Scribbles

After his first two sentences, I knew Joel Yiri from Jirapa was the man I was looking for. I had asked Peter Kuupenne, an extension officer from Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture, to meet “a creative farmer”. And that is what I found: Joel was a man with a vision.

As we shook hands, and sat down in front of Joel’s house, he introduced himself in perfect English. I asked him how come, and if maybe he had been a teacher. But he shook his head: “You know, over here, you are born as a farmer’s son, so that’s what you do for your life: you farm. Just as your father and your father’s father. But that also includes the core challenge: with the current climate change, we can’t farm anymore like they did. We need to adapt our methods. Our fathers had fertile grounds. The rains were plentiful, and for generations they used the same tools, the same seeds and the same technologies. Our generation needs to change.”

From that moment on, I just knew it was going to be an interesting testimonial as part of the series we were recording for the AMKN project.

Joel inherited his plot of land from his father, but the soil had become infertile. For years, he was one of the many migrant workers who go south to farm on other people’s land. “But I realized I was wasting my energy. I work on someone else’s land, to earn money, and buy food. Why not farm my own plots?”.

With the help of his extension officer, Joel tried to use the manure from his two pigs. “I tried it on a small scale first, and found it worked much better than the mineral fertilizer. With the manure, you mix it with the soil, waiting for the first rains. No matter when the rains finally come, the soil is ready. But with mineral fertilizer, if it does not rain within a week, the soil turns hard again, and the fertilizer is wasted.”

Unfertile soil resembles sandHe gradually increased the size of his piggery, so he could also apply the manure to larger plots, and turn them fertile. He showed us the difference: the field treated with manure had green crops growing in a soft soil. Right next to it was a parcel he intended to start treating next year. For the moment, it was barren, with a hard top crust. “This soil almost resembles compacted sand”, Joel said, as he kicked his heel into it, “Nothing grows here. But look over there: with the manure, I harvest maize, soya, cowpeas, cashew and even mango. Untreated soil used to give me two or three bags of maize per plot, if I was lucky. Now, I get twelve bags.”

Joel keeps statistics on his cropsAnd he should know, as he keeps record of all input costs, and revenue on his farm. “My statistics showed me I was loosing on the traditional cash crop of ground nuts. I switched to soya beans and cow peas instead. Those yield better on my ground, and with the shortened rains. I also switched from the local millet and guinea corn to maize.”

Joel’s cashew trees in GhanaJoel does not sit still. He reckons the rainy season will continue to shorten in the years to come, so he planted mango and cashew trees on the plots where he also grows other crops. “Those trees go well in combination with the soya beans and cow pea, but I also combine it with bee-farming. The bees love the cashew flowers. I thought…, even if later on we will only have two short rains in a year, my other crops won’t yield enough. But the cashew and mango will, even with less rain. Combined with the revenue from the honey, I will still have an income, even if my other crops completely fail.”

Every year, the rains have started later, and stopped earlier. To make matters worse, the first rains are often followed by a drought, which sometimes lasts for a month. That’s why Joel is looking further ahead: “I want to take a micro finance loan, to dig a borehole on my land. If I have access to water, I could grow vegetables even during the dry season. A borehole with a simple irrigation system would cost about US$7,000.” A considerable investment, but Joel is sure he could pay back the loan in two years. “An NGO came to look at my plot. They found termite heaps and several indigenous scrubs indicating there is water nearby, so they won’t have to dig deep. My plot is ready. With my 65 pigs, I have enough manure to treat that surface, so only thing I now need is water. It would also benefit the other people on the nearby plots.”

“Farmers should be thinking of the future”, Joel concludes, “We should farm differently from our grand fathers. They took to farming only as a way to survive, to eat : if a crop failed, the next year they would try the same thing again, and again. No, that is not the way. We have to change. The way the climate is changing, we too have to adopt new crops, new seed varieties and new farming techniques.”

