Image: Preparing to plant moringa tree seedlings.
What
Project Title: Moringa Production Builds Resilience and Reduces Agricultural Disaster Risk in South Omo Zone
The IAS-14 project encourages moringa tree farming to provide a solution to multiple problems facing the pastoralists in the South Omo Zone of Ethiopia: food security, nutrition, the environment, and income generation.
Who
The project serves more than 27,000 people in 20 kebeles1 in the drought and flood-affected woredas2 of Hamar and Dasenech, in the South Omo Zone, Ethiopia.
Why
The South Omo Zone has been severely affected by recurrent droughts and floods for decades. The arid land is losing its ability to support the traditional livelihoods of pastoralist people who are dependent on grazing livestock and cultivating non-rotating crops of sorghum and maize. These communities need diversified foods that are drought tolerant, and they need new sources of income in order to thrive in the face of continuing climate and economic challenges.
How
The IAS-14 project provides smallholder farmers with resources and skills to diversity their diets and earn money selling food. We are planting 110,000 drought resistant moringa trees to enhance the environment, provide a plentiful and nutritious food, and introduce a new source of farming income.
The project is creating nursery sites supported by small-scale irrigation in the Hamar and Dasenech woredas. We are planting and cultivating moringa seeds for the seedlings that we will give to more than 7,000 households for cultivation and food consumption.
The project will also establish producer organizations involving 2,000 households who will participate in learning how to harvest and prepare moringa for market.
The project uses our proven community learning process to involve the communities, explain the nutritional value of moringa, recruit participating households, and teach them the skills for moringa cultivation and harvesting.
Impact
The IAS-14 project, like all of our projects, uses our community learning process to help communities change behaviors and adapt to their dramatically changing environment. The overall impact is that participants will be able to feed their families. In the process, participating tribal elders will discover why it is beneficial to allow women to participate in community-level decision making. Families will discover why they need to consume nutritious foods, and community-based organizations will learn to assume responsibility for monitoring and managing their community resources. The overall impact of the project is to improve the resilience of women and men smallholder farmers in moisture-deficit areas of Ethiopia.
Metrics
| 110,000 moringa trees planted |
| 5,500 households learn moringa farming |
| 20 producer associations created |
