Case Studies

Chilimo

Cabbages and school

Amare Zebre, 33, is putting his efforts into new vegetables. He’s got a hectare of land and is concentrating on cabbages, potatoes, carrots, swiss chard, beetroot and lettuce, attracting good prices at the local market where these vegetables are in short supply. He also grows traditional crops like maize, teff and enset, a banana-like plant, and has started growing wheat. 

Much of the seed for the new crops was provided by FARM-Africa and Amare uses the produce to feed his family of five, selling any surplus.

He’s also got a cow, two oxen, three sheep and two calves for fattening. Livestock is used for its products such as milk, its draft power for transport and ploughing, and as a safety net to sell in hard times. Amare also does contract work for people to earn extra money.

Amare’s main concern is for the community to build a school for the village’s 400 children.

Two of his own children went to school but one dropped out because he couldn’t walk the 14kms there and back every day. “He’s helping me to plough and plant seed and to sell my crops at the local market.” 

		“There are many children in the village who should go to school but don’t. I think we get ignored because we live in the forest but we are trying to fill that gap ourselves,” he said. Commenting on the newly signed forest agreement, which gives his community group forest management rights and responsibilities, he is clear about its benefits. “The forest used to be patrolled by guards and the community wouldn’t cooperate with them.
Now we have both the responsibility and the authority to manage and protect the forest. We have exclusive user rights to the forest products and we need to protect them from poachers. People come from the town to take wood for their own use or to sell it for firewood or construction and we need to educate them not to.”

He said there was still more to be done. “We need to develop the forest and plan with the community and the government how we will extract any benefit from it, that will not hurt the sustainability of the forest for the future.”

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