By Mario Osava
AFOGADOS DA INGAZEIRA, Brasil, Jun 30 2023 – “The rainwater tanks are the best invention in the world for us,” said Maria de Lourdes Feitosa, 46, who recalls the deadly droughts of the past in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast region.

“There has been a reduction of many diseases” that came from the so-called “barreros”, puddles and small ponds that are the result of the accumulation of water in muddy holes in the ground that people shared with animals, Feitosa, a farmer from a rural community in Afogados da Ingazeira, a municipality of 38,000 inhabitants, told IPS.

Feitosa owns a six-hectare farm and is less dependent on water than some of her neighbors because she produces agroecological cotton, which requires less water than horticultural and fruit crops.

Nearly 1.2 million tanks that collect 16,000 liters of potable rainwater from the roofs of homes now form part of the rural landscape of the semiarid ecoregion, an area that covers 1.1 million square kilometers and is home to 28 million of Brazil’s 214 million people, which extends throughout the interior of the Northeast and into the northern fringe of Brazil’s Southeast region.

The water tanks are a symbol of the transformation that the Northeast, the country’s poorest region, has been undergoing since the beginning of this century. During the longest drought in its history, from 2011 to 2018, there was no repeat of previous tragedies of deaths, mass exodus of people to the south and the looting of businesses by desperate people, as seen in the 1980s and 1990s.

According to the Articulação Semiárido Brasileiro (ASA), a network of 3,000 social organizations that created the program, adopted as public policy by the government in 2003, some 350,000 families are still in need of water tanks.

This 16,000-liter concrete slab tank stores rainwater collected on the roof and uses pipes to provide drinking water for Josaída Nunes and Eronildes Silva, in the Sertão de Pajeú, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Another battle is to increase fourfold the more than 200,000 “technologies” for collecting water for production, or “second water”, which already benefit family farming and are decisive for food security and poverty reduction in the region.

Reusing household water

Josaida Nunes da Silva, 38, and her husband Eronildes da Silva, 41, resort to reusing water from the bathroom and kitchen in their home, faced with shortages aggravated by the altitude of the hill they live on in Carnaiba, a municipality of 20,000 people bordering Afogados da Ingazeira.

A complex of pipes carries the wastewater to the so-called “fat box” and then to the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor and a tank for “polishing”, exposed to the sun, and another for the water ready for irrigation.

This system filters contaminating components, such as fecal coliforms (bacteria), and prepares the water with fertilizers for irrigation of the fields and fruit trees. “We grow lettuce, onions, cilantro and other vegetables, as well as bananas, corn, cassava, papaya, guava, passion fruit and even dragon fruit,” said Nunes.

Dragon fruit comes from the cactus family, of Mexican and Central American origin, and has recently become popular in Brazil.

The large size of the banana bunch is “proof” of the fertilizer’s effectiveness, said Nunes’ husband, who adds cow dung. “The treated water is a blessing. Besides providing us with water, it gives us good fertilizer,” Nunes said.

A “stone tank” that takes advantage of holes in the rocks to store rainwater is one of the technologies used to coexist with the scarcity of rainfall in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast ecoregion. In the background can be seen the mountainous landscape of the Sertão de Pajeú, in northeastern Brazil. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Her husband Silva is also a bricklayer and has built many water tanks in the region. He also drives school children from the rural area in an old van and keeps fodder for his ten cows in hermetically sealed plastic bags.

“The drought hit us hard. We had to bring water from the ‘barrero’ on the plain, up the mountain in the ox cart. We bought a cow, when she was still a calf, for 2500 reais and had to sell it for 500 reais (104 dollars),” lamented his wife.

The couple owns 8.5 hectares of land, a large property in the region where most farms are only a few hectares in size, the result of the frequent divisions between heirs of the large families of the past. But since the terrain is mountainous and rocky, the cultivable area is limited.

Nunes and Silva have three children, although only the youngest, 17, still lives with them.

Farmer Aluisio Braz (L) dries and threshes beans, accompanied by his wife, Joselita Ramos, on the terrace of their house that collects rainwater to fill the 52,000-liter tank at the back for agricultural irrigation on their farm in Carnaiba, in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Coexisting with semiarid conditions

The techniques that benefit family farmers so that they can “coexist with the semiarid conditions” and prosper have been disseminated in the municipalities of the Sertão de Pajeú by Diaconia, a social organization of Protestant churches.

