Nuru’s Agriculture Program provisions small loans of agricultural inputs (fertilizers and seed) to farmers and trains farmers to generate a permanent and significant increase in crop yields.  The beginning of the long rains season (December to July) marks the busiest time for the agriculture program and for millions of Kenyan farmers who are investing in their future.  In the 2011-2012 season Nuru is helping some 3,000 farm families to produce enough maize for their food security and income generation on one to three acre plots throughout Kuria, Kenya.

In the November Ag blog, we learned about farmer empowerment through base education – an event from which over 3,000 farmers graduated (with 2,000 of these farmers brand new to Nuru).  At base education, farmers learn the basic theoretical tenets of Nuru.  Afterwards, farmers attend a series of practical and timely technical trainings, beginning with ground preparation, pacing, planting, and gapping.  These farm management basics, plus the essential farm input loans, take farmers from yields of three bags of maize per acre to fifteen and twenty sacks of maize per acre.

The technical training series diverges from traditional agriculture extension in ways that help it adapt to the cultural and societal context.  During base education farmer groups were organized by the same members who comprise them.  The group learns farming best practices together, works the land together, and pays the loans together.  This group concept plays off Kenyan culture.

Groups form support networks within the community and draw out community members to serve as trainers and leaders.  The agriculture program staff, themselves farmers from the same rural communities, teach the group chairman, who in turn pass on the knowledge to the members of their groups.  This training of trainers encourages a type of grassroots development as community members learn from their neighbors, who themselves eventually become the next leaders and Nuru staffers.

The agriculture team also employs best management practices such as demonstration-based learning, appropriate language and technology, and close supervision of farm activities following trainings.  While Nuru International supports local and traditional knowledge, the agriculture program teaches modern farming practices based in principles of ease of implementation, proven science, and sustainability (especially for the natural and economic environment).  Importantly, maize agriculture is relatively new in Kuria, Kenya, and has been largely unsuccessful because of lack of agriculture inputs and traditional farming methods.  Nuru promotes a more intensive investment and care for the land and crops, with the aim of eliminating the period during which people go hungry (the hunger season).

Traditionally, ground preparation was not planned for optimal crop establishment.  In some areas, steep or very rocky sites were chosen and cleared, with resulting erosion.  In other areas, there was too much shade or soil was too compact for proper crop development.  Nuru teaches farmers to choose flat, sunny areas with live and dead barriers to prevent soil erosion.  Tillage and composting with animal and green manures are also promoted, and burning is discouraged.  These practices strike the balance between environmental concerns, and proper crop development.

Farmers traditionally used inexact plant spacing and fertilizer amounts, resulting in wasted land and inputs.  During pacing training, farmers learn to measure their land by walking the length and width, each pace having been measured to equal a number of meters.  These measurements are essential to ensure that farmers use the correct plant spacing and fertilization rates on their plots.

The Nuru planting method ensures proper spacing for nutrients and sunlight, freedom from competition from other vegetation, and appropriate development of grains.  Planting training teaches farmers to use the appropriate amount of fertilizer and one maize seed per hole, each hole having been precisely spaced at 25 cm by 75 cm.  This new teaching differs drastically from traditional practice, where farmers would broadcast seeds randomly, or use a stick to poke a hole in the soil and pour in a few seeds (dippling).  The spacing was highly irregular, resulting in a field with patches of overly dense and other overly sparse areas.

Planting practices also did not provide the jump start of fertilizer that maize requires in the highly weathered soils of Kuria, Kenya.  Compounding the problem, two or more maize seeds competed with the same meager supply of nutrients, and farmers, thinking more is better, would let all of them grow with resultant poor production.  The last technical training is gapping, during which farmers learn to replant in any areas where seeds did not germinate correctly.  Nuru teaches planting methods that correct the problems found with traditional crop establishment methods.

Together, the technical training series forms the basis of proper maize production, setting farmers on the path to food security and income generation.

Posted from Suba Kuria, Nyanza, Kenya.

Nuru’s agriculture program mobilizes and trains thousands of farmers every year in October and November in anticipation of the long rains maize harvest season (January to July). The agriculture program issues loans of agricultural inputs (maize seeds and fertilizers) and trains farmers to use them. Nuru equips extremely poor smallholder agriculturalists with the knowledge and tools to sustainably and permanently increase crop yields for subsistence and sale.

Each of Nuru’s program models – agriculture, community economic development (CED), water and sanitation, healthcare, and education – are built on the foundations of sustainability and scalability. Agriculture leads and drives the other Nuru programs.  Farmers become Nuru members through a series of trainings and participation in agriculture loans, thereby increasing their crop yields. At the harvest date, farmers have enough food for subsistence and sale, improving their basic living standards and generating income.

