“I harvested practically nothing,” Founé Danfakha says of her 2011 yield. She grows groundnuts, maize, and rice in Bembou, a small village about 50 kilometers east of Kedougou, near the border with Mali. The 60-year-old mother of five children and grandmother of four says, “If the rain comes normally, I can get 20 sacks of groundnuts. Last year I got only five.”
Danfakha has about five acres of land. She says her last harvest was dismal: She got three bags of rice, which is about 30 percent of the normal harvest. She planted about an acre of maize, but harvested none at all.
No seed, no harvest
Danfakha is sitting in front of her home, with her four-year-old grandson on her lap. The boy is quiet, and seems to have little energy. Danfakha says she is feeding everyone in the household regularly, despite the fact that the food she grew last year lasted only two months after the harvest in November. Usually she grows enough to last four months. She says she is meeting her family needs with money sent from her daughter, who is digging for gold in a nearby mining area.
When the rains start, Danfakha’s daughter will come back to help her prepare her fields and plant. “I think we will have to cover our needs growing groundnuts,” she says. “I don’t have enough rice seed, but I think I have enough groundnut seed.” When her daughter comes back they will have no income from mining while she works in the fields, so it is a calculated risk.
“The situation is difficult here. There’s a problem of rain,” Danfakha says. “It’s been irregular. If there’s not enough rain, there won’t be a harvest. And if there is no seed, there’ll be no harvest.”
Oxfam is collaborating with local organizations in Kedougou to help farmers there and in other areas of West Africa with crucial agricultural support, so they can plant this spring. Oxfam is also planning work that will help keep drinking water clean and safe, and provide food or short-term employment for cash wages, so farmers can meet their food needs over the summer while they work their fields.
Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
]]>She planted a maize field and hoped to grow a ton, but only got one 50-kg bag. She says the poor result was due to “lack of rain, lack of good equipment for cultivation, and lack of money to pay for labor.”
Her situation is rather typical in the small village of Bandafassy, about 15 kilometers from the town of Kedougou in eastern Senegal, where erratic rain last year hit farmers hard. The resulting high demand for food grown in other parts of the country is pushing up prices, and forcing farmers who were already struggling to feed their families to find creative ways of coping.
Camara is the one in the family responsible for agriculture, but her husband Nicolas Keita helps prepare fields for planting and the harvest – when he is not away mining for gold to earn cash.
Keita says they planted in early June, but by the end of the month it had stopped raining, and what they were growing dried out in July. They replanted in August, and invested in some fertilizer. The rains were intermittent in September and stopped altogether in the beginning of October. "The rain gap in June and July prevented any decent harvest," he says.
"Things are going to go badly," Camara says she realized after the harvest. "But we will make every effort." She turned to gathering wild fruits in the forest, such as the seed pods of the baobab tree and jujube berries to feed her family.
To earn money, her mother-in-law began making clay pots for storing water; Camara walks 15 kilometers to Kedougou (carrying a 10-pound pot on her head) where she sells the pots for about $5 each. If she can make a sale, she buys food and returns. In a good week, she can sell two or three pots.
Camara reports that after a good harvest she can feed her family for about six months, but this past year the food only lasted about four. She says she is down to her last two bags of rice, one of which she wants to save for seed. “We will always find a way to get by,” she says with a certain resignation. The threat to farmers like Camara is that of another year of diminished harvests: Successive bad years can lead to a downward spiral that even the most resourceful farmer can’t avoid.
Oxfam is designing programs to help farmers like Camara get the resources they need to plant crops this year, so that when the rains come people will have an opportunity to grow what they need for food. Cherif Sow, who works for the Kedougou Association for Action and Development, an Oxfam partner, says the need for support in the area is crucial. “We have to help the communities as quickly as possible to help them survive the lean time, otherwise it will have an impact on their agricultural production.”
Oxfam is aiming to help 1.2 million people across seven countries with programs that include cash transfers and cash-for-work initiatives, veterinary care for the livestock on which many families depend, and access to clean water and sanitation. We are also campaigning to change the root causes of this crisis. Find out how you can support our efforts.
]]>The agriculture ministry reported that there are now 1,070,384 farmers—about 70 percent of whom are women—applying the System of Rice Intensification, or SRI, on 185,065 hectares (457,110 acres) of their rice fields. The number of farmers using SRI practices in Vietnam has tripled since 2009.
SRI is a package of good agricultural techniques for hand-planted rice that helps farmers reduce their costs. And the innovative techniques are helping the poorest rice producers on the smallest rice paddy areas boost their rice yields: When compared to traditional rice growing techniques, SRI producers can increase rice production by as much as 500 kilos (more than 1,000 pounds) per hectare. (A hectare is about 2.5 acres.) This typically increases income by about $130 per hectare, enough money to cover food costs for a month for a family of four, or invest in five piglets to raise and sell.
“There is significant evidence that lives are changing at the village level,” said Le Minh, Oxfam Associate Country Director in Vietnam. “I give most of the credit to the collaboration amongst our farmers. When they are successful, they want to share their success with families and friends.”
SRI farmers generally use less seed, sometimes as much as 70 percent less. They do this by transplanting fewer rice seedlings, and spacing them farther apart. This reduces competition for nutrients and allows the rice plants to have more room to grow stronger roots, which makes them more resistant to pests and diseases.
