Like any other disease, HIV/AIDS results in direct costs, mostly medical and funeral expenses, and indirect costs, which are labour related. Potential income is lost because of the illness and death of individuals and the diversion of labour to the task of caring for the sick. If no safety net is present or is incomplete as in Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, households and rural communities have to bear these costs alone.
Before considering the impact of HIV/AIDS on small-scale farmers, a few words should be said about the organization of the farm-household system. A farm-household system generally consists of three closely interlinked sub-systems:
- the household as a decision-making unit; establishing goals and controlling the system, providing labour, and ensuring food and cash in fulfilment of set objectives;
- the farm and its crop and livestock activities; providing employment, food and cash for the household; and
- the off-farm component, competing with farm activities for labour, providing employment and income-generating activities, becoming increasingly more important to supplement the well-being of farm families (FAO, 1990).
HIV/AIDS intervenes and affects these different sub-systems and their interlinkages as demonstrated in Figure 5. Cash and labour flows are partly diverted to AIDS leaving less labour for farm and off-farm activities as well as reducing cash for the household. Cash which is exchanged by the farm and off-farm system for the purpose of, for example, purchasing fertilizer or financing investments in off-farm activities, may also be used for AIDS related expenses.
It should be noted that this generalized definition of the farm household does not take into consideration the fact that households may be internally differentiated by, for example, age and gender. Thus it is important to recognize that distributional consumption and other entitlement inequalities may be of considerable importance in determining the precise impact of HIV/AIDS on any particular household. This point is of great importance when we consider the relative impact of any traumatic event - such as HIV/AIDS- on the internal operation of a household and thus the relative robustness of different households in the same society and similarly constituted households in different societies. Some of these issues are dealt with below.
Figure 5: Resource diversion due to AIDS in a farm-household system
3.1 The direct costs of HIV/AIDS and the process of impoverishment
In general terms HIV/AIDS has the effect of increasing poverty by escalating costs at every level, to the individual, to the community, to government and to the private sector.
At the family level, medical costs associated with caring for the sick and bedridden have to be borne along with the funeral expenses of family members who die of the disease. Besides the costs of drugs, conventional and traditional medical treatment, households caring for AIDS patients are often faced with meeting expenses for additional special foods to comfort the sick or for items such as extra blankets.
Funeral costs appear to be even higher than expenditures for medical care. A household study carried out by the World Bank in Kagera, Tanzania, revealed that on average US$ 60, of which 60 percent was spent on funeral expenses - the remaining 40 percent having gone towards medical care - was spent on the funeral expenses of a household member. This is an amount which is probably close to the annual per capita income in Kagera. Due to the nature of AIDS, as a predominantly sexually-transmitted disease, there is frequently more than one death in a household. As a result, numerous cases can be observed where a family's entire savings, often meagre before the onset of AIDS, are completely consumed.
Box 1: Case study 1 (Gwanda community, Uganda)
The cost of AIDS
Sarah is a 44-year old widow who lost her husband in 1990 due to AIDS. Apart from caring for her children, farming her 3.5 acre plot, and breeding pigs for sale, she also makes mats, baskets and table cloths which she sells to earn extra income although finding a market for her wares is often difficult.
From the time at which her husband first became ill she has had to use most of her money to pay for his treatment and for that of her mother who was also sick. This took up much of her time and thus she now has fewer hours to manage the farm. Apart from the time she spent canny for the sick, followed by a month mourning the death of her husband, the deaths of other people in the village also interrupt her farm work because she has to attend funerals and prepare food for the relatives of the dead. Since most of the people in her village are closely related and there have been many deaths, in most cases she spends one to four days in mourning with the result that much of her plot is now under weeds and she derives little income from what she is able to produce in the remainder of the time.
The high cost of treating AIDS and the expenses incurred through the death of a person with AIDS, mean that households either require assistance or cash incomes to cope with these additional expenses. Case material from Mpongwe village, Zambia, indicates that one possible source of assistance is from remittances sent by working-age relatives employed elsewhere. There are few households, however, which appear to be actually receiving such external support. This is certainly connected to the straitened circumstances of most urban households whose budgets have been affected by structural adjustment. Inflation has resulted in food and other commodity prices rising considerably in excess of any gains in wages. Within the Mpongwe case studies there were only two households out of 34 being helped by remittances sent from outside the area. Both of these were elderly retired couples; one had 10 successful children, with one son living in London. These children sent money which was used to hire a tractor. Local sources of employment are, however, important for others. Such income sources can pay for resources such as tractor or ox hire, as well as supplementary food and household items.
In the Mgeta area of Tanzania, households headed by women are not uncommon and do not necessarily represent one of the poorest groups of the community, as they frequently benefit from the remittances sent by their husbands. The money received is often used for employing labour and thus their agriculture does not suffer from the lack of labour. Female-headed households, following the death of a husband, are in a much more difficult situation as there is no cash to replace the shortfall of workers.
