Lesotho: new financing aims to help rural farmers

The United Nations agency that works to improve the lives of the world's rural poor is providing $10 million to help small farmers in Lesotho boost agricultural production.

The agreement signed in Rome between the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Government of Lesotho comprises a $5 million loan and a $5 million grant to increase market opportunities for smallholder farmers and improve production in four of the tiny nation's 10 districts.

Over 70 per cent of Lesotho's population lives in rural areas, according to a news release issued by IFAD, which adds that more than three quarters of them are involved in agriculture.

Lesotho's rural population has been hit hard in recent years by a steady decline in remittances from migrant mine workers in South Africa, a major source of cash for purchasing agricultural inputs or making other necessary investments.

About 15,000 rural households are expected to benefit from the project, the latest in a total of eight programmes and projects IFAD has financed in Lesotho for about $60.3 million.

For over three decades, IFAD has invested about $13.7 billion in grants and low-interest loans to developing countries, empowering about 405 million people to break out of poverty and to create vibrant rural communities.

UN News

Floods take heavy crop toll in Lesotho

From a distance, the fields of maize that cover almost every hillside in Lesotho’s Thaba-Tseka District look green and lush. On closer inspection, the plants have a sickly yellowish hue and the heads of corn that should be ripening in time for the April harvest are nowhere to be seen.

For most of the farmers in this remote, mountainous district, and in many other parts of Lesotho, there will be no harvest this season. Heavy rains which started in December and are expected to continue through much of February have washed away top soil and nutrients and left fields waterlogged and weed infested.


The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that in some of the worst hit districts up to 60 percent of crops have been destroyed while nationally at least 4,700 livestock, mainly sheep and goats, have died.

Lesotho’s mountainous topography and erratic weather mean it already produces only enough grain to meet about 30 percent of its needs. The country had increased its production of maize - the main cereal crop - and sorghum during 2010, but the heavy rains are likely to reverse those gains.

“It’s going to affect food security in the worst way because Lesotho doesn’t produce enough food as it is,” said Matsiliso Mmojaki, head of the national Disaster Management Authority (DMA).

Out of a population of just over two million, Mmojaki estimated 250,000 will need food assistance in the coming months.

In the village of Phaila, in Thaba-Tseka District, Tsepo Phaila, 31, watched one afternoon in early January as a river of water swept down a hillside, tearing up the trees he and his family had planted for firewood, and flooding their maize field. By the time the water receded, only a few broken stalks poked up from the mud.

"We can't plant there any more because the topsoil has washed away," Phaila said.

The family has one other smaller field where maize plants are still standing but are too rain-damaged to produce a harvest. "There's nothing we can do right now," said Phaila, explaining that the maize and the firewood provided the only source of income to support himself and nine other family members.

Many other households in the village and across northern Lesotho are facing a similar predicament, but the government has yet to declare the situation a disaster.

"Should we say because the government hasn't declared it a disaster, it's not a disaster?" asked Teboho Chalane, the Ministry of Agriculture's extension officer for Thaba-Tseka District. "A lot of people have been affected; there will be no maize for them, so we need to do something to make sure they get something to eat."

He added that if seeds could be distributed quickly, there was still time for affected households to grow vegetables before the start of winter. In the longer term, said Chalane, communities needed to become less reliant on maize and start keeping livestock such as poultry and pigs that could be bred and sold.

As for the fields of stunted maize plants, his advice to farmers was: "Take a scythe and cut them all down."

Like many parts of Southern Africa, Lesotho had been warned to expect a heavier than usual rainy season due to the La Niña phenomenon, but Mmojaki of the DMA said "the intensity [of the rains] was just beyond our imagination; it has never really happened here."

A rapid assessment of the damage conducted in January found that in addition to the extensive crop losses, a number of roads had been washed away making some health facilities unreachable. Stocks of essential medicines, including antiretrovirals (ARVs) and drugs to treat diarrhoea, an outbreak of which had spread across the country, were running low.

