Agriculture
Inspiration: Mandela’s speech in Trafalgar Square
Yesterday, we learned Nelson Mandela is back in the hospital with a serious lung infection. While we hope for his complete recovery, we’re reminded of his inspirational speech in London more than eight years ago, which became a rallying cry for many of us who began the journey to end extreme poverty.
On February 3, 2005, Nelson Mandela addressed more than 20,000 people in London’s Trafalgar Square. In his speech, Mandela keenly stated, “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”
Watch the video, then sign our G8 petition to tell world leaders to put us on a course to end extreme poverty by 2030.
Kenyan farmer Anne answers your questions
In partnership with One Acre Fund, we are following Anne, a smallholder farmer from Kenya, for a whole growing season. From planting to harvest, we will check in every month to see what life is really like for a farmer in rural Kenya. Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2. Written by Hailey Tucker.
Anne with her children Leah, Sharon and Joshua. Photo: Hailey Tucker/One Acre Fund
In the last month, Anne has finished most of her planting. Although she still has to work in her field, weeding and applying fertiliser to each crop at the proper time, these less time-consuming jobs mean she can spend more time on family life.
Her eldest son Briston has left home, but her other children—Sharon (18), Leah (14), Joshua (13), Elvis (7), and Steve (3)—are around the house when they aren’t at school.
Early on a Monday morning, Anne shuffles around the dark house silently but quickly, without needing a light to find her way around. By the time the sun begins to rise, she already has the children dressed and ready to eat.
She tells Joshua to grab a tin bowl for their still-hot morning snack of roasted groundnuts and helps Sharon adjust her school uniform necktie. As the children eat in the kitchen, Anne sweeps the dirt paths around her compound and straightens the crochet cloths that cover the wooden chairs in her house. She shakes her head slightly.
“When I ask duties of the children, most of the time they forget, and I come back to find the duties have not been done,” Anne says. “Sometimes it makes me mad.”
Anne making tea at home. Photo: Hailey Tucker / One Acre Fund
She makes quick work of tidying the house’s mild disarray and returns to helping her children get ready for school. Her husband Isaac has already left for a nearby market, where he hopes to buy livestock he can then resell later in the week.
After the children head to school, Anne lets her livestock out to graze, surveying her field to see what farming needs to be done. She also has to make several trips to the nearest creek 1km away to collect enough water for a house of seven to drink and bathe in.
“What makes me so tired is the running between jobs,” Anne says. “It’s like chasing time, and it makes me tired. I’m always thinking, ‘after this—then this, and after that—then this.’”
Despite the drain Anne feels, she loves being a mother. She smiles as she describes how wild the house gets at night when all the children come home.
“When the whole family is around, some of the kids are very active and noisy. They make jokes and make the whole family laugh. Then there are some that are more quiet. A few even get a bit rough sometimes, and then I must intervene,” Anne says. “ I really like this time each day because I can learn the character of my children—who is who—and it brings me joy to see that.”
Anne says she wants her children to become whatever they want when they grow up, but she hopes they will learn some of her skills too.
“I learned how to grow various types of vegetables and how to plant onions because that’s what my parents used to do,” Anne says. “I want to give each child the opportunity to choose what she or he would like to do, but I hope since they see what I do on my farm, they will learn and be able to replicate if they ever need to.”
Anne herding her cows. Photo: Hailey Tucker / One Acre Fund
Last month we invited you to send a question to Anne, and we received almost a hundred from you! We’ll be posting more of her answers in future posts.
Stephanie Michelle asked: What is the number one obstacle you face as a farmer in Kenya?
Anne: “The rains and providing for the family. Even though I work hard doing the farm activities—they may fail. And even if they fail, the family still looks to me to provide something.”
Katarina Novotna asked: If you could have any job in the world, what would it be?
Anne: “It is my dream to sell clothes. Other jobs I may have liked to do would’ve required more education, and I like this idea because the job would still allow me time to take care of my family and cattle.”
Kevin Fath asked: What are your coping strategies for the increased variability of rainfall levels?
Anne: “I look at the crops and if they are growing slowly and turning a bit yellowish, then I know there is too much rain. In that case, I usually dig a trench on the higher side of my field to hold the water. This year, I didn’t do this. Instead, I planted napier grass to serve the same purpose, but I have observed that this year the rains have been so heavy that the grass has let the water run through.”