The other Nuru programs follow up on and integrate with the agriculture program to bring a holistic community and household development. For example, the CED Program facilitates farmers to form savings groups so that their extra income is stored safely as cash to be used in case of an emergency or, better yet, for investment in other income generating activities. The healthcare, water and sanitation, and education programs similarly integrate with the agriculture program. The involvement of farmers in other Nuru programs starts with mobilization and agriculture training.

Farmer mobilization and training commences with a general farmer meeting – the first introduction to Nuru – followed by base education and a series of specific technical trainings.

While it would seem that farmer trainings should immediately start in on technical topic areas in agriculture, Nuru has found that farmers should first be trained on a set of principles encapsulated in what is termed “base education” training. The two-day course covers life skills and broader concepts for farmer participation in Nuru programs. Nuru Agriculture equips and trains farmers to increase maize yields; Nuru as a whole aims to empower individuals to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty.

Base education is far from a simple list of procedural rules, but rather through base education farmers come to understand how and why the actions that Nuru promotes will lead them out of extreme poverty. Nuru facilitates farmer empowerment, so that farmers use knowledge and tools to assume an active and responsible role in changing their lives, instead of taking a back seat to poverty alleviation.

Base education achieves its impact of mobilizing and empowering extremely poor farmers through an agenda of five topic areas.

• Service Leadership: Teaches farmers to become advocates that serve their communities as humble stewards of their natural and human resources.  Nuru uses small farmer groups as functional work units who assign their own chairmen, the aspiring local service-minded leaders.
• Tools & Knowledge: Informs farmers of the importance of implements and trainings to achieve goals. Specifically, farmers learn the importance of inputs (seed and fertilizer) and agriculture trainings to achieve the goal of increased crop yields.
• Groups & Hard Work: Encourages farmers to use their neighbors and communities as an interdependent support network that can achieve goals through hard work and effort. Nuru uses groups as a culturally appropriate mechanism because Kenyan society is traditionally collectivist (tuko pamoja – we are together – is a Swahili-language adage popular in Kenya). Groups work together to learn and reinforce agriculture knowledge, labor the land together to plant and weed on time, and repay their loans together.
• Credit & Loans: Informs farmers that agriculture loans from Nuru are not gifts, but rather are meant to be repaid. Nuru uses both positive reinforcement and analysis of consequences to encourage loan repayment – farmers understand that if they do not repay their loan there will not be funds for loan issue to their fellow community members, to their groups, or even for themselves in future years.
• Savings: Farmers learn through role plays and group discussion that planning and saving cash for the future is an important part of their household and community livelihood.

Upon successful graduation from base education training, the participants are inscribed as Nuru members and provided access to small agriculture loans and trainings for maize production on one acre. The loan product offers improved maize seed and quality fertilizers in a timely fashion and at an accessible price. The agriculture technical trainings include everything from land preparation and planting, to weeding and fertilizing, to harvesting and grains processing – all of which are central to achieving increased crop yield.

Nuru issues small loans and imparts technical agriculture skills to thousands of farmers yearly, enabling them to excel at maize farming. Base education, and the life skills and programmatic components it teaches, empowers farmers with the knowledge and tools to sustainably lift themselves out of poverty. Together, technical agriculture skills, high quality agriculture inputs, and base education are the first steps towards the Nuru vision of holistic community development. Tuko pamoja! (We are together!)

Posted from Nyanza, Kenya.

Over the coming months Nuru’s Agriculture Program will evolve in exciting ways to aid the overall mission of increasing crop yields in a sustainable and scalable way.

Nuru International employs local Kenyan staff members to manage the agriculture program and develops their capacity in conjunction with an expatriate staffer (Agriculture Program Manager / Nuru International Fellow). The team works together to sustainably increase crop yields, principally through the issuance of small loans of high quality inputs combined with agricultural extension and training. The agriculture loan product is accessible to smallholder agriculturalists and targets a repayment rate of >98% by farmers. Loan repayment fuels sustainable program growth to meet the needs of the extreme poor in rural areas of southwest Kenya. Over the coming months there will be special attention to innovations such as piloting cash crops, mechanisms to cut costs amidst rapid growth, and information gathering to make smart decisions with a growing staff.

The following are areas of innovation for the agriculture program:

• New Program Manager / Agriculture Fellow: Nuru’s Agriculture Program is receiving its first ever Agriculture Fellow who will assume the program manager role. This transition of Nuru International staff brings fresh ideas, technical expertise and further capacity to facilitate gradual handover of program leadership to Kenyan staff.

