Zambia, we picked ten finalists from which five emerged as winners of the business grants of varying amounts,” Tambatamba told IPS. “For the first prize winners, they will receive 5,000 dollars for their project.”

Leadership commitment and Investment

Expert analysis points out that for developing economies to cut poverty and create meaningful jobs, particularly for youths and women, they require political will from leaders and colossal sums of investment in agriculture, which interestingly, is the basis of the CAADP compact. Tambatamba agrees with this assertion.

“We were impressed with a lot of ideas that came through,” he said, citing the winning proposal whose integrated approach in re-using water between fish farming and vegetable production fits well with this year’s theme of World Water Day—Why Waste Water? which focuses on reducing and reusing wastewater. Considering the extra importance of water for the fishing communities, Tambatamba believes serious investment is required to support such “brilliant ideas.”

Granted that cash capital is important in Agribusiness, entrepreneurship pundits argue for mindset change as a starting point. According to Mawila Fututu of Future Search, a Zambian Public Service Management Division (PSMD) entrepreneurship development project, “Even if you have the fish, the nets and the money; if your mindset is poor, you will still drift back into poverty.”

The onus therefore is on the people involved in the two projects to take advantage and maximize on the opportunity provided to diversify.

“I am excited to have been exposed to this project and my appeal to fellow women and youth is that we should rise and decide our own destiny,” says Lina Mahamba, one of the few people already engaged in aquaculture. The 31-year-old, who lives a stone’s throw away from the Zambezi river, adds that she was motivated to construct fish ponds to fill the market vacuum created during the annual statutory ban.

To sum it up, there is global consensus that the challenge is huge but not insurmountable if women and youth are carried along. In the words of former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: “The energy of youth can spark economies,” while African Development Bank’s Akinwumi Adesina believes that “when we solve the problem of women, we will address most of the problems facing us in terms of inclusive growth.”

The Mandal family lives on a half-hectare farm in the Sundarbans and uses integrated methods to ensure survival. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
SUNDARBANS, India, Jan 8 2015 (IPS)

When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks through the netting of a coop and two-dozen shiny hens rush forward for lunch.

In the Sundarbans, where the sea is slowly swallowing up the land, Mandal’s half-hectare farm is an oasis of prosperity.

The elderly couple resides in the Biswanathpur village located in what has now been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a massive tidal mangrove forest covering some 10,000 km in the vast Bay of Bengal delta, stretching between India and Bangladesh.

“An integrated farming system virtually replicates nature." -- Debabrata Guchhait, a trainer with the Indraprastha Srijan Welfare Society (ISWS) in the Sundarbans
In this scenic biodiversity hotspot, there is no longer any doubt about the impact of sea-level rise prompted by global warming – studies show that the region lost some 5.5 square km per year between 2001 and 2009, compared to four square km annually over the previous four decades.

As a result, the population here is facing a myriad of crises, a lack of freshwater being one of the most pressing for the primarily subsistence communities who have lived and worked the network of islands that comprise the landmass of the Sundarbans for generations.

The stubborn encroachment of the sea, as well as cyclones, storm surges, eroded farmland lost on the islands’ edges, tidal river floods from concentrated rains, brackish water intruding through breached earthen embankments and increased soil salinity, have all deepened poverty in these villages.

With a population of some four million, research suggests that three out of every 10 people in the Sundarbans now live below the poverty line.

Those like Mandal and his wife have been forced to innovate to stay alive. With traditional farming faltering under the strain of climate change, new methods, such as integrated farming, have been adopted to ensure survival.

Water everywhere, but none for farming

A November 2014 study sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) pointed out that the dearth of fresh water was reaching a crisis point in the Indian portion of the Sundarbans, occupying a large part of the state of West Bengal.

According to Sugata Hazra, oceanographer and climate change expert at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University, the region urgently requires an infusion of 507 cubic metres of fresh water per day to sustain its estuarine ecosystems and dependent human livelihoods.

Increased salinity now affects farmlands in 52 of the roughly 102 inhabited islands on the Indian side of the forest.

Meanwhile, an observatory on Sagar Island, the largest sea-facing island bearing the brunt of climate impacts, recorded a relative mean sea level rise (MSLR) of 17.8 mm per year from 2001-2009, remarkably higher than the 3.14 mm per year observed during the previous decade.

Making ends meet under such harsh conditions is not easy.

Several farmers’ groups in the Patharpratima administrative block of the South 24-Parganas district told IPS that every family has one or more migrant members, on whose remittances they are increasingly dependent.

Other families, like Sukomal and his wife Alpana Mandal, are turning towards integrated farming methods.

“An integrated farming system virtually replicates nature,” explained Debabrata Guchhait, a trainer with the Indraprastha Srijan Welfare Society (ISWS), which works for community food security.

The technique “brings the farm and household together” so that waste from one area of life becomes an input for another. Staple crops are mixed with other plant and vegetable varieties, while cattle, ducks and hens all form part of the self-sustaining cycle.

The process “reduces farm costs and risks by going organic and by diversifying yield and income sources, while ensuring nutrition,” Guchhait told IPS.

The hens feed on leafy greens, broken grains and maize while their litter is collected and used as organic manure with dung from Mandal’s three cows and two goats. The remaining hen waste drains into the pond, becoming fish feed.

Digging a small pond to help harvest water during the annual monsoon, which typically brings 1,700 mm of rainfall, helped his fortunes immensely.

From one ‘bigha’, a local land measurement unit equal to 0.133 hectares, Mandal now harvests 480 kg of paddy (un-husked rice) – 70 kg more than he did before, and sufficient to cover one month’s worth of household consumption.

With sufficient fresh water in his backyard he now harvests a paddy crop not once but twice annually, harvesting 900 kg in a disaster-free year. After meeting his family’s food needs, he still sells 25,000 rupees (about 400 dollars) worth of his harvest.

Vegetables grown in the tiny space fetch him double that amount, since he plants a mixed crop of over 25 varieties throughout the year. Using every inch of free space, the family has built up crucial resilience against changing climate patterns.

The overflow from the pond provides a catchment area for fish from their paddy fields.

“Our family of four consumes three kg of fish weekly and sells some,” Mandal’s wife, Alpana, tells IPS. Rice with spicy fish curry is a popular staple here.

Still, those practicing integrated farming are few and far between.

“Of our 890 household members in 17 villages, only 15 members have taken up bio-integrated farming,” Palash Sinha, who heads the ISWS in Patharpratima block, told IPS.

“A major reason for the low uptake is the high 12,000-rupee (200-dollar) cost of landscaping integrated farm plots,” he explained. Despite assistance in the form of technical training and monetary support from community organisations, many farmers are reluctant to take the required 5,000-rupee loans.

“For effective landscaping at least 0.072 hectares (720 sq metres) are needed,” Sinha added. “Many farmers do not even have this much land.”

Others associate the integrated method with harder work. “In a good year, income from integrated farms can be 200 percent higher than same-size conventional farms, but labour input is 700 percent more,” Samiran Jana, an integrated bio-farmer, told IPS in the Indrapastha village.

Government assistance for marginal farmers hoping to transform their smallholdings, meanwhile, is extremely low, experts say. For instance, the West Bengal Action Plan on Climate Change – which includes promises on stepping up assistance for integrated farming – is yet to be implemented.

In a country where 56 percent of the workforce is engaged in agriculture, of which some 80 percent are small and landless farmers, experts say that concerted efforts at the federal level are needed to safeguard millions whose lives and livelihoods are bound up with changing weather patterns.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida