By Mulako Muimui & Paul Mwale
Most women living around Katanino Forest Reserve in Masaiti District, Zambia, earned a living by packaging and/or selling charcoal produced illegally inside the Forest Reserve. To change that, WeForest introduced alternatives through the Katanino Project. The focus was to replace the unsustainable income sources that were putting pressure on the forest, with sustainable ones, like vegetable production.
Vegetable growing requires a steady supply of water and is labor-intensive when one relies on carrying for long distances a watering can for irrigation. That’s what stopped most women from engaging in this lucrative livelihood that has the potential to generate household income throughout the year, while supplying vital nutrition to the household.
As a solution, WeForest partnered with Kickstart Zambia to supply low-cost irrigation treadle pumps to farmer cooperatives on the Katanino Project.
Each treadle Pumps costs about $156 and is accessed by the members of the cooperative through a loan scheme. The farmers pay back to the cooperative the cost of the water pump over a period of 36 months, after they start making an income from selling their vegetables. From the loan repayments, new treadle pumps are purchased for other members of the cooperative on the waiting list.
The treadle pumps are popular among the resource-poor farmers as they can be manually operated without the use of gas, diesel or kerosene. Kickstart Zambia also trained the farmers in the use and maintenance of the water pumps and farm business management.
In the buffer zone around the Forest reserve, the most productive lands close to water sources are mainly owned by men, who can grow their crops even without irrigation equipment. Available fertile land is farther away and without access to an irrigation system, it becomes very difficult. A treadle pump comes with a 10 meter sucking hose and a 25 meter delivery hose that can be extended. That allowed women to establish vegetable gardens away from the water source reducing competition for land along the stream banks.
Now, women grow a mix of vegetables with cabbage (Brassica oleracea capitata) mainly grown for sale whereas Rape (Brassica napus) and Chinese Cabbage (Brassica rapa pekinensis) are grown for both sale and home consumption. The average garden size is about half hectare and the women make a net income of about $1580 over a 4 month vegetable growing season.
Having a simple irrigation system allows women to grow vegetables throughout the year and also allows them the flexibility to grow crops with better market demand. They no longer have to rely on rain-fed vegetable production, with high competition. Because they grow with the rain, the market becomes flooded with sellers at the same time, leading to reduced market prices.
The treadle pump support has impacted the lives of women positively as they no longer have to risk their lives engaging in illegal activities or exposing themselves to potential road hazards by selling charcoal along roads. Some women have even up-scaled from the manual treadle pump to purchasing petrol powered pumps using profits from the sale of vegetables.