• Leadership and decision-making partial transfer to Kenyan staff: The Kenyan staff will assume new responsibilities over the coming months as they develop their capacity to implement and scale programs, inventively engineer solutions to problems, and pilot new elements of the agriculture program. Nuru International promotes a responsible, gradual transition of leadership to Kenyan staff. Nuru aims to achieve a long-term sustainable and scalable impact while maximizing the short-term impact of third party donor funding and expatriate staff.

• Maintain loan repayment rates at 98%: Nuru’s Agriculture Program issues small loans of maize inputs (fertilizers and improved seeds) to smallholder agriculturalists for maize production. The maize produced, even from as little as one acre, is enough to repay the original loan, provide food security to families, and fuel growth of investment capital in extremely poor rural communities in Kenya. A particular focus over the coming months is to raise and maintain loan repayment at 98%; a percentage which sustainably funds the overhead of the agriculture program.

• Scale program to include 1,000 new Nuru farmers: Among Nuru’s program areas, the agriculture component leads the expansion into new areas to reach farmers who desperately need access to quality agricultural inputs and training. Nuru’s Agriculture Program helps feed families and raise incomes, thereby acting as a foundation for the community and allowing other Nuru programs to enter the area.

• Pilot short rains cash crop and research second alternative: Nuru farmers currently cultivate maize with the agriculture program during the long rains season (February to August), yet are often left with little access to inputs to fuel agriculture production during the short rains season (September to January). Nuru’s Agriculture Program is currently researching pilot crops for the 2012 short rains season. Nuru aims to provide Kenyan farmers an alternative to tobacco farming. Growing tabacco is a labor and input intensive farming scheme that often bankrupts farmers, causes respiratory illness and deforestation due to drying shacks, and leaves soils heavily eroded and chemically contaminated.

• Reduce program costs and redesign staffing model: Nuru Kenya is a non-governmental organization that fundamentally focuses on business-like efficiency to provide services – health, sanitation, education, agricultural extension, and economic development – to our customers – the rural extreme poor of Kenya. To achieve this goal, the agriculture program will be reevaluating program costs and restructuring staffing to be more efficient so that every Kenyan shilling invested in agriculture achieves its highest impact in the shambas (farms) of the extreme poor.

• Partner with M&E to generate adequate geographic information to meet strategic and operational needs in a sustainable way: Monitoring and evaluation is critical to generating the base information that Nuru’s Agriculture Program uses to evaluate whether it’s achieving its desired impact with extremely poor rural farmers. Specifically, we will combine participatory needs analyses and geographic information systems (mapping) to generate spatial information using appropriate technologies. Mapping will aid operations in analysis of agricultural and social data to determine if input loans are meeting socioeconomic needs in particular geographic areas of focus.

We look forward to sharing our progress updates in the coming months.

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Matt Lineal is thrilled to join Nuru International as its first agriculture fellow in September 2011. Matt is dedicated to working with smallholder agriculturalists and rural communities as they interface with their natural and socioeconomic environment. Before joining Nuru, Matt worked with The Nature Conservancy and Peace Corps in Honduras, and throughout the U.S. Interior West with the USDA Forest Service. He earned his BA in Government and Spanish from Lawrence University and his MS in Forest Sciences from Colorado State University. Matt has experience in small plot sustainable agriculture, agricultural extension and project development.

Posted from Nyanza, Kenya.

When I was a kid, I remember my dad routinely encouraging me in the midst of failure as I grew up.  “It doesn’t matter so much that you failed,” he would say.  “What matters most is that you learn from this failure and don’t repeat the same mistakes that led you here in the future.”  As a result of dad’s willingness to allow me to mess up as a kid, I have developed a strong tendency to be fairly risk-taking in most endeavors that I have undertaken over the years.  The merits (or lack thereof) of this characteristic I possess can be (and are) hotly debated often by those closest to me, but the one thing all can agree on is that this characteristic inevitably produces some failure along the way.

Failure is a very important part of growth as a leader.  Failing, admitting that you have failed, and then learning valuable lessons from that failure enables a leader to effectively take advantage of opportunities as they come up, better understand his own limitations as a leader, and experience a higher chance of success when faced with similar challenges in the future.  As part of Nuru’s commitment to learn and grow, I want to tell you a bit about a pretty big failure with the agribusiness program we just experienced that we seek to learn a great deal from in moving forward.