An increase in the number of female-headed households might occur if women do not become infected or are infected after their partners, and without the benefit of remittances to support their production, only the wealthiest may continue to hire labour and thus for most their output will suffer. The position of women after the death of a spouse is, however, much more favourable amongst women in patrilineal systems, like the Luguru in Tanzania. Although the husband's land will be returned to the clan, the widow will still have access to the land she has inherited from her own clan. In other areas widows may become landless and forced to seek off-farm employment, but in Mgeta they are likely to be able to maintain their agricultural incomes.
The general lack of remittances, however, and the fact that many of those being affected by AIDS are employed locally, means that most of the cost of AIDS will have to be borne internally. Men will experience this cost, because they and their wives will receive the children from brothers and sisters. The brunt of the burden, however, will fall on women, because of the fact that death, like divorce, leads to the social relocation of children to matrilineal kin, which often means in practice to the care of the grandmother. Thus it happens that a number of children end up in households headed by middle-aged or older women.
Inheritance practices may have a negative effect on production and increase the vulnerability of women and children. Especially in Zambia, (but also in Uganda) property grabbing after the death of the husband is a wide-spread practice. According to customary law, in patrilineal systems, all property acquired during marriage belongs to the husband, and after his death, to the husband's family. Relatives arrive soon after the death to claim all the household's possessions which may even include cooking utensils. Despite enactment of the Inheritance And Succession Act of 1989, which was designed to prevent precisely this situation, but seldom respected, this remains a serious problem in Zambia (Foster, 1993). In Uganda, women do not have any official ownership of the land. Once widowed. they may even lose the right to use the land.
At the national level, costs resulting from HIV/AIDS include additional provision for health care directly associated with HIV/AIDS, diversion of resources from other areas of health care, and money for health-education programmes. These expenses involve not only treatment programmes but awareness-building and information campaigns. While much of this work is being undertaken by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the effective dissemination of information requires the support of governments. Additional costs to governments may also arise from the loss of skilled labour in certain areas, to be replaced by replaced international employees, or from the import of foodstuffs or other items which may be needed to supplement the loss of production etc.
Despite wide-spread impoverishment as a result of HIV/AIDS there may also be some who benefit from the epidemic. While a large number of farmers are forced to sell farm assets like animals and implements to raise money, there are some others who have actually benefitted with the result that they can afford to acquire assets. Box 2 is an example of one such case.
Box 2: Case study 2 (Gwanda community, Uganda)
Benefitting from AIDS?
Peter, 47 is married to a strong looking wife aged 30 and has eight children between the ages of one and, 11 years. His family has so far neither been AIDS affected nor afflicted. Peter can be described as a so-called progressive farmer; he is convinced of the utility of mulching and composting practices end is open to new practices such as growing tomatoes as a cash crop.
Five years ago, this household relied totally on family labour, and owned no cattle. Today, the same household is able occasionally to hire labour, owns 20 head of cattle, a boat with a motor and a television. Peter said that this rise in wealth was possible due to hard work on his farm and to his beer brewing, which he described as a profitable business. But it also seems that his family benefitted by buying cattle from AIDS-afflicted households!, which were short of cash to pay medical bills. His boat was bought from a family who could no longer afford to keep this asset because the husband, a fisherman, had died of AIDS and, the remaining family members did not know how to manage the fishing business.
3.2 The impact on population
In the three countries studied where the HIV/AIDS epidemic has struck, or where its effects are beginning to be perceived, the disease has been both age and gender selective. In Uganda, for example, young adults above 12 and below 40 years of age have been shown to be most at risk, accounting for 91.8 percent of all HIV/AIDS cases. Of the remaining eight percent, children below the age of five account for three-quarters of the total. Men and women are also exposed to different degrees of risk at different ages. Of the 2 089 reported cases of youths aged between 13 and 19 years (June 1993), 1 736 were young women. Recent population-based studies in Uganda have shown women to have a much higher rate of HIV infection than men, sex ratios ranging from 1:1.12 to 1:1.18.
These findings are significant in the context of the present study given that the majority of Uganda's agricultural producers fall within the age group that has been shown to be most at risk of HIV/AIDS infection. This is particularly significant when considered in the light of the labour intensive nature of agriculture. Similarly, it has important implications in terms of the interconnection between domestic and farm production in rural households and the important role of women in agriculture.
In Uganda's Gwanda community, it is suspected that HIV/AIDS had a marked impact on the age pyramid shown in Figure 6. The 20 to 49 year age group is particularly under-represented as well as the very young, children between the ages of 0 and 4, in comparison to the national age pyramid.
Figure 6: Age pyramid of Gwanda
In Tanzania, of the total of 20 694 cases recorded between 1983 and 1993, the cumulative rate per 100 000 is 89.9 for men and 82.4 for women. The highest case rates per 1 000 are seen in the 30 to 39year age group for men and in the 25 to 29-year age group for women.
The situation is less clear in Zambia, since the recorded incidence of HIV/AIDS has so far been largely an urban phenomenon, with 45 percent of recorded cases within the urban areas of the country's Copperbelt. However, the pathways of the spread of infection from the main urban centres are the major transport routes. The carriers are those that use the routes regularly, traders, truck drivers, and business people. Where they interact with people from rural areas, HIV/AIDS infection will spread into the rural areas.
