Dateline ACT

Swaziland 02/04

Ideas to overcome drought take root

by Stephen Padre, ACT International

Swaziland, March 22, 2004--A new idea is taking root in Swaziland.

A severe drought is calling for innovative measures in growing food, and Lutheran Development Service (LDS), a member of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International, is sewing the seeds for new ideas among small farmers in southern Africa to encourage them to plant cassava.

Cassava, a root vegetable that produces a nutritious starch, is a crop that is unfamilar to most farmers in Swaziland and is more tolerant of dry conditions than the African food staple of maize.

Much of this small country on the eastern edge of South Africa is suffering from a prolonged drought that has spread across southern Africa. Farmers have planted too few or no crops at all because of unreliable rains for nearly four years.

LDS and other ACT members and local partners, with support from ACT members around the world, have been responding since July 2002 to the food shortage in the lowland areas where the drought has been worst. LDS first distributed World Food Program (WFP) food rations, and, as the crisis situation continued into 2003, it formulated the plan it is currently implementing to address the crisis in both the short and long term.

Besides continued direct food relief to pick up where relief from WFP, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the Swaziland government left off, LDS's plan includes a component to help people secure more reliable sources of food, even when water is in short supply.

LDS is now using a variety of methods to encourage small farmers to grow drought-tolerant crops and use alternative agricultural techniques. One method is to show farmers the benefits of cassava.

LDS approached the Cathulani Bomake Association, a group of villagers who had been tilling a common plot of land together, and suggested cassava as a crop.

The association has not planted crops for the past three years. Its members said that, before 2000, rainfall would feed a spring that they used to water their crops. During the good times, they planted a variety of vegetables to sell at a market-tomatoes, cabbage, onions, beets, carrots and lettuce.

The association's field still lies empty and unused now, but some rain has been falling in parts of Swaziland since the beginning of this year, and farmers are hoping there will be reliable rains this year so they can plant crops and try growing cassava.

As a large group from the association's 24 member households gathered in their field on a hazy morning in February, they spoke about the challenges and the chain reaction in their families' lives set off by the shortage of water. LDS is hoping ideas, like introducing new, heartier crops, will trigger a disruption to this devastating chain of events and some respite from the hardship households are experiencing economically and in their diets.

However, LDS staff say they've had to overcome some resistance to cassava among some farmers. They report that it's hard to convince people to grow something other than maize, which is overwhelmingly popular among small southern African farmers as a crop and food staple. LDS has had to teach people in workshop settings how to cultivate cassava and how to prepare it as a dish that their families would eat. It has also established four nurseries next to community gardens to begin cassava cultivation in the area.

When asked what they thought of cassava, murmers of approval were heard from the Cathulani Bomake group. It was one step they could take, but considering how much they were able to produce before, members of the group said they needed much more assistance.

With little water and few crops, "most of our livestock have died," one association member said. "In the past, we got enough, and we didn't need to buy very many things," said another member. They said they were able to buy small necessary items, such as sugar and salt, with the income they received from selling vegetables. Now, however, they report, they have to buy most of the food they used to grow themselves, and they can't get the nutrition they once had in their diets. But even buying all their food can be a problem because their incomes have dropped. And this had made it difficult for parents to pay for their children's school fees. Some association members said they sold livestock in January to meet this need.

It is a vicious cycle, but one the association's members could survive, they said, if they could get assistance with their water supplies. They said they would like to appeal to their government to rehabilitate earthen dams destroyed during cyclones in 1998 that could once again store water for their crops. Along with that, some would like to start small businesses, such as raising chickens, to sustain them during difficult times, but they didn't have the necessary funds.

And, while they wait for the rains to come again, the people in this region aren't letting the ideas run dry - they are cultivating solutions in these difficult circumstances.

This Dateline is part of a series on the drought in southern Africa.

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