Pajeú is the name of the river that crosses 17 municipalities, whose basin is home to 360,000 people. The mountains surrounding the territory include the headwaters of several streams and creeks, which dry up in the dry season, but ensure greater humidity compared to other areas of the semiarid Northeast.

Agroecology practices are one of the focuses of Diaconia, whose agricultural technician Adilson Viana has dedicated 20 of his 49 years to supporting farmers and who accompanied IPS on visits to families involved in the program.

A tank that collects 52,000 liters of rainwater for production is the treasure of Joselita Ramos, 49, and her husband Aluisio Braz, 55, on their two-hectare farm, also located in Carnaiba.

The UASB reactor is an important component in the system for reusing bath and kitchen water for family farming in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

The rainwater falls on a concrete terrace on the ground that is about 200 square meters in size and is slightly inclined to fill the water tank. Braz uses it to dry and thresh string beans, which are typical of the Northeastern diet.

The couple grows fruit trees that Ramos uses to make pulp using mango, guava, acerola cherry (Malpighia emarginata) and a fruit native to the semiarid region, the umbu or Brazil plum (Spondias tuberosa), that comes from a small tree native to Northeast Brazil.

Ramos is taking a break from the activity “because it is not fruit season in the region and the energy to run the refrigerator is very expensive.” Another difficulty is that the city government’s payments for the pulp supplied to the schools have been delayed. “I only received a payment in November for sales from early last year,” she complained.

To boost the production of grains, such as beans and corn, as well as cassava, Braz grows them on his father’s four-hectare farm, about six kilometers from his own farm.

Ivan Lopes, an enterprising family farmer, shows a soursop plant that is highly productive thanks to irrigation with reused water and natural fertilizers, on his farm in Brazil’s semiarid Northeast. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Agroecological productivity

An exceptional case of entrepreneurial vocation and availability of water is that of Ivan Lopes, 43, who together with his brother grows fruit, including bananas, pineapple, mango, grapes, avocado, passion fruit and many more, on nine hectares of land.

Water is pumped from a lagoon on the property to four reservoirs located at the higher elevations, which make gravity irrigation possible. That is why electricity is one of the farm’s biggest expenses. “I plan to install a solar power plant to save money,” Lopes told IPS.

Honey is another product they make. “The last harvest totaled 40 liters,” from dozens of hives distributed throughout the orchard. Sugarcane is grown for the sale of sugarcane juice in the cities.

The farm is also a kind of laboratory for the dissemination of organic tomato cultivation in greenhouses. “At the agroecological market in São José do Egito (a neighboring city of 34,000 people) people line up to buy my tomatoes, because they are known to be clean, pest-free and tasty,” Lopes said.

Based on their experience, there are now 10 projects for tomato production in the Pajeú Agroecological Association.

To achieve his high level of productivity, the farmer makes his own fertilizer from earthworm humus. The success he has experienced in farming prompted him to get rid of his 10 cows in order to focus on crops and beekeeping.

By Esther Nantana
WINDHOEK, Namibia, Jun 30 2023 – In almost every conversation I’ve had about gender-based violence (GBV), the question “why don’t they leave?” inevitably comes up.

After many years of working in this space, I have learned that the answer is not as simple as we think. The nature of GBV is quite complex. Numerous layers and factors affect individuals both internally and externally.

These can include the nature of the relationship, the sense of responsibility, the sporadic nature of violence, fears and uncertainty.

A significant part of the complexity of GBV lies in the fact that it is committed by someone with whom the victim is in a relationship and thus someone they deeply love and care about.

Trying to reconcile how someone you love can hurt you in that way is usually only the initial shock. But it keeps victims trying to figure out what went wrong in the relationship.

BLAME-SHIFTING

Victims have been known to take on a sense of responsibility for the violence they face. Some tend to believe they provoked or caused the problem.

This is usually a result of blame-shifting by the abuser. Society also contributes to this when they subject victims to questions like “what did you do to aggravate him?”

Esther Nantana

This engenders a sense of guilt and an accompanying sense of responsibility to prevent further violence.

This is wrongfully placed on victims when the abusers are at fault. Also, no level of “instigation” warrants physical aggression or abuse. Physical violence is unacceptable even when it only occurs once in a relationship.

