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organic farming in Karagwe District
Community Habitat Environmental
Management, Tanzania
CHEMA: Organic farming in Karagwe District
eW consumers used to spare a thought for how the food they buy was produced. But
Fthat’s
changing: customers are becoming more concerned about the healthiness and taste
of their food, and increasing numbers flock to health-food stores and fair-trade shops that
guarantee their produce was produced without pesticides or other chemicals that harm the
environment or the health of the people who eat it – or who produced it.
Organic agriculture in the developed world is booming. Supermarkets are responding to
consumer demand by establishing organic brands and devoting aisles to organic food. A new
industry has grown up to certify that labels claiming that food was produced organically was
in fact grown using compost and ladybirds rather than phosphates and pesticides.
How can small-scale farmers in East Africa benefit from this growing market? A collaborative
project involving farmers in Karagwe District in northwestern Tanzania, the development
organization Community Habitat Environmental Management (CHEMA for short, Box 13),
and Matunda Mema, an organic produce exporter, shows how it might be done.
Through this project, 300 farmers in Karagwe District have been certified as organic. The
farmers are certified by the Institute for Market Ecology, a Swiss-based organization known
by its German acronym, IMO. They produce pineapples, papayas and sweet bananas, which
Matunda Mema dries and exports to Germany.
the Karagwe story
CHEMA’s project began in 1997 in Ihanda and Nkwenda, two wards (groups of villages) in
Karagwe District. Ihanda consists of 3 villages with about 250 families, and Nkwenda has
5 villages with about 300 families. The farmers there relied on a combination of traditional
cropping and livestock keeping. Most were practising organic agriculture by default, because
they could not afford fertilizers and pesticides. But they also used unsustainable practices
such as setting bush fires to clear land. Other farmers were dependent on their cattle: they
were semi-nomadic, moving around with their herds in search of fodder on communal lands
and in forests.
The average farm in the area covers only about 0.5 ha. Four-fifths of the farmers farm less
than 1 ha; another 10 to 20% own between 1 and 2 ha, and only 5% have more than 2.5 ha.
Almost no one has more than 5 ha of land. The traditional crops are bananas, maize, beans,
sorghum, fruit such as pineapples, papayas, mangos and oranges, and spices such as garlic
and lemongrass.
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