When he started his own farm more than three decades ago, Patrick Mutepeya didn’t think twice about growing maize. Raised in rural Zimbabwe, where maize had always been king and the harvests of the 1980s plentiful, it was the obvious choice to make.
He witnessed the great drought of 1992, which decimated yields, left millions of farmers in need of aid, and turned Zimbabwe – previously a “bread basket” of Africa – into a net importer of food for decades to come.
Patrick recovered and kept growing maize. But good harvests were few and far between after that, he says — about once every five years.
Like him, around two-thirds of Zimbabwe’s labour force work in agriculture, which means climate shocks can affect the livelihoods of many across the country.
Then, in 2017, after learning about various climate-resilient farming methods, Patrick finally made the transition to growing pearl millet. Like many in his area, he was sceptical about the grain at first. But the local Farmer Field School he attended allowed him to experiment on test plots, and the consistent results ultimately convinced him. He never regretted his choice.
“Millets have brought us joy and saved my family,” he says sincerely. And that’s not just because the grain is drought tolerant – it’s also cheaper to produce, he says.
“The native seed varieties are more accessible and available from the local seedbank,” he explains. “[It] has greatly contributed to reduced production costs.”
Today, Patrick is a member of the Community Seedbank Network, which farmers use to preserve and exchange indigenous seed varieties. Generally, farmers can access readily available seeds at low cost as long as they replenish the seedbank from their own harvest annually. The network taught him how to best preserve his millets seed, and now he’s passing on that knowledge “through field days, seed and food fairs”, he says.
“I continue to spread the gospel on preserving farmer varieties,” he says. In addition, he works with a Zimbabwean seed company and cooperative, Champion Seeds, on seed multiplication. This means he grows parts of his millets specifically to increase the quantity of indigenous seed for sale.
Thanks to his surplus millets' harvests, he already saved enough to build a brick house for his family. Most importantly, “I can now pay school fees for my children,” he says.
His next goal is adding value through processing. “In the next five years”, he projects, “we plan to buy a small grain processing thresher, for home use and to rent out to other farmers.”
Patrick benefited from the work of the Community Development Trust (CTDO), a local NGO that helps rural farmers build stronger livelihoods while preserving biodiversity, including by setting up seedbanks and cooperatives.
