meet the farmers

This past week I spent three days out in the "field". I traveled up to the districts of Mopeia and Morrumbala in Zambezia Province to visit with the local farmers who are actively involved in our agricultural projects. It was incredibly refreshing to see a different area of Mozambique than what I have experienced thus far. These districts were lush and green with tall grass, fields of maize, thick bush and rock formations randomly protruding throughout the landscape. The air was much cooler in the evenings (though the sun was incredibly intense during the day)! I accompanied our director of agricultural programs in Zambezia Province, who is a wealth of knowledge! The four hour drive to and from and the walks through the bush and meeting with the farmers was a wonderful educational experience for me. (I'm still learning to identify the different crops planted and harvested here in Moz.)

*Side note: for those of you who may not know, Mozambique had no annual emergencies this year! No flooding or cyclones. The southern half of the country is experiencing a drought, but it has not yet reached emergency status. I therefore have been transferred over to Agriculture to continue working on up and coming proposals and to do some monitoring and evaluation on current projects. I find it a bit ironic the year I work abroad on an emergency response program there are no emergencies!!

The field site visits were positive for the majority. The results of current projects were cut in half with the success. The majority of the multiplication plots that WV created, trained and supported were doing well; though some were planted late and therefore are lacking in average growth for this time of year. Other fields where farmers hired out workers who did not receive the training were suffering. A couple fields were quite miserable in that they didn't succeed at all. A new animal traction project has started and we spoke with three different farmers groups in these two districts to participate in the project. A cow and a plow will be provided to introduce an alternative to weeding by hand and hoe. The cow will also produce milk and eventually be joined with a bull to produce a calf, which will be given to another farmers groups to sustain the project. The lack of rainfall was an issue with all farmers. Weeding was the biggest complaint and culprit to the crops suffering. Hopefully the animal traction project will assist in this problem. Crops planted and assessed included maize, rice, cotton, millet, sesame and peanut. And a few others exotic to N.America and which I can't remember at the moment. :-)

I really enjoyed this time out in the field and meeting with the farmers. It brought to life the words I've been writing in proposals for the past few months. A beautiful thing!

Pics are posted on my flickr site. You can check out the sunshine and the green. :-)