One of the goals of Nuru’s agriculture program is to introduce a cash crop that our farmers can plant during the short rains season.  The main reasons for this goal are to build more crop diversity into Nuru’s ag program, provide a cash crop that serves as an alternative to tobacco and the harmful effects of farming tobacco, and to help the farmers produce a higher level of increased income to more adequately empower them to make wise choices in planning for their family’s future.

In January, we decided to try to experiment with teff as our first cash crop.  Teff is a wheat-like crop that serves as the main ingredient in Ethiopian injera bread.  Why teff?  The short answer is that we were absolutely certain of a large, untapped market that would allow our farmers to capture large margins, and teff is simple to farm.  How did we know this?  A year ago, USAID issued us a grant as part of their Market Linkages Initiative to help us improve the efficiency of our maize-buying business.  As part of that program, they also introduced us to several larger players in the commodities trading business in an effort to help Nuru connect small-holder farmers with larger, more stable markets.  USAID set up a partnership with the third largest exporter of commodities in Kenya, and we began to talk with them about maize markets and markets for other crops.  I visited the company’s corporate HQ in Nairobi to discuss them becoming a buyer of Nuru maize.  The corporation’s leadership team insisted that, instead, we begin producing teff with our farmers.  They quoted prices for teff in the east African markets as high as 1,000ksh/kg which was truly astonishing.  They were certain of the stability of this large, untapped market.  They even agreed to give us a small handful of seed if we would run a pilot with a few farmers and consider rolling out teff as a Nuru cash crop.  Not knowing any better, we left the office excited about the potential for this new cash crop and the seemingly large, untapped market for teff.

After we got back in Kuria, we planted the spoonful of seed we had been given as a demonstration plot at the granary and collected 13kgs of teff at harvest.  The crop seemed perfect.  It had a good yield, a short three-month growing cycle, required no fertilizer or chemicals, and was easy to farm.  We decided to pilot the crop with a group of 22 farmers to see what yields we could produce and what challenges we would encounter at a slightly larger scale.  Even though our staff was sworn to secrecy, rumors began to circulate through the farmers (as they always do) about the unusually high price this crop could bring in the market.  Subsequently, excitement about teff travelled and grew quickly throughout the seven sub-locations where we are currently operating.  Farmers closely monitored the progress of the teff as the 22 pilot farmers grew and maintained the crop.

Harvest time came…amazing success!  The 22 pilot farmers had been given 0.5kg each to plant, and they harvested 160kg on average.  At the original quoted price, this would have been an incredible, life-changing profit for the farmers (after cost of farming approximately 130,000Ksh or $1,400 each).  So, we went back to the company to report our success and tell them we were ready for large-scale production and rollout to all 2,000 Nuru farmers in the short rains season.  The company refused to buy our product at the pre-arranged price, stating that the markets had changed wildly.  “Well, what price can you give us then,” I asked as I tried to control myself from exploding.  “You know,” the manager on the other end of the line said in an indifferent, unapologetic tone, “the market for teff in other parts of east Africa has really dried up.  We can give you 60Ksh – 100Ksh per kg.”  I was devastated.  At that price, some of the farmers wouldn’t even be able to pay for their cost of farming the pilot crop.  I aggressively looked for other markets we could tap into in order to realize a larger margin for our farmers, but came up dry in my search.  We eventually bought the teff from our 22 pilot farmers at 100Ksh/kg, and then had to pay them additional money to cover the cost of experimentation that they had incurred during the trial.  They and the other farmers were not happy with the results.  They were frustrated with my inability to secure a better market, and they were justified in their frustration.

I learned a lot of lessons in this failure – lessons I wish I didn’t have to learn at such a high cost to the community:

• Research markets thoroughly via multiple sources before even making a decision on a pilot.
• Verify stability, size, and current conditions of potential markets prior to a decision on a pilot.
• Don’t trust leads on commodities markets just because they come from a credible, reputable firm.  Single-source leads should never be relied on in isolation in cash crop selection – even in the pilot phase.
• Manage expectations of the community.  Set expectations very low and be 100% sure of your ability to deliver on those expectations before releasing ANY information to the community about a new initiative.

I learned valuable lessons that will allow us to grow and more effectively select better cash crops with more secure markets.  Nuru farmers proved to be even more gracious than my dad in putting up with my failures.  They are cautiously optimistic that we have learned from this first mistake and will provide a viable secure market in the next trial.  So, the search for a viable cash crop in the short rains continues.  If any of you have any interesting leads that you think could be options for us to research and consider, please pass them along.  I can assure you that we will thoroughly research the viability of a stable market before implementing a pilot.

