“The training has led to a big change in my life. I used to farm without knowing what I was doing. Now I know why I’m preparing my land, why I’m digging and what takes place in the ground after I’ve planted”.
Meet Florence. Florence is 38 years old and has six children. Five of her children are still in school and Florence hopes that she will have the means to support them all the way through their education, so that they one day will be able to enter the formal employment market.
The main income of Florence’s family comes from her one-acre farm. Florence also owns two cows and she sells their milk to help support her and her family. Furthermore, when it is time to distribute mosquito nets or give the children in the area polio vaccines, Florence steps in as a community worker and offers her assistance. Although she enjoys it, she cannot depend on the little income she earns as a community worker, because of its irregularity.
Her first season as a Momentum farmer yielded the best output she has ever seen on her farm. However, because of a poor raining season, it is still not enough to support her and her family until the next harvest: “This season with it’s poor rains, I have seen that the Momentum farmers were the only ones to harvested something. Even if our outputs did not live up to our expectations, we were left with much more than those who are not Momentum farmers,” Florence says.
Before Florence joined Momentum she would harvest as little five to ten tins of maize, which is between ten and twenty-five kilos. However, after she joined Momentum Florence harvested 360 kilos of maize and 75 kilos of sorghum, even with the poor rains for that particular season.
Florence’s husband, who is farming the land with her, did not understand the new farming techniques until recently, but now points out: “There is money to be made in farming and better methods to use than the traditional ones. I have just realized this now and I want this knowledge to be shared”.