The most reasonable solution was nuts.
Struggling to cope with unpredictable and often unfavorable weather patterns emerging in Uganda, one group of farmers found that planting a specific variety of peanuts, a mainstay in the local diet, could help protect their harvest against dismal yields.
A CRWRC partner organization provided members of the Olusai Savings Group in Uganda with one bag of the improved nuts last year. At the end of the season, the farmers were able to successfully harvest three-and-a-half bags. They sold two bags for about $27 each and kept one for replanting. They then used the earnings, as well as some of their own savings, to purchase a bull.
“This bull is yoked with three others and is helping them to open more land for food production,” says Dan Ageet, Food Security Program Officer with the Katakwi Integrated Development Organization (KIDO), a district development office of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God (PAG) and a CRWRC partner. Ageet says in 2011, members of the savings group planted another bag of unshelled groundnuts and have since harvested five bags and are expecting to sell them for about $200.
It’s an encouraging story in a country where hard working and experienced farmers and their families are often suffering from serious food insecurity in the face of changing weather patterns. Food costs have risen substantially in Uganda, and the annual inflation rate rose to over 30% in October.
“Families have had to reduce their consumption of food, or of more nutritious food – some reducing the number of meals eaten per day,” says Jim Zylstra, team leader of CRWRC Uganda.
For farmers, it’s as if nothing is as it once was. “These days the first season rains sometimes fall well for a couple of weeks, followed by a dry period with a lot of sunshine causing the crop to wither in the field,” says Zylstra. He says when the rains resume, only those who delay planting or those who kept some seed in reserve for replanting succeed.
There is hope, however, to be found in adaptation. “Research stations have developed crop varieties that are more drought resistant and/or produce more quickly, thus taking advantage of the shorter rainfall seasons,” says Zylstra. “Farmers who have access to these seeds are using them to get better yields.”
CRWRC partner organizations provide improved seeds as well as training to farmer groups, with repayment in kind in order to extend the program to more groups. “We would like to see farmers begin to use techniques of conservation agriculture, learn with us how best to adapt to the changing weather patterns and come to see farming as a biblical, honorable and interesting livelihood – not just a way to feed the family,” says Zylstra.
He says members of the Olusai Savings Group are a wonderful example of what can be accomplished despite adversity. “The members of the group are finding their strength in working together, so this gives hope for transforming communities on a larger scale. They recognize that they also have resources and do not just depend on help from others. They have put these resources together with what they have received from KIDO and leveraged them innovatively in order to succeed in ways that exceed even the stated objectives of the program.”