Iowa women volunteer for farmer-to-farmer project in Uganda

By ERIN FOSSELMAN, ISU Extension News Service

On her trip to rural Uganda, Jennifer Steffen, a farmer and retired watershed coordinator from southeast Iowa, felt very blessed to live in the Midwest.

“There are many things that we take for granted in our Midwestern farming practices that are completely out of the realm of possibilities for the women in Uganda,” Steffen said. “Everything was done manually with very basic hand tools.”

Steffen’s trip was part of the rural development program, Bridging the Gap: Increasing Competitiveness of Ugandan Women Farmers in the Marketplace. The farmer-to-farmer program links Iowa farmers with eight groups of women farmers in the Kamuli District of Uganda.

The yearlong project is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Iowa State University’s Global Extension program has partnered with a Ugandan non-profit organization, Volunteer Efforts for Developing Concerns (VEDCO), to provide farmer production and marketing expertise to Ugandan farmers. ISU’s Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihood (CSRL) and VEDCO have been providing outreach and education in the district since 2004. Due to their efforts, many area Ugandan farm families have achieved food security and are now poised to increase crop diversity, as well as grain yields and quality for sale to commercial markets.

“In Iowa, we have an amazing system in place to grow and market our crops. Our Iowa farmers’ experiences allow them to identify the gaps in the Ugandan marketing system and help identify steps for improving local farmers’ maize quality and marketing,” said ISU Extension Value Added Ag Specialist Margaret Smith, co-director of the Bridging the Gap program. “Our ultimate goal is to improve profitability for these Ugandan women farmers and bring more money to their households.”

Steffen and two other volunteers spent six days working with the groups of farmers on project objectives. The project focuses on improving maize grain quality and helping to organize collaborative or group marketing of the grain. In addition, soybeans are being introduced as food and as a cash crop. The Iowans also helped train the Ugandan farmers to keep written farm business records.

During their trip, Steffen and the others traveled to maize mills and warehouses and met with the farmer groups to monitor record books and evaluate the soybean plantings. Meeting “rooms” were outside under the shade of spreading trees, where the gradual movement of the group following the shade marked the progress of the work sessions.

Steffen has farmed for many years on a diversified crop and livestock family farm near Birmingham. During their spare hours, Steffen and her husband, Chuck, manage habitat for upland bird species on acres they have enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Her two sons, Ben and Spencer, are looking forward to being the next generation to live and work on the family farm in Van Buren County.

Steffen also serves on the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture advisory board, most recently as its chair, and is a member of the advisory committee for the Henry A. Wallace Chair for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State. Her background in farming and conservation led to an appreciation for the simple ways farms are managed in Uganda.

“The women farmers in the Kamuli District are industrious, hardworking and resilient,” Steffen said. “They are wonderful communicators and are willing to learn new, improved and economically advantageous methods of farming that have the potential to improve their livelihoods.”

Despite the differences in lifestyles between the Iowa volunteers and the Ugandan women, Steffen noted some similarities, “They value family and the farm and take pride in a job well done, just like we do.”

In Uganda, bicycles are used for all manner of transport. One day, while the volunteers were working with a group of farmers in the Butansi sub District, Steffen saw yet another sight that made her appreciate Iowa farming methods.

“I heard squealing, looked out on the road and saw a bicycle being pushed along with what I guessed to be a 200-pound hog tied to the frame. I suspected the hog was on his way to the butchery,” she said. “This made me think my days spent sorting and hauling hogs to market in Iowa were a cakewalk.”

Another group of Iowa women farmers went to Uganda in August. They were scheduled to continue work by Steffens’ group to improve on-site farm production, crop quality and farm record keeping in the Kamuli District.