Few know better than farmers what it is to depend on the weather. In most areas of Zambia, there is no rain for almost half the year, falling mostly between December and April. And when the rains do come, they are increasingly unpredictable.
Unless you’re a commercial farmer and can afford the necessary irrigation during the dry season, this can leave you with only one annual crop. Land lays unproductive for months, and the only harvest is one of hardship. Farmers must find other ways to earn an income or stretch out what income they make. January to March are the most difficult months in rural Zambia. By then, farmers have sold their rainfed crop and used the money to buy what they need to plant anew in December, in time for the next rains. With funds in short supply, there are difficult decisions to be made – including not having the money to send children to school.
The wider context is that, according to the UN, Zambia is among the countries with the highest levels of poverty and inequality worldwide. More than half of the country’s population still lives below the poverty line, with a high proportion of those people living in rural areas. Access to energy is variable across the country. As highlighted by the World Bank, only one in ten households in rural areas have access to electricity, and economic growth can be closely linked with energy access.
It was against this backdrop of particularly complex challenges that an enterprising group of farmers in Chipata, eastern Zambia, quite literally saw an opportunity for growth.
Their response was to band together and fill one hectare of usually empty fields with neat rows of verdant onions – with the aim of increasing their number of harvests, and bumping up the money they earned. To keep their crop watered in the dry season, they harnessed the power of the sun with solar-powered water pumps.
The farmers’ story is as multilayered as the vegetable they nurtured – one of setback and success, lessons learned and solutions found. But at its centre is essentially the spirit of trying something new.
Planting a seed
The high value crop initiative’s roots lie in Good Nature Agro (GNA), a social enterprise in Zambia that started in 2014 with a mission to improve farmer incomes through the production of legume seeds, a crop grown in the rainy season. GNA has 4,400 local smallholder seed farmers on its books, 40% of them women. GNA seed growers have seen what they earn go from an average of US $113 per season in 2014, to US $591 in 2019. GNA’s hope for operation onion was that farmers could earn up to ten times their annual income without needing to expand the land they farmed.
To realise this ambition, GNA secured funding from the Powering Renewable Energy Opportunities (PREO) programme, supported by the IKEA Foundation and UK aid via the Transforming Energy Access platform. The resulting project – Multiply Harvests and Transforming Lives through Solar Powered Irrigation (MHTL) – was delivered with support from the Carbon Trust and Energy 4 Impact.
Growing in experience
In April 2022, after the rains had come and gone, and the farmers with GNA contracts had harvested their legume crops, their minds turned to onions. While usually working independently, farmers assembled in four groups with up to 10 people in each. The PREO grant was used by GNA to develop a financing package that included boreholes to be drilled for each farmer group and a host of other essentials the farmers would need. That included solar submersible pumps, drip irrigation kits, water tanks and tools, which the farmers agreed to pay back in three installments from the harvesting income over an 18-month period, ultimately gaining ownership at the end of the loan term. Grant money also went towards salaries for project staff and resources for training.
Farmers planted up the nurseries and by November, the drills had hit water, and the boreholes were in. But there was a hitch. There had been delays in drilling and the sourcing of drip irrigation kits, but the onions had already been bedded into the fields. To the frustration of the farmers, around half of the plants were lost due to the lack of water.
Farmers received training from GNA staff and the onion seed suppliers, along with the company supplying the solar pumps, on the most effective ways to use the equipment. Each group had a ‘champion’ charged with operating the equipment and carrying out basic maintenance. An agronomist was also on hand to provide advice, including how to spot pests and diseases.
Harvesting began in December and soon, 15 metric tonnes of ruby-red Syngenta Red African Queen and pearly-white Hazera Saturn onions were hanging in the thatched drying sheds built by the farmers. For the first time in the history of GNA, they were harvesting in December. For many farmers, it was the first time they had two harvests in a year.
