After 18 months of activities in Tanzania, the Beyond Cotton Project is releasing an unprecedented documentary recording the results that have benefited around 11,000 cotton farmers in the Mwanza region.
Cotton cultivation is the main activity of farmers in Tanzania and supports around 40% of the population, equivalent to 18 million people.
Through multidisciplinary activities, the project has trained farmers and technicians to diversify production by intercropping with maize, beans and sorghum, in order to increase family income and local food security.
The project was carried out within the framework of South-South Trilateral Cooperation and involved a partnership of many institutions. Participants included the Government of Tanzania (with the involvement of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute and the Tanzania Cotton Board); the Brazilian Government, through the Brazilian Cooperation Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Federal University of Campina Grande; and the World Food Programme, through the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil and the WFP in Tanzania. The project was funded by the Brazilian Cotton Institute.
The themes worked on in the project were agriculture, income generation, adding value to cotton and nutrition. More than 21 activities were carried out to share technical knowledge in a horizontal way, using participatory techniques.
For Albaneide Peixinho, project coordinator at the Center of Excellence, the results in Tanzania marked a paradigm shift in terms of cooperation. “We showed that we have the capacity to carry out projects in the countries, respecting culture, tradition, and genuine knowledge, in a horizontal way. We taught a lot, but we learned a lot too,” she said.
According to her, one of the outstanding results was the construction of 16,000-liter school cisterns in elementary schools, to collect rainwater for human consumption and irrigation of school beds. “The cisterns were built in a participatory way. They changed the quality of life for the schoolchildren, who previously had to walk for four hours to get water.”
There were several low-cost and participatory initiatives, sustainably promoting local capacities.
These include planting planning, crop rotation, seed selection and storage and the distribution of low-cost equipment, such as manual seed drills, which reduced work time from 14 days to 2 hours.
Income-generating loom workshops were held, which added value to the cotton fiber, as well as promoting access to new markets by selling clothes or spun cotton fiber.
In the area of Nutritional Food Education, culinary workshops were held with a focus on making full use of food, reducing waste, combining food better to access the diversity of nutrients, and building ecological stoves.
Albaneide highlights the profound transformation promoted by the project. “We show that the WFP works in a systemic way, and the projects discuss sustainable food systems that are resilient to climate change, contributing to improvements in the quality of life and income generation for participating farmers,” she explained.
Watch the documentary Beyond Cotton Tanzania.