Read my original post on the CCAFS blog…

“Twenty years ago, famine reigned our area”, says Helene. “The men went off to Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Togo and all countries around us. They farmed other people’s lands. But we, the women, we could not move. We had to raise the children. And it was hard.”

“You know, for a farmer, the crop is everything. As the weather changed, as the erosion took our soil away, we were left with infertile land. Whatever small crops we could still harvest, was not enough for our kids. They got sick, many died. Those were very hard times.”

Adama, the chairman from the farmers’ union, had told us how the village succeeded in constructing a dam. “That was good as a drinking hole for the cattle”, Helene explains, “but I realized we could do more with it, and thought about growing vegetables during the dry season. We never did that, I had no experience, but I wanted to give it a try. If you don’t try, you won’t learn, in my opinion.”

Indeed, the farmers in Ninigui, used to be idling during the dry season. “Once the harvest finished, everyone, young and old, sat in the shade of the trees, until the new planting season. So we thought of using the water from the dam to make plots with small vegetable farms so we could grow vegetables all year round, and not depend on the single crop from the rainy season.”

Helene on her vegetable farmThe village allocated several small plots for Helene and her group of entrepreneurial women, to try out vegetable farming. “It took me about five years before I had a significant yield”, she smiles, “But once I found out the basic techniques, it took off really fast. Now we have over one hundred men and women working in the lowlands around the dam. So now, in the dry season, everyone is busy. Some tend to the vegetable gardens, some harvest them, others go to the market and sell them.”

“For everyone starting a vegetable garden, my advice is: try it out! Vegetables will diversify your food basket, but will also allow you to create a second harvest, during the dry season. It is not difficult to get a vegetable crop. The only thing you need is water.”

As water was critical, Helene had a water hole dug on her vegetable plot. “But it was not sufficient, so I dug another one, and yet another one. As my vegetable farm grew, I took a microfinance loan and bought a small motor pump. It takes the water from the dam, fifty meters further and pumps the water to my plot. I share the water with other women on the neighbouring plots. They chip in to cover the gas and the maintenance of the pump.”

On her small plot of one hectare, Helene harvests 70 tins of onions per season. Each tin is about 20 kgs. “And with 25 kgs of potato seeds, I get about 600 to 700 kgs of potatoes. But I also do peppers, and cabbage.”

Asked about her future plans, Helene gives me a wide smile, and a fire glows in her eyes: “I don’t want to sit still. I want to experiment with vegetables uncommon to the people in this region: bell peppers, courgettes, cucumbers,…. I want to grow them, and see if I can create a market for them, that’s my next project.”

Read the original post on the CCAFS blog…

“My grandparents grew crops without any fertilizer, and had no problems. But with the 20 hectares I inherited, the yield was not enough to even feed my own family”, sighs Ganame Adama. “The forest was gone; the fertile soil was taken away by the waters gushing over the land during the rainy season. A hard crust was everything we were left with. We had to find ways to use that water.”

The people from Ninigui, in Burkina Faso’s north, looked for advise from other farmers who lived through similar challenges. They learned how to build small dams, called ‘diguettes’, ‘digues’ or ‘digues filtrantes’ to break the water flow and block the fertile ground from running off: Using a simple long tube, filled with water, they mark ‘contour lines’ with sticks: areas on their flat plots which are at an equal height. Then they stack rocks, only half a foot high, following those contour lines.

“These dams break the flow of the water as it gushes off the plains. While the rain water slowly seeps through one dam, the soil carried by the water, sinks to the bottom, forming strips of fertile land. The water leaking through one dam is stopped again by the dam on the next contour line, about twenty meters further down the slow slope. And again on the next, and again. Each time, a fertile strip of land forms between the lined-up rocks”, explains Adama.

It is only now I notice all stones stacked, snaking through the landscape. It is a remarkable sight, actually, as you can see the vegetation pushing through on the treated plots, in sharp contrast with the barren landscape of the areas without any “digues”. It reminds me of similar techniques used to construct terraces in the mountains of South-East Asia, but now applied on almost flat plains. The effect is the same: the soil heaps up between the stone dams, creating strips of fertile land.