3.3 The impact on labour
As noted above, the effect of HIV/AIDS on the population has been to hit not only women as primary agricultural producers but also the most productive age groups generally. In terms of availability of labour this has significant implications. Population growth was long perceived as the problem in Africa. HIV/AIDS is now resulting in labour shortages for both farm and domestic work in some areas. This phenomenon is likely to become more widespread in the coming decades.
In Uganda, one of the findings has been that the negative impact of HIV/AIDS on agricultural labour is more a result of death than it is of sickness. This is due to the fact that the period between illness and death in this environment is short, reducing the amount of time required in nursing AIDS patients. Even so, in farming systems that are essentially labour dependent, the complete loss (if a person falls sick or dies) or partial loss (if time has to be diverted from farming to the care of the sick) of any household member who is involved in agricultural work, can have a severe effect on that household's agricultural production and finally on its level of consumption and general well-being.
Different factors determine the sensitivity of agriculture to labour loss resulting from AIDS (Gillespie, 1988) these are:
- Seasonality of labour demand
Seasonal labour constraints are not new, due in part to the fact that: farm incomes are low and adults often spend part of the year away from the farm in search of cash incomes; in some regions distribution means that labour has to be mobilised intensively for brief periods only; and daily life requires substantial amounts of labour for non-farm work associated with maintaining the household. Water and fuel collection may occupy as much as eight hours a day - tasks usually carried out by girls and women.
Figure 7: Activity Calendar (Women) Zambia study rainfall
Agricultural labour requirements seem to be more equally distributed over the year in the Ugandan study areas than in the communities examined in Zambia. This can be attributed to the fact that large parts of Uganda are characterized by a bimodal rainfall pattern and a wide range of crops are cultivated, while there is only one rainy season in Zambia and the predominant farming system is maize-based. Figure 7 shows labour distribution for women in Zambia with two marked labour peaks in the year.
- Degree of specialization by gender and age
While farming may be done by women or men or jointly, it is generally recognized that in large parts of Africa women carry the bulk of the farm workload in addition to the domestic activities. A study in the banana-coffee farming system in the Kagera Region, Tanzania, revealed that the asymmetric division of labour between the sexes lead to allocative inefficiency such that farms produce at less than full capacity, and this is without the existence of AIDS (Tibajuka, 1994). In cases of the death of a spouse, the impact is likely to be greater the more differentiated the gender roles are in any particular society. Traditions and a lack of agricultural knowledge generally hinder spouses from easily taking-over their partner's share of the work. Thus it is not only the person who dies, but the knowledge and skills of that individual which die with them. This situation is aggravated where women are concerned. With the death of their husbands, they are likely to lose access to the extension service, to credit, marketing facilities, etc.
In Uganda, some women, having lost their partners, who previously handled marketing, have completely abandoned commercial farming. The widows now only plant enough for their subsistence and have grown very poor as a result. In these and other households, time accorded to nursing the sick, frequent funerals and the mandatory one-week mourning period, second burial ceremonies, deaths of progressive farmers and general demoralization, have all contributed negatively to agricultural production.
- Economic return to labour
In Gwanda community in Uganda, many households appear to be experiencing labour shortages. On the one hand, the high incidence of AIDS-related sickness and death, has caused a labour deficit. On the other hand, there are also some features of the local labour market which contribute to this shortage. In a remote village like Gwanda, agriculture itself has been extremely limited due to the lack of marketing facilities. Rural youths in particular have not found such work attractive, in addition to their perhaps natural wish to explore a wider world away from the constraints and obligations of the village. Even though it is the case that most agricultural work is done by women, it is also true that there are important tasks carried out by men, in particular the clearing and initial cultivation of land. Both men and women farmers complained about, the lack of marketing facilities, low prices for agricultural products and the deteriorating terms of trade for their produce in comparison to products like soap, salt and paraffin.
Moreover, while the farming system changes in response to labour constraints induced by HIV/AIDS, other sectors of the local economy which require workers are nevertheless able to command some of whatever labour is available. In a fishing village near to Gwanda, in spite of numerous deaths due to HIV/AIDS, there are still plenty of fishermen. Those who die from the disease it seems are quickly replaced by others. Many youth from Gwanda and other inland villages apparently find it very hard to acquire employment in the fishing village because although, only a few kilometres away from Gwanda, there is a surplus of labour.
Thus the attraction of the fishing villages, and probably other regional towns and even the capital, Kampala, all act as competitors in the labour market for young male workers, and thus may take labour away from agriculture in the area. These constraints are then further exacerbated by the high level of deaths in an already labour-depleted farming village.
Economic returns to labour are closely linked with the level of intensification in terms of improved seeds, input of fertilizer and pesticides and the level of mechanisation. In all three countries studied, cultivation is mostly done using a hand-hoe, although in Tanzania and Zambia animal traction, and to a lesser extent tractors, are used by wealthier farmers.
- Cultural factors
One of the most significant traditions, which has an impact on labour in times of high mortality is attendance at funerals and the mourning time. Box 3 describes the tradition of mourning in Rukwa region, Tanzania.
