We all know the old saying.  As a piece of art this picture is worth no more than the plywood it’s drawn on.  But as a plan to maximize profit for this 4-acre Farmers of the Future vegetable garden, it’s worth over $100,000! And for 50 women from this rural village in Niger, that’s a lot of money!!!  Let me explain.

These days the largest and most impressive FOF gardens are located in the county of Balleyara, a 100-kilometer drive north of Niamey.  Five cooperatives were struggling when we received funding from USAID to take them over. Two and a half years later the gardens are lush and productive.  We arrived for our site visits just as the women were about to harvest tons of onions and potatoes.

What’s the secret behind that success?  We provide intensive training and supervision for a three-year period of time, hopefully long enough for women to master farming as a business.  But what happens when we wean them off support?  Will they sustain that success?  The question is particularly challenging since almost all our women are illiterate.  How can they record technical information, retain it and retrieve it as needed?  We believe a big part of the answer is pictorial.

For example, cooperatives must be able make their own annual crop plan.  To maximize profits women need to select which crops to grow, when to plant them, when to harvest and when to sell as prices peak.  The drawing in the photo shows exactly that.  The women create symbols for each of the 12 months.  They draw pictures of the various crops and develop additional symbols to identify the activities of planting, growing, harvesting and selling.  The whole annual plan on one giant piece of plywood!

During our visit to Balleyara, we asked one woman at each site to talk us through the plan.  And they really knew their stuff.  They rattled off all the details of what, when, how and why.

Today sustainability is the central focus of our work in gardens under direct FOF control.  It’s an opportunity to develop a unique competence in this frequently overlooked but absolutely critical aspect of rural economic development.  And it will become a featured topic in the curriculum at our Horticultural Training Center now under construction.  More about the Center in the next post.