And in most cases, when it happens once, it is often likely to reoccur. It may not even happen frequently, but it will.

And those moments when it’s not happening pull the victim back into the relationship – thinking the last time it happened was the last time it would happen.

ASSUMPTIONS

When we try and picture an abusive relationship, we tend to assume it’s violent all the time. This is not always the case.

Abusive relationships are usually filled with other moments. Even happy moments. The abuser who gets upset and violent is the same person making grand gestures and declaring their love daily.

Abusers beg and cry, showing remorse and regret, just to try prove they are still “good people”. They tend to play on the emotions of the victims because of the close nature of intimate relationships. This eventually makes it easy for the abuse to reoccur in cycles.

It takes the victim quite a few times before they can confidently say they want to break out of the cycle. Regrettably, even after deciding to leave, issues of safety are paramount.

Statistics show the most dangerous time is when victims attempt to leave the relationship. In some cases, it can end fatally.

As abusive partners try to maintain power and control, they can become more violent, threatening to end the lives of their partners and even threatening the lives of other loved ones involved.

CHALLENGES

Victims wanting to leave abusive relationships face enormous challenges. Where do they get adequate support? Do they know where to go? How do they survive economically? Where will they live?

Then there are fears of not being believed or supported. Or having their reports and accounts invalidated. They are also pressured by family and friends to remain in relationships for the sake of the children and to maintain the facade of a good family image.

These are only some of the issues involved with trying to leave. It’s difficult, and it is challenging, and it cannot happen overnight.

So next time you hear about a person who stayed in an abusive relationship, treat them and the situation with grace and understanding. It takes a lot of courage to report abuse the first time and even more courage to keep reporting it and trying to get out.

Our loved ones in these situations need empathy, support, and love. This gives them the strength to leave eventually.

Esther Nantana is currently a project coordinator for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Namibia. Previously, Esther co-led the Women and Youth Development/Capacity Building cluster at the African Union. She graduated from the Indrani Fellowship in May 2023. She is also a public health and gender advocate and a blogger; website esthernantana.com

Source: The Namibian

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By Charles Mpaka
BLANTYRE, Jun 30 2023 – Located between two heavily-deforested mountains, Nakadanga Trust in Machinga District in southern Malawi looks lifeless.

It is isolated away from all other original communities. Here, the houses are made of mud bricks and they are grass thatched. There is no source of potable water in the area. There is no school nearby, no health centre and no shops for groceries.

When the members of the trust gathered to speak with IPS last month, one of the outstanding features among them was that there were more babies and children than could be expected.

“Early marriages are rampant here,” said one of the women, Merika Kapachika.

“There is nowhere our children can learn about the dangers of early marriages and early pregnancies. In the homes, there is nothing much to do.”

Kapachika is among the people that relocated to the area in 2006 under a government land resettlement programme.

Between 2004 and 2011, the Ministry of Lands implemented the Community-Based Rural Land Development Project with financial support from the World Bank.

The project involved moving what it described as “poor, land-poor and food insecure families” from the tea-growing districts of Thyolo and Mulanje in the south to Mangochi, Machinga, Balaka and Ntcheu districts in the eastern region.

There, people were resettled on land which the government had acquired from estate owners. The beneficiaries were organised into settlement communities called trusts.

At the time the project ended in 2011, over 15,000 families had been moved.

The World Bank’s Implementation Completion and Results Report Project, dated March 30, 2012, says the programme “fully” achieved its development objectives.

It says the programme succeeded in increasing both incomes and agricultural productivity of the rural families that moved.

According to the report, the incomes of the relocated families had multiplied by six; yields for maize and tobacco reached an average level of 50 to 60 percent higher as compared to communities in the surrounding areas; average maize and tobacco yields multiplied by 4 and 2.6 respectively as compared to the previous situation of the relocated households.

“Based on the promising results of this pilot experience of land acquisition and redistribution for smallholders, the Government of Malawi is willing to scale up the approach to the entire country with an objective of resettling at least 100,000 households,” reads the report in part.

However, alternative assessments expose the social and economic hardships the beneficiaries have suffered.

For example, a study of the project published in the South African Journal of Agriculture Extension in 2015 found that the relocated communities faced greater difficulties to access agricultural inputs, credit, markets and extension services to support their agricultural production and access to social services.

“As a consequence, household food and income security deteriorated after phase out of the project in 2011,” the study says.