Box 3: The tradition of mourning in a Tanzanian village
Following a death in the community of Rukwa in Tanzania, the following customs are observed:
Relatives and neighbours gather to prepare for the burial bringing with them food and livestock to assist the bereaved in feeding those who gather for the burial ceremony. Gifts of money are also made.
On the day of burial, all farm activities are suspended by the entire community. (This may involve more than one village. For example, when the research team was travelling to Lula village, it encountered many people travelling in the opposite direction to Kaengesa village where a person: had died, All of them were carrying something; one for example had a goat).
If an adult dies, mourning takes three days; if it is a child, the rite lasts for two days.
During this period, all relatives do not work while neighbours collect at the house in the evenings to comfort the bereaved family amidst eating and drinking. If the person who died had been wealthy or prominent, neighbours may remain longer still. Cattle, goats and chicken are slaughtered and the local homemade brew is drunk.
When those who were unable to attend the burial ceremony eventually come to console the bereaved family, (even if a month later), the ceremony takes on a new impetus with renewed crying, wailing and more eating and drinking.
When a man dies, his wife is inherited by one of his relatives, usually one of his brothers. The inheritor takes charge of all affairs of the deceased relation e.g. property and children.
When the loss of labour hours as a result of mourning activities is added up and multiplied by the number of burials, the economic impact can be considerable. In other areas of Tanzania traditional mourning rites are even longer. For example, in Mbeya, the period of mourning can last as long as one month. Because of the impact of this custom on the rural economy and in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS during these occasions, the Kyela District Council in Mbeya region has attempted to restrict the mourning period to four days. Similar efforts to restrict funeral rites have also been observed in Uganda and are likely to be an important component of local coping mechanisms more generally.
Before the impact of HIV/AIDS on particular aspects of farming activity is described, the following example will serve to show how the farming system in a particular community changed over time without the presence of HIV/AIDS. This brief examination of developments in Nakyerira village, Uganda, illustrates not only how the labour market has changed but how this factor has impacted on the overall farming system.
For the past ten years, there have been marked changes in the types and volume of crops cultivated. Previously, the range of crops commonly included sweet potatoes, bananas, cassava, yams, peas, beans, egg plants, groundnuts, maize, sorghum and a wide variety of green leafy vegetables and fruit. All these crops, especially the vegetables, were grown for home consumption. At times however bananas, beans, groundnuts and maize were sold.
The people of Nakyerira used to employ a large number of migrant labourers from south-western Uganda, Rwanda and other parts of the country. Nakyerira farmers who could not afford to enter into exclusive contracts with migrants depended on casual labour employed elsewhere, particularly on the "Indian" tea plantations about six miles away. These casual labourers were often paid in food.
The introduction of cash crops in the other areas of Uganda and the later decline in tea production, after the 1972 expulsion of Ugandans of Asian origin, led to a drastic decline in labour supply for Nakyerira and the surrounding communities. At the same time the decline of coffee in the mid-1970s meant that many farmers could no longer afford to employ workers. Thus the youth started to migrate from the area to Kampala and Mityana town in search of employment. An agricultural system that had been a net importer of labour thus became a net exporter.
The effects on the farming system were quickly evident. Control of banana pests and diseases became difficult without the farm labourers to do the work. Farmers began to develop labour economising strategies in response to these conditions. Banana and coffee, each for different reasons, is labour demanding and became progressively less cultivated as a result. Coffee trees were cut down and replaced with drought resistant cassava that did not require either labour for mulching or hand weeding. Hardy beer bananas that neither required much labour for weeding, nor labour for cutting grass for mulching or pruning, together with sorghum, replaced banana and coffee as the new cash crops. The available labour was shifted to groundnut and bean growing as well as the production of maize and Irish potatoes. While some of these were labour demanding, the return was apparently superior and offered more food security than retaining weevil-infested banana groves. Where these crops could not be grown, farmers started acquiring and rearing cattle.
As a result, the inadequate labour supply largely accounted for a decline in crop range and volume. Along with loss of soil fertility, high incidence of pests and diseases (see below), prolonged droughts, the main contributory factors were high labour costs resulting from demand exceeding the locally-available supply, and the frequent deaths of farmers and their children. In addition, local people made reference to other recent changes in the labour market. Two main trends were identified. Firstly, former migrant labourers no longer come to the area but instead remained in their home areas producing cash crops in those areas - for example coffee in Ankole and tobacco in Kigezi. Secondly, former migrant labourers who had settled in Mubende and having acquired land and property, have become wealthier and compete in the local labour market as employers. The end result of this labour shortage has been a reduction in the quality and quantity of crops produced.
These events in Nakyerira's recent history indicate that over the last thirty years the population has been adapting its farming system to labour deficits. It could thus be argued that they may be in a good position to cope with the future effects of the epidemic. However, it may also be the case that with poor soils and less dependable rainfall, the community could now be confronted by a dramatic decline in labour availability with results that prove even more destructive of food security on the rural standard of living than are being witnessed in Gwanda, for example.
