Caritas Harare Short Term food Security Project Caritas Harare’s strategy is to assist the most vulnerable members of Harare and Chitungwiza urban and peri-urban with restoration of fundamental livelihood security strategies aiming at restoring community and household economic activities. The selected livelihood initiative will include the provision of agriculture inputs, intensive vegetable marketing training and extension services to 1500  food insecure and vulnerable households (av. 5 persons per household) for a period of 12 months. Seed and fertilizer organized in beneficiary area before the 15th of the 3rd month where beneficiaries will purchase at least 5 different types of seeds.  Planting within 2 weeks after the input fair. Seed fairs will be organized on the basis of the farmers’ savings from the first phase of the project.

The farmers will have to be trained on saving clubs so as to ensure that they become more efficient in making investment decision for their production. Given that the first phase of the project emphasis was on the creation of saving to buy inputs Caritas will only organize inputs so that the farmers will purchase using their own cash as opposed to vouchers issued by Caritas. Record keeping training is top on the agenda as records are the ones that show the farmers if they are making profit margins in vegetable production.

Caritas will keep working with government structures to ensure that the process will continue as the project only runs for a year. The departments that the project will work with are Ministry of agriculture and the DA of the respective areas. 

Demonstration plots that will be managed by Caritas extension staff will be established to ensure better interaction of technology with the farmer. Seeing is believing, therefore showing the potential of the vegetable production in the area will be enhance by demonstration plots. Caritas will have to negotiate with input suppliers to supply some of the inputs to ensure that this gives the companies to advertise their inputs and how they perform. Caritas will set up 4 demonstration plot in the following areas Bhobho, Seke ward 1, Seke ward 8 and Tafara. This will facilitate look and learn centers for the farmers. As noted above, seeing is believing.

Water conservation and harvesting techniques will need to  be given to the farmers as it is a known fact that climate change is a thing that is occurring at a rapid rate in Zimbabwe. This will aid in ensuring that water is adequate for the production of vegetables.  

Given the scarcity of water and difficulty of irrigation, it would be ideal to promote drip irrigation on a pilot start. Initially it would be good to train farmers on drip irrigation at the demo-plots this is in a bid to stimulate demand of the technology which will reduce labour costs to the farmer. Drip irrigation saves on the volume of water used to grow crop and at the same time improve water use efficiency by the crops.

Post harvest technology development will promote drying of produce for the dried vegetable market and this will aid on issues to do with over production and  market gluts hence this will encourage farmer to focus on other markets this will then spread risk not only production risk but also marketing risk. And in turn get the best value for their sweat.

Markets and market linkages are areas the second phase of the project will strongly look at and promote strong links between the private sector and small scale producers so as to eliminate the dependency syndrome. This means farmers and the market will have a good interface for price negotiation to ensure that both parties will benefit. The overall objective being to create a smart partnership for the between producer and market.

Case studies will be carried out by Caritas Zimbabwe National Office in liaison with the Caritas Harare. Case studies aid profiling of the project and will tell a story of impact of the project.