Mary the yam growing champion

Her name is Mary.

Mary Masape Dari  is a living example of what is possible for women farmers. 

From living in poverty, Mary now send’s her son to university to study IT and accounting – off the proceeds of her hard work growing and selling yams and other foods. 

She is now able to feed her family throughout the year and always has excess of her farm produce which she sells.  She serves as a role model to other women farmers and those aspiring to go into farming.

Mary told me that a few years back her home and land was completely destroyed by a flood, as she puts it:

I had nothing.

She went to the local agricultural office and asked for help. 

She began with an acre of land, growing yams.  With advice from the agricultural support officer, and some help with tools, Mary was on her way.

Yam is usually a crop grown by men, but Mary found that she had a knack for doing it well, and year-on-year invested any extra money she made back into the land to make it more productive and fertile, and little by little starting growing more crops on a larger and larger area, until now she farmers 20 acres of maize (corn) and 18 of yams. 

The local government awarded her with Yam grower of the year, and she’s done well in the national farmers awards also, being awarded regional yam grower of the year. 

If only all women farmers could get a little help like this, especially as most of the food in the developing world is grown by women, in the very communities which are most susceptible to hunger. 

With the support they deserve, investment in women farmers could help end hunger for good.

Mary tells me that farming should not be the preserve of any sex. “I don’t believe it when people say that men do better than women when it comes to farming. Other women can do the same as me if there is fairness in the distribution of the support for farmers.”

A fairer distribution of resources for women – and small investments in small holder farmers can really work wonders. 

In fact they help change can the lives of women like Mary, so many of whom and their families live through distressing and miserable prolonged periods of hunger. 

And applied on a global scale - that means they can change the world.