Mr Offer Dombola

He is a good example of why approaches to fighting food and nutrition insecurity must be multi-pronged and systematic. He is a farmer who has lived and cultivated in these lands all his life, yet now is the time he is living his best life as a farmer. He joined the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience Project in 2019 after being wooed by the lessons the project was offering. When the project established a Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) in 2022, he was one of the first project participants to join and be trained. He has since been saving his income with a local group, called Chankhawana VSLA, in his community. Through these years he has been able to see tremendous benefits from saving with his local VSLA, which include increasing his savings from time to time, accessing loans and earning an interest from the money he saves at this group.

This year Mr Dombola earned K1, 296, 000.00 from his savings and interests, making him one of the top earners at the group. Like any wise farmer, he invested the money in agriculture, and a little bit in other things. “With the money”, he says, “I bought a ridger and a plough for my household. The ridger cost K480, 000, while the plough cost K300,000”. To add on that, he also got a loan from the group and bought 3 bags of 50 kgs of inorganic fertilizer, at a price of K152,000 each. This is a significant step for a local farmer in Mtuza Section. These environmentally friendly oxen-drawn ridgers and ploughs are every farmer’s dream, because they are cost and time affective, and lessen the burden famers have in growing their crops. They also tend to improve yield. Furthermore, the three bags of inorganic fertilizers Mr Dombola has bought could meet all his fertilizer needs if he chooses to make Mbeya Manure, an organic fertilizer farmers learnt to make from the project. He could potentially make 15 bags of 50 kg organic Mbeya Fertilizer, which would be more than enough for a smallholder farmer of Mr Dombola’s calibre.

“With the plough and the ridger, I will be able to prepare my land within a short period of time. Usually, using a hoe tilling my farmland takes over five weeks, but with the ridger and plough it will only take me less than a week to do all of it. And this is also less labourious than using the hoe, especially to an ageing man like me”, he states, beaming with hope and excitement for the upcoming growing season. With the ridger and plough, Mr Dombola has killed several birds with one stone. The ridge and plough can also be used for weed control, banding, improving soil fertility by mixing organic matter and fertlizers into the soil. Before purchasing these equipment, this was a task that required a lot of effort and time, but now it will be shorter and smoother.

He adds, “with the ridger and plough, I will be able to grow bigger portions of land, and will shorten time and burden on my body. With this, my land size will be bigger than before, and my yield will greatly improve”. Aside investments in agriculture, he has also managed to pay tuition fee for his son who is at a mechanic school, paying K400,000. This is why he will never leave the VSLAs no matter what. “I have seen its importance, I will save more. I encourage others to also join VSLAs if they want to have more incomes for their agricultural activities,” he concluded.