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Mrs Magatyeni is about seventy years old and lives with her hubsand.
She has 8 acres (3.2 ha) of cropping field which she did not plant last year because she was very busy and was not always at home. The owner before her was the grandfather of her husband. The reason that her husband gets the whole share is that his two brothers have both died. However when he passes away the ownership will go to the sons of these brothers and to her sons. Her husband works with her in the field, for example chipping weeds with a hoe. The ploughing costs R120 per acre and it is the same cost to have a house garden site ploughed if people are digging a field to grow vegetables or maize on their home stand. So this must be one of the disincentives for local agriculture in the villages. In Mrs Magatyeni’s case, her children pay for the ploughing and also pay for a bakkie to come and help her to collect manure which she can use in her farming. They also help her to pay for fencing materials. In return she offers them a portion of the crop, both from her maize field and the vegetable crop from her home stand. They need food is how she put it. They have jobs, so they can afford to pay for the ploughing. Her husband used to work but it is odd jobs, he has retired now. This huge cropping area is really too big for Mrs Magatyeni and her husband to work so she will lend some of it to anyone who asks. She will not charge – why charge when I am getting fed and they are too?
Her cropping field is on a gentle slope surrounded by other fields, quite a number of which are being used. There is a fierce wind across this hill because there are no windbreaks. Someone lit up her dry field last year but she does not know why, it could have been someone smoking who threw away the butt. Of course, the common practice of burning the fields is reducing soil fertility in the long run. There can be a problem with cattle and goats coming on to her cropping field. It is a home made fence and the posts can burn if someone sets the field alight. After that has happened the posts have to be replaced. I noticed that the fence in one of the cropping fields near to hers had fallen over.
There is a small section fenced off at the top of her field. This area was an experimental plot that was set up when a water harvesting project was in the village, several years ago. The techniques they pioneered have mostly fallen into disuse as they left. People would have joined the project to get their land ploughed, because the project was offering people free ploughing as an inducement to set up their water harvesting schemes. This area which was restructured for the projecct has a sort of bank at the top of her field, which means that the rain water comes over this bank and drops into the flatter area of her field, maintaining moist conditions. There are also strips of vetiver planted in rows about 2 metres apart, extending further down this experimental plot. Although the intention of the project designers was that this technique would be spread to the remaining area of the fields of the beneficiaries, this has not happened in Mrs Magatyeni’s case or indeed on any of the lands of the villagers. She says she will not extend these vetiver bunds because it is hard work, though she admits that it works. My view of this project is that its failure is typical of projects which offer inducements to ask people to do work to put in improvements on their own land. I also think that the bunds in the experimental plot are much too close together, spacings of thirty metres between bunds would be much more appropriate and would make the task of terracing the whole cropping area much more manageable.
Between this and the plot on her home stand, which is also fenced and ploughed, she gets enough maize to last her till about Christmas from June. What is a puzzle is why she does not grow more and get it to last longer. Maybe that is because she is taking a risk on a good season and the more she spends on inputs the more risk.
Her home stand crops are cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, maize. Her field crops are maize, planted with pumpkins and white melons, dry beans and dry peas. At the present time she does not grow any other complementary vegetable crops in with her maize. She does not eat pumpkin or squash leaves and does not eat amaranth any more because of heart burn – she used to cook it with maize. She does not grow cow peas and so she is not harvesting cow pea leaves to dry as a relish to be eaten in the winter months. However, she does dry and store the harvest of beans and peas for later use, which must be a useful protein addition to their diet. She sells some of her vegetable crop and some of the dried beans but keeps all of the maize crop. She takes some of it to a school where they have a grinder to make meal and some she pounds to make saamp and some she gives to the chickens and goats. When she does it at the school she has to pay for the fuel. Mrs Magatyeni has a fig and an apple but would like more fruit trees. She does not know anything about how to propagate trees.