One Acre Fund serves 125,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi, helping them to increase their harvests and incomes. It provides farmers with a service bundle that includes seed and fertiliser, credit, training, and market facilitation, and enables farmers to double their income per planted acre. To learn more about their work, you can read Roger Thurow’s The Last Hunger Season.
“I’m a farmer by accident but I am loving it” – meet the new generation of African farmers
Our guest blogger today is Vincent Rapeta, a young farmer from South Africa. He is speaking at the African Union Youth Forum in Addis Ababa this week as part of their 50th anniversary celebrations.
Vincent with a crop of tomatoes from his farm. Photo: Vincent Rapeta
I’m Vincent and I come from Molemole, Limpopo Province in South Africa. I’m 28 and a farmer. I grow maize, butternut squash, watermelon, tomato, beetroot and cabbages. I am a farmer by accident but I’m loving it.
I was raised by a single parent and we were very poor when I was growing up. I think that my mother earned R5000 a year. In today’s US dollars, that is just over $500.
I had dreams of becoming an auditor and fighting corruption but we didn’t have money to send me to university. But I did have an opportunity. I was helping my mother while I was in school on our small plot of two hectares. And after I was done with school, I started helping her full time- that’s how I became a farmer.
Our produce started being noticed for its quality and in 2006, the local Department of Agriculture selected me to attend an agriculture training programme where I learned about soil quality, when to plant certain crops and also special knowledge about growing tomatoes, which are higher value crops. I eventually got my own plot and started expanding the amount of produce we could grow, and began to employ some local people to help me manage my plots and harvests.
In 2010, I went to school again to learn about the business side of farming and best management practices. I learned about finances, communications, labour and best standards for my produce. In 2011, I won the Best Farmer award in Molemole Municipality and came second in the district for the informal sector division. I was so excited.
Last year I decided to expand my operation and was able to obtain 20 hectares from the traditional council in my area and another 20 from the municipality. I am now trying to get those plots of land suitable for farming as they are still covered in bush. I’ve had to spend my savings to clear the land and drill boreholes for irrigation, but hope to be up and running by the end of this year.
A field of tomatoes on Vincent’s farm in Molemole, South Africa. Photo: Vincent Rapeta
Farming is hard work. It is very challenging, but so rewarding. I think there are three main challenges for young farmers like me.
First, we need access to land and financial services. I have been very lucky – an elderly neighbour allowed me to farm her plot and I also had my mother’s plot to start from. Not all of my fellow young South Africans without work have been so fortunate. South Africa is redistributing its land but it often goes to people who don’t make a living from it. A doctor will get a few hectares, but then wake up and go to his job.
Banks require security and collateral for loans. Hail can ruin one season’s harvest. I’ve saved and have been able to use this to expand, but we need insurance and loans to help us move forward. When we take the risk, we need government to meet us half way in managing these costs.
Second, we need to challenge the perception that informal sector farmers like myself provide poor quality produce. I was once told by a buyer for a big market that he wouldn’t buy tomatoes from black farmers. And this was a black man telling me this. He would buy spinach and butternut but not tomatoes. So we must try to promote the real quality of food that informal farmers produce.
And finally, we need access to fair markets. As we plan our crop we need to be sure that it will not go to waste. In Limpopo I am lucky that the food bank buys my tomatoes and my income is assured, other youth farmers in the rest of the country don’t have the same opportunities. We need policies that support the development of crop markets so that farmers can increase their harvest, earn more income and improve their families’ lives.
All I can say is that here is so much opportunity in farming. I think young people all over Africa should look to farming to improve their lives and improve our continent. We’re always crying of not having jobs. Well, we can find land. We’re not disabled. Why can’t we just make our own job? Our governments just need to make it easier by building roads that lead to markets and by providing marketing information and training to farmers.
I dream of owning 1000 hectares in ten years where I can have a herd of cattle and provide so many jobs to contribute to poverty alleviation. I know this is possible and with the right policies from government, all of us here will be farming.
ONE is campaigning for more investment in small farmers as part of our Global Food Revolution campaign. Take our one minute action and tell leaders to act on the malnutrition crisis now.
More than just a bar on a chart in New York: Why the MDGs matter
This blog originally appeared in the New Statesman.
