Unbelievable Harvests
Raising children as a widow and full-time farmer in a changing climate and conflict burden region is nearly impossible.
With training in Conservation Agriculture, hope was given
Wiro Belaynesh Bassa awakes daily to water and cares for her farm. After long hours she returns home and has to care, feed and prepare her six children for the day. Bassa became widowed at forty and has cared for her six children alone ever since her husband’s passing. Having to raise six children is a struggle. Raising them as a single mother and full-time farmer in a changing climate and conflict burden region is nearly impossible.
Bassa lives in a village in Boloso Bombe Woreda, Ethiopia, where there is a lack of peace and security. Furthermore, massive droughts have left Bassa and millions of others in the country to suffer from hunger. For Bassa, this has meant caring for her children involves working longer hours in the field with less and less yield as weather patterns change. After endless years of almost no harvests, Bassa was chosen to be trained in Conservation Agriculture (CA). She has gained knowledge and confidence in using cover crops and mulching materials for her land through no-tillage, minimum disturbance, crop rotation, and association principles.
After returning from this training, she planted maize during the rainy season and saw a harvest of over 200kgs in the new CA farming plot, while the old plot only harvested 50kgs. Bassa was in disbelief, “I have never seen such a harvest since my husband’s death.” Farming and harvesting have been difficult without her husband, but she knows she must push through.
Because of donors like you and the hard work of Bassa and local training staff, the yields continue to be positive, and harvest is good even when drought is present. For years, Bassa and her family struggled in the depths of poverty, but since being trained in CA, she has climbed up from poverty and can now care for her children. Bassa is thankful for people like you who fund these projects, but she has decided to be grateful means she must help others.
Bassa has also joined a village-level self-help group (SHG) established with initiation to integrate the CA approaches with other farmers. The SHG focuses on empowering women and reducing marginalization by creating access to finance from group loans to get agricultural inputs, social services and start other agribusinesses for diversified household income and food security.
Thank you for your support; you have changed Bassa and her family’s lives and allowed Tearfund and TDA to transform hundreds of families’ livelihoods, and helped create a better future for these villages.
