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Current page: Home > what we do > income generation To watch our film on incomes click here. Income Generation 50% of the farmers Excellent Development works with are subsistence farmers who rely entirely on their farms for income. The rest have at least one member of their family employed locally, or in towns and cities, bringing or sending money home once a month. After basic necessities are bought, such as salt, sugar, soap, tea, paraffin etc. a family's prime income focus is to raise secondary school fees for their children. Farmers therefore need to create a sustainable food source and income from their farms. Excellent encourage farmers to focus their income generating activities on growing more of the food they eat - instead of just two or three crops - and selling any surpluses. Selling can be done locally, so this leaves the farmer in control of what to sell and at what price. As Excellent founder, Simon Maddrell, explains: "The philosophy of Excellent Development in terms of income generation is to make sure the farmers keep control of their own destiny... Being able to prevent yourself from having to spend money is just as important as being able to earn money. It amounts to the same thing." "In order to eradicate poverty in
Farmers also have opportunities to improve incomes through increased egg, milk and meat production. Traditionally, most communities are very lucky if they can afford to eat meat once a week, as they need to sell livestock for income. Fodder from trees reduces the cost of feeding livestock and improves milk yields. Excellent has also helped the poorer communities establish a sustainable goat improvement programme with a breed of goat which provides four times the milk yield of local goats. One group started life as a bee-keeping project, which, through Excellent's workshops and exchanges, has helped other groups to take up the challenge of producing honey - both healthy and income generating! Excellent trains them and provides modern beehives to increase yields. We do not encourage the growing of traditional cash crops like coffee, as Simon Maddrell explains: "People are often persuaded to grow coffee which takes a lot of time and energy and they don't even know if they're going to get an income at the end, or the price they're going to get for it and they know there's only one place they're going to sell it - that doesn't give anyone control over their own lives." To watch our film on incomes click here. |
Sand dams enable farmers to look at diversifying their crops - improving nutrition and providing income generating opportunities. An example of how successful this can be is seen at Kola market in Machakos district