This time of year always seems particularly hectic for the ONE Campaign and others in the movement against extreme poverty. The run-up to the annual G8 summit, which this year is hosted by David Cameron near Enniskillen in mid-June, is our equivalent of Sir Alex Ferguson’s “squeaky bum time”. Within a few weeks we’ll know what we’ve won and what we’ve lost, and the implications will be felt for a long time.
Yesterday I wrote up on my office wall nine big moments for ONE in this period. The first is today, with the launch of our 2013 DATA Report. The report shows that while aid and investment from wealthier countries is critically important, perhaps its greatest value is in leveraging and supporting resources closer to home – the resources that developing countries themselves can provide – which will ensure that one day, aid from outside will be rarely needed.
We’ll continue to push governments in Europe and beyond to stick to the commitments they’ve made. But African governments have made promises too, and in the DATA report we look at some of the big ones.
Overall, things are getting better. The report explodes the myth that all advances against poverty and disease are thanks to China; in fact, in six of the eight MDG targets, at least half of sub-Saharan African countries are fully or partially on-track. However the performance of leading countries like Ethiopia, Malawi, Ghana, Benin and Burkina Faso is undermined by persistent underperformance by a handful of others, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Chad and Burundi.
There is also a clear correlation between countries that are allocating a greater share of government spending to health, education and agriculture over the past decade and improved progress in those areas. From 2000 to 2011, Ethiopia lifted an estimated 10 million people out of extreme poverty, and over the same period the government spent nearly 45 per cent of its total budget on health, education and agriculture, a third more than the average in sub-Saharan Africa. The fact that increased resources go hand in hand with better results might be considered a statement of the obvious. But in these sceptical times, it’s helpful that a hard-headed look at the numbers demonstrates the link is strong.
However, no African government is on course to meet the promises it has made for investment in all three of these sectors. In the next three years as the 2015 MDG deadline approaches, sub-Saharan Africa as a whole could add $243bn to its health, education and agriculture efforts. The difference this could make is clear in one country after another: for example, by meeting its health spending commitment between now and 2015, Nigeria could provide an anti-malarial bednet for every citizen, vaccinations against killer diseases for every child and life-saving treatment for everyone who is HIV positive in Nigeria – and still have billions to spare in its health budget.
As the G8 leaders meet in Enniskillen this report should remind the world’s decision makers of the task immediately ahead. On Friday, David Cameron delivers the report of the High Level Panel he has co-chaired, on what should replace the MDGs after 2015, to the UN Secretary General in New York. It’s important of course. But it’s hard to avoid the feeling that if there were the same level of interest in the pre-2015 agenda, the world could get a lot closer to achieving the goals we already have. That’s not just a bar on a chart in New York: it means kids in school, small farmers with more chance to work their way out of poverty, people alive in 2015 who would otherwise die if we fail to act. There are less than a thousand days left until the end of 2015 – we need to make every one of them count.
In the days before the G8 summit, leaders of a wider group of countries will meet for a “Nutrition for Growth” event, dedicated to tackling the scourge of malnutrition. If this event is to succeed, it will need to drum up resources from both developed and developing countries, as well as companies, foundations and charities. ONE’s report couldn’t be clearer on this: you get out what you put in.
But the G8’s core agenda is also hugely relevant. David Cameron has called for a “transparency revolution”. With greater transparency – whether in the extractives industries, aid, public spending, company ownership or tax information – governments and citizens in developing countries will be able to ensure that funds intended for the fight against extreme poverty do not end up in the wrong hands. If that revolution succeeds, developing countries will be able to claim more of what is rightfully theirs – and have more resources to build a better future for all, accountable to all.
All of this requires leadership. David Cameron’s government has been resolute thus far. It has built on the excellent work of its predecessors and finally met the historic 0.7 per cent GNI spending target. But this test is a different one. In the coming weeks, as the UN High Level Panel delivers its report and Cameron hosts the series of gatherings culminating in the Enniskillen summit, he has a real opportunity to be remembered as a true global leader on development. It will require determination and vision. I hope he will find both.
Why ONE Africa and 36 other organisations have sent an urgent letter to David Cameron
In a few weeks, the UK government will host a major international event in London called Nutrition for Growth: Beating Hunger through Business and Science. Happening just days before the 2013 G8 Summit in Lough Erne, it will bring together governments, businesses, scientists and civil society to examine strategies that could improve the quality and quantity of food available to the world’s poorest people.
