Tag Archives: farmers

In Praise of Rural Women

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Today is International Day of Rural Women. In honor of the rural women with whom Heifer works, Elizabeth Bintliff, regional director of Heifer’s West Africa Program, wrote the following post.


Say the word “rural” and it conjures up all kindsof images, some positive and some negative; vast expenses of land, no modernfacilities, illiterate or ignorant people, poor, agrarian, scarce and more.When you put the word in the context of a developing country, and add thegender dimension, one begins to understand the enormous challenges that ruralwomen face.

It is for all these reasons and more that the UNGeneral Assembly established the International Day of Rural Women in 2008 to becelebrated on the eve of World Food Day. This day commemorates what the UN characterizes as “the critical roleand contribution of rural women, including indigenous women, in enhancingagricultural and rural development, improving food security and eradicatingrural poverty.”


For all the challenges they face, rural women stillhave to feed and sustain their children and families against innumerable odds. Theirdays often begin earlier than the sun rises and end long after the sun sets. Inbetween, they are fetching water – often across great distances, usuallybalancing heavy vessels on their heads, gathering firewood for fuel, workinghunched-over on farms to grow food using rudimentary implements, sometimes withbabies tied precariously on their backs. Life for rural women can be especiallydifficult, and the rewards of their labor are usually small.

The good news is that creating a better livelihoodfor rural women often requires little investment. The key ingredient is simply opportunity.

TakeDiana Asua, a 37-year-old wife and mother of three children, for example. Shelives in a rural community of Santa in Cameroon and is her husband’s secondwife. In addition to her own children, she is raising the six children of herco-wife, who is now diseased.


Dianadescribes herself 11 years ago as “a mere housewife who depended on my husbandtotally for everything about my upkeep and that of the family.  I was also engaged in farming, as any villagewoman would do.”


Agift of pigs from Heifer in 2007 turned things around for her. Soon, theavailability of manure meant better farm production, there we pigs to fattenand sell, there was income to pay for school fees and medical bills. There wasa path out of poverty. Inthe time since she first received her animals she’s sold 116 pigs and manykilos of vegetables.

“Ihave collected at least 120 bags or 12,000 kg of manure from my pigsty. If Iwere to buy this manure, it would have cost at least 480,000FCFA ($898.50). I nowproduce corn, beans and Irish potatoes on the same half hectare of farm andhave gotten another half hectare for cabbage, leeks and carrots. I started allof this after having gotten seeds from Heifer. I harvest at least 1000kg ofcorn, 50kg of beans, 150kg of Irish potatoes, 6,000kg of cabbage, 2000kg ofcarrots and 750kg of leaks yearly. All of these were reserved just for menbefore; now look at where I am as a woman.”

Lifeis tough for rural women. It takes a great amount of industrial spirit to eke alife in places where there is so little. Yet, a large percentage of the worlddoes it every day, in the remote recesses of the earth, in places that areoften un-named and uncharted.

Soit is meaningful that on the International Day of Rural Woman we all pausefor a moment to recognize the brave, industrious women who make it happen. It’simportant that we look at them, if only for a day but hopefully for longer andsay to them: “We see you, you are making a meaningful contribution to the world, and we acknowledge you.“

Allin Kausay

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Good Living. That’s what Allin Kausay means. It’s the name of a Heifer Peru project in the Cusco region of Peru. This project, which is only about five months in, plans to contribute to improved food systems and living conditions for 1,540 families. Heifer does this by helping them plan the management of their resources, implement agroecology, link to local markets, and involve them in processes that impact local and regional policies for rural families.

Friday morning we visited Dolores Delgado on her farm in the Huachanccay community about an hour from Cusco. Dolores’ farm is small, but very well organized and well-kept. In just the short five-month life of the project’s activities, the practical benefits of agroecological production are clear. In the next four or five years, Dolores intends to be a certified agroecological producer. She is already one of the biggest sellers of guinea pigs in the areal. Right now, she gets about $8 per guinea pig. Once she’s certified, she’ll get nearly $15 per. To earn even higher an income, Dolores will be able to sell an organic breeding male guinea pig for $36 each.

