Excellent! - excellentdevelopment.com

Food Production

"In order to eradicate poverty in Africa, we must encourage communities to produce what they consume, and to consume what they produce." - Professor Mugambi, Nairobi University

80% of Africa’s poor earn their living from farming. Many of them live in areas where their lives are ruled by lack of water, making it hard for them to grow enough food to survive.

During the 2006 drought across the Horn of Africa, the United Nations said a "catastrophic" number of people were at risk of starvation. 3.5 million of the 10 million people at risk were from Kenya.

Excellent Development's work with communities terracing land, building sand dams and planting trees helps to create an environment more conducive to sufficient food production by improving soil and water conservation. Sand dams further help by providing enough water for vegetable nurseries. Increasing the range of produce grown improves both nutrition and food security. Because they are spending less time collecting water, people are free to spend more time working on their farms. As well as vegetables, and fruit from the trees, a wider variety of crops can be grown to feed both people and their livestock.

Excellent Development encourages the zero-grazing of livestock. Feeding and watering them from a pen allows farmers to collect the manure, which can be used to fertilise farmland.

Nitrogen-fixing trees are also planted to help to fertilise the soil and retain moisture in the soil - increasing crop yields.

Traditionally farmers practised mixed cropping - effectively doubling the field space and increasing yields - by improved pest control and water retention. Sadly this has been discouraged by government extension workers who promote single cropping, in line with 'modern' agricultural techniques.

Excellent Development field officers work with farmers to encourage the mixed cropping of staple crops maize and beans, which compliment each other with their different ground coverage and root networks.

In addition they encourage farmers to grow a wider range of traditional food crops like sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, pigeon peas and cow peas, reducing the risk of failed harvests - particularly as they are more suited to dry areas.

Excellent don't encourage the growing of traditional cash crops like coffee, as Simon Maddrell explains - "The philosophy of Excellent Development in terms of income generation is to make sure the farmers keep control of their own destiny. People are often persuaded to grow coffee which takes a lot of time and energy and they don't even know if they're going to get an income at the end, or the price they're going to get for it and they know there's only one place they're going to sell it - that doesn't give anyone control over their own lives."

By growing a wider range of crops, including fruit and vegetables, farmers can feed themselves and create a surplus - selling it when they want to, where they want to and at a price that suits them.

We encourage these and other strategies help increase people's food security.