to Land

32 • From Lab to Land
Mary Nanjala in Uganda, her own poor health, a
shortage of labour in the household and a lack
of income to hire labour mean that her desire
to expand her push–pull plot is likely to remain
unfulfilled.
In Ethiopia, the initial heavy demand for
labour is an obstacle to adoption. Households
are based around nuclear rather than extended
families, which means that less labour is available
than in the multi-generational extended
households of the Lake Victoria region. Although
there are strong traditions of collective farming,
Sue Edwards says “when it comes to field
management for something like push–pull, which
is knowledge intensive, you can’t just borrow
farmers from adjacent fields, or families, like you
can with harvesting, sowing or even weeding –
when people will normally get together to work in
a group. For push–pull, the optimum labour you
have available is what you have in your family.”
Sometimes, this is not enough.
Many female farmers do find ways
around the need for labour. Some, particularly
members of Heifer International groups, work
in small groups on each others’ farms until each
member has established a plot. Others cultivate
a collective group plot, sharing the outputs,
adding them to group-saving schemes or using
the fodder to increase the health and productivity
of pass-on livestock. Others, like Beryl Atieno,
use their own labour, succeeding against all
expectations.
Food
Most of the female farmers interviewed for
this report see ‘putting food on the table’ as a
woman’s basic responsibility to her children. In
the words of Bilha Wekesa, who farmed while her
husband was a schoolteacher, “he educated the
children; I fed them.”
Push–pull increases cereal yields. Many
push–pull farmers describe themselves as food
secure, meaning that they produce enough grain
to last from one agricultural season to the next,
and most of those who have not yet attained this
goal are getting closer. Mary Otuoma, who farms
a single acre, says that “my priority has always
been to have enough until the next harvest”. Last
season, having added a fourth push–pull plot to
her farm, she obtained a surplus for the first time,
and had some maize to sell.
Grace Anyange and her husband support a
household of 13 people on their three-acre farm.
They adopted push–pull in 2012 and have since
Grace Anyange has been a farmer-teacher since
2013.”Now other people are food secure too,” she says,
“and this makes them love me and my work. They pray for
me every day because I have made a difference in their
lives.”
added three more plots, one each year. Before
adopting the technology, Grace says, “we could
only go two months with our own maize – this
meant that I had to look for coping strategies,
and we had to go without. Now we can feed this
huge family.”
In Kisumu West district, Margaret Anyango
works as a tailor and a farmer, while her husband
is a driver. She first adopted push–pull in 2009,
and now three-quarters of her one acre holding is
under the technology. She no longer buys maize
from the market, and is in a position to hold onto
“When people are constrained nutritionally and financially
it puts a strain on family relations,” says Margaret
Anyango. “When you have to ask for money or food and
it is refused, there are fights. I have peace of mind now, I
don’t have to ask for anything. I am seen as an asset.”