CONNECT THE PLOTS

Linking farmers to better markets in Zambia

by Stuart Taylor

Chicken manure and sawdust. Katherine Tembo is animated as she describes her compost recipe to a group of about fifty people – mostly women – standing at the edge of her impressive vegetable garden. Tall, cool shoots rise from white onions, embedded in the dull brown soil next to her carefully tended rows of cabbage – large green globes ripe for the picking.

We are in the dusty outskirts of Ndola in Zambia’s Copperbelt for an open garden day, sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Ndola – one of IDE Zambia’s partners in the Gardens for Better Health project, made possible with support from the Canadian International Development Agency, the Canadian Society for International Health and the Manitoba Government.

The crowd has gathered to hear women like Tembo tell their stories and to learn how the small, dry yards around mud brick homes in this struggling township have been transformed into productive gardens by people living with HIV. Two years ago, Tembo was not growing any vegetables. HIV-positive, a widow and mother to four school-aged children, she was intrigued when her caregiver started talking about the benefits of home gardening and the advantages of micro-irrigation.

Tembo tells her audience that training in vegetable production and financing to buy the treadle pump that sits at the bottom of her garden created the opportunity for her to succeed. With the first $60 that she earned from tomatoes, Tembo paid her children’s school fees and bought them exercise books. The vegetables in her garden now stand to make her more than $300 – a small fortune for her.

When I ask what difference her new income has made, her answer is at once humbling and inspiring. “I’m no longer begging for salt,” she says, looking me in the eye. “Now I’m sending my kids to school. I’m buying meat. I would recommend this to anyone.”

The scene is reminiscent of the previous day, when we were at a field day outside Kitwe – an hour further north – and saw Sharon Chibwe demonstrate her garden to a crowd of more than 70. With a treadle pump and drip irrigation, she has expanded her garden four-fold in the last two years and diversified into a wide range of vegetables, including a very tasty small yellow eggplant known locally as impwa and less-commonly grown vegetables such as green pepper and beets that have a good market with lodges in town.

For productive growers like Tembo and Chibwe, IDE is developing commercial market opportunities. Recently, IDE has connected several farmer groups with FreshPikt – Zambia’s only canner, based in the capital Lusaka. FreshPikt is canning pineapple, tomato and beans. Midge Drakes, the managing director, says that there is ample demand for his product; his chief constraint is supply. While the company has a commercial farm, it is not producing enough to meet demand. That is where IDE’s farmer groups come in.

FreshPikt recently supplied sugar bean seed to farmer groups. IDE organized the farmers, ensuring that everyone knew the date of delivery and had their seed payments ready. IDE staff are also providing in-field extension support to ensure that the beans are grown to FreshPikt’s standards. Once the beans are harvested, IDE will help to organize the delivery of beans to central collection points where FreshPikt trucks can make the pick-up and pay the farmers. IDE is helping the farmer groups to organize their own deliveries and marketing in future so that the system can work without IDE staff on the ground.

IDE is using this basic concept – forming farmer marketing groups and establishing central collection points for delivery of produce – to open a number of new markets to small-scale producers. Thanks to the Rural Prosperity Initiative – started in Southern Province with funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and extended to the Copperbelt with support from a group of private donors in British Columbia – IDE farmer groups are now supplying supermarket chain Spar, traditional dried vegetable processor and national success story Sylva Catering and peanut processor Choice Nuts.

Through IDE’s efforts, agricultural supplier Cropserve is offering treadle pumps and drip kits through its national network of retail outlets. Affordability is still a major issue. In contrast to its success in Asia, IDE has encountered numerous challenges in Africa, including high materials costs, low population density and poor infrastructure that greatly increase the price of treadle pumps and drip kits. In Asia, a treadle pump generally sells for $20-30. In Africa, IDE has struggled to get the price below $100. While IDE Zambia expects to have a $50 treadle pump on the market in the near future, it has recently signed agreements with local financing institutions to provide loans that help farmers to invest in irrigation technology.

The good news is that, while input costs remain high, the potential returns for farmers in Zambia are also very high, given the commercial opportunities that IDE has cultivated over the past several years.

The goals are ambitious. By 2011, IDE Zambia aims to have increased the annual incomes of 18,000 rural families by at least $250 through access to affordable irrigation and better markets. However, with a growing network of motivated farmer groups and skilled field staff, country director Keith Henderson is confident that they will meet their targets.

Back in Ndola, Katherine Tembo’s audience is getting impatient. Women are now pressing in on every side, eager to get their hands on the fruits of her labour. As soon as she finishes speaking, there are a few minutes of pandemonium as women in their brightly coloured chitenges rush down the rows, choosing the biggest cabbages and pulling up bunches of large firm onions. Tembo disappears in the crowd of eager buyers who are now pulling out crumpled banknotes and good-naturedly angling for discounts. She knows the value of her vegetables and calmly accepts payment, tucking the notes into her chitenge.

For Tembo, transforming her homestead into a market garden has been a bit like making her compost tea – good things happen when you add water.