Northeast Iowa farmers and Iowa State University Extension staff recently joined hands with African agriculturists week to share information on how people farm in the mid western US state.
Representatives from Sasakawa Africa/Global 2000 came to Northeast Iowa for a banquet to honor Norman Borlaug, who is president of their organization.
The group toured the John and Kay Reis farm at Cresco and the Northeast Iowa Research and Demonstration Farm at Nashua. They also visited Golden Grain Energy at Mason City and saw Borlaug's boyhood farm at Protivin.
John and Kay Reis and their son Jason and his wife, Jen, raise corn, soybeans and hay and feed cattle on their farm northwest of Cresco.
John Reis said he tries to no-till as much of his farm as he can because it helps in conserving soil. It also saves trips across the field. He said that since he has no-tilled, earthworm activity has increased dramatically. "A big issue for me is to preserve the soil," he said. "There is also a cost savings with no-till, as far as the equipment you need and the time involved."The Reis family sell corn to an ethanol plant, and they buy back DDGs (Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles) to feed to their cattle.
Tareke Berhe, who lives in Ethiopia and is regional director for rice programs for Sasakawa-Global 2000, said soil conservation is important in Africa, where soils are shallow and torrential rains can wash those soils away in a day."We're all about promoting improved agricultural production," said Wayne Haag, Sasakawa-Global 2000 regional director for quality protein maize in Mozambique. "We promote no-till in Africa for the conservation, but also because they do a lot of tillage by hand and much of that falls on the women. No-till reduces the labor load and the weeding burden."
Sasakawa also promotes value added ventures like livestock production and small scale processing.
"In Africa the farms are 5 to 7 acres so even if production increases, the standard of living is pretty low," Haag said. "We are looking at ways for farmers to come together in cooperatives to feed livestock, buy inputs, market crops or do some processing."
Uganda's Kayayo and Marcel Galiba, Sasakawa Africa country director in Mali, said they marveled at the productivity of Iowa farms. Africa also has good land, water and people, but government policies have prevented agriculture from thriving.
"A part is missing to make it happen, but I still have a lot of hope," Galiba said. "I have hope that one day we can make it happen, to bring our people out of poverty."
Fran Mueller, president of Self-Help International and a Waverly farmer, told the group about work Self-Help does in Ghana with Quality Protein Maize in cooperation with Sasakawa/Global 2000. Through the nutrition program school children drink a corn beverage and eat corn cakes each day.
"After two years there has been a significant increase in growth rate and disappearance of the orange hair and listlessness that come with being malnourished," Mueller said.
The mission of Sasakawa Africa-Global 2000 is to promote the scaling up of modern agricultural technologies that increase the productivity and incomes of resource-poor smallholder farmers in Africa without harming the natural resource base.
