This reluctant farmer took a risk, and his harvest multiplied 3x!
A reluctant farmer in Ethiopia discovers God’s provision through new farming techniques, and now helps many others find hope.
Leaning on the handle of his rake, Masine wiped the sweat off his brow.
As he surveyed the modest, sun-cracked land around him, wondered how he would possibly be able to harvest enough food to feed his family of 9.
Maize was his staple crop, like most farmers in the Ethiopian region. But each year, the yield barely stretched past eight months for their family. “Prior to the project,” Masine recalled, “I was a food insecure household.” He and his wife Kelemoa had only been scraping by, year after year.
So when one of Tearfund’s partners approached him with an invitation to try a new farming technique called Conservation Agriculture (CA), he was skeptical. It was hard enough to grow enough food to feed his family of nine as it was, and he wasn’t just going to give up a portion of his land just for it to yield nothing.
“I didn’t want to be a lazy farmer who doesn’t properly farm his land and drops his family into hunger,” he explained. He couldn’t afford to experiment with something new—not with seven children depending on him.
But the project officer kept returning, kept asking, and kept trying to persuade him to try even a small portion of his land. Finally, Masine finally gave in, if only to get the project officer to leave him alone. He reluctantly set aside the land portion with the least fertile soil, already deeming it a loss, and applied the new farming techniques. His mind was already grieving, wondering how he was going to stretch the smaller harvest across his whole family.
But then came the harvest.
From the same size plot, the CA maize yielded nearly double what the traditional plot did! Masine walked through his field amazed. “This nagged in my head,” he remembers. “I sat down with my wife to discuss the result, and we finally agreed to check again by increasing the plot size.”
So, they tried one more time that same year, and the results were even more astonishing—nearly three times the yield!
Finally, Masine was convinced. The next year, he and his wife expanded CA techniques to other crops—beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, and more. Their farm began to flourish more than they ever would have dreamed. And then, the drought came.
This had happened before. Drought had wiped out all their crops, leaving them struggling to survive. But this time was different. Masine’s CA crops didn’t wither—in fact, they produced a surplus! “I got very good yield,” he explained, “which was enough to feed my family and also cover my children’s school fees and other needs.”
Only a couple of years ago, Masine struggled to grow enough food to feed his family. Now, even through drought, he grows enough that he can even send his children to school!
Today, Masine is a lead farmer in his community, mentoring around 50 other farmers in Conservation Agriculture techniques. “CA changed my status. I am food secure. Thanks to God and also to the project staff who politely and patiently supported me,” he laughs, recalling his initial stubbornness. Now, Masine testifies to other skeptical farmers of the real transformation he faced, with the results to prove it. God is using his story to spread this hope throughout the village.
Tearfund works to equip people to be able to lift themselves out of poverty. Thanks to donors, Tearfund is able to bring hope and restoration to people like Masine.