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n Zambia’s Luapula Province, rediscovered farming methods are the key to boosting food security and economic independence for hundreds of households caring for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) affected by HIV and AIDS. Thanks to NPI-grantee Luapula Foundation’s training, OVC caregivers—many of them elderly, female subsistence farmers
—are reviving traditional techniques and learning new ones to grow, store and provide more
and healthier food for their families and improve the nutritional well being within the community.
The challenges are great: the average number of OVC per family is 4.8, and many include at least one chronically ill person; the families are not able to produce sufficient crops to feed the members of the household or meet the cost of education for the children. And, although well-intentioned, caregivers do not understand OVC's special psychosocial needs.
Sowing the seeds of self-reliance to meet these challenges has taken many forms: foremost among them, teaching conservation farming methods—producing compost, inter-cropping and using natural pest control among others. The techniques proved to be easy to learn, replicate and sustain, and, most important, require no inputs from donors after the first year. Productivity and sustainability are enhanced by the Foundation’s enlisting local agriculture extension agents who give technical support and non-hybrid seeds to those willing to adopt conservation farming methods. The local extension agents also serve as program monitors. As a result, after just four months in the program, half of the participants were able to feed every family member at least two nutritious meals a day, often including protein and vitamin-rich grains and legumes new to their diets. In addition, Luapula Foundation has introduced locally-made, fuel-efficient stoves, which enable caregivers to spend more time increasing their crop yield rather than combing the countryside for firewood. Many are producing a first-ever surplus, allowing them to earn extra income and cover at least a small part of the cost of school supplies and/or fees. Beyond these benefits, fuel-efficient stoves also help to preserve the forests of Zambia, as they use far less firewood.
One grandmother, who planted a large kitchen vegetable garden but was growing too frail to adequately cultivate it, produced a large enough surplus to barter it for the help of younger, stronger neighbors. In another instance, a village headwoman’s crop of sunhemp—a “green manure” used to enhance soil and inhibit erosion—was so abundant she gave seeds to all of
the villagers after harvest and, at a special meeting, urged them to adopt the same techniques.
In addition, the Luapula Foundation supplements the agricultural training by helping caregivers
as well as school teachers understand the essential rights and needs of children and the basics of HIV prevention. With Foundation support, all of the school-age children of trained caregivers attend school, ensuring that life skills along with the conservation farming methods will take root.
