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Just got dinged by yet another org who told us they love what we do but we need to impact more farmers. The target is always 10,000. Why? Who put that magic number in their heads? Have any of them MET one of these farmers that we are talking about? Let me tell you a short story.
This year, we worked with 58 “lead farmers” (people who got direct loans from us) and each of those farmers employed about 3-4 additional people to help them cultivate. Tomatoes require a lot of work. We don’t broadcast our fertilizer, we require weed-free fields, etc.
So our total farmer reach was about 259 farmers. And yes, our farmers actually employ people and don’t just use their kids or family members because again, the work is technical and laborious. We have 3 extension officers managing these 58 lead farmers and ~200 secondary farmers.
Many of our farmers did at least one the following:
1) Refused to come to the farm when it was their day to irrigate
2) Refused to weed
3) Tried to sneak baje fruit into their baskets
4) Tried to set up weird side deals for sales
5) Failed to spray pesticides when asked to do so.
1) Refused to come to the farm when it was their day to irrigate
2) Refused to weed
3) Tried to sneak baje fruit into their baskets
4) Tried to set up weird side deals for sales
5) Failed to spray pesticides when asked to do so.
THEN, at the end of the season, when our top farmers got 37 tons per hectare (he is one of the good ones - he is awesome, actually), the sore losers accused him of “spiritually stealing” tomatoes fro their fields into his. This is what 2019 looks like in Kangimi.
We can’t even publicly reward our top farmer because he’s afraid of backlash. We would LOVE to make him an extension worker and/or give him a larger plot to farm, but his village people are literally holding him back from their petty jealousy. It’s insane.
#sorrynotsorry but I would rather work with 100 farmers like our top guy and make them successful on 20 hectare plots than work with 10,000 small guys who are going to abandon their work for family meeting. The “10,000 farmer” donors can keep their money.
The end.
PS the TJ handle will break down our farmer results in more detail later in the month after our investor report goes out, but y’all should know that it wasn’t totally horrible. Despite all their ridiculous behavior, many farmers still managed decent yields.