Have a look at her farm:

Heifer Peru and Headquarters staff arrive at Dolores’ farm.

Common on Heifer participants’ farms are project-related murals,
painted with colored clays. A plastered building for guinea pigs is a big deal here.

Cuy Breeding “Happy Little Farm”
A sign welcomes us into Delores’ guinea pig room.

We must step in ash before entering the guinea pig house so we don’t bring in contaminants.

Wire on the ceiling helps keep rats and weasels away from the guinea pigs.

Dolores shows us her guinea pig cages, which her son helped her build.
There are metal pans under all of the cages to allow for the collection of manure.

The pipes in the back allow Dolores to capture urine, which is high in nitrogen.

Dolores shows us a breakdown of her guinea pig production in terms of inputs, costs and profits.

Dolores shows us the nutritional breakdown of guinea pigs, which are highly nutritious.

Dolores grows fodder for her guinea pigs. She has a basket of ryegrass and barley.

Dolores also makes regular feed for her animals.

In addition to saving money by growing and processing fodder and food for her guinea pigs,
Dolores also cuts costs by making her own medecine. She keeps her animals very healthy,
so they don’t often require medecine at all. What she’s holding is a salve for grass cuts they sometimes get.

Pierre Ferrari gets to hold a guinea pig.

Dolores is so proud of her farm and pleased to show it off to us.

Dolores practices worm composting with guinea pig manure.

Once the compost is ready, Dolores ferments it with water in a drum.
The jug is full of what we would call “compost tea.”

Dolores’ husband uses a basic sprayer to distribute the compost tea.

Using organic fertilizer is already paying off. These are fodder crops for the guinea pigs.

They’ve also used the fertilizer on their family vegetable garden with great success.

And what would a Peruvian farm (or street, for that matter) be without a sleeping dog?

Save the Farmer, Save the World?

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We discussed last week that rising food prices will have a direct impact on American consumers and developing countries around the world; now it seems that farmers and those who work in agriculture are weighing in on the topic. An international group of farm unions, which is comprised of farm groups from Europe, Asia and North America, issued a statement on Monday to the G20 stating that the trade rules will threaten food security. The group defended the use of trade tariffs and production quotas by countries to secure food supplies and stabilize prices.
Agriculture will be a trending topic at the G20 conference in Paris starting on Wednesday. Though the G20 is supposedly not going to support the farm unions’ call, it does raise the question: What about the farmers? 
Since 2008, after the dramatic spike in world food prices, agriculture and food security have been issues of concern for countries across continents. The latest data states that by 2050 we will have a global population of 9 billion people.
Wheat farmer Robert Carlson, head of the North Dakota Farmers Union, said, “What we have become interested in, in the United States, is this question of are we really in a new era now when, instead of dealing all the time with how to get rid of the surpluses, the challenge is going to be grow enough food for the world?”
To discuss how agriculture roles are changing, FAO has created a policymaker’s guide to the sustainable intensification of smallholder crop production titled, Save and grow. This guide discusses the challenge of feeding a growing world population, farming systems, soil health, crops and varieties, water management, plant protection and policies and institutions.
The challenges that farmers will face in the next few years are evident. Small-scale farming has been effective in Heifer’s work to bring communities out of hunger. We teach our project partners environmentally sound farming methods through agroecology. We define agroecology as, “the sustainable use and management of natural resources, accomplished by using social, cultural, economic, political and ecological methods that work together to achieve sustainable agriculture production.”
  
Though we won’t know the results from the G20 meeting for the next couple of days, it’s a good sign when everyone can identify the same problem and begins to work towards a solution.

