Canadian Foodgrains Bank has become a major part of Canada's international development efforts.
The Foodgrains Bank's growing projects like Moosomin, Saskatchewan's Harvest of Hope and Kola, Manitoba's Crossborders Growing Project have not been hindered much by the current global pandemic.
“Those (the growing projects) interestingly, are not as challenged by the various provincial restrictions. They have their local committees. Most of them would have already made the decision on what crops to be grown and they would have sourced all of their input already in terms of seeds and fertilizer. They already knew by mid March who’s able to seed it and who is going to be spraying it (in June),” says Rick Block, Regional Coordinator of Saskatchewan for the Canadian Foodgrains Bank.
Block is quick to point out that the success of the growing projects is weather permitting, but it seems that for now it is all going ahead as planned.
The money raised from local growing projects will got to The Canadian Foodgrains Bank to be sold and the funds will go to help places like Kenya.
East Africa before Covid
Mueni Udeozor is the conservation agricultur3 program coordinator in Nairobi, Kenya and helps the Canadian Foodgrains Bank work with small-scale farmers in East Africa.
This area of the world was in need of aid before the outbreak of Covid-19 and has been plunged into uncertainty because of the pandemic.
“Even before Covid, there were other issues that our program is facing every year. Since 2016 there has been drought, there has been flooding, there has been locusts and fall army worms (a larva that attacts maize crops) and now there is Covid-19,” says Udeozor.
The Scaling Up Conservation Agriculture in East Africa Program that Udeozer works with strives to support farmers in three countries (Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia,) with the help of 11 other local partnership programs.
The goal of this partnership is to traverse the unique challenges of helping local farmers yield sustainable crops in larger quantities over a longer period of time.
“Nothing is guaranteed. Farmers rely on nature. The rainy season, whether it comes or not, whether there is too much. How do you work with farmers to create resilience? To help them diversify their livelihood and strengthen their ability to procure their own food, have enough food for their household reduce the number of months when they have to cut the number of meals or the size of the meals to make it go farther,” says Udeozer.
These were the challenges that Udeozer and the local programs faced before the pandemic. When the world changed, so did the needs of the farmers in East Africa.
Covid creates challenges
In mid-March the health minister of Kenya announced that the country was going into lock down.
“People had to quarantine, people had to work from home there was a curfew and the streets were empty,” says Udeozer.
Like with farmers all over the world, when it comes to planting time you have to plant.
“They are not going to miss a season because there is a pandemic going on,” Udeozer explains.
The challenge now became how to continue helping these farmers while following new rules of social distancing and other lock down policies.
No blanket solution
Like with many companies and programs, the Scaling Up Conservation Agriculture in East Africa Program also had people stop working or work from home. Then, as the world stabilized a bit, it soon became clear that they can still support the farmers remotely.
“Our program has reached over 50,000 small holding farmers in three different countries, so we had to have a strategy of how we reach every last one of those and how do we track them. Each partner organization has their own number of farmers because they work in specific communities. They have (their own) strategies. So they might identify champion farmers who work with five or ten farmers in their community,” says Udeozer.
This system is set in place by local programs and communities that are part of the Canadian Foodgrains Bank network to make sure that local farmers still get the support they need in these times.
The Scaling Up Conservation Agriculture in East Africa Program along with the eleven community programs all had to figure out the best way to help farmers in the different regions since they all faced specific problems.
“It depends on the organization on the ground their context, their reality. They’ve adapted the approach to the farmers to engage them to their needs and reality,” says Udeozer.
One of many crises
Dealing with specific regions and their problems were especially important since the only thing everyone had in common was Covid-19, but it was not the only crisis in the region.
“The locust situation is still threatening parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. In addition, Covid-19 has actually complicated things. When you have the country in shut down and the majority of people are being forced to stay home and starve, you are putting people between a rock and a hard place. We have seen an increase in violence and gender violence a lot of women being at the receiving end of that and we’ve seen a spike in young girl pregnancy in women between the ages of 15 and 19,” says Udeozer.
Removing the veneer
Udeozer goes on to speak about how Covid-19 has brought a lot of the region’s long-standing problems into stark focus.
“The majority of people are living below the poverty line. The gap between the poor and middle class is huge. People are destitute.”
The violence is not just at home either. Police brutality is a problem too.
“The police are not attacking middle class or upper class. They are attacking people living in informal settlements and trying to force them to comply with unrealistic expectations, says Udeozer.
She speaks of the choice people have of staying home and starving or going out and working even though it is against government lock down policies.
“We have to work we have to live we have to figure something out,” says Udeozer is the feeling among the people if the region.
Can countries actually feed themselves?
Another problem that has been created during this pandemic is the sky rocketing prices of food in Kenya. This has prompted the question about whether the country can feed itself and also has brought the focus back to how important it is to support the small holding farmers.
“We work with them, to maximize the productivity if their small plot of land. To strengthen the knowledge they have, empower them to speak for themselves and to prevent them from falling prey to increased prices or unavailability of nutritious foods,” says Udeozer.
Mass communication
With so much at stake and with such a large audience, the countries of Ethiopia and Tanzania have started using the radio to relay their message.
“We developed a partnership with Farm Radio International based out of Ontario. They worked with our partners and then they used the local radio system to amplify what the partners where teaching farmers. So they (farmers) heard it out on the field, tested it, tried it and if they had issues they called in and ask questions,” says Udeozer.
With their five-year partnership in the area coming to an end soon, the question is what impact the Canadian Foodgrains Bank and their Scaling Up Conservation Agriculture in East Africa program has had in the region. Although the final report card is still in the works, a mid term report has been glowing and some anecdotal comments about the radio system has been good.
“We know that there is positive impact, and farmers have said, yes I heard that program and a neighbour heard that program and came and talked to me and they saw what I was doing and they decided to go and try it.”
In these trying times it is hard to know what will help and will hurt, but knowledge has always been useful.
“They want accurate information, that has been our stragedy to equip farmers with information to make informed decisions,” says Udeozer.
