Growing more food

Rural African families urgently need to produce more food – yet have only small plots of unfertile land and cannot afford fertilisers. So we train people in how best to use their own resources, integrating crops and livestock into a natural farming system. It’s an approach that is enabling thousands to boost their yields dramatically, earn an income, and plan for a more secure future.

Feeding the soil

Much of Africa’s farmland has become degraded. Years of unsuitable farming practices, the effects of climate change, and the need to feed growing populations have all taken their toll.

Composted manure is vital for natural farming, so it’s one of the first skills we offer farmers. It adds nutrients to the soil, and makes plants more resistant to pests and diseases. And unlike commercial fertilisers, it also improves the soil’s structure so it can hold water and air better. Families learn how to make compost from the byproducts of their farm, adding vegetable waste, ash and weeds to their livestock’s manure. It’s simple, yet very effective.

Most subsistence farming is rainfed – yet climate change is making rainfall erratic. To help farmers prepare against unpredictable weather patterns, we train families in water harvesting techniques, such as building small dams.

Feeding the family

Rural families in Africa rely on staple crops such as cassava, maize and matoke for the bulk of their diets. The natural farming methods we teach enable thousands of families to increase their yields up to five-fold, often within one growing season (see graph). It’s a spectacular transformation, and an achievement which neighbours and relatives are often eager to copy.

Our experts train farmers in how to set up vegetable gardens near their homes so that children, the elderly and disabled people can easily access them. The centrepiece is usually a keyhole garden: a domed garden with a central compost basket which feeds the soil around it.

The vegetables that result from our natural farming methods don’t just fill an empty tummy. They add much-needed nutrients to the diet – particularly vital for growing children and people with illnesses such as HIV/AIDS. And with the right skills, farmers can grow them all year round and feed their families during the ‘hungry months’ between harvests of staples. You can find out more about families like these through Family Friend.

Other growing techniques we promote will be familiar to UK gardeners, such as double dug trenches; while more unusual methods, developed in Africa, include child-friendly bag gardens and water-saving mandala gardens. Natural pesticides and fertilisers - made from water, leaves and ash – provide protection from bugs, as well as additional nutrients. Many of these techniques can be used effectively in UK gardens with some adjustment.

Earning an income

With the family’s food secured, farmers can look to make an income. They now have a surplus of staple crops to sell at harvest time, and many also use their composted manure to boost yields of cash crops such as coffee and vanilla.

Vegetables bring in money for much of the year, increasing families’ security. This means that farmers can also introduce some high-value fruits and vegetables that would not normally grow in a given area: eg pineapples in arid eastern Uganda.

In some projects, farmers also learn how to grow fruit trees: grafting rootstock, and setting up tree nurseries. We are always keen to try out new techniques, appropriate to local conditions and needs: one project in Rwanda is trialling mushroom cultivation.

Passing on the skills

Nobody understands the challenges faced by poor farmers better than members of their own communities. So more and more, training in our projects is provided by ‘peer farmers’.

These are one-time beneficiaries who have proved themselves to be star farmers. They are selected by their groups and given extra training by us in teaching methods. Often, they set up demonstration farms on their own lands and carry out training there, so that visiting farmers can see for themselves how the techniques they are learning work in practice.

It’s a system that provides real inspiration and reassurance for new farmers, who may be apprehensive about abandoning traditional farming methods. It also restores dignity to the peer farmers themselves, who often received very little formal schooling themselves but are now proud to be recognised as teachers by their own communities.

“The vegetables have changed our lives completely. I started my keyhole garden one February. There was a drought that year – but my vegetables kept growing.”

Agnes Matroopar Leutsoa is a widow caring for three orphaned grandchildren in Lesotho. Three of her adult children have died, and she finds it difficult to farm her fields on her own. Although she “usually gets by” between maize harvests, food is a constant worry.

Her keyhole garden and vegetable beds have been a Godsend. They enable her to grow vegetables she never imagined possible in this rocky landscape: aubergines, beetroot and cabbage. She fertilises them with droppings from the rabbits provided by Send a Cow, and protects them from the frequent storms with a hailnet we gave her.

“I used to spend lots of money on vegetables, but now we can grow all we need,” she says. “I can sell some to pay for healthcare for my grandchildren. We are teaching our neighbours how to make keyhole gardens too.”