IDE Update

It has been a while since I wrote about what is going on with my work at IDE so I thought that I should bring you up to date on what has been happening in the office in the past month.

Sugar Beans

There's still a fair amount of uncertainty of what is going on with the sugar beans. The buyer came to Kabwe while I was in Malawi and they spent about two and a half days visiting the various farmer groups who had been growing the beans. The main take-away from the meetings was that the company was going through some financial difficulties (along with the rest of the world...) which had largely resulted in the changes in price and their ability to provide transport. However, they have said that they may be able to pick up beans from the farmers here if they are organized in a central location. We are still waiting for a for sure answer about this... But before this happens, they have asked for the farmers to see exactly how many beans they have so that they know what to expect. So in the past couple weeks, farmers have told us how much they have and we have communicated that to the buyer through the IDE head office. And.... that's about all that has happened. The farmers are starting to get pretty anxious. It is getting towards the time when they want start buying inputs like seed and fertilizer for the next growing season and they want the money from the beans in order to do that.

Provincial Show

The second weekend of July was busy with the Provincial Agriculture and Commercial Show. For us, this meant three days of running around preparing our stand and then two days spent at the show grounds talking with farmers and others working within the agriculture sector. Our stand had a couple treadle pumps and a drip kit on display which created a lot of interest. We were also selling produce from a few of our farmers including tomatoes, onions, oranges and beans. The sales were super successful with the last bag of beans being sold just as we were starting to clean up at the end of the day on Sunday.

(Me and my fellow field staff at our booth at the show)

The show itself was really interesting. There were displays from all kinds of companies who deal with farming inputs, some cooperatives displaying and selling produce, a few government stands including the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives and the Ministry of Fisheries, some banks offering credit and many others. There were performances by some bands and dancers and the guest of honour, the Deputy Minister for Central Province, gave a speech about the importance of agriculture for the province and country.

This show marks the third of four levels of shows. They start at a block level, then to district, then provincial and then national. Groups who win first or second prize in their category at each level are able to advance to the next level. In general, it seems like there is a bit of a disconnect between shows, though. Farmers mainly participate at the bock and district level but when it comes to provincial it seems that very few are able to come or even are aware that the show is happening. It's a shame because there is so much that the farmers could gain from attending a show like this but very few do. Then the national show is even harder to access, for IDE it is mainly those at head office who go, and the show itself sounds like it is aimed more at commercial farmers. I'm interested to see what other differences exist between the national and provincial shows so at the beginning of August I'll be headed down to Lusaka for a day or two to check it out!

Field Visits

This month's plan has a huge amount of field visits planned. Crop production trainings, irrigation demos and promotions, input agent organization, demo plot monitoring.... but it seems that we have been hitting a few road blocks. At the end of June, we had a few meetings where farmers didn't show up because either they didn't hear about the meeting, weren't interested or there was a funeral. In one of the groups we went to visit, there is another NGO working in maternal health who give handouts to people who attend their meetings, so since we don't give handouts, there is less incentive to come to an IDE meeting. Since then, Buumba's bike has been having some serious issues. It has been "fixed" a couple of times, but the problem, whatever it is, kept persisting. We're hoping that it has been fixed for real now, but without it we are left with only one bike and a need for some alternate plan if we want two field programs going on the same day.

I was able to get into the field for a treadle pump demo not too long ago. Peter Elkind, an American based out of the head office in Lusaka, brought up a few treadle pumps and we headed out to one of the newer groups north of Kabwe. There was a really good turnout at the meeting and we set up the pump to do the demo but the well we were pumping from was a bit too deep for this specific model to draw water from (about 7m). So we left the pump with the farmers to take to the nearby river to try out so that they could see how it really works. Overall, there was a lot of interest in the pumps. Many of the farmers have access to this river meaning the water level isn't too much of a problem and currently only one of them owns a working treadle pump.

(Evelyn Kashinga, one of the farmers in Mukobeko, watering her beds of okra while her nephew pumps away on their treadle pump)

(Me, treadle pump-ing!)

Institutional Markets

I mentioned earlier that I was really interested in learning about the institutional markets around Kabwe and what opportunities exist there for farmers. Around the city we have a couple hospitals, lodges, a college and a university among other institutions who buy fairly large quantities of produce on a regular basis. Few of the small scale farmers have been succeeding to sell to these places, partially due to payments being made very late, but I figured that there had to be either some really good reasons behind that or some way that we could work the small holder farmers in. So Treeza and I developed a short survey to take to some of these institutions to try to understand where they are currently buying their produce and if there is a possibility of linking them to some of the farmers.

Last week, we hit the streets with our survey and I'd say so far that the results have been pretty positive. We managed to talk to a few people and most of them seem to be buying produce from the markets and paying upfront. A different story from what I had originally heard about delayed payments, but maybe we haven't gotten to those institutions yet?! At any rate, I'm hopeful that there are at least a few places like hospitals and lodges where we might be able to set up more stable relationships between farmers and buyers.

Alright, question time...! How can we take the model of agriculture shows and make it work better for the farmers? By getting more farmers to provincial/national shows or more companies and organizations to the block/district shows or something completely different? What role could IDE play in this?

That's it for now, mushale bwino (stay well)!