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(TIMES) Mfuwe farmers earn a living out of chillies

Mfuwe farmers earn a living out of chillies
By NEBERT MULENGA

FROM what started as a mere campaign to scare away elephants from crop fields, chilli growing has now become a viable commercial farming activity for several Mfuwe residents in Eastern Province.

Peasant farmer Boniface Mbao, 63, first planted the hot spice crop in 2006. By the end of the last season, he had managed to raise enough to buy iron sheets, household goods, and even built a standard house on his farm.

“I have bought a big radio cassette, 10 iron sheets, and even this house I have built out of the same money,” Mbao told this writer at his farm in Chitilila area.

“I started picking (harvesting) this chilli sometime in February this year, and even now I am still picking. It is very profitable, more profitable than any crop I have grown before. I sell at K7,000 per kilogramme,” he says.

Mr Mbao is one of the many residents in the tourism resort town who are now working their way out of grinding poverty on the back of well-paying returns from growing chilli, thanks to the South Luangwa Conservation Society (SLCS), a local community-based natural resource conservation project, supporting residents to find alternative livelihoods to poaching and snaring of wildlife in the area.

Small-holder chilli growers like Mr Mbao often group themselves in small teams of up to 20 people to ensure effective crop output and better bargaining. Through such groups, the farmers are able to receive free extension services on the production process of chilli as well as expert knowledge on various income generating activities that they could venture into.

The SLCS also helps in finding a ready market to purchase the crop from the peasant farmers.

At the moment, measures are being put in place to ensure that Mfuwe chilli is branded with its own logo, while a market of up to six tonnes of chilli per year has already been secured.

But meeting such a demand is being hampered by lack of proper production equipment for the small-scale farmers.

Mr Mbao shares one treadle pump with five other chilli farmers. There are also cases in which as many as 10 farmers share one treadle pump due to the limited number of irrigation machines sourced and donated by the SLCS.

“The problem is that because of lack of equipment, our crop is sometimes drying up early. We are supposed to be picking it for over seven months, but now we do it like just for five months … we share a day each but by the time your turn comes, chilli would have suffered.

“We are therefore, appealing to the Government and other well-wishers to help us, we can grow chilli throughout the year,” Mr Mbao said.

The SLCS has identified commercialising of chilli growing as one of the most viable options to scale down poaching and snaring of wildlife in the South Luangwa National Park.

Until now, it has generally been observed that poverty and joblessness are among the key drivers behind the high numbers of people resorting to poaching and snaring in the game management areas.

According to Rachel McRobb, chief executive officer of the SLCS, growing chilli as a cash crop is fast proving effective in controlling the rampant poaching of wildlife.

“We have come to realise that most people actually want to give up poaching and snaring but they have no alternative livelihoods,” Ms McRobb said.

“So, by urging our farmers to grow chilli and earn something from it, we are now seeing more and more people giving up on poaching. I think the element of income-generation has been lacking in the past interventions because there were no alternatives given.”

In most of Zambia’s game management areas, including the surrounding communities of Mfuwe town’s South Luangwa National Park, the human-animal conflict has been a perennial problem.

While communities tend to poach and snare the wild animals, thereby, endangering the existence of wildlife, animals like the elephants have been causing havoc by grazing on the crop fields.

It is estimated that in just a few hours one elephant could completely graze out a hectare of the staple maize field. This is why all the surrounding communities in the game management areas have traditionally been at the centre of perennial hunger and appeals for relief food.

In a bid to control the grazing of crop fields and minimise on cases of perennial hunger in areas around the national parks, researchers have over the last decade or so been encouraging farmers to grow chillies as a preventative crop, that is, to scare away the elephants.

Experts say the giant wild animals renowned for their ivory are naturally allergic to the upsetting smell of the pepper plant and always run for dear life when confronted with a breeze of chili.

To effectively keep away elephants from agricultural fields, farmers usually slash a buffer zone of say five metres from the crop, then dig some holes in which sizeable poles are planted.

A sisal rope is then tied around the poles before a mixture of soaked mashed chillies and used oil is smeared on the rope, to make the field a “no-go” area for elephants at least for 21 days. This process is popularly known as chilli fencing.

Billy Banda, a co-ordinator of the chilli growing programme under the SLCS project, said through the chilli fencing method, growers in the area had managed to drastically reduce cases of wild animals grazing their fields.

“The thing is that elephants are the deadliest animals when it comes to grazing plants like maize but chilli fences are very effective. Chillies have a capsising stuff which makes it hot and elephants can’t draw closer because when this stuff goes in the head of an elephant, it causes a lot of pain,” Mr Banda explained.

Before chilli fences were invented, farmers in game management areas were using traditional methods to scare away herbivorous animals from the fields.

Such methods included beating drums all day long, clapping hands and shouting, as well as making watch-towers or dummy human beings of noisy flying plastic materials.

“Traditional methods were helping but they were very limited. They were helping but not in the way chilli fencing is helping. This (chilli fencing) is effective and people are able to concentrate on other activities instead of physically going to the fields to chase away elephants,” said Genesis Ndhlovu, an induna and representative of Chief Mkanya of the Kunda people.

“But above all, what we appreciate most is that our people are now able to earn a decent living; they are able to make money from growing chilli. It is not just used for chilli fences but as a cash crop. Many people are getting to grow chilli because it is well-paying.”

Labels: AGRICULTURE, CHILI PEPPERS, MFUWE

posted by MrK @ 8:51 PM