Acre by acre, poor farmers feed their families and grow their incomes

Oct 31st, 2011 1:04 PM UTC
By Malulie Tongprasert

Bernadette with some of the fruits of her labor. Photo credit: One Acre Fund.

In Tyazo, located in Nyamasheke District, Rwanda, Bernadette is one of many smallholder women farmers receiving agricultural assistance through One Acre Fund (OAF). By participating, she received a “market bundle” of seed and fertilizer on credit, as well as technical knowledge on improved methods of planting, harvesting, storing and selling her crops.

As the driving force of the Rwandan economy, agriculture employs 70 percent of the population. Yet deforestation, soil degradation and limited access to technology all contribute to food insecurity. More than 50 percent of children face chronic malnutrition.

Before participating in OAF, Bernadette complained that she “was cultivating in archaic methods, not planting on lines. It was hard to get chemical fertilizer” and she was not growing enough food to feed her family.

Reaching more than 73,000 farming families -– including 365,000 children -– across Kenya and Rwanda since 2006, OAF works with smallholder farm families who have up to three acres of land by supplying them all the tools they need to succeed.

Farmers form groups of six to 15 people, and those groups receive seed and fertilizer on credit, as well as education and training in planting, harvesting, crop storage and even how to get their crops to market. One Acre Fund farmers pay for all the services they receive with unbeatable repayment rates — 98 percent of clients repay their loans. OAF plans to reach 1 million farm families by 2020.

By the end of the first harvest after joining OAF, Bernadette was able to grow enough beans to feed her family and have a small surplus to sell. She is also expanding her farm to grow bananas. She used her extra earnings to buy school equipment and pay school fees for her children, two of whom are in secondary school. “I have had so many incomes from One Acre Fund since I joined that I will be part of it forever,” she exclaimed.

Bernadette hopes that her children’s education will help the family prosper. “I will try my best to educate them so that they can make me rich!” she said. “I wish that they step forward and reach other countries for education and work.”

By providing a complete package of inputs, financing, technical advice and market facilitation, all of which were previously unavailable to smallholder farmers, One Acre Fund has enabled thousands of farmers like Bernadette to increase the amount of food they produce to both feed their families and double their incomes in just one growing season!

TAGS: Agriculture, Fight the Famine, ONE