Back in March I attended a highly energised meeting of African civil society organisations in Ethiopia, who had gathered for Africa’s biggest annual forum on agriculture and where we launched our report A Growing Opportunity. We all agreed an urgent message needed to be sent to the international community before the June summit in the UK.
As a result, ONE together with 36 other African organisations have written to UK Prime Minister Cameron asking his government to ensure that African-led agriculture is at the heart of the Nutrition for Growth event, and specifically the existing CAADP plans.
CAADP stands for the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program. It has already created momentum to reform agriculture in 40 out of 53 African countries and many more are joining. This makes it the single best existing framework that would support the G8 to deliver excellent results from their food security and nutrition investments on the continent.
CAADP will also become the central organising vehicle for the African Union year of Agriculture in 2014. African states have committed themselves become more accountable to their people on accelerated progress in fighting hunger and helping small-holder farmers access better investment, technology and markets to sell their produce.
African leadership, political will and investment is critical to realising the poverty reducing potential of African agriculture. The private sector and international community also has a very important supporting role to play in investing in African-led agriculture.
Rhoda Peace Tumusiime, African Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, has said, “Africa has potential, but it cannot eat potential. More coordinated action is needed”.
Rather than re-invent the wheel, the G8 must build on the momentum growing across Africa and fund the agriculture plans already in place.
Read our letter to UK Prime Minister David Cameron and share our graphic on Facebook.
How Grow Africa could be a game changer for African farming and business
ONE US Policy Manager David Hong and ONE Africa Deputy Director Nachilala Nkombo look at the progress made by Grow Africa in the last year.
Today, five African heads of state, four G8 development ministers, and over 100 private sector companies will meet in Cape Town, South Africa at the World Economic Forum on Africa to assess Grow Africa’s work in 2012, the partnership’s first full year in business.
First, here’s a little background. Two years ago, the African Union Commission, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) agency, and the World Economic Forum combined forces to create a new partnership, Grow Africa, which aims to reduce poverty by accelerating private sector investment in African agriculture.
The partnership is led by the organisations above, and includes eight member countries and various stakeholders such as host governments, companies involved in investment, civil society, research institutions, and farmer organisations.
Here at ONE, we’re taking this opportunity to weigh in on Grow Africa’s first annual report. Overall, the initiative made significant progress last year, especially given the small size of its team. ONE hopes for further and more robust reporting in the coming years so the partnership can demonstrate its value and defend its model. Annual reporting gives Grow Africa an opportunity to demonstrate lessons learned over the past year and what challenges lay ahead.
Here are the headlines:
- 97 commitments from 62 companies, of which 39 based are in Africa
- More than $60 million invested in activities that incorporate smallholder farmers
- 270,000 metric tons of commodities sourced within partner countries
- Equivalent of around $300 million in sales from these farmers
- Almost 800,000 smallholders reached with a mix of training, sourcing, and service provision
Obviously, there is a lot to commend here. Thousands of smallholders are being incorporated into commercial food supply chains where they’re growing more food and generating more income for their families. If Grow Africa adds further measures to increase transparency and expand reporting of poverty reduction indicators, the partnership could change the game for farmers and businesses.
For more information on Grow Africa’s report and ONE’s analysis, check out this policy brief.
Watch this and you’ll understand why hunger still exists
After journalist-turned-agriculture activist Roger Thurow witnessed the 2003 famine in Ethiopia first hand, he dropped everything and devoted his life to answering this mind-boggling question: Why are Africa’s small farmers some of the continent’s hungriest people?
Kudos to Roger for not only being brave enough to ask this question, but for doing all the research to be able to answer it, too. I’ve worked with Roger for over a year now at ONE (and read both his books too) – and this TEDx Talk from him brought tears to my eyes. I have never seen such die-hard passion and sincerity in an activist until now, and I am proud to say I work with him.
Please find 20 minutes today to watch this video – then let him know what you think in a comment below.
Did Roger’s TEDx Talk inspire you? In just a few weeks world leaders are meeting in the UK to make big decisions on global nutrition, and we need your help to call for the right action. It could help 25 million children escape malnutrition by 2016 and grow up to reach their full potential.
How much is too much rain? Ask Kenyan farmer Anne a question
In partnership with One Acre Fund, we are following Anne, a smallholder farmer from Kenya, for a whole growing season. From planting to harvest, we will check in every month to see what life is really like for a farmer in rural Kenya. Catch up with Part 1. Written by Hailey Tucker.
