Tackling poverty and hunger, one farmer at a time

Jacqueline Morette says she will teach the women farmers in Haiti some cost-saving methods she learned in Iowa. Photo by Kathleen Masterson

For visiting farmers from Vietnam, India, Haiti and Mali, touring some small-scale Iowa farms was inspiring -- but a little disheartening, too.

 The farmers, who were in Iowa as a part of the World Food Prize events, came to share their stories and to start a dialogue with American farmers.  It was the first time many of them had left their home country.  

Jacqueline Morette was one of the international farmers who visited High Hopes Gardens in Melbourne, Iowa, on Saturday.  Morette is the president of a women’s association in Haiti.  Most of her members are subsistence farmers; the women grow grains and vegetables and raise some livestock.  After visiting several small-scale Iowa farms, Morette said she was encouraged by the efficiency and mechanization she saw.  However, she said, in Haiti they don’t have the machinery and resources to adopt all these techniques. 

“In our country we are still using old practices, that in many ways are primitive,” said Morette, who spoke via a translator.

“It’s a struggle, because everything you have to do is by hand.  And any small work you have to do you have to hire a lot of people to do it. And when I come here, I see this, I’m excited to see it, but at the same time I’m thinking about back home… it’s kind of sad.”

Still, Morette said she did learn some useful techniques that she will teach the women farmers in Haiti.  One is the use of portable chicken cages that can be moved to different areas to fertilize the ground.  

“The key thing and the ultimate goal is for the women to be autonomous, and we’re trying to do everything we can to give opportunities to generate income, or subsistence cultivation,” she said.

Morette said an added struggle this year has been feeding all the people who have moved from the earthquake zone to the rural areas.   “All of our seed plants we had for the next season, we needed to take them out and use them as (food) so that we can feed the folks who’d moved to area. So in that sense, it has a major impact on us.”

Sharing sustainability successes

Duddeda Sugunavva was finally able to work her way out of debt when she implemented a new rice-growing method that reduces fertilizer and water use. Photo by Kathleen Masterson

After touring the farm grounds, the crowd of international farmers, Oxfam America reps, Iowa farmers and citizens ate lunch at picnic tables outside the barn. The meal included dessert made from High Hopes Garden berries. 

Before the group moved into the makeshift barn auditorium with hay-bale seats, Duddeda Sugunavva spoke with me about her farming experience back in India.  She was draped in a blush-colored sahri and a red sweater, and shivered slightly despite what by Iowa standards was uncharacteristically warm October sun.

The petite mother of five said she grows corn, cotton and rice on her three-and-half acre subsistence farm in Andhra Pradesh, India.  About six years ago, Sugunavva was trapped in a cycle of debt. She was forced to borrow from financers to buy seeds and fertilizer, but her crop yields didn’t produce enough to feed her family.  Some days they didn’t have anything to eat. She lost her oldest son.

A nonprofit group came to her village and taught farmers about a new rice-growing technique that costs less and produces more rice. 

“Now in the new method the seed requirement has drastically come down from 30 kilos to 2 kilos, and the fertilizer requirement has come down from six bags to three bags. The water requirement has also come down,” said Sugunavva, speaking through a translator.

Because of these lower input costs, Sugunavva has made enough money to purchase a cow, which brings her extra income from selling milk.  Sugunavva shared her story with other farmers gathered at in central Iowa for the World Food Day event.

Oxfam helped bring some of the international farmers like Sugunavva to the United States for the event.  This year’s World Food Prize theme was “Take it to the farmer,” said Eric Munoz, senior policy adviser with Oxfam. “We thought a nice addendum to that should be ‘listen to the farmer.’ “