By Faith Amon, CARE consultant
In the district of Meconta, in the Nampula province of Mozambique, most families live on less than one dollar a day. Malnutrition is common for children and adults in this area and climate change affects on the frequency and duration of annual rains leaving poorer communities increasingly vulnerable to low rainfall and underproductive agricultural seasons.
Nampula province is the second most populated province in Mozambique and has the highest population density, it also has the highest degree of malnutrition. Families have been subsistence farming here since they established their homes. Often the poor crop result isn’t enough to feed the family let alone produce enough to sell, or save for the dry season.
Bazenda Antonio, and his wife Luisa, live with their four kids in the community called Eduardo Mondlane. About 1500 people live in this area of scattered houses just past the railroad tracks off the main road. Less then 10 years ago Bazenda and his wife lived in a home with a thatch roof and never had anywhere to store seeds or food and never really had much of anything to store.
“We lived on the edge,” says Bazenda when asked about how they got by, “it would take us all day to prepare just a small area for planting, we worked with old tools, old seeds, and we were completely dependent on the rains for our crops”.
But no more, since the arrival of CARE International and the VIDA program, subsistence farmers like Bazenda and his wife have been able to make improvements to their home and have learned techniques to increase their yields, improve their crops and store their seeds for the following planting season.
“CARE taught us to plant in rows,” Luisa explains, “we used to just plant wherever we found space around the side of the house. That is why it took so long for us to prepare the land, and we used to only plant yucca without knowing that the children needed more variety to grow and be healthy.
Now we plant in orderly rows and mix corn and other crops into our fields”. CARE’s program - Viable Initiative for the Development of Agriculture (VIDA) has spanned 10 years in Mozambique’s northern province of Nampula. The program has demonstrated success in increasing income, diet diversity, increased agricultural production, nutrition and food security for over 65,000 households. Working closely with local NGOs, CARE has improved capacity of the communities to achieve food security and introduced livestock and animal vaccinations to increase their agriculture production and health of their chickens and goats.
“The VIDA program has had a positive and notable affect on the lives of its participants,” explains CARE extension agent Benjamin Lourenço who has been part of this program for more than 8 years. Funded by USAID, CARE has provided quality tools, like hoes and watering cans, as well as several new varieties of seeds that are more resistant to pests and have shorter germination periods.
“With the addition of these new varieties, and the use of more durable tools, farmers are able to harvest earlier and extend the overall production from their fields” explains Benjamin.
Bazenda and his family are proud to show off the tools that have contributed to making their lives better. They can now produce enough food to feed themselves, their family, and generate income to purchase things that make their lives easier. “each year our income increases.” says Bazenda.
They have hopes that this year they will sell the offspring of their new pig, and purchase a bicycle to help them bring water from the well several kilometers away. The VIDA program actively applies the lessons of agricultural diversity and relates them to lessons in nutrition and infant health, creating a larger picture of how poverty and health are connected. “We are so grateful to CARE and VIDA,” says Luisa, “My children are growing stronger, and they are not sick all the time, like before.” The integration of a diverse crop and a enriched diet has made a difference in they way this family works and feels. The result of the program is evident in Bazendas confident smile as he explains “We now have good seeds, and can prepare so that each season we produce more.”