The harvest season has started in Tanzania, and our team is busy traversing the country purchasing maize and staple food items to bring back to Unite Food Program headquarters in Dar es Salaam. This harvest marks the second year of operations for Unite Food Program (UFP), and we are thrilled to report that the business is thriving, the team is growing, and the customer demand is exploding.
The social impact work of UFP (a Tanzanian-women-own social enterprise) includes sending teammates out to remote villages to purchase maize from small-scale farmers at fair-market prices and providing them with Agro-Z grain bags, which allows them to store their harvest safely, pest- and pesticide-free, for up to a year (one bag holds 100 kgs and can be reused over three harvests). The Agro-Z bags are a “savings account” for these farmers, enabling them to consume the maize or sell it later at higher pricing months after the harvest.
As part of this social outreach mission, UFP buys from a myriad of peasant farming families, the vast majority of whom…
Live in the deep interior, hours from any main road, without electricity and running water;
Have five children or more;
Keep their children at home to work the land (of those who are sent to school, most drop out after primary level, ~6th grade).
Like so much of the world, this year UFP is facing soaring food prices due to food scarcity following poor rains and rising global fuel prices. The price of 100 kgs of maize has nearly tripled from this time last year.
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Here, a story of a family our UFP team purchased maize from earlier this week.
Unite teammates Isaak Mwimanzi, Baraka Sauli, and Enock Sambala are pictured above with Mr. Adam Kabila and his family on the land they farm together in Kisalala village, Western Tanzania.
Our team arrived at the shamba (farm) of Mr. Adam Kabila and his wife Oditha on June 21st to purchase the families’ maize harvest. Mr. Kabila does not own any land; instead he leases three acres to cultivate with his family. From this shamba, Mr. Kabila hopes to harvest 25 bags of 100 kilograms of maize (2.5 tons) this season. His plan is to set aside 10 bags to feed his family and sell the remaining 15 bags for family expenses. This harvest is the family’s sole source of annual income. However, as a result of the insufficient rains, Mr Kabila’s harvest is lower than anticipated, and already he is worrying about next year. Will he be able to afford drought-tolerant seeds to possibly get a better yield?
With no way to safely store his food prior to receiving Unite’s Agro-Z bags, Mr. Kabila had always kept his maize in his family home. There his crops had no protection again pests or mold. Mr. Kabila told our team that in all of his years of farming, he has never received any support other than from Unite. He was very happy to receive the Agro-Z grain storage bags so that he won’t have to buy or apply any grain storage chemicals.
Mr.. Kabila’s wife Oditha and three of three of their eight children working the land.
Enock Sambala, a Unite scholar and teammate, walking to Mr Kabila’s farm, which is hours from any gravel road.
Unite Scholar and UFP teammate Isaac introducing the Agro-Z grain storage bag to small-scale farmers.
Isaac helping a farmer load the maize into an Agro-Z bag for safe long-term storage.