What do you know about farming in Zambia?
The opportunity to learn more presents itself this week in the first of a series of postings on the Western Producer website at www.producer.com.
Diaries of a Global Farmer will be a weekly instalment written by Marianne Stamm and posted to our website every Friday. Stamm and her husband, Robert, are retired grain farmers from Westlock, Alta., who now rent out their farmland so they can work on development projects in Africa.
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Stamm, who has visited and worked in Zambia before, proposed the idea for a diary last fall: “I hope, by sending reports, to broaden the readers’ horizons about agriculture in Africa,” she said.
“It is not something most of us know much about. We know that Africa produces wheat, mostly in northern Africa, and that the Canadian International Development Agency actually supported wheat research stations in Kenya. Other countries like Zambia were a real revelation to us. To see huge fields of corn, soybeans, wheat or cotton, such as we would see in the United States or southern Alberta, felt like a mirage beside the mud huts and little shanty farmers we are more familiar with from newscasts.
“Both are a real part of Africa.”
The Stamms left Jan. 8 on their latest journey to Zambia, where they will stay for about the next three months. A planned visit to Kenya was altered due to recent political unrest in that country.
The Stamms plan to help develop farm projects involving co-operatives, provide training to Zambian farmers in business and production management and help connect farmers to agricultural resources.
They are no strangers to agriculture. Marianne, born in Switzerland, was raised on a dairy farm near Fort St. John, B.C. Later she returned to Switzerland, where she and Robert worked on his family farm before buying a grain farm near Westlock.
Now that their two sons are grown, the couple has decided to undertake charitable missions, with support from Charis Global Community Aid and their church, Cedar Creek Christian Fellowship.
Stamm says her goal in writing a weekly web diary is to help share information on Zambian culture and develop greater understanding about the difficult aspects of development and foreign aid. Photos will accompany her diary when available.
We hope you will enjoy reading about her travels, experiences and work in Africa. To find the weekly instalment, go to www.producer.com and click on Diaries of a Global Farmer.
