Rural Women play a vital role when it comes to food security and being farmers, custodians of food, land and natural resources, they make significant contributions towards household nutrition and community resilience.
The RWA in Zambia have had meeting in their various districts to discuss the Right to Food, understanding it and how challenges facing rural women farmers can be addressed.
In Liteta, Mungule area the RWA gathered and discussed the right to food, sources of food and the control of food prices.
They said the high cost of living has deprived rural women from having access to meat, chicken and other meaty food stuffs. This is due to lack of income, poor quality foods, lack of farm plots and high food prices.
For the Liteta/ Mungule women they said they do not use chemicals to grow their crops. Other Districts that met to discuss the Right to Food are Shibuyunji, Choongwe, Mumbwa and Chingola.
From all the discussions, the RWA women stated that there was need to find solutions to improve access to food, encourage formation of cooperatives, train women in conservation farming and the control of food prices by the government.
Agro – economy farmer and Rural Women’s Assembly member Annie Mutale Katongo from Shibuyunji district says the Right to Food can be can be achieved if rural women farmers come together and educate one another on organic farming. She says organic farming has allowed her defeat hunger at some point.
“My name is Annie Mutale Katongo and a I am an agro-ecology farmer.”
“Where I am standing is my organic manure shed where I stock the piles to prevent it from getting soaked by the rain and destroyed by the sun” she said.
She says, she uses natural nutrients to preserve her produce and has always engaged in seeds that are indigenous with the support of organic manure.
Annie Katongo says she is a seed resilience person who actively grows onions, cassava, oranges, pumpkins, watermelons, beans and maize including other day to day vegetables which people consume daily.
Manure shed
“This is my garden and I use organic manure and I am seed resilience and an entrepreneur,” Annie explained.
“I plant onions that at the same time plays a role of insecticide to my vegetables. I don’t use chemical pesticides to treat my crops, I only use organic pesticides. I am a seed saver as you can see and I save enough seeds so that I can sell some,” she further narrated.
“I also grow cassava and from this we eat cassava leaves, we use the cassava stems and the tubers to make charcoal and save fire wood as well. I don’t buy seed from agro-dealers, no. I save my own seeds. All these vegetables you are seeing are grown from indigenous vegetable seeds,” she stated.
“I also have oranges, eggplants and a variety of vegetables. We don’t burn our crops, but we continuously rotate them for better growth,” she said.
Annie does not only grow seeds to feed her family but also to sell for income generation.
She was happy to mention that it is during this season when there are no rains that she enjoys growing her crops adding that she has very little competition from other farmers.
Annie expressed her experience during the 2023/2024 farming season drought when her crops dried up leaving her devastated.
“Let me show you my maize crop, a variety called Go by the Red. Why do I plant this maize now when it’s not raining? During the rainy season, there is too much competition and planting now is the best time as there is no competition and as you can see I’m just alone around this area planting the maize seed.” She explained.
“I do intercrop my maize with beans which has nutrients and acts as an organic fertilizer that will help the maize to grow healthy. Further on the other side, I have planted watermelons and beans and I have done this because during the 2023/2024 there was a drought due to climate change which hit us so hard but again made us realize that waiting for the rainy season to start planting, will not help us,” she narrated.
“During the 2023/2024 farming season I was not the only one who felt the impact of the drought, but my fellow community members as well and this is when I realized that indeed planting indigenous seeds and using organic manure is the best way to go, especially in terms of income generation,” Annie added.
She showcased her strength as a rural woman farmer on how she manages to make her own bokashi manure using natural substances.
“People question if at all organic manure can feed the nation. Yes, it can feed. We don’t burn the bushes or grass here. We use it to make manure such as Bokashi. We don’t speak from without, organic farming is the only way that can help us to live healthy live as well as growing our own ingenuous seeds with no cost at all,” Annie concluded.