Working Together for a Sustainable Cup of Coffee

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This blog is the first in a series I’ll share as I attend the Specialty Coffee Association of America on behalf of Heifer International.
The SCAA brings together the heavy hitters in the coffee and tea industries to discuss issues like climate change, sustainability, and gender equity. These issues are of great importance to Heifer’s work as it relates to countries with coffee-specific projects.
Moreover, this conference will serve as the debut of “After the Harvest,”a documentary sponsored by our partner Green Mountain Coffee that features Heifer’s work in Mexico with smallholder farmers to develop effective, sustainable methods of diversifying their sources of food and income as they survive the lean months.
I’m looking forward to meeting with industry experts and sharing what I learn with you.

How Heifer Projects Are Promoting a Healthy Environment: Part 3

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On April 18, Worldwatch Institute’s blog, Nourishing the Planet, published a list of 15 ways agriculture can “promote a healthier environment and a more food-secure future.” In honor of Earth Day 2011, we would like to explore these 15 ways and how Heifer’s projects around the world are addressing these issues. We are doing this in three separate posts, matching five Heifer projects with the corresponding Nourishing the Planet concepts. Read 1-5 here and 6-10 here.

11. Investing in Africa’s Land: Crisis and Opportunity
Okay, so we’re not doing EVERYTHING on this list. But while we may not be creating collaborations between African farmers and foreign entities, land grabbing is on our radar. And we are absolutely working to help farmers in Africa hold onto and make the most of their land.
Fund a Project in Rwanda, where only 32.7 percent of the land is suitable for farming.
12. Charting a New Path to Eliminating Hunger
Have I ever mentioned how much I like biogas? The connection between biogas and eliminating hunger might not be obvious, but it’s certainly there. I’ve written before about the Uganda Domestic Biogas Program, which is targeting 12,160 families over the five-year project period. Not only is the project helping farmers install biogas units on their farms, it is actually establishing a market for domestic biogas installations and accessories, which builds local economies.
Biogas (as compared to charcoal or wood) cooks faster and burns cleaner, which is important for rural women. Healthy women are more productive, for one thing. In addition to being better for the environment, no longer purchasing charcoal or wood for cooking frees up income to be spent on education and health care. And children whose families have biogas lanterns can stay at home and study for school, which could impact their overall success.


Another alternative to traditional stoves are improved cook stoves (ICS), which are smokeless and use considerably less wood. Fund a Project in India that will, in addition to livestock, distribute ICS to participating families.

13. Moving Ecoagriculture into the Mainstream
Heifer began practicing agroecology with our participants since the mid-1980s and officially established an Agroecology Initiative in 2000 to place a greater emphasis on environmental protection as part of our work. Methods used on Heifer’s project participants’ farms include planting trees, using manure and other sources of natural fertilizer, zero- or managed-grazing techniques, contour planting and terracing, and improved cooking stoves or biogas units.
In fact, pick any one of these projects, and you’ll be helping move ecoagriculture into the mainstream.
14. Improving Food Production from Livestock
In many of the places Heifer works, pastureland for livestock may either be limited or poor in quality. By helping farmers build zero-grazing pens and by helping farmers identify and improved grow fodder crops, Heifer helps farmers increase the yields of their dairy animals.
While in Uganda, I had the chance to see zero-grazing in practice. Here’s a little footage:
Read about Huruma Mhapa from Tanzania, a 2011 Women in Livestock Development Award winner, and her plans for an improved zero-grazing pen for her cows. What’s remarkable is that more than 9,000 people have visited her farm for training and to learn about zero-grazing and organic farming.
Heifer also improves food production from livestock by teaching and building capacity for crossbreeding and artificial insemination to improve the productivity of local livestock.
15. Going Beyond Production
In the interest of diversity, I’m going to take this one in a slightly different direction, because although we’ve dealt with dairy surplus with our East Africa Dairy Development Project, and we’ve connected these farmers to the dairy value chain, I think “going beyond production” can be interpreted in more than one way.
For example, Heifer Poland’s Agriculture and Tourism Development Project is helping farmers who live within the boundaries of the East Carpathian Biosphere Reserve, which protects the ecosystem but also limits certain agricultural activities. Through the project, farmers are becoming beekeepers, converting their dairy cattle herds into beef production (EU restrictions make small-scale dairy farming difficult), and learning to become hosts for tourists interested in the reserve and in other features of agrotourism.

