Urban Agriculture Farmers Training Week

I’ve been super busy lately. The process of legitimizing urban agriculture (which I’ve talked about before) is coming along well – very surprisingly to me.

We recently had a bit of a milestone. We’ve been planning for a training week for urban agriculture farmers because due to their insecure land tenures, we can’t fund what they want the most – a borehole for clean water. So we asked them what are the second best things you want? And it turns out they wanted training in entrepreneurship, marketing, and environmentally good practices (e.g. making “natural” (non-industrial; cheaper) pesticides, making compost, methods of soil conservation etc). So we got together the 6 groups of farmers we mainly work with and funded and organized a training week. In additional to the training in skills, we hoped that the farmers would be able to network (it’s the first time they’ve all been in the same room) and share their challenges and successes.

Most importantly, we wanted this training week to be part of the process for demarcating land for urban agriculture in which we’re pushing for more participation from the farmers. On the last day, we became a bit more political. We invited all the big shots, some supportive of farming in the city and some not.  As far as I know, it’s really been the first time when all these stakeholders (many government officials and farmers) have been together in a forum where they can really have a discussion back and forth.

My PhD roommate set the tone for the day by giving a presentation about urban agriculture around the world (in Swahili! Super impressive). The main goal being to persuade the big wigs that UA isn’t actually backward or (god-forbid) undeveloped. That it has its practical and social uses. (I can’t wait to see the thesis my roommate will write – she does the most interesting research that yields the most interesting answers. And she’ll hate this sentence because she hates the vague word of ‘interesting’). Lots of good feedback on this one.

Then we had a high level representative from the Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Human Settlement Development (the MLHHSD). The MLHHSD is actually supportive of UA. There is a national law, mainly a legacy of kilimo kwanza (farming first – national goal by the first president, the highly respected Mr. Nyerere), that legalizes urban agriculture. The municipalities are supposed to implement this law by providing assistance to farmers in the city. There is a reason why they hired agriculture agents for all three municipalities of the biggest city – Dar es Salaam. Question period came and the room lit up with tension. Nobody from either the farmers or the municipalities knew about this law. Farmers were delighted and appalled in equal measure. Municipality representatives didn’t know what to say when questioned why they hadn’t done anything to execute this law? Why were they doing the exact opposite by forcing farmers off their land? My supervisor did a great job in calming everyone down. It was more important at that point than to get answers.

Then the farmers presented their concerns and proposed actions. We had asked the farmers early on to discuss with their groups and then write down a list so they can take full opportunity of the chance. During the training, the farmers self-organized and suggested that it would be better if the six groups worked together as one to present. They willingly stayed behind to talk to each other and summarised what they wanted to say. I was so happy to see that. Political activism isn’t what I’m normally used to here. People just don’t go on protests, punching their fists in the air. The farmers must have really understood how important this chance was. Unfortunately, this period seemed a bit short (although it was scheduled for longer), but since I can’t understand Swahili, I can’t be sure. I think it just somehow melted into the next section. Either way, I think the farmers at least got some responses from these normally unreachable government representatives.

Finally, we were supposed to discuss which parcels of land should be earmarked for urban agriculture. We had asked each municipal Agriculture and Livestock office to bring a map marked with areas that they think should be submitted as UA land. Unfortunately, none of the offices did this (which I 99% expected). So instead, the representatives just presented what their departments are doing. On the positive side, it was good because then the farmers got more time to ask questions.

They day was pretty long and intense at times. Especially when one of the farmers got up and made a 15 minute impassioned speech. He was talking about their hardships as farmers and as the ones that are always blamed and moved around. Of course, I couldn’t really understand any of it, I only got the summarised translated version later. The representatives couldn’t really do much either because they’re working in the government which changes slowly. Even if they personally supported UA, their departments might not.

Either way, this day was definitely a very good milestone. I think we’ve changed a few minds and won a few allies. Now comes the next step!