Project to help farmers escape seed colonialism
By Conrad Mwanawashe
SILVEIRA House, the Jesuit Centre for Social Justice and Development, one of the oldest civil society organizations in the Zimbabwe, is promoting agroecology as a way of capacitating farmers to become conversant with food systems in a bid to extricate them from “hybrid seed colonialism”.
The Centre, owned and run by Jesuits Southern Africa, says that as long as farmers are in a hybrid situation, they are more like ‘colonized people’, because ‘every time and again, they will need to go back to the shop and purchase seed’.
“The problem with hybrid seeds is that you can’t reuse it in the next season. So, you are continuously being forced to come back to the shops. We need to change,” said Dave Bote, Project Officer at Silveria House and Project Leader.
The agroecology project, code named Citizen Agency for Transformed Food Systems in Zimbabwe, is being implemented mainly in Mutoko and Mudzi districts, where farmers were previously trained on agroecological principles, both by government and by other donor partners who also involved Silvera House.
“What we want is to amplify the voice of the farmer to influence the current policy architecture. We felt that the entire system is lacking the voice of the actual farmer, so we are trying to capacitate them so that the voice of the farmer is listened to by policy actors and by key institutions,” said Bote.
“So how are we doing that? We have trained and capacitated some of the farmers in Mudzi and Mutoko districts for them to be able to articulate aspects of food systems and how best they can advocate for agroecology,” said Bote.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) defines agroecology as a holistic and integrated approach that simultaneously applies ecological and social concepts and principles to the design and management of sustainable agriculture and food systems. It seeks to optimize the interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment while also addressing the need for socially equitable food systems within which people can exercise choice over what they eat and how and where it is produced.
“We are saying someone’s way of farming is friendly to nature, to the environment and to oneself.
How are we thinking about it? If someone is going to till the land, whatever principles and approach that person is going to do, they must not be to degrade the same soil, the same environment.
“For example, for us, the farmers should not practice monoculture. You must not be growing only a single crop year in, year out. Why? That in itself degrades the quality of the soil.
“It also degrades the level of nutrition in the soil. We also say to the farmer, why is it not possible for you to plant or to grow several crops in the same field? One, for the purpose of soil nutrition. Number two, for the purpose of retaining moisture itself.
“There are other cover crops that can help the farmer to retain moisture, also to deal with insects and other pests. We know that there are certain crops that can fight certain pests within the same field. Those are some of the principles that we say someone should practice. We are also saying we don’t need to till at large scale. Be very intense on a short or small plot.
“Just invest as much as you can by using local manure from nature, but also using murakwani, which is compost mainly from nature. Try to cover as much as possible in terms of retaining the moisture. Also don’t apply too much synthetic fertilizers,” said Bote.
But there are barriers to the promotion of agroecology, some of which relate to national policies, such as laws to do with seed, “laws to do with bridging of seeds, where our local seeds are currently
not being recognized at law as seeds”.
“Key government policies such as the national budgets should be reflective or supportive of agroecology,” he added.
Silveira House is also part of the “My Food is Zimbabwean Alliance”, a congregation of several local and development institutions, including other government institutions working on transforming food systems.
“We are also thinking about agroecology in light of climate change. This year is a good example where we are now seeing that our food systems are under threat. If we don’t adapt, if the farmer doesn’t adapt, they run the risk of not having the capacity to guarantee household food security, but also not to have income because most of our farmers in Zimbabwe rely on agriculture for food production and also to sell excesses,” said Bote.
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