The DMA has developed a contingency plan and submitted it to the government for approval. It includes urgent repairs to roads, bridges and water supply systems as well as assistance to farmers in the form of subsidies, seeds and fertilizers.

The plan comes with a price tag of US$68.5 million, an amount that economic policy head in the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning Motena Ts'olo said the government would struggle to raise at a time when the global economic slowdown and reduced revenues from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) were already straining the national budget.

"The rain has created even more pressure and I don't know how we'll manage, but somehow we'll have to," she said.

IRIN

No-tillage farming improves yields, reduces soil erosion in Lesotho

The poor, cracked soils and frequent long droughts that characterise the high plateau of Lesotho have long been the despair of farmers and advisors. But a new approach - not ploughing the soil - has yielded dramatic results.

"We have some soil that has not been ploughed for 15 years," enthuses Reverend August Basson, who has championed this no-till farming system, or conservation agriculture (CA) approach. "This is the best we have, and we have reached six tonnes of maize per hectare on one of these fields."

Coming from such depleted soils, and achieved during the worst drought in three decades, the yield is even more remarkable: proof that the no-till farming system has found a foothold in one of Africa's poorest countries, one whose agricultural future has been threatened by climate change and HIV/AIDS.

The spread of CA in Lesotho has been promoted by, among others, the World Food Programme (WFP), anxious to source grain for its national feeding programme from local farmers and avoid the high transport costs and grain prices in the region.

'Food for training' schemes have spread the methodology to 1,800 farmers living in the most food insecure areas, raising harvests and enabling the WFP to buy over 7,000 tonnes of surplus maize from Basotho farmers in 2007. One group of 20 farmers from Mohale's Hoek, for example, sold eight tonnes of surplus maize to the Programme, earning US$2,800. This year, they are expecting to sell over 30 tonnes.

"The most difficult challenge is to change mindset; people are scared of change. It is difficult to accept that you do not need to plough your soil," says Basson, a missionary who has championed conservation agriculture in Lesotho, and whose Growing Nations organisation is a key partner in the training programme. Farmers are taught to make planting holes for seed and fertiliser, rather than the usual ploughing and ridging.

Minimising disturbance of the topsoil helps to protect it from Lesotho's heavy rains and preserves organic matter. Both hybrid and open pollinated varieties are planted, depending on what a farmer can afford, and weeding is done by hand or occasionally by herbicide. Where possible, planting holes are covered with compost or manure, but insufficient supply means that most farmers must also use chemical fertilisers.

Buying maize from the group at Mohale's Hoek was an historic moment for the WFP in Lesotho, its first direct purchase of grain from small-scale farmers in the country. With a saving of US$45 per tonne compared to grain bought in South Africa, the Programme is keen to expand local purchasing. The government is supporting that effort, with a US$4 million budget to subsidise larger producers using CA techniques.

August Basson's efforts are also continuing, persuading the Ministry of Education to add conservation agriculture to the school curriculum and establishing a new training centre for Growing Nations in Maphusteng. "We are at a point where the method is getting a life of its own," he says. "People are developing it as they see fit. Some people fall out, others join."

While the efforts of August Basson and the WFP have focused on maize production, NGOs such as CARE and Send a Cow have been popularising intensive, no-dig horticulture plots as a way of increasing vegetable production. Known as 'keyhole gardens', these are circular raised vegetable beds built from layers of soil, grass, ash and compost, contained within a rock wall some four feet (1.25m) high. Watering is done through a basket, placed at the centre of the garden, typically using the family's daily wastewater; plants grown include leafy vegetables, root vegetables, legumes and onions. With the plants growing at waist height and needing only a single watering each day, keyhole gardens are particularly suitable for the elderly and chronically ill, as well as wheelchair users.

Many have now built their own keyhole gardens; in Lenkoane, one community has built a garden and small dam for every household. With each garden only two metres in diameter, even the smallest plot can be highly productive, potentially transforming diets and making the most of scarce water resources.

