Agriculture

Africa is known as the world’s begging bowl - around 20 million tons of grain is imported annually. It is said that 85% of the continent’s population are subsistence farmers. Average maize yields amongst the poor are around 300kg/hectare and the food requirement for one person is 450kg per annum. Crop failure is common, largely due to drought, but also due to poor standards of practice. Crop failure and hunger impact health, family values and people’s well being. Communities and cultures change irrevocably as young people move away from the areas of hunger and failure, towards urban centres.


Our neighbour’s plot

All these problems are common to the areas where we work too and have inspired us to look into Foundation Farming (also known as Farming God’s Way) which comes within the overall umbrella of Conservation Agriculture. It is a method of farming that has been promoted over many years and aims to break the poverty cycle. It teaches stewardship and crop management made effective through following Biblical principles. It’s about life in Christ and farming as a practical expression of this. The four keys to success in this farming method are:-

 On time
 To high standards
 Minimal wastage
 With joy

It is ideally suited to the many subsistence farmers who live around us here in Northern Tanzania on their small plots of land. It is also suitable as a way of introducing pastoralists such as the Maasai to small scale agriculture as many of them are now using maize meal as part of their daily diet. We see this as an addition to their current way of life, not as a change.

Last year we established a demonstration plot on our property where we produced a very encouraging acre equivalent harvest of 16 bags compared to our neighbours’ 2 - 4 bag harvests.



In October, at the height of the drought, we started again and prepared the ground much to the amusement of our neighbours, and the embarrassment of our workers who were asked to do the work!



We planted after the first rain in November and our neighbours began to watch with interest as the maize took off. Still no-one else planted.

No-one is laughing anymore. We are expecting a good harvest and are hoping that our neighbours are watching with enough interest to come along to our next demonstration. We are also very much hoping to be able to measure our harvest before it ‘walks’ as few of our neighbours have planted and none with such success.