Inspired by their own success, farmers like Le Ngoc Thach are committed to help others. Thach attended an SRI training and visited a few demonstration fields. He gave SRI a try in 2006 and was convinced that these growing techniques would improve the lives of farmers in his cooperative. He started to spread the word. Now 2,000 families, his entire grower cooperative in northern Vietnam, are part of a network of over a million farmers who employ SRI and earn extra income.
Vuong Hoang Kim, a cooperative member in Yen Bai province, has volunteered to teach other women farmers about using SRI. “We all are very happy to see our rice plants grow very quickly and we gain a lot of benefits from these simple techniques,” she said.
Oxfam has been working with several partner organizations to promote SRI to small-scale farmers as a means to help poor farmers in Vietnam. One partner is the Plant Protection Department in the Ministry of Rural Development, which has been training farmers in SRI techniques in northern provinces of Vietnam with support from Oxfam since 2007. SRI training is part of a larger effort to help build the ability and confidence of smallholder farmers to develop agricultural innovations as a way to earn more money. The program is especially important for women in rural areas, who normally depend on agriculture for income and food.
“It’s a great achievement for small farmers because they are the ones leading the SRI innovation,” said Ngo Tien Dung of the Agriculture Ministry’s Plant Protection Department. “We need to build momentum for SRI extension over the coming years. It’s a smart investment needed to lift people out of poverty and to boost the national economy.”
Vietnam is the second largest rice exporter and accounts for one fifth of global rice supply. In 2010 the country exported 6.6 million tons, worth about $2.8 billion. Oxfam’s collaboration with the Plant Protection Department is helping small-scale farmers, who are usually the poorest, to increase their share of this business. SRI farmers now represent about 10% of all rice growers in Vietnam.
]]>But a hungry child exists in a larger context: if we nourish communities, they can nourish their own children.
The woman on our cover, Fatou Doumbia, and other women in her village in Mali, pooled their resources last year. They set aside nearly a ton of millet as a defense against the hunger they’d seen as food prices spiked. Hers is another face of hunger: determined, resourceful.
After the last harvest, Oxfam reached out to supporters to respond to the food crisis. We’ve devoted much of this issue to looking at what communities have done to avoid the kinds of hardships they confronted. When people living in poverty are hit by a food crisis or natural disaster, they lack resources to tide them over.
Oxfam works to help people build their resilience. Let respect and hope fuel your efforts to support women like Doumbia.
]]>"Much like the Cairo speech, we are hoping the Accra speech will signal a new era of engagement, respect and partnership with Africa," said Raymond C. Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. "This historic visit, so early in his presidency and on the heels of important commitments at the G8 in Italy, signals the importance President Obama places on African development."
Millions of Africans live in extreme poverty, and are now hit hard by the global economic and climate crisis. Sub-Saharan Africa alone is expecting losses of up to $245 billion this year as a result of the global slump, which is almost seven times the amount it receives in global aid. In Ghana, a resource-rich country, the life expectancy is a mere 58 years and 70% of people in the poor northern regions live on less than $1 a day. Despite the economic crisis, Africa continues to attract large investments to extract the riches that lie below ground, producing billions in government revenues. By 2015, oil revenues in African oil-exporting countries will exceed the amount needed to meet key social development goals by $35 billion annually—but investing this money wisely is not a sure thing.
"Africa is rich in natural resources like gold, diamonds and oil, but, too often, these resources have contributed to corruption, conflict, and human rights abuses," said Offenheiser. "But important progress can be made to turn this around. President Obama can help by supporting increased transparency and the disclosure of payments from US and other companies to African governments to help ensure responsible use of billions of dollars of government revenues per year."
Oxfam praised Ghana's recent commitment to transparency in the country's nascent oil sector and urged President Obama to encourage the government to follow through on these commitments and encourage other African governments to follow the positive steps the Ghanaian government has taken to date.
Oxfam also noted that key reforms are needed to make the US foreign aid system as effective as possible in reducing poverty and creating prosperous communities throughout the developing world. The US currently lacks a coherent assistance strategy for many of the countries it is trying to help. Oxfam is calling on the US to keep recipient country governments and their public informed on the nature and amount of American aid, help the recipient country to manage its own development, and ultimately, let each recipient country lead its own development agenda.
"American generosity is undermined by a reactive approach that prioritizes relief efforts—like food aid—that saves lives, but doesn't address underlying causes of poverty and hunger," said Offenheiser. "If the US wants to use its aid consistently help the poor in countries such as Ghana, it needs a global development strategy to guide the US government's efforts to fight poverty."
Climate change is already impacting the lives and livelihoods of millions of poor people in Africa, as a recent Oxfam report details. Tackling these impacts is essential to addressing food security and broader development objectives. President Obama must commit to help bring about a comprehensive global climate strategy that will help poor communities cope with the impacts of global warming, from failed crops to dwindling reserves of clean water and displacement caused by extreme weather events.
"Global hunger and poverty is a human tragedy exacerbated by faltering investments in agricultural production and the growing impacts of climate change," said Offenheiser. "We are pleased to see President Obama follow through on his commitments to reassert US leadership and address the challenges facing the billion people around the world without enough food."
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