Adama continues: “Between the contour lines, between the digues, we sow in zai’s: staggered holes, a few inches deep. We sow in the zai’s, and cover them with compost. As the water slowly runs through the ‘digues’, it fills the zai’s. Once the first zai’s are full, the water spills over onto the next, and the next. In each zai, the water, combined with the compost, slowly seeps into the ground. When the seed shoots and starts to grow, we can do for several weeks between rains. The crop continues to grow, as the zai is almost like a small island of fertile, wet soil.”

As the rains have become more erratic, starting later in the season and ending earlier, Adama uses the slow growing millet seeds from his grandfathers and combines it with new varieties which grow much faster. “This way, no matter if I have a long rainy season, or a short one, at least one variety always does well. It’s like I am spreading my risk.”

The result is simply amazing. Several years ago, Adama could not feed his family with 20 hectares of land, but with just 3 hectares and new simple techniques, the harvest fills his grain store. “This year, the crop is that good, I will have to build a second grain store”, he smiles, “I not only feed my family, but can also sell off what I have left over.”

NAAM, the farmers’ union he chairs, is not short of new initiatives. They also built dams in the ‘ravines’, the deep trenches cut by the water on the steeper slopes. “There, we can not just stack stones as we do on the flats as they will be washed away. We need to reinforce them using a simple technique of stacking huge nets of weaved metal filled with boulders.”

As the dams break the flow of the water gushing down the gullies, and let it filter through slowly, the soil forms a fertile terrace, used as a plot to grow crops.

“The digues are fine, but to fight against the longer term problem of erosion, there is only one solution”, prophesizes Adama: “Trees! “. His fertile plots are dotted with low scrubby bushes. “Gum trees, we planted some years back. And we continue to plant more. You will see, come back ten years from now, this will be a forest again. The trees will not only stop the soil from running off, but we can also use them for timber and charcoal, as long as we continue to plant more of them. We can not chop them without replanting, or the same problem will start all over again.”

As he walks through the young trees, hardly taller than him, he touches the leaves with tenderness, as if – it occurs to me – he is touching his future.

Read the original on the CCAFS blog…

In the north of Burkina Faso, about one hour’s drive from Ouahigouya, the trees change into low scrubby bushes, the grass turns yellow, and as we drive on, it eventually disappears. The dirt track dissolves into a rocky river bedding, climbs up a steep ridge and levels on a plateau. We stop for second, and take in the scenery.

The landscape is barren. The soil is a dark brown crusted gravel, often bereaved of any vegetation. Houses are grouped together, with the mosques and low mud grain stores sticking out. Here and there a group of kids walks to the school at the edge of the village. A large troop of cows, herded by two nomads, kicks up a cloud of dust.

Ninigui feels like a border town. A village on the edge of the desert and on the edge of survival.

Ganame Adama, who heads NAAM, the local farmers’ union, takes us to his field where he just harvested his millet crop. “Look around you”, he says, “All of this used to be forest. At the time of my father’s father, they hunted wild animals here. They grew a crop without using any fertilizer. They had crops every year without much effort.”

As the forest was cut for firewood, gradually the rains carried away the thin top soil. To make matters worse, the rainy season shifted: it started later, lasted shorter, and came in repeated violent squalls, often causing flooding as the barren ground was no longer able to absorb the rain.

“Rains just gushed over the ground”, Adama explains, “In the hills, it dug out ravines, emptying into the flats. The water would just carry away whatever we had sown. It was no use to apply fertilizer neither. Each time it rained, everything was carried away.”

The men migrated to the neighbouring countries, looking for work. “In the village, you could only find women, babies and old people”, whispers Helene Nana, one of the leading women in the village. “People sometimes talk about misery and poverty, but we, we lived through it. We know what hunger means. We could hardly produce anything anymore on our fields. Children died because of malnutrition. We were so poor we had no money to pay for their funeral. THAT is poverty, THAT is what we lived through.”