3.4 The impact on crop production
3.4.1 Reasons for decreasing land use
3.4.2 Decline in crop yields
3.4.3 Changes in cropping patterns: a strategy for survival
3.4.4 The advantages of crop diversification
The direct impact of HIV/AIDS on crop production was observed in terms of a reduction in land area cultivated, a decline in crop yields, and a decline in the range of crops grown. However, the extent of the impact and the relevance of contributing factors differed from country to country and from one farming system to another.
3.4.1 Reasons for decreasing land use
In the first instance, the reduction in land use is attributable to a number of factors which have occurred as a direct result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic or indirectly with the effect of exacerbating existing constraints. These include: sickness and death in households leading to fewer family members being available to work in the fields and thus in the amount of land that it is possible to cultivate; the limitations of land inheritance and land tenure systems, especially as they may affect widowed and orphaned households; poverty, resulting in malnutrition, which in turn affects the health of family members and their ability to perform agricultural work, and which leads to reduced cash incomes needed to purchase inputs such as seed and fertilizer; the selling of land to meet the cost of medical and funeral expenses; and the loss of soil fertility on farms with limited land areas.
A land utilization survey carried out in Masaka and Rakai Districts in Uganda in 1991 found that 23 percent of all farms reported a reduction in land use in the preceding four years (Hunter, 1993). Death and sickness as well as old age and poverty were the leading causes for this decline in land use apart from land given to older children.
The effect of HIV/AIDS in reducing the number of household members available to cultivate crops and large areas of land, has led to substantial reductions in land use in many of the communities studied, especially in Gwanda which has been extremely hard-hit by the epidemic.
In one case, a Ugandan family in Nakyerira community, in which three sons have already died of AIDS, reported that the proportion of land now under cultivation or for livestock grazing had declined from 95 percent in 1991 to 60 percent of the total by July 1993. Furthermore, the expansion of the land which the family had started to realize through the purchase of neighbouring plots, had to be stopped in 1991 due to the sickness of two family members. Some of the land that they had hoped to buy in the neighbourhood of their existing plots had instead been bought by other people. The area which had been planted with coffee, cassava and bananas was abandoned and allowed to revert to bush early in 1992. Even the banana plantation, healthy by local standards (due to the use of cow dung as manure) was overgrown with weeds and contained weevils. Where once the family had planted beans, maize and cassava on 1.5 hectares of land, because of the time needed by family members to nurse the AIDS sick, and due to a lack of money to hire farm workers for ploughing, substantial areas previously devoted to these crops now lay derelict.
A common farming system among the communities studied, particularly in Uganda and Tanzania, is the coffee-banana system. In the zone which forms an arc around the western shore of Lake Victoria and stretches into the north-western part of Tanzania around Kagera, for example, the majority of households cultivate Robusta coffee and savoury bananas matooke as their main crops in combination with a wide range of other annual and perennial crops.
This farming system predominates in Gwanda. Where formerly, larger land areas were planted to banana and coffee, such farms are being abandoned (many having reverted to bush) due to the lack of household labour or money to pay for temporary help to weed, mulch and control against weevil infestations. At the same time, it was observed that many households now consist of orphaned children and their grandparents or other senior relatives, with few young adult family members who would otherwise have done much of the cultivation of crops.
Farming systems which are particularly vulnerable to the impact of HIV/AIDS are likely to be those which are labour intensive in nature.
An example is the village of Mgeta in Tanzania. At the time of the study no AIDS cases had been recorded, but it is easy to see how, given the labour-intensive nature of the farming system, an overall reduction in the area of land prepared for cultivation might be expected, as a consequence of labour shortage due to sickness and death. Some households are already unable to cultivate all of their fields because land preparation is such a time-consuming activity. These are usually the poorest families who need cash incomes and so work on neighbouring fields at the expense of their own, rather than because they have insufficient labour or a large area of land.
A further expectation would be of a simultaneous increase in the land area given over to fallow crops, which require neither weeding nor irrigation. These crops include cassava, pigeon pea and sweet potato. However, households go to great lengths to ensure a rainy season crop of maize and beans so the planting of fallow crops would be likely to increase only during the dry season at the expense of the more labour-intensive cash crop production.
The nature of land tenure and inheritance
In some communities, where land tenure and inheritance traditions favour male inheritance, for example, the effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic may be especially severe. As increasing numbers of women are left widowed, becoming de facto heads of households, with their rights to land already constrained by the traditional inheritance customs, their access to land is automatically constrained.
In Gwanda and other parts of southern Uganda, land tenure is based on the colonial reform implemented early this century. This is known as the mailo system. The reform, which was important in the colonial political settlement, ensured that the nobility were given superior land rights and the majority of the population became their tenants, whereas previously they might have been described as "serfs" within a "feudal" structure. This system has subsequently become confused in a number of ways, and today there is considerable uncertainty about land tenure.
In practice, both cultivation rights (in the case of the tenants) and land title (in the case of title-holders) are inherited through the male line and women do not inherit these rights except in certain circumstances where they hold rights of trusteeship for a limited period, for example until a male heir attains his majority. In cases where a woman holds such a trusteeship, her husband's patrilineage is likely to bring considerable pressure upon her to relinquish it. This has special implications in the case of HIV/AIDS-affected households where the woman is the survivor.