She saves maize seed from one season to the next. For the most part, she has not been saving her vegetable seeds. She has been told not to save her vegetable seeds (they are hybrids) and that they will not grow a good crop. In fact, she saved her onion seeds and replanted them for several years. After that, she was worried that the next crop would be no good so she did not bother. She does save seeds from spinach and she grows potatoes from stored seed potatoes. She cooks with paraffin rather than using a wood fire and locally collected wood. She has two dogs, the one that is chained up bites and looks very thin.
On her home stand, Mrs Magatyeni has a small flock of free range indigenous chickens and a kraal for her goats. The side of her yard where the chooks range has no trees or shrubs planted to provide shade or chicken feed; there is only grass growing in this run. In the yard as a whole, there are very few trees. She collects manure; chicken and goat manure for the home garden and dry cow manure for the fields. She does not use a compost heap because she and her husband and their children eat all the leaves that the garden produces (or the chickens do).
Mrs Magatyeni is one of seven villagers to be given a water harvesting tank and plastic guttering for her home stand. This was because she was part of the water harvesting project in the fields. It is a 5000 litre plastic tank and the guttering is not wide enough to accommodate a strong downpour. So she is unlikely to get sufficient water from this tank to provide for the dry season and must walk to a village tap to collect water for cooking and washing. Of course there will be little possibility of using any water on her garden in the dry season.
According to Nomokhaya Monde, Mrs Magatyeni would be classified as poor. She would do alright nutritionally in the summer growing season but she would suffer during the winter. She would not be getting any vitamin A or vitamin C from her household garden in these winter months. Despite the problems of growing vegetables in the winter I noticed that at the time of our visit (August) there were some weedy plants growing despite the dry and cold conditions – namely Chenopodium and nettles. These were looking quite healthy. It seems likely that many Dark African Leafy Green vegetables could be grown in the winter if proper conditions were set up to harvest minimal rainfall – using contour bunds and swales, with ponds set up to retain water for gardening.
Suggestions
None of the following interventions could work unless Mrs Magatyeni and her husband were keen and were prepared to put in the work to establish these technologies. Only materials should be supplied. Much of the following does not require any new materials but is just dependent on advice and help in making it work.
The most useful intervention would be to fence the left hand side of the garden to keep goats out of the chicken run. This fenced section could be planted with legume trees for fodder and mulch, as well as fruit trees. There are some useful varieties in the village that could be propagated – the figs that are endemic and black wattles. A minor orchard like this alongside the house would really improve chicken nutrition and would also supply vitamins for human consumption. A good fruit to grow would be apricots, which could be dried to provide vitamin A in winter.
Another good intervention would be some windbreaks for the cropping area. These could be established by propagating casuarinas, which are growing in the village. What would also help would be a proper system of bunds in the whole of the cropping area fortified with vetiver grass.
She could use some of her vast cropping area to grow a crop of wattles for mulch, fodder and wood. With this, in time she could have a proper fire place for the kitchen, with a chimney, and use wood instead of paraffin for cooking, saving money by using a free local resource.
She should be introduced to seed saving and given non hybrid seeds of some of her common vegetable crops from a seed company.
She should be taught how to collect seeds and grow leafy weed-like vegetables. This could begin by finding out what local wild vegetables are in the area and working out how to establish and grow them in the garden – for example black jack, amaranth. A good source of leafy greens for the winter would be Lebanese cress grown in ponds. Parlsey could also work.
She should have a bigger concrete tank and guttering of a large size that can save all rainfall, not just light showers. Ideally, this couple and their children should construct a 10 000 litre tank themselves, so that they can establish a permanent supply of water, that can be repaired and maintained into the future.
She should develop a compost heap.
She should use a complementary green manure crop in the maize field – for example Dolichos lab lab could work well. Maybe Mucuna pruriens.
A composting toilet would be possible if the couple were keen to try this technology and this too could be built largely with materials on site (mudbricks, thatch) and maintained indefinitely. This would be a cheap source of nutrients for orchards and cropping fields.