Namibia: Young Local Food Farmer Utilizes Home Garden to Enhance Household Food Security and Livelihood

Johanna Kwafeinge Benjamin is a younger nonetheless ambitious youth who does not shy absent from environment herself aside from her peers. Born and elevated in Eheke village in the Oshana area, the younger agriculturalist is a budding farmer who at a really youthful age was taught the value of staying self-adequate.

“I was groomed by a family members that can make a living out of farming so I turned extremely aware of the requirement of getting self-adequate, particularly in conditions of food stuff output,” reported Johanna.

For this rationale, the 25-calendar year-outdated made the decision to strengthen upon the simple farming abilities she acquired at home by pursuing a qualification in agriculture at the College of Namibia’s Ogongo Campus.

After graduating, nonetheless, task potential customers were being several for Johanna, which motivated her to enterprise out into horticulture as a suggests to assistance herself and her family.

“Following completing my studies I was not privileged enough to protected a task, so I determined to utilise the expertise I obtained and began a yard at household.”

Johanna’s back garden is now her main resource of income and takes wonderful pleasure in it as it allows her to earn an cash flow although at the identical time delivering accessibility to healthier and mouth watering fruits and vegetables to her buyers.

“I am grateful for currently being ready to contribute to foodstuff security in the county, in particular with wholesome and wholesome meals,” she beamed.

Regardless of the problems concerned in starting an agricultural business enterprise, Johanna claims she understands that food stuff is a want and not a want and has for that reason taken up the challenge to farm so individuals can have obtain to plenty of food.

Johanna claims most of her buyers are community customers within her village and surrounding villages and close by towns.

Among the numerous obstructions that Johanna faces as a younger food stuff hero, she highlights market obtain and plant pests and conditions as the most tough.

“Thanks to the fact that I am even now functioning on a modest scale, my major danger is business producers who develop on a considerably greater scale than I do.”

For the reason that of this, explained Johanna, she finds it hard to secure contractual agreements with retailers to source them with contemporary develop as she is new on the industry merchandise and her merchandise are unbranded.

Johanna is hence contacting on for much more aid to be availed to young farmers such as herself in get to make a safe residing out of their tricky function.

“Assistance applications need to be founded for farmers during all the phases of the worth-chain, from inputs and output right until usage,” she suggests.

The younger farmer hopes to personal a huge farm sometime in buy to function on a bigger scale than she does now.

She encouraged her peers to just take agriculture very seriously and develop into foodstuff heroes for their family members, communities and the region as a full.

“Agriculture is nothing to shy away from as it retains all people on this world alive. Let us all be food heroes to ensure a meals secure potential for all.”

In light of the approaching Globe Meals Day commemoration, the Foodstuff and Agriculture Business (FAO) of the United Nations, FAO, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, H2o and Land Reform is compiling a collection of characteristic articles highlighting #FoodHeroes who add to =foodstuff stability in the state.

The world wide #FoodHeroes marketing campaign was released previous yr in 2020 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations as section of its Environment Food items Working day commemoration to fork out homage to all meals heroes who – inspite of all problems – keep on to present food items to their communities and past, notably throughout the Covid-19 disaster.