With declining soil fertility and low crop yields a demoralising trend in Africa's smallholder farms, August Basson believes that his CA training model could offer lessons to other countries.

Growing Nations, in partnership with the National University of Lesotho, is developing a hands-on science curriculum for secondary and tertiary levels, which includes CA and agroforestry. Intensive training for 30 'lead farmers' in Maphusteng, followed by farmer-to-farmer exchanges, monthly refresher courses and regular monitoring, are all planned. These will feed into the writing of a manual for use in other parts of the country. Education programmes are also being developed to target extension officers and policy makers.

Both CA and keyhole gardens are rooted in a 'no dig' philosophy which many still regard with scepticism. Success in one of Africa's most eroded farming landscapes, however, could unlock the door to widespread adoption.

New Agriculturalist

Voucher system for inputs helps Southern African farmers

A voucher system to access agricultural inputs could put farmers in disaster-hit Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho on the road to recovery, according to a senior UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) official.

The vouchers - with cash values between US$15 and US$75, depending on the country - allowed farmers to purchase inputs at mobile trade fairs organised by the FAO. Previously, the FAO and other relief agencies provided a pre-selected combination of seeds and tools.

"But this did not meet the precise requirements of beneficiaries living in different agricultural zones and conditions," said James Breen, the FAO's regional emergency agronomist. "The vouchers not only help farmers and their beneficiaries become more food secure, in the long term it also helps the economy, as it promotes local input dealers through the fairs. This system is probably more effective than providing input subsidies because in most instances these farmers do not have any cash," Breen said. "Let's hope that we now get adequate rainfall."

The new system, pioneered in Kenya and later in Sudan by the non-governmental organisation, Catholic Relief Services, dispenses small-denomination vouchers printed in various colours so that farmers can choose from the seeds, fertiliser, tools and tillage services on offer.

FAO has distributed over 1,000 metric tonnes of seeds, as well as fertiliser and tools, to over 110,000 poor farmers in three southern African countries - Swaziland, Lesotho and Mozambique - through the trade fairs, which took place from September to November.

In Lesotho the drought has been so severe that in July the government declared a state of emergency after a UN survey estimated that 30 percent of the country's people would need humanitarian assistance.

Drought in neighbouring Swaziland left 40 percent of the population of just over one million with acute food and water shortages. Mozambique was hit with three natural disasters in the last growing season - flood, cyclone and drought - resulting in cereal losses as high as 99 percent in some affected areas.

"The lack of cash over the past 10 years has left maize cribs empty," said John Weatherson, FAO Emergency Coordinator in Swaziland. "The draught oxen population is greatly reduced; the cattle population has been hammered by drought, with cows either dead or sold as a coping mechanism."

IRIN

Land degradation takes its toll on Lesotho

Overgrazing of marginal land by cattle is a main contributing factor to the reduction of plants that retain topsoil when the rains come. Flash floods are common in the summer. Incorrect farming techniques also contribute to soil erosion, a greater conservation threat to the environment than drought: seasonal rains come and go but soil erosion never ceases.

Only 10 percent of Lesotho's 30,000sq km of mountainous terrain is classified as arable, according to the June 2007 report by the Lesotho Meteorological Services.

"Much of the land of Lesotho is vulnerable to extensive soil erosion," noted the 2007 Lesotho Drought Flash Appeal made in July by UN agencies. Several of them are involved in conservation programmes, without which agricultural production would remain compromised and food assistance from international donors would become a perpetual necessity.

According to Lineo Mdee, Sustainable Development Advisor at the UN Development Programme in Lesotho, continuing degradation of the natural resource base and the impoverishment of the soil are key factors in food insecurity. Two long-term developments have contributed to soil degradation: a region-wide process of desertification, which has turned stretches of arable land into marginal land, and a decades-long mismanagement of land.

