The Journal Friday, March 18, 2016
10
Food Matters
Working the land binds communities together
Report by Sam Gray
SOUTH Shropshire farmer Sam Gray has just returned from a self-funded two-week research trip to Africa. She visited Malawi as part of a mission organised with Self Help Africa. Sam wanted to find out more about the country, its farming practices and what people in the West can do to help those in the developing world. This extract from her diary reflects on her experiences: It’s half past two in the morning. I am woken by a deafening silence. The fan has stopped. There has been another blackout. I am trying not to panic or breathe too quickly as the unimaginably hot, unmoving air starts to feel oppressive and suffocating. My mind is cast back to sights of the day and thoughts of the villagers I have met: no power, no beds, no fans and a long walk to a borehole for the nearest water. I am suddenly grateful for my one energy bulb, mattress, fan, running cold water and sporadic power. This is Africa. This is Malawi. Last year I made a bold request to our Shrewsbury-based Self Help Africa (SHA) offices asking to visit some of the farmers they work with. As a smallholder of many years I was keen to learn about small-scale farming in other parts, to understand more about what it is like to have to be self-reliant. It was the name ‘Self Help’ that held my initial interest. It opened my eyes to a different type of charity and reinforced my own feelings about growing skills and the empowerment that brings to the individuals involved. Although not alone in the way they work, SHA promote skills that many of us in developed countries (outside the world of farming or veg growing) have not needed in decades. But upgrading agricultural skills to help keep up with the ever changing climate in rural Malawi is the difference between life and death. Working between three different offices in the country, I was privileged to visit over 12 settlements in two weeks. Some had only recently started with the Self Help Africa projects but were already seeing the benefits of
We shared Malawi’s M1 with oxen and goats grazing at the side of the road
Intervention has led to a far healthier picture for those smallholding in rural Malawi, and their children what is termed ‘Conservation Agriculture’. For many this included the use of manure on crops for the first time ever, crop diversification lessening the dependence on maize, and planting trees to replace the copious number being cut down for firewood. All this was being run alongside small-scale agricultural businesses while being introduced to the cash economy in a formal way. However, my second week took me on a quite different journey. Starting with Malawi’s M1 where normal motorway speed limits apply was a learning experience in itself. We shared the high speed road between Lilongwe and Karonga with little children walk-
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ing to school, numerous bikes, oxen and goats grazing at the side of the road, sometimes tethered, sometimes not, and an alarming number of overturned, overloaded artic lorries carrying felled trees. The impact of the small steps being learned by the new beneficiaries became very clear as I was transported to projects five years down the line and I witnessed the success stories of those who have built sustainable livelihoods from adopting many of the interventions recommended by SHA. My favourite was the ‘pay it forward’ scheme – a simple, fair and workable programme whereby a farmer receives a goat or pig and in-
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They eat as much as they can of what they cultivate, and are beholden to the weather
stead of paying for either animal, he/ she has to give the first kid or set of piglets born to another farmer in the community. Thereafter, all goats and pigs born belong to them. The money earned from livestock allows many farmers to invest further in their own farms, including a solar light to replace paraffin or buying a tin roof instead of dried grasses, etc. This intervention, alongside crop diversification; better, more workable seeds; nutritional education for new mums; established and further advanced village banking systems; gravity-fed irrigation systems for rice fields; better Disaster Risk Management ideas, including rain gauges
to be used as an early flood warning system; hazard maps and enhanced forestry management all add to a far healthier picture for those smallholding in rural Malawi. I went on this journey to learn about small-scale farming under African skies and how it would compare to my life in rural Shropshire. Apart from the extraordinary heat there were many similarities. Like me, they have pigs that slowly destroy their own boundaries and escape into the fields; they make compost with animal dung to feed their crops; they eat as much as they can of what they cultivate, and they, like all growers in the UK, are beholden to the weather. Although
we’re unlikely to get temperatures soaring over 40 degrees or regular earthquakes, it is true that flooding, storms and drought all play their part. I was, however, struck by the immense community spirit. Farming in the UK can be quite solitary. The very land that surrounds us can be alienating and the machines we employ to carry out much of the work means that the number of employees is small or non-existent. However, the reverse is true in the places I visited. They may not have advanced equipment or high efficiency levels but it was very it was clear that in these parts of Africa working the land creates and binds communities together.
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