Helene turns away, and looks over the horizon. “We had to change. The weather had changed, and we had to change with it. Once we realized that, now twenty years ago, things turned around for us.”

“There were very few of us left in the village”, explains Ganame Ousseni, who keeps cattle. He scrapes his foot over the crusted soil as if to emphasize how hard things were. “We organised ourselves into a farmers’ union and applied for funds to make a small dam. Nobody approved the credit. Nobody believed in a future here. So we rolled up our sleeves and built a mud dam ourselves. The whole village helped. The first year, the dam turned the lowlands into a huge water hole. Even though eventually the mud gave away and the dam broke, we had proven a point: the water would stay. So the next year, we got the credit, and build a proper dam.”

“And that changed everything. The dam could hold the water through almost the whole dry season. The cattle could come and drink from it, and we started to grow vegetables around it, irrigating the crops with water from the dam. Yes, from there on, it only got better. It gave people hope. The war was not won, but we surely had won a battle”, Helene smiles, “we had proven to ourselves we could fight back against the odds, against the weather, the desertification, the erosion, and against poverty. That insight changed everything”.

Original article published on the CCAFS blog

Once upon a time, a red box was delivered to a large aid agency. The courier was a bit confused because of the lack of a clear addressee. It only had the street and the city on it. But as it bore the logo from a big donor to the aid community, he delivered it at the agency’s front gate.

After a while, it ended up on the desk of the “Director Donor Relations, Press Relations and other Public Stuff”. He was a bit surprised. “Hmmm.. a big red box, what do we do with this. Can’t throw it away as it apparently came from a donor”, he thought as his trained marketing mind started on a roll. “And red… hmm.. Communism.. Not much I can do with that. But wait. Wait a second…”.

He immediately called in his whole team and presented The Box: “This green box here, will be the center of our new fundraiser and awareness efforts..”, he started. Immediately some eyebrows were raised, but as trained PR professionals, nobody said a thing: If it was to be a green box, green it would be. Even if everyone knew it was red, and wondered “WTF ?”. The trick was to sit, look, but not see. Have your mind wonder off somewhere else. Nod when everyone else is nodding, smile when everyone else was smiling… That is the trick of a PR professional.

The PR team immediately went to work. Took pictures of the box. Photoshopped it until it was green. They pasted their agency’s CEO (who had not been in the office for two years and moved off to the Bahamas, but nobody was to know) standing next to the green box. Several well known actresses and actors, which are always part of their PR conglomerate, were also photoshopped in it.

The “PR content” team had a bigger challenge… “What can we tell about a red, euh, a green box?”, they brainstormed. “It is green. Which is good. Green is good. Green is in. Green is Eco-stuff. It is a box…. represents mystery,… like development is a mystery. No, wrong, like.. Many poor’s needs are a mystery.. Better. Like.. euh, many problems in the developing world are a mystery. Good. Think further. Green. Islam.. Good. Green is Islam, but only Islam knows that… Will not piss of the Americans which will think of Eco stuff. What more..? “Empty the box”… no “Join the box”.. Better… “Join the Box”. “Wrap the world in green paper of change”… Work on that.. Mmm.., “Green Trap, Change Wrap”, no. More.”The Green Wrap” Right… Green, the colour of change. Al will like it. The Iranian people will too. Shit, for all we know, the Taliban might like it!” It went on for hours. It was clear all PR staff, who were seconded for three months from big PR companies, as a collective tax writeoff, knew their marketing stuff.

Then it went to the operations department, the finance department, the risk analysis department (who indicated that green was also the colour of the election protests in Iran, but all wiped it off the table as “nobody cared about that Iran shit anymore”), the IT department (who distributed green mousepads) and even the catering people (who wore green caps for two months). The security department suggested to scan to box as nobody had opened it. And there was an awkward smell coming from it.. But they got orders from “up above” to keep their hands off.