Anne at home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
In Western Kenya, successful planting for the year is typically seen as a matter of materials, skill and knowledge. However, most farmers acknowledge that ultimately—regardless of expertise—plant germination can be won or lost by the rains.
For farmers who plant too early, there will not be enough consistent rain to help their crops grow. For farmers who wait long enough but get unlucky, their newly sown seeds will be washed away by heavy rains before the seedlings have a chance to take root.
Trying to pinpoint the prefect timing makes planting one of the most risk-laden choices a farmer can make.
Anne (left) and Rasoa Wasike, both members of the Kabuchai Women’s Group, planting millet. Photo: Hailey Tucker
It had been a few nights in a row when Anne had been too hot to sleep and too hot to even cover herself with any sort of blanket, when she knew it was time. Anne would lay awake on a sweat-moistened mattress and hear a strong wind rustling the trees outside.
“When the temperature stays high at night and the winds are blowing hard from West to East, I believe the rains are very near,” Anne says. “Then in the day, I observe the clouds. If there are dark clouds and they hang closer to the earth than the white clouds, then I know the rains are coming.”
After seeing the signs Anne has come to associate with pending rain, she decided to plant part of her millet for the season on March 22, and then finished the rest of the plot on March 25 after taking a few days off for her mother-in-law’s funeral.
The morning of planting, Anne and her husband Isaac gathered with their relatives to pray over their seeds and fertiliser. “I am a believer,” Anne says. “I am spiritual so before planting my family will pray.” Isaac, who is a pastor at the local church, leads the prayer.
After planting, Anne commented, “Preparing the finger millet land required a lot of commitment and labour because we had to break down the soil very fine and remove all the debris. All of the preparation was worthwhile though because then the planting became easy—even easier than maize.”
On March 23, the rains were heavy and with Anne’s field being situated on a slight slope, her first round of seeds took more water than was ideal. Looking at the field two weeks later, the furrows that once divided her lines of seed are barely visible, but patches of millet are still beginning to appear.
“The rains are a little different this year because they usually come in April,” Anne says. “They came in March this year instead and are also much heavier.”
The first green shoots of millet germinating. Photo: Hailey Tucker
The second half of her field received light rain most of the days immediately following planting, which is the best Anne could have asked for.
“I believe that these are good,” Anne says pointing to the second set of seedlings. “They are much better, I think they will germinate well.”
Have you got a question or message for Anne? Leave a comment and we’ll get them directly to her in Kenya, and try and answer them in the next instalment.
One Acre Fund serves 125,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi, helping them to increase their harvests and incomes. It provides farmers with a service bundle that includes seed and fertiliser, credit, training, and market facilitation, and enables farmers to double their income per planted acre. To learn more about their work, you can read Roger Thurow’s The Last Hunger Season.
Take our agriculture quiz and win prizes!
One of the ways that ONE holds governments to account on their commitments to the world’s poorest people is by publishing reports and sharing them with other organisations, governments and the media. Recently, our policy team did just that with their report, A Growing Opportunity: Measuring Investments in African Agriculture.
Basically, it checks up on the governments who made promises to support agriculture and food security in Africa and answers questions like ‘Which countries have been keeping their promises? Which have not? What more is there to be done?’
Do you think you know the answers to those questions? Test yourself with our quiz. All the answers can be found in the report.
Everyone who gets 100% will be entered into a draw for this amazing ONE goody basket. We’ll announce the winner and the answers on Tuesday 30 April.
The prize includes: a handcrafted fashionABLE scarf, handmade beaded bands and bracelets, bright activist stickers for your laptop, mobile phone covers and a cool ONE apron!
Type your answers in the form below, then click the submit button. Don’t forget to include your email address so we can get back to you if you win. Good luck!
