How to empower farmers and nourish the planet. by agnes kalibata

               

                       i have told this story a million times but I'm going to tell it today again so that it can help you connect with the 500 million farmers small holder farmers that are out there i grew up on a small farm in Uganda where my parents were refugees from Rwanda my parents farmed they grew maize and potatoes my mom dug the land and fed us My dad never touched the whole even worse and my mom never complained because she felt it was her responsibility to feed the family fast forward.

 i got out of there at the age of around 14 thanks to the fact that my dad had been a teacher in rwanda but i was the exception not the rule and I'm here today to tell you that empowering small holder farmers can change their lives can nourish people improve economies and actually help them deal with the current challenge of climate when i finished school i worked in research in uganda and i got a friend of mine gave me 2kog of seed to take to my parents this was an improved variety when my mom planted it she got 10 bugs in a place where she would have usually got  three bugs she sold some seeds ot her  fellow farmers and bought herself a traditional dress she did not have to ask my dad for money that was the first time and i still remember the excitement and the joy in her face like it was yesterday but of course she needed more seed and she wanted more of the same seed in my mind i was like if i can empower my mother like i did with one sock of seed i can definitely power whole villages I can help send more girls to school. 

                   I still remember the pain i felt when i was told my best friend had been married at 15 because her parents could not keep her in school. I still think of all the girls that did not make it out of my village because they didn't have the opportunities i had. And it gives me a certain yearning that actually keeps me grounded in the realities of my world. The opportunity came 15 years later when i joined the leadership of ministry of Agriculture in Rwanda,ultimately as the minister.

This is not a country where you want to wake up as a minister. Farmers' land holding are the smallest in the world, at least in Africa. The country is mountainous. Farmers lose land every season. And the country was just coming out of a genocide, and everybody was struggling. But this did not water down my excitement. In my mind, i was served lemons, and i needed to make lemonade. I took advantage of the fact that Rwandan farmers owned their land, and we designed a program to consolidate land and synchronize how farmers farmed without worry of land boundaries.

My government put in place policies to ensure that farmers had access to seeds and to fertilizers. We put in place extension for every 500 hectares. The first season of farming was a lot of preaching and campaigning. And why would farmers want to use seeds and fertilizers they had never seen? But by the third season farmers were demanding that seeds and fertilizers be delivered in good time for planting. Three years in, we had a bumper harvest, and it was my worst nightmare because we had not prepared for market. I had not thought about the storage. And maize was everywhere. I went to government and my government helped me. Working with World Food Program and government procurement agencies, we were able to buy farmers' produce, and we worked with the private sector and set up more long-term solutions through the storing and processing capacity Once farmers had a market, the transformation was palpable. 

I remember feeling as i walked around the country, feeling that the air around me was vibrating with energy and excitement. My people were happy, my country was proud. And in the period of six years, Rwanda was recording poverty reduction levels that were not being seen in the region, and the World Bank attributed 65 percent of that poverty reduction to what was happening in the agricultural sector, and related value addition.