In Tanzania, exposure to best farming practices opens new opportunities for enterprising farmer Pendael Paulo.

Even during the rainy season—usually, a good time to raise crops in Tanzania—hardworking Pendael Paulo from Bashay village in Karatu district ended up with poor harvests of vegetables and other crops. Prior experience taught her that farming was a risky and costly endeavor. She struggled to make money from growing and selling vegetables to support her family.

Pendael, 43, had been a vegetable farmer for some years before enrolling in a farmer group supported by the Africa RISING and Kilimo Endelevu projects in 2019. During training sessions organized by the World Vegetable Center in partnership with Island of Peace (IDP), Pendael learned sustainable vegetable production methods at demonstration plots, a practice based on the farmer field school approach.

“When I was just following farmers’ business-as-usual practices, I ended up with very low yield, and sometimes no harvest at all,” she said. “In most cases, the crops were seriously affected by pests and diseases. I used a lot of chemical pesticides in my garden. But after the training on the safe and sustainable production of vegetable crops, I realized these pesticides are harmful to the crops, our health, and the environment. And now that I am using good quality vegetable seeds, things have dramatically changed positively.”

Her vegetable yield has tripled now that she follows good agronomic practices such as right spacing, enriching the soil with manure, mulching, timely weeding, irrigation, and general field hygiene. She also learned to save her own seeds and re-use them in the next season. These days, Pendael is harvesting enough safe vegetables from her garden to feed the family and sells the surplus to earn income. “We use the money to purchase household goods and pay school fees for the children,” she said.

The income stream from vegetables has added a measure of flexibility to the household budget, which Pendael can now manage with greater confidence. “I am a member of the Village Serving and Credit Association where I received credit of TZS 450,000,” she said. “I spent 200,000 TZS to purchase a solar panel for our house, 150,000 TZS for the floor tiles, and 105,000 TZS to paint our new house. I pay back the money weekly through the sale of vegetables from my farm.”

Cooking demonstrations and nutrition topics covered during the training sessions changed the way Pendael views vegetables. She now knows vegetables contain essential nutrients and are necessary elements of a healthy diet. “My family eats meals with vegetables every day,” she said. “I’m now able to prepare delicious and nutritious vegetable dishes using pumpkin leaves, nightshade, Ethiopian mustard, and sweet potato leaves.”

From March to June 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was moving through the region, Pendael sold vegetables to community members, many of whom had participated in the nutrition training and field days and were aware of the importance of vegetables for health. With the money generated from these sales and some family savings, she purchased several chickens and three goats to expand her farming activities. “Now I get eggs for family consumption and the excess for sale, and hopefully will soon benefit from the goats,” she said. “I also gain double profit because I feed the poultry with vegetable residues from my farm, and in return, the poultry manure fertilizes my vegetable garden.”

Pendael’s ambition is to join with interested group members to start a local restaurant to sell nutritious traditional vegetable foods and other local specialties to improve nutrition and health in her village and beyond.