QUIZ: African Agriculture Commitments
1. How many Africans depend of agriculture for their incomes?
a. 1/2
b. 2/3
c. 1/4
d. 3/42. True or False: The CAADP stands for The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme
3. How many countries out of 19 are on track to meet Millenium Development Goals of halving extreme poverty by 2015?
a. Six
b. Eight
c. 18
d. None of the above4. How much labor do women contribute on farms in sub-Saharan Africa?
a. 35 percent
b. 25 percent
c. 95 percent
d. 50 percent5. Who is not part of The New Alliance?
a. G8
b. Private companies
c. National governments
d. Peace Corps6. Which of the following is a reason for African farmers’ inability to produce enough surplus to generate an income?
a. Facing poor infrastructure
b. Expensive fertilizer
c. Unreliable and unpredictable markets
d. All of the above7. At what summit did donors pledge $22 billion over three years to support sustainable agriculture and food security?
a. 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy
b. Gleneagles Summit
c. Hokkaido G8
d. UN Summit September 20088. How long has the Maputo Declaration been in existence?
a. 2 years
b. 5 years
c. 8 years
d. 10 years9. What are most agricultural plans missing?
a. A call for agricultural development.
b. A clear call for transparency.
c. A clear focus on women farmers.
d. A clear incentive program for market participation.10. What has 2014 been deemed?
a. 2014 African Union “Year of Agriculture”
b. 2014 African Union “Year of the Woman”
c. 2014 African Union “Year of the Market”
d. 2014 African Union “Year of Transparency”
Follow Kenyan farmer Anne from planting to harvest
In partnership with One Acre Fund, we’ll be following Anne, a smallholder farmer from Kenya, for a whole growing season. From planting to harvest, we will check in every month to see what life is really like for a farmer in rural Kenya. Written by Hailey Tucker.
Anne at home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
Anne Wafula wrings her dirt-caked hands as she sits in her living room. She has been tilling soil in a half-acre plot of land to prepare to plant millet, groundnuts, sweet potatoes and cassava; and she is admittedly a little worried about the season ahead.
“As a mother, I am worried about what will happen when harvest time comes,” Anne says. “It is my hope that I should not lack food at this home.”
Anne is a smallholder farmer in Kisiwa, a village in western Kenya. Like most of the world’s poorest people, her main livelihood is farming. For the last few years, she has enjoyed strong harvests.
Anne is a member of One Acre Fund, which provides farmers with fertilizer and seed on credit, teaches the farmers how to more effectively plant their crops, and then allows them to pay back their loans at times of the year when money is easier to come by.
Anne with her husband Isaac and youngest son Steve outside their home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
Since joining One Acre Fund in 2010, Anne has been harvesting 10 bags of maize a year, more than double her previous harvests of four bags.
Anne, whose stoic demeanor softens after a while, is the mother of seven children, two of which she and her husband Isaac adopted. Like many farmers, Anne faces the competing challenges of providing enough food for her family, keeping everyone healthy, and making sure all her children are receiving an education.
Her increased harvests since joining One Acre Fund have helped her grow enough to feed her family and make real life improvements, but as she increases her income, she also has increased her expectations of what she should be able to provide for her children.
Briston Nangesa is their eldest and is studying engineering a local technical college. This is possible because Anne’s improved harvest pays the fees. Many farmers in her village are unable to send their children to secondary school, let alone a technical college. Anne is proud of Briston but she wants to give all her children the same opportunity, and the thought of all those future school fees is daunting.
Anne with some of the crops on her farm. Photo: Hailey Tucker
This season Anne is trying something different. A maize disease appeared in Kenya last year and infected fields had a heavy loss of crops. As a result, One Acre Fund is encouraging its farmers to diversify their crops and reduce the risk of losing everything.
Anne has decided to plant only a small amount of maize and focus most of her energy on growing alternatives: sweet potatoes and cassava for food security, sorghum and millet for income, and beans for nutrition. If the harvest goes well this season, she also hopes to have enough money to start a business selling clothes.
Anne with 3-year old son Steve at home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
As a mother, my biggest concern is that I would like my children to learn, so if they are not able to go to school, that is not good for me. My hopes are that we will harvest well and get the highest yield”.
We’ll be back in a month with the latest news from Anne and her family.
ONE has just launched a new report that looks at investment in African agriculture. Find out which countries are getting it right, and where both donors and African governments need to improve.
One Acre Fund serves 125,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi, helping them to increase their harvests and incomes. It provides farmers with a service bundle that includes seed and fertiliser, credit, training, and market facilitation, and enables farmers to double their income per planted acre. To learn more about their work, you can read Roger Thurow’s The Last Hunger Season.
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TAGS: Agriculture, G8 Summit, Nelson Mandela, Open Development, Spotlight, Transparency