Five Years Ago
Jekoniah looks over his 1.5-acre farm in the Iringa Region of Tanzania and surveys his crop of maize (corn). The crop this year is no better than last year's, which is not very good. Jekoniah didn't have the money to buy the quality seeds or the fertilizer that would have produced a higher yield. He has nothing but his small mud hut that he shares with his wife and five children so no bank will give him a loan for better crop inputs.
If the weather holds, Jekoniah will produce five big bags of maize (about 250 lb. each), so Jekoniah has a problem. His five children are all teenagers and eat like teenagers. He needs at least ten bags just to feed his family for the year, though the maize is far from optimal nutrition.
He is one of the world's poor who makes less than a dollar a day. By international standards, he makes 42¢ per day but that number counts what he grows, not his income. To have any money he will have to sell some of the maize and make his family even hungrier. If a family member gets sick he will have to choose between medicine and deeper starvation. School for his children is not an option. Amazingly, some families starve their children just to put them in school in hope of a better life.
Jekoniah lives with the cruel irony that the hungriest people on the planet are usually farmers.
Today
It is harvest time and Jekoniah is bringing in the best crop he has ever grown - more than 25 bags of maize. Things started to change for Jekoniah when he joined a farmer group organized by Pearl Foods, a Cheetah Development company. He waited two years to join, verifying the success of his neighbors because couldn't take the risk of a loan with his family living at the edge until he was certain.
The farmers in his group are mutually accountable for the loan they receive from a local bank. If one member defaults, the other members of the group are responsible for the full repayment. The bank is willing to make the loan to Jekoniah's group because Cheetah provided collateral and the sale of the farmers' crops is guaranteed by Pearl Foods. It will cost Jekoniah 5 bags to repay the loan, he will keep 10 bags for food, and sell 10 bags for around $280.
This is the most money he has ever had and Jekoniah can now imagine a brighter future for his family. The rising incomes of farmers in Jekoniah's village also has big benefits for their community: the local clinic has been upgraded, the villagers convinced the local government to improve their road, fields are being surveyed for land titles, and a church is being built paid for by the villagers. New lives are growing from the soil of Jekoniah's farm.
Posts
