From Martin Geake, Send a Cow
The experience of Send a Cow, a charity which provides livestock and training
to poor farmers in East Africa, supports the idea that “livestock can be an ally
of better farming” and B. B. Singh’s conclusion that “there is no reason why
Africa cannot feed itself”
(27 October, p 44).
Send a Cow began by sending cows to Ugandan farmers left destitute by the
country’s civil war. The idea was that the cows’ milk would combat malnutrition,
particularly among children. We very soon realised, however, that the farmers
were also using the cows to re-establish the sustainable farming systems that
had been destroyed along with their cattle during the years of violence. For
them the cows’ manure was at least as important as their milk.
Since then we have seen many farmers restore severely degraded soil, using
simple sustainable, or “organic”, farming techniques based on the use of animal
manure. Nowadays, the training we run for all future livestock recipients
includes sustainable farming methods, as well as animal husbandry.
Many farmers speak of crop yields increasing three or fourfold as a result.
Families—often some 10 or 12 people—now find they can support
themselves on plots of less than three acres. Interestingly, when a colleague
spoke earlier this year to a group of Rwandan women about the
sustainable-farming training they had just received, they told her: “We are
relearning things our parents used to know.”
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