Why working on sustainable agriculture chain development?

To understand the changing context of family farming in developing countries, read this story of our former director, Jan Aertsen:

One woman, two encounters, another world

In 1985, I have an open-hearted discussion with a young woman farmer in the heart of Africa. She cultivates, with her husband, sweet potatoes in her garden. Her husband works with a hoe; she plants. She’s pregnant, happy and cheerful. This family cultivates beans, sorghum, one hundred feet of coffee, sweet potatoes and cassava. She has three goats, five chickens. She’s a member of the union of cooperatives. And catholic. But above all, she looks at the future with a smile.

In 2006, I meet the same woman again, but the world looks completely different now!

  • 1985: a small Belgian NGO named Vredeseilanden makes a feasibility study to examine the introduction of a fax machine
  • 1989: the Berlin wall falls
  • 1990: big hope in (South) Africa with Nelson Mandela
  • 1991: first Golf War for oil
  • 1994: mass murder, civil wars and genocide in Rwanda and Eastern Congo
  • 1999: anti-globalist movement paralyses WTO
  • 2000: the world wakes up with China and India in full growth
  • 2001: the war against terrorism starts
  • 2002: generalisation in the use of mobile telephones
  • 2003: coffee prices are extremely low, but FLO (Fair Trade Labelling Organisation) receives the Nobel Price
  • 2005: WTO meeting in Hong Kong: failure and confusion
  • 2006: energy crisis

In 2006, like I told earlier, I meet this woman again. She works some vegetables with her hoe. She gets help from two young girls. She tells me she has five children. Two have died. Her husband works as an assistant bricklayer in the city. Her eldest daughter is in high school. She tells me everything, the whole story. She will not be pregnant again because she receives an anti-conception injection every four months; but the religious sect that took over the health centre, advocates for continence, and that with a husband in good form each Saturday, recovered after a week of hard work in the city. She tells and tells and I ask questions.
I memorise the changes:

  • The hoe is not made in Germany anymore but in China
  • She doesn’t cultivate sweet potatoes anymore, but vegetables and rice in her garden. She’s member of a women interest group
  • The salary of her husband is used to improve their house, tuition fees for the school and the big expenses: medicines, clothes, bicycles
  • The government is completely absent in agriculture and the rural areas it's finished with agricultural extension, control of prices, storage centres, agricultural credits
  • The union of cooperatives has failed and the ex-president of the coop is paid by an English NGO to go to Hong Kong for the WTO meeting. He came back with two electronic agendas and two digital cameras
  • On the menu: sweet potatoes and cassava are replaced by rice and imported spaghettis. But the family eats vegetables
  • Except for the price of vegetables, which she sells directly at the local market, the prices of agricultural products are extremely low. The one hundred feet of (robusta) coffee are abandoned.

She tells me her dreams related to farmer organisations, ecological products and the role of women. She asks me what Vredeseilanden will do towards that dramatic situation in agriculture in Africa. I answer explaining that we will invest in sustainable agriculture and improving the position of farmers in the agricultural chain... She goes to pick me some oranges. ‘Agamba’, provisions for a good journey...
 

Photo: Jan Vannoppen