Kitchen Gardeners International: The view from Mali

Jan Maes, a KGI board member, recently traveled to Mali. What follows is a short update from his trip pointing out some of the food security challenges he saw there.

I worked this week with a local NGO which is promoting vegetable gardening as one of its activities: The photos are taken in Wampiri, a small Tulani (Peul) village in the vicinity of the Niger river. Right now it is dry season, but even during the rain season, this area is already too far removed from the river to be flooded every year for rice cultivation. Sometimes they have sufficient irrigation, some years not. You can imagine how precarious their food security is, especially this year with rice prices already higher than they were just before the harvest (i.e. October) last year.

Right now people in the village are fine because they still have some rice reserves, make a living trading (mostly staples) from and to their village, and almost every household has a son selling labor in the capital or in neighboring countries. They can send home some cash, and they will return to help in the field once the rains start in July or so. There has been a declining trend in the amount of rainfall received in this area for the last two decades.

However, despite these very precarious living conditions, the villagers persevere. A few years ago, the local NGO helped this village to dig a well and built a vegetable garden around it. The well is the only source of water for the whole village during the dry season and serves as water supply for the kitchen garden as well.

They just harvested their shallots and are now leaving some plants for seed production. The shallots are grown for the villagers own consumption, not as cash crop. They dry them in flakes and then use them in dishes.

Posted by KGI on May 27, 2008 12:57 PM to Kitchen Gardeners International
----------
Kitchen Gardeners International is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that relies on the financial support of individuals to fund its educational and outreach activities. If you found this information useful, please consider becoming a KGI member. Thank you.