In the midst of food insecurity being experienced currently in Nuba Mountains, Sudan, Thereza, our Transformational Community Development (TCD) worker in Sawaya Village, recently harvested close to seven 50 kg bags of groundnuts. She is very pleased because the quality and quantity of her groundnuts are considered a good yield for the size of the farmland she cultivated.

Sawaya locals engage in subsistence farming as their main occupation and grow mostly groundnuts, guinea corn, and beans. However, for most of them, their farm sizes and the farming practices they employ do not produce enough crop yields. Consequently, year in and year out, they receive a meager income from the sale of crops, and the food they save for family consumption is usually grossly inadequate.

Despite the availability of vast acres of arable land for farming, Thereza found that culture, worldview issues, and ignorance, in addition to a combination of other factors, are responsible for the challenges the locals experience. Thereza decided to farm differently so she could model more productive subsistence farming to reinforce the various TCD lessons on Income Generation and Food that she had been teaching regularly. Thereza’s bumper harvest has drawn the locals in, and many are warming up for the next planting season, eager to do better than they have done in the past years.

Thank you!

Written by Shade, GHNI Project Manager