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by Yemi Ademiluyi

I tagged along with Jessica Thorn when she went out into the field in search of dry season farms. Jessica, a researcher from Oxford University, is working on mapping project sites in Lawra-Jirapa in Northern Ghana as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).

In the field Jess is using a combination of quantitative ecological field-testing techniques with qualitative sociological methods. These surveys are used to assess the relationship between ecosystem processes, goods, services and human well being in a changing climate.

The first place visited was home to a community of blind farmers called Abambeau group (meaning Who Knows Tomorrow), which has existed for 15 years. It is one of five other associations built on a similar model working towards providing income-generating opportunities to disabled people in the district.

There were 48 members not all of whom were completely blind. There was one small seeing-impaired child, not a foot tall, whose age I could not guess, who tripped over a root and landed flat on his face. He didn’t shed a tear, or even make a noise, he just gets up, back tracks, runs his foot over the root a few times as if committing it to memory, then walks off.

When we arrived we were immediately told by one of the ladies standing near the door that there were water problems. As we started walking through the farm, I found myself rather confused. Buckets and calabashes full of water lined the field. Granted the soil itself looked dry, but the water was sitting everywhere in pots. We got taken to a well that was deep but had not much water at the bottom. Another source of water is from a tap nearby, for which farmers have to pay. Then we got taken to the main source of water for the farm and I truly came to understand what each of those buckets of water meant.

There was a hole in the ground. A big deep hole that was getting bigger and deeper as the years went by. This hole was sitting in the bed of what used to be a river. In this hole were three calabash-sized puddles fed by groundwater. Felitia, at 75 years of age would start at 6:00 am with several others of a similar age, and work through the day, filling each bucket, one scoop at a time and carrying one bucket at a time to the field. They would wait until water slowly seeped into the calabash-sized hole in the dirt, scoop that out, wait until the water slowly seeped back again and then do that again. 

While this water source seemed to replenish itself, by the end of the day they told us that it would be empty, and they may have to wait another day more for the water to replenish itself. Or, the water may not return at all, and they may have to dig deeper to get down to the new water level.

Despite these challenges, when we asked what vegetable farming did for them, what they got out of it, the group of farmers had countless answers. Here are some of my favorites:

“I was idle. I was not doing anything. Now that I have learned vegetable farming I can’t sit Idle any more. My body aches if I sit idle now”

“I like vegetable farming because it allows us to help others. We can give gifts. We can buy soap. We also sell some of our vegetables to get an income. Although sometimes we sell to some people on credit and they don’t pay us.”

“Through the cultivation of vegetables people recognize us as being important for society. As we walk in the street people see us and ask ‘Aren’t your vegetables ready yet?’ or ‘Don’t you have some vegetables to sell to us today?’ Some people insult us but still…”

Despite the various difficulties this group also had a sense of pride rather than just a sense of necessity. As well as being a livelihood the vegetable farmers reported that they felt a sense of achievement, felt productive and like they were active members of society.

Today, Jessica and I came across incredible resilience and adaptive capacity, and returned home touched by the farmers’ stories. I was so affected by the experience it seemed worth sharing these stories from the field with those of you who share an interest in supporting marginalized agricultural communities cope with environmental change.

Written by Yemi Ademiluyi, Oxford University. To learn more about on Systemic Integrated Adaptation, follow the group on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more updates from Ghana, and West Africa.