Originally published on Forbes.com
By Randa Osman and Daniel Ange, Program Associates at myAgro
Smallholder farmers in rural areas make up 80% of the world’s poorest people globally. myAgro is a nonprofit organization on a mission to help move 1 million smallholder farmers out of poverty by 2026. In light of this, one key activity of the communications team is to capture farmers’ stories. Farmer stories are important because they are also myAgro’s story. When we immerse ourselves in the daily lives of farmers we can best capture the impressions and expectations of farmers—and measure the impact myAgro has on their daily lives.
Though these visits can be time-consuming, as we reach some of the most remote rural villages within Mali, Senegal, and Tanzania, it is key to how we operate as an organization. As Anushka Ratnayake, the CEO of myAgro once said to our team: “We are a field-based organization, we get mud in our boots and are proud of it!”.
Earlier this month, we traveled to Casamance, the southernmost region of Senegal, to collect farmers’ stories. The most direct route to Casamance from Senegal’s capital city of Dakar where we are based is through the Gambia. In theory, the journey time should be seven to eight hours, but if you add two border crossings, the reality is around 10 hours.
Casamance is known as a tropical paradise offering a picturesque scene with a unique geography. Casamance has abundant rivers, fishing villages, palm forests, and river towns. It has a more unique geographical and cultural flavor than the rest of Senegal. It is mainly made up of Fulani tribes, a large and widely dispersed group of both nomadic herders and sedentary farmers living in Africa’s Sahel region.
Once we arrived in Casamance we met Timothée in the city of Kolda. Timothée, an Agriculture Agent, led us to Sossouto village, to meet with two farmers, Hawa and Marïam Balde. Both women welcomed us and right away we could sense that these women farmers held strong positions within their households. They were both eager to tell us about their experience with myAgro and were proud to have been two of the first women in the village to enroll with the organization earlier this year. Although myAgro had been present a year prior in their village, both women expressed hesitation given that they had not witnessed the positive results of myAgro’s products for themselves. They were worried about using their hard-earned money to buy seeds and fertilizer little-by-little. However, this all changed when they witnessed their neighbor, Abdoulaye Kombaye’s, peanut farm. The only farmer who had enrolled the previous year, he had a terrific harvest. “Last year he was the only one who got good peanuts and others did not,” Marïam Balde stated.
So far both women have seen a notable change in their fields. “The field looks a lot better and I have a reasonable expectation,” Hawa Balde shared.
Having spent some time with Hawa and Marïam, the following day we met with Khady Sow from the village of Saré Yobe Diége. We heard Khady was doing well over the three years they have been planting with myAgro. Khady is a widowed mother of four and grandmother of eight. The layaway platform has been of great benefit to her: “The little payments are helpful to us because we can’t pay it all at once,” Khady expressed. She now successfully plants her two hectares of land with myAgro. One hectare for rice, and the other hectare for hibiscus and gombo. “I love farming, I live off farming. My children and grandchildren live off farming,” Khady told us. As a little girl, she remembers farming with her parents and has become fond of the practice herself. “As a farmer, my favorite season is the rainy season, because you start planting,” she continued. Khady has instilled her love of farming in her daughter Maoudes and daughter-in-law who is also named Khady. They both expressed a similar kind of fondness for agriculture, which is an essential part of their lives.
Meeting farmers like Hawa Balde, Marïam Balde, and Khady Sow requires careful preparation, consisting of two main parts. Firstly, we identify and categorize different farmer profiles by utilizing data that has been collected from the different departments within myAgro, such as the Innovation and Audit teams. Secondly, we get in touch with a field-based staff member before heading into the field. They are usually local residents who have grown up in these remote villages and are the direct points of contact with myAgro farmers who provide technical agricultural training, market myAgro packages to farmers, and monitor farmers’ progress toward their layaway goals.
Our initial encounters with farmers like Hawa Blade, Marïam Balde, and Khady Sow give us the opportunity to spotlight their stories and myAgro’s impact. Our goal is to build deeper connections that shape people’s perspectives of smallholder farming communities. It’s a process that requires compelling storytelling and mission-driven focus on farmers, as we work to build widespread empathy and understanding.
