agriculture Archives - Page 4 of 5

Post Tagged with: "agriculture"

Meandering the Moroccan Medina

June 18, 2013

For at least part of my recent assignment for the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Morocco, I had the opportunity to be a tourist. Well, kind of. Tourism is one of this North African country’s major industries, but also one that has not reached its full potential. In the medinas (old quarters) of Fez and Marrakech, MCC has helped bolster tourism with the installation of cultural walks through the ancient winding alleyways. It’s also provided training and improved workshops for some of the cities’ artisans, whose workshops can be seen farther below. These projects are in step with the organization’s principle of reducing poverty through economic growth. MCC also has other programs in the fisheries and agriculture sectors. Also, some of my earlier work for MCC was just published in the Guardian today.

Recovering from Kony

May 25, 2013

It’s hard to believe that as much hoopla as this guy has stirred up, as much attention as he’s garnered in the media, that the problems he caused are still not yet fixed. Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army plundered Northern Uganda for over a decade. The rebels killed tens of thousands of Ugandan civilians, displaced millions, and turned the peaceful farms across the region into heaps of ashes. The war against Kony’s LRA ended in Uganda in 2006. It’s still ongoing, albeit on a smaller scale, in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the rebellion most families in Northern Uganda were forced to flee their homesteads and livelihoods for the security of crowded refugee camps. Still largely dependent on handouts from government and relief organizations, they’ve returned to their land with nothing. Economic and psychological recovery has yet to be realized. When you’re[…]

Struggles of a Small Farmer in Zambia

April 22, 2013

You certainly won’t need an umbrella in South-West Zambia outside the month of January. While many places in Africa have plentiful rainfall and lush soils (central Uganda for instance), many rural farmers, after only one brief rainy season each year, must attempt to cultivate enough food for their families in extremely dry and sweltering conditions. This means that families have only one small window of opportunity to grow food and sell any surplus to earn income. Often that window is not great enough to last the entire year, and so not only does poverty persist, but something even more brutal occurs: hunger. Most of us who would read this entry have never experienced true hunger. Perhaps we’ve had to go without lunch because we were too busy at the office. However, true hunger is a reality for the people of this area of Zambia, most of whom survive on cornmeal porridge[…]

A Toast to Tea

March 15, 2013

If you could get a caffeine rush from walking through tea fields I’d be bouncing off walls by now. But as I’ve learned recently from shooting for Shared Interest in Uganda’s tea-growing highlands, there’s a lot involved in getting those glossy green leaves into a palatable consistency. Shared Interest, an ethical investment company out of the UK, loans exclusively to fair trade buyer and producer organizations around the globe. Hit play below (and turn on the HD!) to find out what Shared Interest is doing in this corner of Africa.

Back to the Farm

February 27, 2013

Get this: 80% of Burkina Faso’s population attempts to make it’s living in subsistence agriculture while only 19% of land is arable. That makes farming kind of like a guy getting a date in a country where men outnumber women four to one. Poor soil qualities, fluctuations in rainfall, and topsoil erosion all contribute to the country’s crop production woes. Recent work is displayed here from the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s agricultural programs in Burkina Faso. MCC, a humanitarian arm of the US State Department, is boosting production and access to markets for small farmers in this West African country, however. The programs shown here document the organization’s efforts in sustainable agriculture, livestock vaccination, fertilizers, and agro-forestry, as well as ground-breaking, innovative initiatives. In the Market Information Systems program, agents use cell phone technology to publish regional market prices for a variety of commodities. Farmers who subscribe to the database can[…]

Dam That River

October 29, 2012

How can a family earn income when most of their time is spent meeting the most essential of needs? How can an entire village or town develop if all its inhabitants face this same problem? As with other things, water does not grow on proverbial trees, but neither does it run through municipal pipelines in much of the East African nation of Kenya. Consequently, families are at the mercy of rainfall and river water to ensure the ability to drink, cook, bathe, and wash clothing. Unlike much of the West, rainfall in Kenya usually occurs only during a certain few months out of the year. The later in the dry season it is, the harder it becomes to find a water source. On one of my latest assignments with ChildFund, I documented the lengths to which people go to find water in Kenya’s Migwani District, just four hours north-west of[…]

Empowering Chad

September 10, 2012

My most recent video production was shot near Exxon’s oil fields in southern Chad. For women, Chad is one of the most challenging nations in which to live. But in the communities around the southern town of Doba, women are defying the status quo by becoming the leading business people of the area. Thanks to the successes of Africare‘s Initiative for Economic Empowerment of Women Entrepreneurs Program (IEEWEP), women are improving the livelihoods of their families and using their excess capital to begin new ventures. Above, women participate in literacy classes outside Doba. While I look back on my time in Chad fondly, there was no shortage of difficulties associated with the making of this video. Chad is the epitome of what most westerners think of Africa: hot, humid, hard to find a good meal, and truckloads of men with big guns that I couldn’t film lest I run the[…]

Fair, Green, & Happy

May 19, 2012

Next time you take a sip of the world’s most popular beverage, think of the hands that harvested it from a hill far away. Many that work on tea plantations around the world are children forced into labor or adults earning deplorable wages. Not so, however, in the fields of Mpanga Tea Growers Factory outside Fort Portal, Uganda. Mpanga is different from the dozens of other growers in the country because it grows Fair Trade tea and is solely owned by small holder farmers. One of my recent clients, Shared Interest, is a UK-based ethical investment cooperative that provided $250,000 worth of capital to Mpanga in the form of a loan. This allowed the Fair Trade growers to expand their business and land on which they farm. Shared Interest is the world’s only 100% fair trade lender. The land surrounding the factory is host to clean, modern schools, health care[…]

Hope Amid the Crisis – Turkana, Kenya

September 2, 2011

Many have heard about the horrific drought that is gripping the Horn of Africa right now. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Kenya’s Turkana Region documenting the situation and the relief efforts there. In Turkana the UN has declared a food Crisis: one step below a Famine but one above an Emergency. While I have plenty of images that depict the crisis, today we’ll focus on the positive – the long-term food security projects of ChildFund and the World Food Programme in Turkana, known as Food for Assets. Click play above for a full explanation. The Food For Assets program works to coerce those Turkana living in irrigable areas to learn sustainable farming practices by making the food aid they receive contingent upon their enrollment in the program. It is the hope of implementing partners that after one year of learning, people who have received the training will[…]

Greener Pastures

August 10, 2011

My most recent video assignment is truly a story of success. The Kimaro family has graduated from poverty thanks to the programs of the environmental NGO Plant With Purpose. Several years ago Jacob & Joyce Kimaro were small farmers living in poverty and trying to make ends meet on the foothills of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro. Things became even more difficult when Mr. Kimaro’s brother and sister-in-law passed away, and they had to take in seven extra children. It was then that the Kimaros joined VICOBA, the Village Community Bank organized by Plant With Purpose. There the family received training in sustainable agriculture practices, organic farming, and earning income while preserving the environment. VICOBA members are also able to save money jointly and access credit each week. Today the Kimaros not only have their bills paid on time, but are eating healthy and balanced diets while preserving their natural surroundings.