In the six trusts which IPS visited in Machinga and Mangochi districts, where 90 percent of the 15,000 families were resettled, stories of regret are prevalent.

Mary Yalale moved from Mulanje District in 2007 and resettled in Mangochi. Initially, it looked promising. The people finally had enough land on which to grow crops. They realised a good harvest in the first few years.

“However, we did not have markets to sell part of our produce for money for us to meet other needs. Vendors took advantage. They would invade the area, buy our produce at exploitative prices, knowing that we were unable to take it to proper markets ourselves where we could earn better prices,” said Yalale of Kuma Trust.

Today, she said, they are poor such that some of them survive on piecework in the homes of the original communities.

“Our land has degraded because we are now turning to forests to produce charcoal and firewood, which our husbands take to town to make money.

“Up to now, we still do not have good relations with the original communities. They say we grabbed the land that should have gone to them. We are outcasts. The government does not give us cheap fertiliser like it does with the others. It makes us feel foolish that we agreed to come,” she said.

In Bweya Trust in Machinga District, there stands a relatively new primary school block.

Chairperson of the trust, Sowani Saidi, who is also chairperson of all the trusts of relocated people in the two districts, said it was not by the design of the government that they have a school in the area.

“We moved here in 2007. It has taken us more than 10 years of fighting with the district council for us to have this school here. We moulded bricks and collected sand for our children to have a school,” he said.

They may have the school now, but they are struggling to have the government build teachers’ houses. To date, there are no teachers’ houses at the school.

Many teachers for the school are based at the trading centre about 10 kilometres away.

“So most of them don’t come most of the time. They can’t walk, or they spend a lot hiring motorbikes to report for duties. When it’s the rainy season, there are no classes on many days because teachers don’t come. We have been asking the government to build the houses; nothing is happening,” he said.

IPS reached out to the Ministry of Lands, which implemented the programme, for its comment on these concerns. Its spokesperson, Enock Chingoni, did not respond.

However, senior officials at Mangochi and Machinga district councils, speaking on condition of anonymity as they are not authorised to speak on behalf of the government on the project, said the project did not have any integrated social and economic development activities.

The design was that once people resettled, another government programme, the Malawi Social Action Fund (Masaf), which was also financed by the World Bank, would bring public services.

“However, Masaf failed to deliver,” said one official who was part of the implementation of the programme in 2010 in Mangochi District.

Masaf, a product of the Malawi Poverty Reduction Strategy, was meant to ensure poverty reduction through activities implemented by local councils under the decentralisation policy. But decentralisation itself is generally considered as failed thus far.

“Up to now, the central government still controls much of the work of the government. We are on the receiving end of most of its decisions,” he said.

Asked if the council has any specific interventions in the resettled communities, he said there is none.

“Yes, we have development plans as a council; but we treat those people like anyone else. There is not going to be any development specific to them. At least not from the government,” said the official.

Gift Trapence, the chairperson of the Human Right Defenders Coalition (HRDC), a local organisation, faulted the project for not considering social services as a core component in its implementation.

“Such projects should not be breeding grounds for poverty. Rather they should empower citizens socially and economically,” Trapence said.

He urged the government to assess the settlements and come up with an actionable plan to address the public service access challenges they are facing.

For Kapachika of Nakadanga Trust they are no longer interested in such interventions.

“We have been here for more than 10 years now. All along, the government has known that we are suffering; it has done nothing.

“What we want now is it should take us back to where it uprooted us. There we had health centres. We had good roads and markets. We did not have to wait for our children to reach 8 years for them to start primary school. We were delivering our babies in hospitals, not in the bush. Government should take us back to our villages,” she said.

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By Paul Virgo
ROME, Jun 30 2023 – Get yourself a nice big pot full of water, dice some onions and throw in the meat of your fancy, followed by chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, dried okra powder, garden eggs and chilli peppers.

Leave the pot to boil and, when simmering, add some fish and locust-bean-and-chilli mix, grind in some fresh okra and give it another stir.

Toast some fonio in a saucepan until it’s warm, add some water, put on a lid and cook on a low heat for 20 minutes.

Leave the fonio to rest so it comes out nice and fluffy and serve with your stew.

Delicious and easy-peasy!

This recipe for soupu kanja with fonio was recently presented by celebrity chef Fatmata Binta to launch the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Global Chefs Challenge.

