June 2008 IssuE
goodworks
EWB Builds Sorghum Crop in Zambia
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NEW CROP, NEW HOPE |
BY THULASY BALASUBRAMANIAM, E.I.T.,
NINA LOTHIAN, P.ENG.,
& BRAD LARSON, P.ENG.
Engineers Without Borders
The engineering community has supported Engineers Without Borders since the Calgary Professional Chapter’s inception in 2005. Thanks to the corporations and individuals who have helped EWB through awareness-spreading workplace outreach, as well as by volunteering and making donations, EWB has been able to send members overseas to create positive change — on the ground, where it matters.
Our corporate outreach partners include AMEC, Carmacks Enterprises, the City of Calgary, CH2M HILL, Colt, Emerson Process Management, EnCana, ISL, Klohn Crippen Berger, Nortel, Shell and many others. And our projects help build self-sustaining capacity in rural African communities. Stable and steady work for locals enables them to earn fair living wages and keep them away from the horrors of poverty.
One of our feature projects is the Sorghum Project in Zambia’s Southern province. In 2005 Engineers Without Borders Canada partnered with CARE Zambia to promote sorghum as a cash crop. Two years later, the project is into scale-up and expansion.
Long-term EWB volunteers Nina Lothian, P.Eng., of Syncrude in Fort McMurray, and Thulasy Balasubramaniam, E.I.T., formerly of Pangea Solutions in Calgary, have been in Zambia since August of 2007 implementing this project.
Sorghum is a traditional cereal crop that provides a stable subsistence food for drier regions of Africa and Asia. It is a hardy crop that tolerates drought and being water logged for short periods. Widely grown in Africa, it is boiled and eaten like rice or made into flour for porridge or bread. It is also used as an ingredient in making beer and animal feed, and as a commercial crop for oils and starches.
Sorghum provides a reliable food source for local farmers. But there is also demand for the crop on the national market. And when farmers combine growing it with maize, diversification reduces risk if one crop fails.
The EWB/CARE Zambia project provides free sorghum seed to farmers interested in trying it out and connects them directly to sorghum buyers. The team gives farmers an opportunity to try something new while ensuring increased revenue.
Behaviour change is one of the many hurdles for the project to overcome. Farmers have traditionally relied on maize as their staple cereal crop, due largely to a concerted effort by the Zambian government to encourage it through seed and fertilizer subsidies. However, recent changes in government policy, budgetary cuts and environmental factors have made growing maize a risky endeavour with reduced economic returns.
Although maize is the staple food in Zambia, farmers are moving away from cropping only it and are diversifying with sorghum for home consumption. Sorghum products are catching on as they are appearing in markets and grocery stores around the country.
The project has succeeded in introducing over 2,000 farmers to sorghum growing in the past six months alone. The reception in the communities has been overwhelming and farmers are encouraged by the frequent site visits of EWB volunteers and CARE staff.
In addition, farmers have met with seed suppliers and agricultural experts to learn how they can increase their sorghum yields and thus further improve their livelihoods. EWB has been influential in connecting farmers directly to businesses involved in the sorghum supply chain. By our fostering these links early on, we believe the farmers will continue to buy sorghum seed and sell sorghum grain, long after EWB volunteers return to Canada and CARE Zambia exits the project.
Statistics of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations show that the food price index, based on export prices for 60 internationally traded foodstuffs, climbed 37 per cent last year. That comes on top of a 14 per cent increase in 2006.
On the surface, it seems that farmers the world over would rejoice. Prices for all sorts of agricultural commodities — among them wheat, corn, soy beans, barley, sunflower, canola and sorghum — are soaring in response to escalating demand, due to an increased need of grain for biofuels and meat production. Farmers in the West are ramping up production to meet the demand.
“I was out in Muzya [a village in Zambia] and the only signs of this trend were in the skyrocketing prices of basic goods like bread and cooking oil,” says Thulasy. “Though Muzya is a strong farming community with a long history of maize production, known once as the Maize Belt, farmers out here haven’t been able to cash in on the increasing prices.
“Numerous factors are working against them, including extreme and inconsistent rainfall patterns, volatile input prices and the loss of draft power due to cattle diseases. Another significant factor is that they are simply not connected to agricultural markets.”
This is where sorghum comes in. The sorghum marketing project Nina and Thulasy are working on is representative of a rash of progressive development projects seeking to engage small-scale farmers in developing countries in commercial agricultural markets. Our sorghum project is starting with national buyers but hopes to expand the market to include export, as there is huge regional demand in neighbouring Botswana and the Democratic Republic of Congo where sorghum is the staple food.
“Our hope is that by taking advantage of these market opportunities, farmers will eventually be able to not only afford simple commodities like bread and cooking oil but also have a greater freedom of choice in how they live their lives. That’s the ultimate goal,” says Thulasy as she and Nina prepare for another day on the project. “Linking farmers to a variety of agricultural markets will go a long way towards creating sustainable and hopefully bountiful income streams for once marginalized rural families.”
EWB volunteers are working on a number of such projects with different partner organizations, like CARE, all over Zambia and Malawi. This network is allowing EWB to share best-in-sector practices between our partners and constantly improve our implementation methods.
Through continued support here at home, the EWB Calgary Professional Chapter has been able to send Mark Hemsworth to northern Zambia to work on a honey farming project and is in the process of sending Binnu Jakumar of TransAlta and Janelle Murray, who is involved in wastewater treatment, to Malawi to work on water and sanitation projects.
Thank you, Alberta, and thank you, members and permit holders of APEGGA.
More Info
Nina and Thulasy will be working on the sorghum project with CARE Zambia until August. You can find more information about their work and experience by
visiting their blogs at
www.ninazambia.blogspot.com
www.thulasy.blogspot.com.
For more information about Engineers Without Borders, e-mail calgary@ewb.ca or visit www.calgary.ewb.ca.