She planted okra, carrots, beans, covo, and rape in the perma-garden. She indicated that by introducing a multi-cropping system, she diversified her household diet, and a four-star diet is always on the table. The family planted 55 paw-paw trees in December 2021, and despite the prolonged dry spell, the trees remained green due to water collected by the half-moons.

Demand for food is increasing in Zimbabwe, but production from both commercial and smallholder farmers has not kept pace with the growing demand. Changing climate patterns, high water demand, and a growing population is all factors that significantly strain the Zimbabwean food supply. The challenge is worse in rural areas, as 70 percent of production is from smallholder farmers.

CARE International, and its partners in a USAID-funded program called Takunda, seek to address smallholder productivity challenges through an enhanced soil and water conservation intervention called resilience designs. The pilot face of the intervention was launched during the 2021–22 rainfall season.

Wickrafu Mapfumo is a forty-eight-year staunch member of the Johane Masowe Apostolic Sect, a religious group, with his three wives and nine children from Ndongwe village in ward 15 of Buhera. He was selected by his community members as one of the five farmers to pilot the resilience design approach program. The five farmers underwent resilience design (RD) training through the Takunda project and set aside land for resilience design sites at their homesteads. Wickrafu, with the assistance of his wives, dug three dead-level contour ridges and set a 0.02-hectare perma-garden. The contours were very helpful as they harvested water that sustained their pumpkins, cowpeas, and pigeon pea crops planted on the water harvesting contours. In October 2021, the family, who are already tomato growers, planted 2613 plants of tomatoes of the Newton variety.

In the previous years, Wikrafu would plant his crop in isolation without any water harvesting structures. In the resilience design training he received, he incorporated some of the resilience design approach structures, which are the dead level contours that assisted in the continued presence of moisture for his tomato crop without requiring much irrigation. For the basal dressing, they relied on well-decomposed manure, and mulching was done using tree leaves. When tomatoes were at the fruit formation stage, Wickrafu had this to say to one of the TakundaRFSA officers,

“I am proud of our work, and as a resilience design farmer, you are always learning and discovering new things; you are exploring, and it is very humbling because you are always learning from mistakes.”

The harvest time was from February to early April 2022, and the tomato yields were incredible. They harvested over 200 buckets (20litre containers), realizing over one thousand united states dollars in sales. They managed to source a market sixty kilometers away from their homestead in Nerutanga village. As a way of sharing responsibilities in their farming business, Wikrafu’s two wives went for three-week camping at a churchmate homestead as the customers were buying from this central point. One of Wickrafu’s wives narrates,

“If you are from a polygamous family, you must work hard to contribute to the happiness, food security, and income of your family.”

With the proceeds, the family bought farm tools and inputs, including a wheelbarrow and a 200metre poly-pipe for irrigation as they use a treadle pump. The rest of the money was used to buy the family’s food and clothing. Wickrafu managed to plant a second crop of 2614 tomatoes in April 2022, and the family is expecting a bumper harvest. Wickrafu’s first wife, Vaida Mhenzi(36 years old), specializes in the perma-garden. She says,

“I managed to follow the four resilience design principles in water conservation, namely; slow, spread, sink, and save, and now I am getting a good harvest and sharing with the other people.”

Vaida, together with her co-wives, managed to construct seven double-dug beds as well as the construction of three half moons that assisted in the recharge of the shallow wells that were in their garden. Through the assistance of these structures, the water became readily available for watering their permagarden.

She planted okra, carrots, beans, covo, and rape in the perma-garden. She indicated that by introducing a multi-cropping system, she diversified her household diet, and a four-star diet is always on the table. The family planted 55 paw-paw trees in December 2021, and despite the prolonged dry spell, the trees remained green due to water collected by the half-moons.