Millets can grow on arid lands with minimal inputs, they are resistant to drought and tolerant to crop diseases and pests, making them resilient to changes in climate. Their ability to grow in poor, degraded soils can also provide land cover in arid areas, reducing soil degradation and supporting biodiversity

The aim of the online challenge is to show the multitude of ways fonio and the other cereals belonging to the millet family can be used in order to encourage people to put them back on the menu.

Millets, a diverse group of small-grained, dryland cereals, are an excellent source of fibre, antioxidants, proteins and minerals, including iron.

They are diverse in taste and gluten free, meaning they are safe for sufferers of celiac disease, and the residues from their harvests can be used as livestock feed.

Despite these virtues, demand for millets has declined in recent decades, with a knock-on effect for production, as other cereals have become widespread and dietary preferences have shifted.

Millets, which were among the first plants to be domesticated, currently account for less than 3% of the global grains trade.

The FAO is trying to reverse this trend as it sees millets as an ideal way for countries to increase food self-sufficiency and reduce reliance on imported cereal grains.

Millets can grow on arid lands with minimal inputs, they are resistant to drought and tolerant to crop diseases and pests, making them resilient to changes in climate.

Their ability to grow in poor, degraded soils can also provide land cover in arid areas, reducing soil degradation and supporting biodiversity.

So as agrifood systems face big challenges to feed an ever-growing global population, these cereals provide an affordable and nutritious option and a potentially precious resource to help small-scale farmers to adapt to the climate emergency.

The United Nations has declared 2023 the International Year of Millets to promote their cultivation.

Naturally, people do not base their eating habits solely in the recommendations of agronomists or UN agencies.

So the FAO has enlisted Binta and other celebrity chefs to help people appreciate what these hardly cereals have to offer.

“Fonio is not only nutritious and delicious, it can grow in tough climates and could help to end world hunger” said Binta.

“So enjoy my fonio recipe and I challenge you to share your millet recipe!”

A native of Sierra Leone, in 2022 Binta became the first African to win the Basque Culinary World Prize for chefs who improve society through gastronomy.

Now based in Accra, Ghana, she received the prize for her ‘Dine on a Mat’ pop-up restaurant initiative showcasing the culinary traditions of the Fulani people of West Africa.

“If you’ve been following my work, you’ll know that I’m very passionate about African gastronomy, highlighting underutilized ingredients, and most importantly, taking inspiration from women in rural areas,” said Binta, whose Fulani Kitchen Foundation helps women farmers grow fonio as a crop.

“I collaborated on a recipe with some beautiful women from a town called Kolda, in Senegal.

“I encourage you all to try millets, to try fonio, add it to your diet, and let’s keep this challenge going”.

Anyone can join the chefs in taking part in the challenge.

All you have to do is make a video of yourself preparing a millet dish, explaining the recipe, the type of millet being used and the nutritional benefits.

Then put the video on social media using @FAO and the hashtags #IYM2023 and #YearofMillets in the post.

The potential of millets to save livelihoods and lives is demonstrated by story of Pudi Soren, a 27-year-old woman from the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

Pudi recently started growing finger millet after initially receiving seeds from a project administered by the FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources and implemented by an NGO called Public Advocacy Initiatives for Rights and Values in India.

This has proved vital as it is a crop that she can plant near her home when rain from monsoon season is insufficient.

“We have forgotten about some crops,” said Soren.

“When we were children, we saw crops such as finger millets too, but people stopped their cultivation for many years.

“My husband and I have a small piece of land, but we did not grow much previously, because we lacked the necessary resources.

“Three years ago, the project gave us seeds and encouraged us to do farming. Now I am proud to be a farmer.

“We can grow finger millet in the rice fallow season and summer, and they do not need fertilizers; some cow dung is sufficient.

“It is a good source of protein in our meals, and my children like the biscuits that I make with the flour.

“In the past, we bought oil, wheat and pulses from the market and spent 500 to 600 rupees every month.

“Our expenses have been halved since we started cultivating these crops. I use the money for the education of my children.

“There are problems that we face as smallholder farmers.

“Rainfall is reducing. And when there is little rainfall, like this year, irrigation becomes expensive. Thankfully, finger millets can be grown with less water.

“What I grow sustains my family, but in the future, I want to sell my surplus on the market”.