It is estimated that 55.7 million people in Southern Africa are facing food insecurity and malnutrition owing to years of drought; rising food, fuel and fertilizer costs; and supply chain disruptions. In Zimbabwe, while the impact is generally spread across the country, it is especially challenging for women and girls.
An integrated resilience-building initiative aimed at improving livelihoods, food security and nutrition is working to protect vulnerable communities from climate-related and other shocks by giving people the additional skills needed to withstand those shocks through seed/fertilizer inputs and skill-building. The Zimbabwe Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, and the Department of Agricultural Advisory and Rural Development Services have partnered with WFP and FAO to implement a small-grains programme in Mangwe and Chiredzi Districts. The programme targets the most vulnerable people, who are also supported by the WFP Lean Season Assistance and Food Assistance for Assets programmes. The districts of Mangwe and Chiredzi benefit from these programmes owing to support from the India-UN Fund. The India-UN Fund project reaches 5,200 smallholder farmers and 40 agricultural extension officers in these two districts. One of them is Ms. Muhlava Munyangani, a 35-year-old mother of five. After her community faced one of the worst droughts in recent years, she managed to obtain some grain.
From what we were taught by WFP and the seed packs, I managed to harvest 10 bags of sorghum. The most important thing I learned is that farming is proper planning. You need to plan for every situation, including a drought”
Ms. Munyangani added.
Cultivating sorghum and cowpeas, farmers learn agronomy methods using conservation agriculture principles, group development, collective marketing, post-harvest loss management and gender issues in agriculture. The idea is for them to produce high-quality grain that can be competitive on the market.
Through this initiative, women are empowered to address the underlying drivers of food insecurity; they are trained to grow different crops able to withstand severe drought, which is essential to helping them through the poor harvests. Investments in drought-tolerant varieties help to manage post-harvest losses.
Traditionally, women used to sow small grains by scattering them over the field, which attracted pests and dramatically reduced the plant survival rate. Instead, they were taught to use ridge furrows, a traditional method of ploughing that helps to drain the field by allowing the excess water to flow through the furrows, thus reducing stress on plants from excess moisture. The proper seed variety suitable to the geographic area was identified, and the women were encouraged to use locally available organic manure from their compost. The farmers were supported with the rehabilitation and establishment of community warehouse infrastructure and post-harvest equipment to enable them to aggregate their commodities and meet the quality requirements.
In July 2022, the communities of Chiredzi and Mangwe were supported with multi-functional threshers to improve farm mechanization and minimize the post-harvest losses associated with manual threshing processes among farmers. Since processing small grains is labour-intensive, farmers have not adapted their plantations despite understanding that small grains are suitable for their agro-ecological regions and in view of the impact of the climate crisis. While the Government of Zimbabwe is actively promoting the production of traditional grains, indications are that the labour-intensive nature of the processing can be a deterrent to community adoption. In view of this, the support provided by the India-UN Fund is addressing this challenge through the provision of mobile threshers, thereby strengthening Government efforts to promote drought-tolerant grains and their adoption by the supported beneficiaries and others in the district who will also be able to use the equipment at a cost.
“Harvesting and post-harvest losses remain one of the major challenges that the Zimbabwe agricultural sector continues to face,” said Mr. John Basera, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development during the handover ceremony in Chiredzi in July 2022. “Our aim is to reduce post-harvest losses from the current 20 to 25 per cent through mechanized harvesting and use of modern storage structures such as metal silos. The threshers that WFP is handing over today will go a long way to reduce such losses and reduce threshing and winnowing labour, which in most cases is undertaken by women and youths.”
“What makes this programme particularly successful is the pool of resources and expertise within our respective organizations – all working towards developing the resilience of smallholder farmers,” said Ms. Christine Mendes,
WFP Deputy Country Director. “WFP has been proud to support our partners through implementation, logistics and monitoring of the programme, helping to distribute drought-tolerant small grains, fertilizers and other agricultural inputs through our established programmes.”
The Ambassador of India to Zimbabwe, H.E. Mr. Vijay Khanduja, commended the leadership by the Ministry and the project as a good example of South-South cooperation: “What we are witnessing here is a very good example of trilateral South-South cooperation being carried out through the India-UN Development Partnership Fund. The aim of the Fund is to support projects which contribute to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, as per the requirements of the recipient countries. The funding is provided in adherence to the principles of South-South cooperation, which place priority on national ownership and leadership, equality, sustainability, development of local capacity and mutual benefit.”
The handover ceremony
