Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Time In Agriculture

So I have been wrapped in chains with work and have had no time to reflect and make any blog posts for a while. This is my last week and I am doing two more rounds of presentations. The topics include: Personal Development - What it means to me, Goal Setting - How it can benifit you at work and within yourself and Agriculture Value Chains - A Big Picture Session.

I am scrambling around writting reports, having meetings with the MDGs and being on tv. It has been wild. I have so many stories to tell.

I have included something I wrote a while back that I never really polished up. Maybe you can forgive me anway.

Cheers,

Tony

agriculture in zambia: a perspective on rural farming in the copperbelt area

From what I have seen farming generally works this way: you grow maize (corn) and if you don't you are a sucker.

Everybody in Zambia grows maize because it is the thing to do, it would be as if you did not breathe in Canada. If you don't grow maize there is something wrong going on or you are crazy. Because maize is the main ingredient in the staple food, Nshima, there is a ever lasting high demand for it.

You will get money when you grow maize, this is garunteed. The question is how much and this all depends on the goverment. Since 11 million people live off maize (they eat Nshima here eat least once a day....most eat it twice...some 3 times) the government has stepped in to regulate the price of maize so it is fair for both sides. They do this by setting a price for the maize for which is must be sold at, the intention is that farmers get a good price to balance out the cost and makes enough money for the rest of the year....in a perfect situation the farmer would grow only maize and live off the profit for the rest of the year...but the system dosen't work that way....but should it really....i don't know.

The governemnt sets the price of the maize through an advisor/representative of the farmers across Zambia. How this person is elected I don't know, I have been unable to find out but it seems that this is a very important position and it would be necessary to chose one who is for the farmers....no? Well from what I understand, this is not really the case. The person currently in charge of advising on the price is not a farmer but a middleman who buys maize in order to process it. This person is part of the national milling industry who buys from thousands of farmers to process the maize into a product which is then bought by the pubic (and funny enough farmers themselves).

Why does this bother me?

Well I see it as a conflict of interest. This person represents the biggest buyer of maize in the country, why would he or she fight for higher prices for the farmers? In the profit scheme of things a buyer always wants to get the LOWEST price in order to maximize profit thus regardless of any promised good intentions there is always the doubt that this person has his/her hand in boths pots.

Right now farmers get K65,000 per 25kg (15$ canadian per bag) but is this a fair price for the farmers. Most say it is not, they wish for something above K70,000.
So what do you do when you don't get enough money from your stapple crop....
Grow other products!

This is were IDE comes in.

Maize is grown only in the rainny season (Nov-April) because of the large farmering areas used and the high water requirements for production, it is not impossible to grow during the dry season but because of the high water content you would need to be irrigating so offten it not be profitable.

Thus during the dry season farmers grow a variety (kinda...) of vegetables in order to make extra cash and food for their famalies. They typically grow cabbage, tomatoes, rape and onion...but there are many who grow bananas and oranges but you need lots of water and some sort of advanced irrigation technology (Zambian level) for those.

Right now most farmers are growing vegetables during the dry season as it has become a necessity in order to survive. From what I have experienced the farmers do it for extra money and for food (substinance), most do it for substinance. IDE (and the government from what I understand) is promoting the idea of farming as a buisness, thus catering to growing to make cash and not just to eat. This requires that farmers understand the bigger picture of farming in Zambia, especially at the marketing level.

When treating farming as a buisness, the idea of just growing cabbage, tomatoes, rape and so on needs to be changed because if everyone grew the same thing the market would be flooded and there would be low prices all around (imagine the supply and demand curves....high supply leads to low demand...leads to low price...need to find equilibrium....how?).

(Rural) Farmers usually sell to their nearest market as it is close. These people don't have trucks to carry their good so they transport them by foot (can you imagine carrying 50kgs of cabbage for 25km...they do it) or by bicycle...they do that too. Farmers usually opt to sell their products at a lower price because other markets are too far and the investment in a renting a truck is worrysome (sketchy driver, scared to get the same low price at another market...).

Transport is expensive because the roads suck. Straight up. If there were roads like the ones in back country canada here, things would be SOOOOO different...but there is not. The roads make things slow, they destroy trucks quickly and they make some places inaccessible because of the size and shape of the road.

There is a development theory which states the idea that if they just built roads in rural areas/countries development would solve itself....being here really makes me think about that...i really wonder about it sometimes...

Back to growing for a moment.

Since during the dry season it does not rain (not once from May-Oct) there needs to be a way to water your garden/farm. Most people do this by bucket (can you imagine watering one or two hectars with a plastic bucket...you also need to fill it up....you are walking back and forth alot...for a long time) which is exhausting and time consuming. This is the reason irrigation equipment is so great because vit reduces the back breaking labour of extracting and mobilizing the water throughout the farm, it also gives you time to relax and umm.....farm more? hahaha...free time here is still wierd to me...maybe they goto church more...I don't know....once irrigation is settled maybe we can start building libraries in rural areas to take up the time of farmers who don't have much else to do. wow, wouldn't that be great?!!? build libraries for rural people, start inpiring learning by reading....this is another conversation..

I am sure my thoughts have changed but this is my perspective at the end of June.

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