How Heifer Projects Are Promoting a Healthy Environment: Part 2

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On April 18, Worldwatch Institute’s blog, Nourishing the Planet, published a list of 15 ways agriculture can “promote a healthier environment and a more food-secure future.” In honor of Earth Day 2011, we would like to explore these 15 ways and how Heifer’s projects around the world are addressing these issues. We are doing this in three separate posts, matching five Heifer projects with the corresponding Nourishing the Planet concepts. Read 1-5 here.


6. Using Farmers’ Knowledge in Research and Development

Heifer Lithuania’s Cooperation and Development of Farmers for Poultry and Rabbits in Plunge Project is increasing entrepreneurship among rural people living near Zemaitija National Park by first creating sources of income for the local community and then providing the foundation for local business creation. Last April, project participants went to a hands-on training on rabbit breeding and keeping on a local, modern rabbit farm. The farmer had received his own training in Spain and was very kind to show his farm, share his experiences and answer project participants’ questions. The farmer had 500 female rabbits, some of which were pregnant, while others already had offspring. The farmer shared his expertise in making rabbit hutches. Upon returning home, project participants were inspired to make their own farms as productive as the one they had visited.
7. Improving Soil Fertility
Heifer project participants around the world use a number of soil-enriching agricultural practices. Compost, animal manure and even worms (and their castings) can be used to build the soil. Some of our projects are located in valleys with rich, fertile soil. Other projects, including those in cities, must improve their soil before they can begin to grow anything.
Do this experiment to learn how earthworms act as nature’s plows and add nutrients to soil and build your own worm bin.
Fund a Project in Oregon that will provide earthworms, among other things, to participants.
8. Safeguarding Local Food Biodiversity
Heifer’s Sustainable Food Systems in Copan and Lempira, Honduras Project will benefit 2,058 families in western Honduras. Families here struggle with poverty that is exacerbated by farming steeply sloping land with low fertility. This project provides cows, hens, fish, goats, sheep, rabbits, bee hives and fruit trees. In addition to promoting agroecological practices, this project is help;ing families establish food gardens with local crops to feed people and livestock, for natural medicine and to protect the environment. The project also works to recover and promote the use of local seeds.
9. Coping with Climate Change and Building Resilience

Read this post on how Heifer’s projects improve local ecosystems, help families out of poverty and cope with the changing environment.
10. Harnessing the Knowledge and Skills of Women Farmers
Much of Heifer’s work, particularly in Asia/South Pacific, is done through women’s groups. Women are severely marginalized in many countries here, but it is the women who are the communities’ best bets. Here’s the story of a project participant from Nepal:

I am Tika Mahato, a member of the Daunnedevi Women’s Group. As the eldest of three sisters in a poor family where both parents worked from morning to night, I was burdened with the responsibility of taking care of my siblings. My father was ver encouraging about my education, but he was also pressured by society’s norms about women.

I come from a marginalized ethnic group in Nepal, the tharu, in which women are considered the family’s honor and treasure. We are not allowed to tread outside of our houses, talk to strangers or voice our thoughts on family matters. Girls from the age of 10 are encouraged to find partners and get married. I was married at the age of 15 and bore two children by the time I was 19. My in-laws were not very well off. The family struggled to provide for every meal. All of us worked as laborers, but money was never enough. In 2006, an incident changed my life as I knew it; my husband passed away, leaving me with two children.

Having always been dependent on him for everything, I was in a state of shock for a long time. I stopped caring for my two children. What would I do with my life? The question and its unknown answers plagued my mind. My mother says I used to stare at nothing for hours. During that time, a group was being formed. Seeing this as an opportunity to engage me, my mother forced me to join. Reluctant to focus on anything except my misery, I did go to the meetings but never took part in any discussions. Slowly, the members started becoming my friends. I felt like I had someone to count on in the time of need.