In cases where people enter into sharecropping arrangements, they may be given land which is heavily infested with perennial weeds requiring considerable manual work before planting is possible. In order that such seasonal cultivation rights do not become transformed into longer-term claims, these loans are for limited periods of around two years. The study noted that land surplus households are reluctant to lend their land because they fear losing their "ownership" rights.
The uncertainties concerning land tenure have given rise to a paradoxical situation where for some, usually poorer, households, there is an effective land shortage which may require that they enter into sharecropping arrangements with households having a surplus, while elsewhere in the community large areas of land remain uncultivated.
In Nakyerira, while local people report that they experience land shortage, in the majority of households there is insufficient labour to ensure optimum utilization. The result is that in most cases farmers have abandoned about one-third of their land to bush due to the lack of farm workers to manage the fields.
The practice of dividing land between children of both sexes (it is not uncommon for fathers to give land to daughters) when they come of age and start their own households or, at the death of the father, is prevalent. In polygamous households, different wives are given usage rights to their own individual plots. These plots will eventually pass on to the male children. As in Gwanda, this practice has the effect of reducing holding size to uneconomic proportions.
A major development observed in most small farms covered in the field work has been that of a decline in the crop yield per area, especially in the last five years. The factors identified as responsible for this decline include:
- a decline in soil fertility;
- an increase in pests and plant diseases;
- changes and delays in cropping practices; and
- a decline in external production inputs.
These factors are in part attributable to the effects of HIV/AIDS morbidity and mortality on the availability of labour which has meant that certain necessary tasks like weeding, mulching, pruning, particularly, as noted above, and the clearing of land, generally, have either been inadequately carried out, or completely neglected.
Declines in yields result in a relative reduction in spending power by households which might otherwise have used cash from the sale of produce to buy basic items like soap and paraffin and to hire occasional labour, or to purchase inputs such as seed and fertilizer as well as agricultural implements.
Decline in soil fertility
There are initial signs that an indirect effect of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is to reduce soil fertility. This appears to be due, in part, to a reluctance by farmers to carry out long-term soil conservation measures. This may well be because such measures do not yield an immediate result and are also labour demanding.
Box 4: Case study 3 (Gwanda community, Uganda)
The story of Martin
The story of Martin is the history of a household which has witnessed a dramatic change of circumstances, in a large part attributable to the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS on the family. Martin was an able farmer and a former fisherman. On one acre of land he used to grow bananas, coffee, groundnuts, beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, mangoes, a variety of other vegetables, and a little maize. Most of the time he produced enough food to feed his family of ten and to earn a small amount of cash. The entire half hectare of land was cultivated, with all the family members taking part in the planting and weeding. Thus Martin was able to prepare his land early enough - planting in good time to take advantage of the rains and thereby achieving high yields. He also raised chickens, giving his family ample protein throughout the year.
Some time ago, Martin's wife left the house, but, according to him despite his unhappiness at her departure, at least his farm work did not suffer. However, since then, three of his nine children have died of AIDS and one of his sons was murdered. The shock of these deaths has left him almost mute. Three of his remaining children are also living away from home and it seems they rarely visit their now 70-year old father. These days two-thirds of Martin's land is under bush. The coffee trees, which used to yield about three sacks of coffee each year, have disappeared. Martin doesn't have anyone to tend the groundnuts because they require a lot of work and now there are no garden vegetables either. The banana plantation occupies less than 0.6 hectare and is weedy and dying, being heavily infested with weevils. Last season Martin said they could not plant maize because he could not afford the seed. Although he still produces some cassava and sweet potatoes, there is often not enough of these basic foods to feed his family. Now, if they are lucky, they may be able to eat meat at Christmas, and once a month Martin's eighteen-year old grandson buys a little fish.
In Rakai district in Uganda, for example, the banana plantations used to be either mulched by residues of the plantation where the nutrients of the same plot are recycled, or with grass cut and carried from the open fields, the latter practice requiring considerable labour which was previously hired. This alternative practice is reportedly decreasing due to the expense of hiring farm workers. The farmers themselves frequently do not have the time and energy to carry out these tasks. They may also lack access to the financial resources to purchase fertilizer.
Conversely, soil regeneration may be aided by the fact that a large number of plots are no longer cultivated due to the numerous deaths and sickness within families in the district of Rakai, and the land is thus left fallow by necessity.
In Nakyerira, one farmer, who was considered to have been progressive and successful, reported that he was now poor partly due to a decline in soil fertility. He said that he used to have a good banana plantation, well mulched, weeded and pruned. He had used both organic and non-organic fertilizers. However, with the loss of two daughters as a result of AIDS, and the departure of other children from the home, he could not now afford to hire farm workers. At the same time, his land had suffered the effects of drought and fire. He now complains of poor crop yields due to infertile soils, the presence of banana weevils and the lack of help to do the weeding and mulching. Now, he says he grows mainly cassava, maize and sweet potatoes purely for household consumption.
