Field Realities

A while back, I promised to give a more detailed description of what goes on at the field level of IDE in Kabwe. So far, I've been able to be a part of a bunch of different programs that are under way and I'll try to give a bit of a description of each.

Sugar beans

I described a little bit of situation with the sugar beans in a previous post. Basically, farmers have been growing the beans for the past two years on contract with a processing company in Lusaka. Since the first year went quite well for the farmers, there has been a significant increase in interest. This year however, we are facing a bit of a challenge with the buyer. The original price for the beans was $1US/kg, but this year it has dropped to $0.73. For the most part that is OK, farmers will still be able to make some money but a lot of them were expecting more. The main challenge that we are facing right now is in transportation. The contract states that the buyer would come and collect beans if there is more than 5 tonnes, and in Kabwe, our estimates are showing that we have significantly more than that. However, when the price was released, the buyer also said that they wouldn't be coming to pick up the beans. So right now, we are in a bit of a limbo stage. Farmers are waiting with their beans ready and we are waiting for the buyer who is coming this week to talk to the farmers. We are hoping that they will agree to come pick up beans if we arrange for them all to be at a central collection point, otherwise, farmers will have to transport their beans to Lusaka themselves.

This is a really good example of the challenges that are faced in building relationships between farmers and buyers. There is a lack of trust that has been propagated by a variety of failed linkages. From the farmer's perspective, many are hesitant to enter into these agreements because they face risks of the buyer delaying payments, ripping them off, changing prices and not following through on agreements. Although I don't know what the specific constraints are from the buyer's side in this scenario, often it is a matter of lack of commitment, consistency and quality from farmers as well as really high transaction costs as they have to deal with multiple small farmers rather than one really big one.

Anyways, we are really hopeful that the result of this year's sugar beans crop will be a positive one so that the relationship will continue. If the farmers leave feeling like they have been taken advantage of, the chance of them entering into a similar agreement with a different company later on will decrease significantly.

Market linkages

One of the major focuses of my time here is on the output market linkage side of IDE's work.

Last week, we had a meeting between farmers and market agents. The goal of this meeting was to create and strengthen the relationship between these two groups in order to make the process of getting crops to the market and selling them much easier. The response to the meeting was very positive, there was a high turnout and a lot of issues were discussed. We revealed a lot of challenges faced by both farmers and market agents and hopefully in the coming months we will be able to start addressing them.

(Meeting with the farmers and market agents)

This week, we are also having a meeting with Savanna, the company who has developed the SMS system and although we were originally only looking for 10 participants (both farmers and market agents), we already have 20 people who have said they are coming! We have started doing a bit of market price research ourselves, building up to the SMS system becoming more widely known and used. Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, Treeza goes to the market to find out what the prices are like for different crops and then those prices are sent out to the contact farmers via text message. This is a pretty local representation of what the market is doing, but if the SMS thing catches on, both farmers and market agents will be able to know what prices are like all around Zambia.

Another area of marketing that I'm very interested in is those of institutional markets. Within Kabwe there are lodges, hospitals, a university, the prison, restaurants and other governmental institutions where produce is being consumed. At the moment, there is very little interaction between these institutions and small holder farmers and there are many possible reasons behind this. From the farmer's perspective they are wary of dealing with these institutions because they tend to take a long time to pay and have many requirements that the farmers must meet. In the office, we are working to develop a survey for the institutions to try to understand the situation from their point of view, where they are buying their produce and why. Then we may be able to work on a path forward for creating a stronger link between them and small holder farmers.

Crop production trainings and variety research

A lot of the field visits that are done involve crop production trainings. This basically involves conducting training sessions for farmers on everything from farm planning to pest control and often includes setting up demo plots. Recently we also started doing some crop variety research. A couple farmers volunteered a small piece of land where we planted three different varieties of tomato and eggplant. Over the coming weeks, these varieties will be monitored to see how they develop in the local climate and how much they are affected by different pests.

Input supply

IDE has also been involved in promoting treadle pumps and other irrigation technology. There was a company providing coupons to subsidize the cost of the pumps and IDE has been helping with that, although so far a lot of farmers haven't used the coupons. A treadle pump is a human-powered machine used to pump water out of the ground and into the fields. It's kind of like a stair-master that pumps water while you do your work out! It's a pretty cool technology, though a bit of an investment for farmers (with the coupon discount, they are about 700 000 kwacha - about $150). At the moment, the water table is high enough that watering using buckets isn't too difficult, but as it drops through the dry season, treadle pumps will become more and more useful. The one disadvantage is that you can't use a treadle pump alone, you need at least two maybe three people to make it work because someone has to be pumping and someone has to be out in the field filling up basins to use for watering. So for Mr. Nkhuwa, although he has a treadle pump, he only uses it on the weekends when the children aren't at school.

Another area of input supply that has just started is related to seeds, fertilizers and other chemicals. IDE is planning to use the same agent system that I was talking about for output markets to help get inputs to farmers. These agents will be in locations that are more convenient for farmers to get to and the agents will also be able to travel around to farmers in the area. Another service that the agents will do is repackage products into smaller sizes that are more useful and avoid products going to waste. This way, although the total price of a product will go up as the agent needs some revenue, the costs saved through transport, time and smaller packaging will make it worthwhile for the farmers.

This project is in partnership with CARE International. So CARE will be involved in linking the agents up to input dealers and suppliers and providing them with business training while IDE will work on linking agents with farmers and providing some more technical agricultural training. Right now, we are in the process of identifying groups outside of Kabwe who would benefit from having this system. Some of them already have agents working in the area so we will identify them with the farmers as well.

This project is the only area of our current work that involves maize which is a pretty big thing. A lot of IDE's efforts face blockages when it comes to maize because for farmers, that is their primary concern. Nshima is the staple food of Zambia and most nshima is made from maize flour, though it can also be made from cassava, sorghum or other types of roots. So from the time when farmers start preparing their fields for maize in October until harvest time in May, any other crop is a secondary concern.

(Some of the boys at Mr. Nkhuwa's farm, separating maize kernels from the cobs)

Of course there are other programs going on. Buumba does some gender trainings aimed at demonstrating the benefits of having both men and women in a family involved in the farm. Bernard also has a lot of work on his hands with farmer recruitment as we work towards the target of 3000 farmers. So far I haven't been too involved in any of these so I can't give much more of a detailed picture.

Next steps

This week, I'm headed to Senga Bay, Malawi with the rest of the southern Africa JFs for our JF retreat. We will spend a few days together reflecting on the past month of our placements and planning the way forward for the rest of our time here. I'm really excited to catch up, see what's going on in the rest of the IDE offices and the other placements throughout Malawi and Zambia.

My question for this post is related to monitoring. A lot of IDE's projects, and development projects as a whole, are quite number-focused. Our definition of success is based our donor's desire to know how many people we reach etc. and understandably so, as they want to make sure that their money is being used effectively. So how do we build quality monitoring into our projects along with the quantity? And if the two become opposing factors, which one should be the focus?

This has been a long post, so thanks for staying with me. I really appreciate all the replies and I welcome any kind of input or feedback on the topics I've been writing about or things that you would like to hear about (this is for you, anyways!).

So until next time, take care!!