In short, it took less than two months to prepare the campaign, and to present it at the next “General Government Meeting”. They got the nod from the Americans and the Brits, which was good enough to roll out the campaign globally. None of the other donors were important anyway.
Neither the US nor UK knew what it was all about trusted the organisation to know what they were doing. It was also as a trouble-free way to empty their budget before the year’s end. Otherwise questions were asked. And by nodding, they stepped up as a major donor, so they’d see their logo on all PR material. “Donation from the American and British People”. Solid deal, man. Solid deal..
Some rumour that the US and UK representative to the General Government Meeting had been drinking the night before, and were actually dozing off. Which would explain their enthusiastic nodding at the proposal. But that is just a rumour of course.

The Green Box was put in a huge display case, stuck on a massive rotating pole with flickering lights and all, in front of the agencies’ office. It even dwarfed the McDonald’s sign right next to it. McDonald being one of the main private donors to the agency, did protest every so slightly. But they were quickly reminded that Burger King was just around the corner and waiting… Indeed, the main private donors: McDonald’s, Bayer, Shell and Bureau for the Promotion of Tourism in West-Agriculturia (which later turned out to be a tax outlet for the Albanese Mafia, but that is another story), all supported the idea and made small green boxes for change collection in their offices and outlets. “Change for Green”.

In one of the roll-out meetings that followed, some staff did question the content of the Green Box. One even opposed the idea, but the cold stares she got, had her sit down and be quiet. After all, nobody wants to be a lone tree. They catch a lot of wind. And she had only a temporary employment contract, so ‘not extended due to funding limitations’ was easy.

Once this initial opposition was dealt with, all went very fast. Everyone was enthusiastic. Directors pitched in their support, as they knew the Green Box campaign had a huge budget. They all wanted a piece of the pie. Staff stepped up to be the “Champion of the Green Box”. There was a competition to collect the most money from family. Kids had a worldwide “Green Box” painting competition, you name it,…

The press had a ball. They pitched everything from “Turning Development Green”, “The Green movement: turning evolution into revolution”. “The Largest Green Aid Campaign Ever”… Millions, Billions, it did not matter, figures were thrown. Everyone loved the hype. I mean apart from Putin having the flu and the Americans invading North Korea, it was a slow news month.
Even Foxnews feature something. “Large Green box, center to Obama Tax Evasion” in which they proved through extensive investigative journalism, that the box was sent straight from Obama’s office, and contained money left over from his election campaign…

Three years later, the Green Box campaign was declared a success. It went in the books as a school example how to to strategize for a good fundraiser, how to motivate staff for your causes, how to rally donor support.
In the next government meeting, the UK and US reps gave an enthusiastic nod on the final evaluation report, and approved funding for the next project.

So, everyone was happy. Loads of money went around. And they even helped some poor along the way. Not many, as their 10% declared overhead cost, did not include 50% staff cost, and 20% transport cost, 10% security cost, plus the agreed 10% miscellaneous cost.

It did not matter. Everyone was happy. With the funding generated, the organisation survived another year. There were no scandals, so donors were happy. And does it not feel good to help the Poor of the World.

Oh and the box? It was delivered to the wrong address. It was supposed to go to the recycling company next door, and contained 300 dead AAA batteries.

Question to be asked:
How many green boxes exist in the aidworld? How many times are we all sitting in a meeting, enthusiastically nodding at eachother, although we all know the proposal is shit, the product is shit, the purpose is shit, but it does not feel right to ask questions or to oppose. How many times are senseless things done, because “donors want it”, because politics want it, simply because the boss wants it? Do we leave enough room for critical thinking and opposition? How many times are we sucked up as part of this massive dynamic which includes all the “wins-wins”, and where it is almost impossible to stand up in the stream and say “Is this really what we should be doing?”. There is no reward in opposition, after all. Loser!

A Wise Friend told me not long ago, that in the Aid World failure, incompetency, “half-half” are much more common and accepted than in the Commercial World. I think I will start to believe that.

Picture slightly modified from a find on Words, Pictures, Humor