Diaries of a global farmer

Chewing on the beans I shelled from the dry plants at my feet, I watch the two dusty red Case IH combines swallow up the large field of soybeans. It is hard to believe I am in Zambia, Africa.

Having spent the bulk of our time here with small-scale farmers planting no more than a hectare or two of maize, it is easy to forget there are many large commercial farmers in this country. When we flew into Lusaka, we saw the green pie-shaped wedges of irrigated fields. Now, in early April, we are privileged to witness the beginning of the maize and soybean harvest.

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We are visiting the Berkhout farm, about an hour outside Lusaka. Angela and Brian Berkhout are among the white Zimbabwean farmers chased off of their land by Robert Mugabe. Many of them have found a new home in Zambia, and are rebuilding their lives and farms.

Whatever we may think of the issues between the white farmers and their African workers, the stories these people could tell us are heartbreaking. I admire the courage with which they have picked up their lives and gone on.

Brian and Angela have been in Zambia for five years, three of them on this farm. They partner with two other Zimbabwean farmers. I am excited to learn the father-in-law of one of their partners is the man who pioneered ‘God’s Way of Farming’. This is the conservation farming method for the small scale farmers taught at Masaiti Farming Institute that I wrote about a few weeks ago. It’s a small world.

All three young couples help with an orphanage nearby, run by an African American. As Angela tells us of her struggles with the wide gap in standards of living between themselves and their workers, I have to revise my picture of the white ‘Bwana’ farmer.

The Berkhouts farm 2,470 acres; 600 acres each of maize and soybeans are under irrigation. After the maize harvest, they will seed 300 acres to wheat, which needs to be irrigated during the dry season. Like many other farmers, they are cutting back their wheat acreage due to the frequent power outages. The problems caused by the power shortages seem to be a frequent issue in my diary.

A plastic hut is erected at the edge of the maize field. Guards patrol the fields during harvest to ward off theft. Back at the farm, 18 men unload a trailer by hand. Some shovel soybeans off the trailer, others hold up the sacks for filling, others heave them on their heads to bring to the scale, where another adds the right amount of beans to 52 kilograms. Others pile the full sacks. Ten more men are occupied with shelling the maize that was picked by hand a few days ago. Termites had caused large areas of maize to fall to the ground. The foreman has quite the task overseeing these 28 men.

The main reason we are here is because Brian has extensive experience with chickens and is also producing eggs. We are surprised at the simplicity of the structures for the chickens and quickly decide to revise some of our building plans. Angela gives us the tour and patiently answers our numerous questions and even invites us to lunch in their newly built spacious farmhouse.

Before we leave, I buy 10 Macadamia nut seedlings from Mark Wenham, their partner. Beside the tree nursery a chattering group of African women sit on a tarp separating garlic cloves, which Mark will soon be planting in the field. Nearby, on several acres, the glossy slender leaves of Amaryllis plants gleam in the sun. At Christmastime in Switzerland I often bought an amaryllis for my mother-in-law, not knowing that the bulbs, which came from Holland, might have grown in Zambia.