But there were hard lessons to be learned. Not only was there the earlier delay that led to the harvest coinciding with the rainy season, once the rains were in full flow, some onions were lost in the drying sheds because of the weather. More spoiled in GNA’s warehouses, which had been designed for optimal storage of legumes, and were not well suited to storing onions. After more setbacks due to the quality of the onions and the way they were transported, and how far they had to be transported to market, the original buyer passed on the opportunity. As much as half of the onions produced were lost due to customer rejections and inadequate post-harvest handling methods. For the remaining onions, another buyer was found, but at a lower price. Despite these setbacks, it proved there was a market opportunity, as 8 tonnes of onions were sold, generating revenues of ZMW 64,000 (US $3,500) for the farmers.
Knowing their onions
Fast-forward to late 2023 and the group of farmers have just enjoyed their second solar-irrigated onion harvest using the knowledge gained from their previous experience. Even as the price of onions reduced to ZMW 7 (US $0.30) per kilo from ZMW 8 per kilo (US $0.35), the yields more than tripled. The set of four farmer groups harvested 50 tonnes of onions (compared to 15 tonnes in the previous irrigated season) and have successfully sold them to three buyers. As a result, by cultivating on just four hectares of land, the four farmer groups generated revenues of ZMW 350,000 (US $16,6000. This was 33% more than what they earned from the rainfed season earlier this year, where they cultivated at least 10 times the amount of land used for growing onions. The farmers plan to add a third irrigated crop to their portfolio in 2023: maize. GNA has also been enrolled as a supplier with Freshmark, which distributes products to major supermarket chain Shoprite. This means a continued demand for their crop moving forward.
Melina Banda and Limbikani Phiri are two farmers who have seen massive changes in their lives as a result of the project. “The big difference onions have made is receiving money in a time of year when one does not expect to receive money,” says Melina, a mother of four. “This was the first time in my life to make money in rainy season.” Melina adds: “Previously, after April and May when we harvest field crops, we had nothing to do but just stay waiting for rains. But now we are busy all year round working in our onion field.”
Limbikani, who lives in a household of 17 family members, has also seen an increase in what he earns. He says the family can now afford school fees and food, and they have been able to fence their farm. He has high hopes for the new harvest. “This year I am expecting 20 metric tonnes of onions and my income will be more than what I have made in all my farming life.”
Both farmers have also been able to hire workers to help them on their farms, further extending the benefits through creating additional employment opportunities in the local economy.
But it’s not just financially that the farmers have benefitted. Limbikani, who hadn’t used solar irrigation before, became one of his group’s champions and his confidence has increased. “I feel well trained and now I call myself an all-season farmer.”
For Melina, the feeling is similar. “The project has made us feel respected in the community as we are the only ones who have crops in the field this time of the year,” she says. “I have also learnt how to connect drips and people in my village get surprised to see a woman connecting drip lines and operating a pump.”
Another positive outcome of the project has been access to clean water from the boreholes. As Melina observes: “No more travelling a long distance to fetch water, and also less stomach diseases ever since the borehole was drilled.” Limbikani agrees: “We used to boil water for drinking but now the water is so clean.”
The farmers are clearly optimistic about one day owning their equipment too – along with the prospect of making a good income from their land all year round. “It feels very good,” says Limbikani, adding, “it’s exciting to have three harvests in a year and for different crops.”
Increasing the number of harvests also gives farmers the reassurance of having a safety net in the face of climate change, when the weather during the rainy season can be unreliable. “The global warming has raised [the] temperature here and so just a few days without rains during the rainy season, we end up losing a lot of crop,” says Limbikani. Melina highlights that the opposite is true, too: “Like last year we had too much rains hence most [of the] crop started to rot…” She adds that because of the unpredictability, yields are “usually low compared to when I was young.”
As another cohort of farmers embark on the programme, expansion is on the cards. Maize, squash, garlic and ginger… who knows what other possibilities the future holds for these enterprising farmers. Perhaps it’s time the farmers adopted a new motto: when life gives you lemons, grow onions.
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