My group then took the Cornerstones training — it was like four days of continuous awakening. I felt like all my questions after my husband’s death were being answered. I was overcome with guilt for abandoning my children. Yet instead of looking ahead in life, I was burying myself in the sorrows of my past. Though fully capable of working and providing for my family, I was becoming a burden for my parents with whom my children and I lived after the death of my husband.


I now have a renewed sense of faith and belief in myself. I have my goats that I received as gifts from Heifer, and my life has found a purpose with the goats. I plan to be independent and raise my children without the shadow of poverty.

Fund a Project working with women’s groups in India, Nepal, Laos or Cambodia

Share Your Ideas to Help Solve Global Food Crisis

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Have you watched this?

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Super powerful, right?
Did you know that Heifer International was started from the idea of one man? Dan West, Heifer’s founder, saw a problem and envisioned a solution. Over time, that idea evolved into a model that has helped 13.6 million families lift themselves out of hunger and poverty.
What if you had the next idea?
Dan West lived way before the Internet. Way before institutions like the World Bank asked the question: What’s YOUR Solution?

video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Some of those ideas sound familiar? Access to technology. Reducing waste. Safety nets. Storage capabilities. Research and extension linkages. Empowerment of small-scale farmers. Increase food productivity.
These are things Heifer does. So what does this mean? It means we’re on the right track, but there is always room for new ideas. Head over to World Bank’s website, read through the ideas already posted, and post your own. Participate in their Open Forum: Food Crisis April 14-15. And post your ideas here!

Eat Your View

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by WorldLink staff

What foods do you buy locally? In this clip from the Nourish Video Encyclopedia, journalist Michael Pollan encourages buying local food to conserve energy, support farmers, and preserve the natural landscape.

Watch Michael Pollan in the award-winning special Nourish: Food + Community, now airing on PBS stations nationwide. Find a PBS broadcast in your area.

Michael Pollan is the author of In Defense of Food, Food Rules, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and other best-selling books. Pollan currently serves as the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

Nourish is a national educational initiative designed to open a meaningful conversation about food and sustainability. With a distinctly positive vision, Nourish celebrates both food and community. Learn more at www.nourishlife.org.

Stay tuned for more selections from the Nourish Video Encyclopedia, a collection of short films that explore the story of our food.

Be part of the food revolution. Nourish yourself. Nourish the world.

Visit the Nourish website, and follow Nourish on Twitter and Facebook.

Nourish is a program of WorldLink, a non-profit organization dedicated to education for sustainability. Heifer International is a sponsor of the Nourish initiative.

Got a Few Seconds to Volunteer?

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Everyone stays busy these days, and carving out a whole day or even a whole hour to volunteer can seem next to impossible sometimes. Lucky for you, Jacob Colker is on the case. Colker is one of six young people earning a spot in the 2010 Rolex Awards for Enterprise Young Laureates Programme. Watch him in action here:

Announcing their first ever Young Laureate winners, Rolex pointed to Colker’s forward thinking. “Tapping into the latest trends in information and telecommunications technology, Jacob Colker has combined volunteering, the internet and mobile phones to pioneer a new form of activism in which almost anyone with a smartphone can devote spare minutes – waiting for the bus or to see the doctor – to a useful charitable or scientific task. Nearly 30,000 volunteers have now signed up for “micro-volunteering,” carrying out a wide range of tasks, from helping Nasa identify galaxies by examining their shapes to translating the CVs of newly arrived immigrants who are looking for work.” You can learn more about Colker’s idea at www.beExtra.org.

This Colker fellow is in pretty amazing company. The other five Rolex Young Laureates include Nnaemeku Ikegwuonu, a Nigerian who wants to help millions of farmers in his home country exchange information via radio, and Reese Fernandez, a woman in the Philippines who’s helping families earn money by turning scrap materials into fashion accessories.

The six winners earned $50,000 each, which is hopefully enough to keep them on the path toward real innovation that could improve an untold number of lives. To read more and watch video interviews with all six winners, visit http://young.rolexawards.com/