Box 5: Case study 4 (Gwanda community, Uganda)
How AIDS sickness and death have resulted in a reduction in the land area and a change in the cropping practices of one family
Robert is a 38-year old primary school teacher. He has inherited two hectares of land from his father on which he owns a small mud and wattle house. Four years ago his wife died as a result of a mysterious disease leaving Robert with four young children, two of whom now live in a village 30 miles away with their grandmother. He has remarried and it is the new wife who now does both the housework and the farm work. Only one of the two hectares is cultivated with bananas, groundnuts, cassava, sweet potatoes, beans, cabbage and many other crops.
At present Robert's wife can only grow sufficient produce to feed her family since they do not have enough cash income to buy food. Since the land was only acquired in 1992, the entire area has been overrun with couch grass, Robert's wife has not had the time to do the arduous task of clearing the remaining 1.5 hectares of land, Because of the burden of having so many household and farming tasks, including caring for her father and two sisters who are dying of AIDS, Robert's wife has only been able to plant maize very late in the season. The delay in planting, she believes is the reason that her maize plants are stunted and affected by a virus. It seems that the maize crop will yield almost nothing, and in the meantime she has not had time to prepare the land in order to plant groundnuts.
In order to ensure that she has enough basic food crops for her family, Robert's wife decided to plant early-maturing varieties of cassava, sweet potatoes and bananas which were also supposed to produce good yields. Initially she had problems with banana weevils until the NGO, World Vision, advised her and her husband to control the weevils using cultural methods; this method controls the pest to levels where it does not cause much economic loss, although the weevils have not been eradicated completely.
Increase in pests and plant diseases
A common feature of the farming systems studied, particularly those where there has been a high incidence of AIDS cases, has been an increase in pests and plant diseases. A common pest, which was present or reported in a large number of farms is the banana weevil. Banana weevils used to be controlled either by traditional means, which are labour-intensive, or with the use of chemicals. A shortage of labourers hinders farmers from controlling weevils using traditional methods nor do they necessarily have the financial resources to purchase chemicals.
In the village of Gwanda in Uganda, a cause of decreased production in the coffee shambas has been an increase in insect infestations, particularly of large black stinging ants which are believed to be symptomatic of poor cultural practices. These insects now discourage farmers from working on the starchy crops which they have been trying to cultivate on their run-down coffee shambas. This situation is now described as critical, the plots in many cases, having reverted so far that it is no longer economic for all but the wealthiest or most labour-endowed households, either to recover their old coffee trees or open new areas for coffee production.
At the same time, it was also reported that coffee has generally become a less attractive crop for farmers in the last twenty years. Until the early 1970s, Gwanda was a major coffee growing area. Much of this coffee was grown on land which has now reverted to forest. A decline in world coffee prices, corrupt marketing practices and civil strife, have lessened interest in producing the commodity.
In Gwanda, weevil infestations have contributed to declining banana yields. Although it has been observed that this might have happened anyway, the absence of effective and cheap chemical control methods together with a lack of labour have meant that this problem has now become critical.
In the same village, there also appears to be an increase in the plant diseases, fusarium wilt and sikatoga. The greater incidence of these diseases may also be associated with changes in cultural practices due to a lack of farm labour. Apart from pests and diseases, couch grass, a notorious weed, poses an increasing hindrance to farmers. It is extremely demanding to dig out couch grass manually, because the roots grow very deep. Herbicides, which would be another way of fighting the plant, are too expensive.
Decline in the variety of crops
In a comparison between a study conducted in 1989 and the present fieldwork in Gwanda, marked changes were observed in cropping patterns. There was a general shift away from crops that are labour demanding, like bananas and coffee, to those that are the least labour intensive most frequently cassava and sweet potatoes.
In Nakyerira, farmers claimed that since 1980 there had been many changes in the type and volume of crops grown. Irish potatoes had recently been introduced and cassava and sweet potatoes were now being grown on a larger scale than in the past. The increased cultivation of sweet potatoes and cassava was attributed to the fact that they are easy to plant and maintain, they require less attention than other crops and are also drought resistant. Generally farmers remarked that at present, a narrower range of crops is grown, the emphasis being on sweet potatoes' cassava, beans and maize. Other crops such as sesame and vegetables are either produced in smaller quantities or have been completely abandoned.
An example of a similar trend in Zambia can be taken from the village of Teta, a community which is only just beginning to feel the effects of HIV/AIDS. In the case of one family, where both the husband and wife were ill, the couple reported that they were, as a result of their declining health, reliant both on owning or hiring oxen for planting anything but the smallest area, and that they needed to hire occasional help to weed their lands. Such labour, they noted, was expensive and they could not always afford the cost. Consequently, while the couple had recently been able to hire oxen in order to harvest their maize crop, they were not able could not afford - to grow a significant area of any other produce except for some sweet potatoes cultivated using hired workers. As a result of illness and the family's reliance on hiring oxen and part-time labourers which they could little afford, overall farm production has suffered dramatically leaving the couple with little cash and lower yields of fewer crops.