"The original vegetative cover has disappeared, and invasive species that cannot retain moisture and which deplete the soil are increasing," said Mdee. "These are plants originating from outside Lesotho and Africa. Now, with the drought and Lesotho's usual fierce windstorms, the topsoil is blown away. When we do get rain it comes in torrents, and it makes gullies and dongas."

Harvesting scarce indigenous trees for firewood also poses a problem, exacerbated by people's poverty. Other fuel sources are unaffordable, and few people in rural areas are connected to the nation's electrical grid.

"This is a cold country. People need fuel; people are burning wood, and also crop residue. The few trees are going and, instead of ploughing back into the earth the crop residue to assist the next year's crops, there is nothing left," said Mdee.

Counteracting land mismanagement tops the conservation programmes initiated by UN agencies. "We need to find crops that really suit the soil types of this country and weather. Because of traditional customs, people grow maize and sorghum, though these are not the best crops for our conditions. We have declining productivity of the land as a result," Mdee commented.

Hassan Abdi, Programme Officer for the WFP in Lesotho, said training farmers to make the most of their land would boost harvests and preserve the environment. "We are advocating conservation agriculture as a way to halt further soil erosion and make more productive what farmland there is. We are encouraging people to get into environmental management."

Rather than burning crop residue, like maize stalks, during winter, or using it as cattle fodder, conservation agriculture requires farmers to leave it on the ground to nourish the soil.

"We assist communities to build earth dams and, in some cases, concrete dams, and at the same time we are reducing runoff by building retaining structures," said Abdi. Throughout the lowlands, barriers in dongas and hillocks of stones or layers of rocks held by wire mesh are built to retain soil.

In another WFP-sponsored programme, communities plant trees in dongas to rehabilitate the environment. "These are able-bodied persons who are unemployed, and because it is a community initiative the people have a sense of ownership of the project," said Abdi. "We give them some food as an incentive so at the end of the day they do not go home with empty stomachs."

IRIN

Rain brings hope to drought - plagued Lesotho

Rain in the past two weeks has brought some respite to Lesotho's farmers, who are struggling with one of the country's worst droughts in three decades. But with more than 400,000 people food insecure, some aid workers say it will take more than the rains to overcome the impact of the drought.

"We must do better than last harvest," said Setsoto Nyaku, a small-scale farmer. "Usually, this patch of land of mine yields 70 bags of maize; this year, we harvested only eleven bags. There has not been enough rain for the crops, but it is a start. We must plant now if we are to hope for early summer maize."

Four months to the day after the government declared a state of food crisis on 9 July, when the drought had largely destroyed the annual maize and sorghum harvests, Nyaku and his neighbours are plunging into a new season with greater optimism.

An aid worker ... is more cautious. "I think we will be here next year, distributing food aid; the drought will affect people until next year - too many people ate their planting seeds, and they are too poor to buy more."

In 2006, the UN's World Food Program fed between 60,000 and 70,000 people in Lesotho, and the numbers have grown with each rainless day; drought has brought production of maize, the staple food, down to less than half the previous year's crop.

Analysis awaits data collected in the 2006 national census, but preliminary results show a population of 1,872,000, with a life expectancy of 35.2 years illustrating the impact of AIDS in a country where nearly a quarter of all adults are HIV positive. According to UN agencies, more than a third of the nation struggle to get by on less than one US dollar a day, and 13 percent of the entire population is undernourished.

Irrigation may not be the immediate way to safeguard against erratic rains. A third of the nation's boreholes and wells have dried up, as have many small dams and reservoirs on which livestock and gardens depend.

When normal rainfall returns, water-harvesting schemes ...will act as protection against future droughts.

Abigale Modise, waiting for her share of food aid, remarked, "I accept this aid on behalf of myself and my grandchildren, who I now support because God has taken their parents. I yearn for my garden; nothing tastes sweeter than the maize I grow myself."

IRIN

World Food Programme pleased with local aid-maize purchase in Lesotho

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has reported that its purchase of maize directly from small farmers in Lesotho, who used conservation to produce a surplus amid the country's worst drought in 30 years, is having a beneficial effect on local communities.

