MUJILA FALLS AGRICULTURE CENTRE BULLETIN

MARCH/APRIL 2011

Inspiration for Lent and Palm Sunday

Sally, our newest donkey in training easily accommodated a bit in the mouth and an inexperienced rider on the very first day. It is easy to understand why Jesus chose a donkey colt to ride into Jerusalem. Her courage, tolerance, patience, perseverance and good will, are traits us Christians need to learn and value.

When Roxanne and I came here in 1999/2000 we came to the place with the highest infant mortality and lowest life expectancy in Zambia. Children between the ages of two and six were almost universally malnourished with pot bellies and reddish hair indicating severe protein deficiency. There was no school in the village and few made the long walk to go to school in the next town. Homes were just mud bricks and thatch and were rebuilt every year or two. Of all of the Chiefdoms in the Mwinilunga District ours had the lowest maize production. Most people were trying to live traditionally as hunter-gatherers in a land mostly depopulated of animals larger than rats and mice. There was no milk or eggs to be purchased in the local villages. Fruit was rare. Vegetables limited to a few low-nutrition greens. People mostly lived on high starch mush made either from Cassava or Maize and eating only one meal per day.

In just ten years we have seen great progress. Chief Kanyama's area has gone from being last in Maize production to being first. Permanent homes are now being built with concrete floors, fired bricks, steel roofs and glass windows. There is an elementary school and we will soon have cell phone service and grid hydro-electric power. All of these advances started with our Mujila Falls Agriculture Centre.

Our workers are receiving wages that help them to buy bicycles, radios, medicines, and send their children to school. Our Mama Roxanne Day Care has been followed by another at Kanyama where over 80 children receive education in English, numbers, letters, colors, shapes, hygiene, and learn to use colors and pencils so that they will be prepared to enter the public school system.

Many people come to the centre to learn about gardening, fruit culture, milking cows and goats, raising rabbits, turkeys, chickens, etc. This year we trained local people and four students from D.R.Congo to drive oxen. We sold two pair from our own site on time to some of our workers. We have given away or sold several sets of goats around the area and given training in goat milking to many people. We have placed turkeys throughout the area and sent five sows and boars to help cooperatives begin the raising of hogs.

We are now marketing 2000 eggs per day into the local economy and are the largest producer of eggs in the entire North West Province. Demand for eggs has risen greatly and we are even planning to increase our egg production to over 3000 per day in the coming term.

Our bananas and plantains feed our workers and we sometimes have surplus to sell. We have been selling frozen strawberries, guava sauce, and mangos. We have recently found a reliable buyer for our milk and are delivering 80 litres every three days. Our dairy herd is growing both in numbers and in quality.

This year we planted about 83 acres of crops. All of the tillage, ridging and cultivating is being done with oxen. Before the age of tractors in the U.S. this would have been a notable number of acres for a single farm. We are planning to buy a tractor before the coming planting season so we can get our crops in faster and reduce labor costs. Once we have tractors we will be able to clear more land for cultivation and increase output.

While we clear land we have not neglected the environment. We have a tree nursery and have been planting out between 3 and 5 thousand pine trees each year. This year we have planted over 10,000 pine tree seeds in bags. These will be planted out in the coming rainy season in November 2011. We have been teaching people how to rotate crops and to use manure to improve the soil. We have been teaching people not to burn crop residue and to work it back into the soil. We are also reducing our plowing and using more limited tillage practices to preserve the soil. The result has been an increase in organic material in the soils we have planted for several years based upon soil sampling and testing. We apply lime to the soil to control for acidity and to increase the effectiveness of our chemical fertilizers which we still need to use.

As our workers learn from us and begin to till their own farms, we are actually experiencing a labor shortage at planting and harvesting time. This is an added reason to get a tractor and mechanized tillage and planting equipment.

Ten calves born:

In the past two months we have seen the birth of ten calves. Seven of them heifers! We rejoice in the good fortune as we are experiencing increasing demand for milk. We thank all of the church congregations who have helped by donating money to buy bush cows and to pay for our high-grade Holstein-Frisian bull.

Egg production is up:
With 1500 new pullets coming into production we are now getting around 2000 eggs per day from our approximately 2500 hens. This is helping to pay our worker salaries and other needs for our project. While I never expect to become fully self-financing, the extra income is helpful in supplementing the donations of many churches in the U.S.

Experimental plot looks good:
We are always experimenting with ways to get fields planted faster with less labor, planting new crops not seen here before, and increasing production from a given field.

This year we have planted an experimental field with black beans and sorghum inter-cropped. This is commonly seen in Central America, but I haven't seen it here in Zambia. The black beans will mature early and be used as a food crop for people. The black beans also leave nitrogen in the soil as they dry down. This nitrogen will then transfer to the growing sorghum and ensure strong growth and a good crop of sorghum seed. The sorghum plant is very drought resistant and can continue to grow for over a month into the long dry season. The sorghum seed can be used for human food, but is more commonly used for cattle and chicken feed.

We have pioneered the use of oxen to not only plow and work the soil, but to lay out the furrows for planting and then covering the seed after planting. This has permitted the field seen above to be planted in a single day.

We have also pioneered the use of an appropriate technology hand-push cultivator for weeding the narrow rows of beans and sorghum. We use only bicycle frames and with very little expense turn them into "high-wheel" cultivators. We estimate that they are at least ten times faster than hoeing the weeds by hand.

Paul L. Webster
GBGM Missionary
Mujila Falls Agriculture Centre