Pamba Time: Part II

Later that morning I met a 65 year-old woman who had just finished weeding one of her cotton plots. In Sukuma she explained to Charles that she had been cultivating cotton for 40 years. This woman told us that cotton is good for people when they are paid at the point of purchase. If they have to wait months or even years for payment, as she has in the past, her view of the crop is much less favourable. A man from a neighbouring village walked up and joined our group. His cotton failed completely during the drought last year. He was able to come up with enough cash to pay out-of-pocket for seeds this season, but he does not have enough money to pay for a single application of pesticide. Currently, he does not even have enough cash on hand – 5000 TZS – to join the new Savings and Credit Cooperative scheme (SACCOS). If he did, he would have access to credit for pesticides. Additionally, he has not seen any extension agents from any of the companies or from the District. Zero access to credit and extension, and adverse climatic events, are only several of many factors that keep this man poor.

Just up the road on a hill I then witnessed a farmer spraying pesticides on his field. Charles and Danstan explained that his crop was infested with bollworms. He too was barefoot, and wore no protective gear while applying the spray. While this man did have the money to purchase additional pesticide applications, Charles noted that his investments were likely for naught. Based upon the advanced stage of the bollworm infestation, and insights garnered over twenty years of field experience in the district, Charles predicted that this farmer’s yields were set to be under 100 kg/acre. Assuming he is paid 320 TZS per kilo, a higher than average price, his net at the farm gate will be thin. He might net less than $15 Canadian per acre for many weeks of hard manual labour. A few kilometers away I met with victims of another type of infestation: aphids. This young family was attempting to rid their crop of the scourge, but they too had not seen any extension agents or company people until we walked up. This factor of impoverishment – lack of extension services – was clearly not a minor one.

Later we visited a Village Executive Officer. He sang the praises of cotton and argued that it was relatively more beneficial for farmers to produce than other cash crops due to the evidently high level of competition amongst the buyers. The VEO argued that the more cotton that people grow the richer they are. We moved on to visit one of these ‘rich’ farmers in another area. Approaching a smallholding that was dominated by cotton plants, we introduced ourselves to a man with a massive family. He had two beautiful wives and eight children between the ages of two and ten. The man noted that with eleven mouths to feed things get quite tight each year in the months leading up to harvest. He explained that they had kidogo sana (very little) food on hand, but that they are surviving better than in previous years. This farmer had invested his past cotton earnings heavily in cattle and is now the proud owner of twenty cows. However, his houses are in disrepair and he does not have the money to purchase additional pesticides this season. The farmer’s failure to invest in production is a factor that impoverishes his family. His wives also work the fields quite hard, but do not seem to control the earnings from their work. Consequently, a skewed intra-household resource distribution impoverishes these women.

Our meeting with this large family was also notable as the parents broke out in hysterics at the mention of maskini (poverty). After settling down, the two women explained that they did not think that it was possible to remove poverty from cotton production. I wagered a guess that poverty was not a usual subject of conversation in their area. Also of note was the man’s name: he was called “Maendeleo”. In Swahili, maendeleo means development or progress, and it was enshrined in Mwalimu Nyerere's policies. Before we left I passed one 500 TZS note to each of the women, and one to the man. My colleagues at the ESRF in Dar, and several of my interviewees, advised me earlier this year that I should always leave a little something with cash crop producers after an interview. In this case the typical 500 TZS did not seem to be enough.

After traveling through a large forested area (msitu) we met with one of Copcot’s assistant cashiers. According to her first-hand account of the marketplace some farmers will travel more than 7 km with seed cotton wrapped in bundles on their head. She explained that only the richest farmers – perhaps 5% of total sellers – hire labourers to carry their produce to market. Cotton farmers that sell early in the season also become disgruntled as the season progresses and prices rise. Sometimes they confront the cashiers and demand more money. She claimed that it was easy for her to tell the bigger farmers from the poorer ones based upon the things they have with them in the market, including their clothes. It seems that shoes or the lack thereof are a useful guide to ascertaining a farmer's relative success.

As we drove off, Charles and Danstan pointed out the lack of electricity in all but a few villages in the district, and we attempted to guesstimate just how many cotton producers might have generators or televisions. As we were pondering the TV issue, I told Charles to hit the brakes when I saw the silhouettes of what looked to be a gang of young men clubbing away at the weeds against the backdrop of a setting sun. I walked up to them and introduced myself as per normal. Nilisema (I said): Habari za kazi (how’s work)? Jina langu Adam. Mimi ni mwanafunzi (I’m a student). Mimi natoka Canada (from Canada). Jina lake (what’s your name)? Habari za nyumbani (how is your home)? As my eyes settled on the group I realized that the leader was in his early twenties, but that the rest of the crew were half his height and that they were no more than ten years old. The man claimed that these boys were a team that could be hired for 1000 TZS for an afternoon. I asked Danstan if that figure could be believed, and my suspicions were raised further when none of the boys would speak to us. Instead, they stared intently at the man, and several appeared to be fearful. Much of the field had not been weeded yet, and Danstan commented that this could be one of the reasons he had ‘retained’ the boys. I was disturbed by the fact that they were children, and not young teenagers. I believe that I subsequently fell into a little bit of shock as we drove away towards the ginnery. Coupled with some minor heat exhaustion, I was spent. As I pumped fluids all night in a way that producers on the other side of the compound’s walls could not, I was quite disturbed. I knew that people like Donald Max were doing what little they could to reinvest in the community. But I also knew that few people in the business shared his sense his corporate social responsibility. With little to no NGO presence or ethical production systems in Geita, the prospects for many producers seemed grim.