By buying the maize directly from a group of small-scale local farmers rather than in neighbouring South Africa, WFP saves $45 per ton and helps stimulate the local agricultural economy.

"This is a win-win situation," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said. "It helps provide income for small-scale farmers while saving money for WFP."

In the first ever direct purchase in Lesotho, WFP paid 20 farmers from the isolated and impoverished district of Qacha's Nek around $2,800 for eight metric tons of their maize - a considerable sum in a country where more than a third of the population lives on less than $1 a day.

"WFP is committed to buying locally whenever possible because - as this historic deal proves - even a small purchase can have a huge impact on the lives of small-scale farmers," Ms. Sheeran said.

The maize will help feed thousands of children attending primary school in Qacha's Nek.

On 9 July, Lesotho's Government declared a state of emergency following an unprecedented period of hot, dry weather between January and March, which devastated the maize crop across the country.

Despite the drought, the 20 farmers in Qacha's Nek were able to produce a surplus of maize by following conservation farming methods picked up through a WFP-assisted food-for-training programme.

Some 400,000 people in Lesotho need immediate humanitarian aid - a figure that could rise to 550,000 during the first three months of 2008.

WFP plans to distribute food to about 260,000 people in Lesotho from now until the next maize harvest next April. The Government and other humanitarian organizations are aiming to reach the others in need.

So far this year, WFP has bought 7,000 tons of food in Lesotho at a cost of $2.3 million.

allafrica.com

Farmers struggle as drought ravages Lesotho

For Lesotho farmer Setsabo Mothibeli it has been too long since the rain came, as he stands desolately among dried maize stalks in the barren field he should have been harvesting.

Another year of drought, another failed harvest and the news could not be worse for the small country. "The stalks are so dry that they are useless even for the animals," says a frustrated Mothibeli, tossing aside the dried remains of maize that never grew to maturity. "We didn't harvest anything this year. We are stranded because even animals we were hoping to sell have been affected by the drought. There was no fodder for the animals so they are very thin and can't be sold at the market."

Driving out of the capital, Maseru, field after field of knee-high withered maize bears testimony to the devastation wrought by the country's worst drought in 30 years. Each desiccated field would have supported scores of people and livestock, who now pick desperately among the parched remains of the crops. Even though it would have been harvesting season, some farmers can be seen trying to replough their fields in the vain hope that something will grow and feed their families.

The brown and dusty landscape stretches endlessly, mercilessly, with the only hope for the Basotho that international donors will heed the call for more food aid as government declares a state of emergency.

In the village near Mafeteng, about 80km south of Maseru where Mothibeli lives, the situation is especially dire and the World Food Programme (WFP) is bringing pulses, maize and vegetable oil, which will see 29 households (158 people) through the next month.

"This is one of the most hit villages from the drought. We expected to only be helping them for six months but then again we had this drought crisis," says WFP field monitor assistant Nthoneng Mahao.

According to WFP country director Bhim Udas, about 400,000 people across the country - a fifth of the population - will need food assistance as only 72,000 tonnes of cereal was produced for a population needing 328,000 tonnes.

The true depth of the crisis would only be felt towards the end of the year and early 2008 when current stocks run out and locals feel the effect of rising food prices.

"About 80% of Basothos depend on agriculture and there is only 10% of arable land," said Udas. He notes the irony in that the dehydrated country is considered water rich, and its main source of income is from the water it sells to South Africa through the controversial Lesotho Highlands Water Development Project. Lesotho, entirely surrounded by South Africa, makes about R25-million ($3.5 million) a month from supplying water to its giant neighbour. "Water is one of the main incomes for government but the income is not shared with the people," he says.

According to Mahao, "The government making water available for people, it's a matter of accessibility. We don't have taps, there are no water pipes. We seem to be the main exporter of water, yet we don't have it for ourselves."

The mostly rural country is massively food insecure and hard hit by HIV/Aids.

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