By Calisto Nhamo
When I completed my secondary school, I was like many youths who grow up in rural areas, eager to leave my rural home and head for the city, where I would get a good job and make it big in life. So, in 2007 I left my rural home in Bikita and for eight years I worked for different companies in Mutare, Harare and Bulawayo, the three biggest cities in Zimbabwe. However, after those eight years of working, I realised that I was not ‘making it big in the city.’
In 2015, with much disappointment, I decided to move back home to establish some farming projects as a way of supporting my family. However, the only farming I knew was the conventional system. I began growing cash crops such as maize, tomatoes and potatoes using synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.
This quickly put a big strain on my finances because synthetic fertilisers and hybrid seeds are very expensive. For example, at the shops close to my home, a 50kg bag of Compound D cost US$50 and Topdressing fertiliser costs US$65. I ended up spending money I didn’t have on inputs and could never really make any meaningful profits so I found myself struggling to make a living again.
After seven years of this struggle, I participated in a workshop that was organised by Schools and Colleges Permaculture Programme (SCOPE) Zimbabwe to teach smallholder farmers about agroecology. It was at that workshop that my eyes were opened and I learnt about the problems that arise as a result of applying synthetic fertilisers and chemicals on the soil. I learned that there was another way, a much cheaper and more sustainable way of enhancing the fertility of my soil, by using organic fertilisers.
SCOPE Zimbabwe took us through a training on making these organic fertilisers and after the training, I was very inspired and made the decision to start practicing agroecology. I have been practicing Agroecology since that training in October 2022 and I have realised its potential not just in the money I can save by no longer buying synthetic fertilisers and hybrid seed but also in the diversity and quality of my produce.
I want to thank SCOPE Zimbabwe for introducing agroecology methods of food production. I want to practise it on the ground and I want to be an agroecology ambassador in my community.