An innovative food bank in Mutiusinazita in Buhera district is providing poor families with access to maize during the hunger season, reports reports CLAYTON MASEKESA.
The Hozi (Granary) Food Bank, established in 2008, is managed exclusively by women. The scheme is improving nutrition, keeping families together and accruing interest in the form of grain stores in the warehouses.
The women who manage Hozi work with the Chief and his traditional subjects, Arex officials and a local councillor. The bank stores crops immediately after harvest and is able to lend grain to devastated families during the hunger season when crops fail.
According to local councillor, Samson Chiteme, the women have excelled. “Each week during the rainy season, the women involved in the project organise the collection and distribution of available cereals. This is significant because here in Buhera women have traditionally had little or no control over decision-making,” said Chiteme.
“This approach gives us three main results. First, we have been able to set up a local system at village level to prevent and manage food crises with a strong focus on poor families,” he explained. “Secondly, it has enabled women in the villages to become actively involved in this enterprise with the support of their husbands, and this in turn, has led to the creation new, dynamic women’s organisations in the villages. And thirdly, the project is able to work with these organisations to develop activities that focus on issues such as health, child nutrition, HIV and other challenges.”
Exchange
The chairperson of Hozi Food Bank, Miriam Mabikwa – who is a respected community leader, said the bank was lending food to farmers during the planting period to help them get through the pre-harvest hunger season, which runs from mid-July to early November, a time when family maize reserves are almost empty.
“During these months, families usually eat only one meal a day.” Mabikwa said. “It is also the time when farmers are planting seeds and need strength to work.” She explained: “The Hozi Food Bank concept is based on exchange. Every week, poor families receive maize as a credit. The families through their subsistence farming then pay back the loan – not with money, but with the maize, once their own crops are harvested. They add 25 per cent interest to replace the stock and cover the cost of storage and maintenance.” She added that first preference was given to women who were regarded as responsible and had proved to be honest.
“Hozi has sustained many households in the village through recurring food crises caused by persistent drought, which has seen cereal production drop by nearly a third in successive years,” she said.
The droughts in Buhera in 2008 created a famine. Hardship was aggravated by intense political pressure from Zanu (PF), which forced various NGOs supplying food donations to pull out. Most villagers faced acute food shortages.
Crop failure
An Arex Official in the area, Robson Masaiti, last week said even some of the crops that were suitable for the area had failed to thrive over the years. He predicted that the same conditions were likely to persist in the forthcoming season. “From the look of the things right now, our water sources are inadequate and the pastures insufficient. Very soon live-stock will be under siege in this district," said Masaiti. The drought that began in 2008 and persisted during subsequent years has forced most rural families to sell tools, seed, herds and flocks to buy what little food was available.
“I have been harvesting an average of only four sacks of maize in my four-hectare field over the years,” said Keresenzia Munyavi, a villager. “So even before the planting season, we were left without maize for the household. My husband went to work on other people’s fields to make money to buy maize. I had already sold my goat to get through the drought and I was left with nothing else to sell, but now I am happy that I have managed to feed my family, using the maize loan I got from Hozi,” said Munyavi.
Rosaline Gadzikwa, who became one of the maize bank’s clients in 2009, said there were two main benefits from having the Hozi close by. “Last month I had 56 kilograms of maize that helped us cope for one month and gave us something to eat other than just leafy vegetables. Without the maize, many heads of households would have had to leave the village,” she said.
Her neighbour Juliet Samushonga agreed: “If we didn’t have the Hozi, our alternative strategies would have been to borrow from our neighbours in Wedza and Chivhu or to send our husbands away in search of jobs,” she added.
Survival
Farmers benefiting from the scheme have been able to continue working in their fields, instead of being forced to seek jobs elsewhere and neglect their own cultivations.
Lucia Chipindura, another beneficiary, said, “In April this year we barely had anything left from what we had harvested. With seven people to feed and my husband having to work in a neighbouring village, I had to sell one of my goats to buy additional maize to ensure the survival of the household.
“My husband came back for the rainy season but had to work on other people’s plots in Chivhu to earn some money. With the little money he could make with that seasonal work, we could have two meals a day combined with vegetables.” Chipundura said she borrowed 30 kilograms of maize last month.
“My husband no longer needs to work on others’ fields four times a week. He can now concentrate on our own field. The Hozi is a good initiative. Today as women in the villages are able to participate in meetings with the agreement and support of our husbands, so we know more about what is going on outside our homes. We could hardly do that in the past. We now want the stock in the Hozi to increase so that it covers a much longer period of the pre-harvest season,” she added.