I weaved in and out of the tall maize stalks as James and I hurried to keep up with Emmanuel, a Nuru Field Officer overseeing 56 new Nuru farmers in a small collection of villages known as Ihore in the Kuria West District of southwest Kenya.  We were moving quickly through the “shamba” (farm) of Mwita Marwa, one of Emmanuel’s farmers, on our way to visit Mwita at his home. As I moved through the maize, I gazed in awe at the height of Mwita’s maize – some stalks reached ten feet.  On our way to Mwita’s hut, we emerged from the forest of maize into the stark contrast of Mwita’s neighbor’s shamba.  The neighbor’s field was dry and sparsely populated with sad-looking 2-3 foot stalks of maize bearing no actual cobs.  We paused.  “There will be hunger here,” James said with sad eyes. “Again,” I said. “Yes,” James said. “There will be so many this season.”  Previously, I had been used to seeing the sharp difference in the maize yields of Nuru farmers and those who had not enrolled yet…but this was different.  Since I returned from the States a couple weeks ago, we have encountered shamba after shamba of desolate maize fields which will yield less than two bags of maize per acre. (Most families require six to feed themselves between harvests.) James lingered in the shamba. “The drought has come again to Kenya.”

Just as you’ve read and seen in the news over the past three months, prolonged drought conditions have gripped East Africa and are dragging the region into the desperate depths of cruel famine. Entire populations that were already suffering from chronic hunger have now fled into neighboring countries as refugees, in search of relief from the famine.  These migrations are bringing even further instability to an already chaotic region – destabilizing nearby countries and producing conditions that strengthen extremist groups operating in the Horn of Africa.

The World Food Programme (WFP) stated that these prolonged drought conditions combined with the never-ending conflict in Somalia are now affecting over 13 million people. The United Nations declared two entire regions in southern Somalia to be in a state of famine – effectively declaring nearly half the population of Somalia (3.7 million people) now in imminent danger of starvation. Over 3,000 refugees are flooding across the Somali border into neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya every single day. Al Shabaab (the Al Qaeda-linked extremist group) continues to be an obstacle to aid groups attempting to provide relief in the region (WFP alone has lost 14 relief workers recently).

The famine is absolutely overwhelming. As I read those facts, I couldn’t help but feel a growing sense of despair in the pit of my stomach – quickly followed by a protective, defensive, tough layer of apathy because this global humanitarian crisis won’t impact me personally. This tough layer of apathy has been a protective cushion for me for most of my life – until I joined the fight against extreme poverty.

How do we even begin to think about this global crisis and our role (or lack thereof) in addressing it? We must begin by taking small, actionable steps. Lasting gains in a fight are made through small victories along the way – not all in one leap.  Let me share about ways that Nuru is addressing the injustice of this crisis – and about the small steps that you are helping us take to gain ground in the fight against extreme poverty.

Hunger has indeed come to Kenya again.  Kenya is no stranger to drought.  The 1980s brought several severe periods of drought that brought hunger and devastation to all of east Africa. However, this time is different for a remote pocket of southwest Kenya.  In January, before drought conditions were fully realized in Kenya, 2,000 smallholder farmers took out Nuru agriculture loans for high quality fertilizer and seed and were trained in best practices in growing maize. As the maize grew, the drought became more severe and signs of suffering began to appear in the villages here in Kuria.  While Nuru farmers have been affected by the drought (most will realize a 20-30% decrease in yield this season), the incredible news is that they still have more than enough to feed their families for the whole season and pay off their agriculture loan.

Programs like Nuru’s are tapping into the potential of the poor to create their own solutions to extreme poverty by introducing a framework of simple, scalable, and sustainable ideas (like Nuru’s agriculture program) to trained local leaders and then equipping these leaders to scale these ideas. Both Nuru leaders and farmers are hungry, but it is a different kind of hunger than those suffering in the famine. They are hungry for choice. They are hungry for the opportunity to create and own their future and have hope for lasting solutions to the seemingly impossible challenges they faced before. They are hungry for change, and they are pursuing that change using all that is within them.

As we approached Mwita’s hut, we immediately noticed he was beaming. He began talking excitedly to James as they shook hands vigorously. “Karibu marafiki yangu! Mimi ni farahi sana kwa sababu hakuna nja. Uliona mahindi yangu? Sasa hakuna nja!” (“Welcome my friends! I am so so happy because there is no hunger! Did you see my maize? Now there is no hunger!”)

I watched as James, with beaming satisfaction, listened to Mwita share his family’s story of triumph this season. “Small steps,” I thought. “Small steps.”