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Resource ID
15137
Access
Open
Gender and Age of people featured
Female
Consent?
yes, gathered by Farm Africa
Any restrictions on use?
Do not use before 17 April 2020
Photographer Credit
Farm Africa (Ava Emami)
Names of people featured
Amina, Pharida
Country (mandatory)
Tanzania, Africa
Photograph format
portrait
Specific keywords
Crops
Crops
sunflower
additional not included in options above - describing the content and style of the resource
sunflower, seeds, mother, daughter, smiling, happy, laughing.
Date resource was created on location
14 January 20 @ 10:00
Staff member content was gathered by
Ava Emami
Caption
Amina Muru, sunflower farmer participating in Farm Africa's Flourishing Futures project in Babati, Tanzania. Pictured with her daughter Pharida.
Project (Tanzania)
Flourishing Futures (Sunflower)
Project or event summary
In Tanzania, growing demand for cooking oil has been met largely by palm oil imports rather than increased sunflower oil production.
Poor farming techniques and sunflower plants’ vulnerability to drought keep farmers’ yields low.
Sunflower oil production is currently capping at a quarter of its potential.
Farm Africa is promoting a hybrid variety of seed to farmers that is drought tolerant and produces vastly increased yields compared to local varieties.
This project is working with agricultural cooperatives and 10,000 of their members to support farmers to establish or develop sunflower businesses. The project aims not just to benefit the farmers, but all of the actors involved in the sunflower oil production industry.
https://www.farmafrica.org/tanzania/flourishing-futures
Quotes
Amina Muru
33 years old. Divorced, two children who are 11 and 8 years old.
“I earn an income from farming. I farm maize, sunflower and sesame. I have five acres of land. I use two acres for sesame, two acres for sunflowers and one acre for maize.
Sunflowers are my biggest income generator. The previous few years, I used to grow sunflower using a local variety of seeds and I’d harvest only three bags (70kg per bag) from the two acres of sunflowers I grew. But since last season, when I was introduced to a hybrid variety of seeds, I got 30 bags of sunflower seeds from my harvest! So I’m getting more income now because of improved sunflower variety seeds.
I can sell my 30 bags of sunflower seeds for 40,000 TZS each so I’m earning 1,200,000 from sunflowers alone!
As a woman and young farmer, I have to buy my own land, we do not inherit any, so I’ve bought some land (the five acres which she mentioned) which cost me 1.5million TZS and I want to build my own home on it. Thanks to the income from sunflowers, I have money in the bank. My aim is to generate more income. I’m also going to hire more land so I can do more sesame and sunflower farming. Thanks to this income, I also bought a mattress and a very nice bed for the children! I can also afford to pay the school fees and also I can provide food for the household. Last season there was a bad drought so we didn’t grow enough maize (which they’d use from consumption). But we were able to feed ourselves thanks to the income from the sunflowers.
I have been growing sunflowers for four years. I got involved in the Farm Africa project in 2018. This is my second season since joining. I joined the project because there is another nearby farmers group that had joined the project and they had very nice demo plots. My farmers group were invited to go see their plot and after that we were convinced to join the project too.
Since joining the project, I have changed the seed variety I use. I used to use local variety but now I use the improved variety. I’ve also changed my planting methods. I used to drop seeds behind the oxen or the tractor but now I use proper spacing and planting in lines. And that’s why I now get 30 bags from two acres when I used to get just three from the same plot of land.
The increased income has changed our life in so many ways. Firstly, look at me. I look pretty no? Not like the other ladies around here. I couldn’t look like this if I was still only harvesting three bags! Before I was stressed and confused about life but now I’m OK! I have time to put my angel face on… my lipstick…I’m nice looking! Before I couldn’t buy lipstick, because we didn’t have enough to eat!
Now the kids are getting enough food and they’re going to school. Before they were getting no food, and they had no clothes, because we had no money. And when they were going school, they weren’t able to perform academically because they hadn’t had any food and they were unhappy – that was the situation before. Before my kids were like the poor kids you see on the street with torn clothes. Because of this farming, they look much better. They are healthy, they go to school, they have school uniforms, they’re happy. They have good school bags, shoes…everything is fantastic.
I sell my seeds to the processors. My farmers group has a plan to cultivate 45 acres collectively. We will sell the seeds from this land to a contracted buyer. We’ve already signed the contract. We do collective marketing. I will buy five acres of this collective land. As a group it’s easier to get training. Our group also is a VSLA so we do saving and lending together. We get small loans to help with farming activities. We can also easily access loans from financial institutions.
I am the chairman of the farming group. I am the main leader. I mobilise the members to participate in group activities like meetings and trainings. I write reports for the group and also send them to service providers like the bank. I also supervise the fundraising of the group – each month we collect money to help one member of the group. In the group I also promote savings for community services so for example if a member gets sick, we contribute to help them with the medical care because we don’t have health insurance, so we help each other as a group.
There was over-raining this season. We wanted to plant earlier than now, but every time we wanted to go for planting it was raining so we couldn’t because the soil was too thick. It’s too wet to take tractors anywhere so that has affected the planting time. But last season there was a prolonged drought and I didn’t harvest enough maize which we rely on for household consumption so we had to spend money on food. Despite the drought I still got 30 bags of sunflower but who knows, it could have been even more if there was no drought. The high-quality seed variety I used is drought tolerant.
I am divorced. I am living at my uncle’s house at the moment. But I will build a house on the land I’ve bought. I can afford to hire labourers to help me on the farm so I can look after my kids. I’m working hard and I’m doing really well. I’ve got my own business and soon I’ll have my own house, and my ex-husband will see he lost something good! As a woman and young leader, I’ve tried to make our farming group a model as an example to other groups. We want other farmers’ groups to come and learn from us. And in the last 2/3 years as a group we’ve been able to save an average of 7 million TZS each year. We want to attract more service providers to work with us and even other groups to learn from us.
I am happy because I learnt about the hybrid seeds. I learnt that from the project. I’m also very happy now that there is a market. I know who will buy my crops after the harvest because we’ve signed a contract with the buyer. Before I was trying to sell to any traders passing through the village. They were middlemen, they would buy from me and sell to the processors. Now the processors are the ones who buy directly from us.
After harvest, I keep a few bags for the household and I use a local pressing machine to mill some oil for consumption at home.
Marker lat / long: 7, 21 (WGS84)