3.4.3 Changes in cropping patterns: a strategy for survival
In order to adapt to changing, social, economic and environmental factors like disease, drought, and erosion, farmers have responded, in many cases, by changing their cropping patterns. This may be interpreted as a coping mechanism. A recurring pattern in a number of the villages visited during the study was a reduction in the cultivation of cash crops like Irish potatoes and coffee in order to concentrate all available labour on the production of the main subsistence crops like sweet potatoes and cassava. With respect to specific crops the following observations have been made.
In Gwanda, the response to declining banana cultivation has been an increased emphasis on producing the two secondary starch sources, cassava and sweet potatoes, and to a lesser degree on yams and sorghum (the latter being used for beer brewing and thus providing a source of cash income for some households). These crops, apart from being less labour demanding, are more easily stored than bananas; neither is particularly prone to disease infestation at present. However, there are indications of an increasing incidence of cassava mosaic when new cultivars have been introduced by farmers in an effort to arrive at a suitable combination of storage potential, early and late varieties, and palatability of this new staple. What appears to be occurring in Gwanda is a transition from a banana-based farming system to a cassava-based system. This may be considered a period of experimentation and forms part of the epidemic-impact coping process.
Bananas. In both Nakyerira and Gwanda, bananas have been grown for a long time. Traditionally, their production benefitted from better climatic conditions and more available manpower to tend the banana trees. Under careful management, these savoury green bananas, matooke were the staple food of the communities. However, in Nakyerira, adverse climatic conditions (especially the droughts in 1988 and 1991), poor soils, requiring intensive labour for tillage, mulching and pruning, the addition of manure or fertilizers and for the control of weevils, reduced the supply of household labour (due to migration and death), of casual labourers and the increased incidence of crop pests, especially banana weevils, have all contributed to declining banana yields.
Box 6: Case study 5 (Gwanda community, Uganda)
This story illustrates how the break up of a household due to AIDS related sickness and death changed the structure of the household's crop and livestock production
Formerly a family with ten children, the husband and wife owned half a hectare of land on which a new house had been built. The husband, the first to die of AIDS in 1991, had been a successful small trader at a nearby fishing village. Originally the family owned five cows, a banana plantation and had borrowed some additional land. The wife, before contracting AIDS herself in 1992, had made and sold handicrafts to pay her children's school fees and had even gone so far as to operate a craft shop out of her living room.
With the deaths of first the husband and then his wife, the banana plantation went progressively to weed. On the borrowed land some cassava, sweet potatoes and groundnuts were planted. However, during the wife's sickness both the banana plantation which had been briefly intercropped with beans, and the borrowed land went to bush. All five of the family's cows died from a cattle disease because the children did not have the money to pay for veterinary drugs.
Late in 1992 the brother began to reclaim the overgrown plantation. He also started to raise pigs and chickens on the plot. While some of the original land is still being used productively, the family is completely dislocated and all the children depend on the goodwill of relatives some of whom are elderly and themselves suffering from illnesses. Now only two of the ten children live in their original home, the others have gone to stay with relatives.
In the 1960s, two hardy species of beer banana were introduced and widely adopted. These varieties require minimal labour for weeding and pruning. The bananas are very leafy and the fact that they are not pruned lessens the need for mulching. Beer bananas have consequently taken over from matooke and coffee, as the major cash crop.
Other forms of coping mechanisms adopted by farmers after the failure of bananas have included:
- Increasing the cultivation of cassava, maize and sweet potatoes to replace matooke as staple foods because they are better suited to the area especially if planted in time and properly managed; and
- The substitution of banana cultivation with livestock production.
In Gwanda, it was reported that historically, matooke was cultivated by all households together with a fall-back crop of cassava and/or sweet potatoes. Today, both the area cultivated and quality of the matooke produced have declined. The proper cultivation of the savoury banana requires adequate mulching. The mulch consists of surplus banana leaves and, in some cases, additional green matter gathered from swamps. Lower levels of care have meant that there is less leaf matter available from the bananas themselves. In addition, declining household incomes, resulting in part in reduced income opportunities and thus out-migration by the migrant labour population, have meant that this swamp mulch is no longer used.
The ficus tree was also a source of crop mulch as well as improving soil fertility. Ficus trees were planted in the banana groves for this purpose as well as being a source of bark for the traditional craft of bark-cloth making. As the tree takes four years to mature, people consider it a long-term investment which they could not expect to realise in view of their perceived lower life expectancy. Adequate de-suckering and pruning of the bananas is said to be less widely practiced for the same reason and also because these are labour demanding tasks.
Coffee. Prior to 1970 Nakyerira was an important coffee growing area. From 1960 to 1980 many people were able to improve their standard of living markedly through profits made from growing coffee. Some farmers believed it worthwhile to mulch carefully and to use fertilizers. At the same time, many such farmers earned enough and thought it worthwhile to employ labour to tend their coffee plantations. In some cases they also purchased land to increase the volume of production. Today, coffee has almost disappeared from the area, many farmers having given it up completely. The reasons for this are:
- frequent droughts;
- the poor marketing system and late payment;
- HIV/AIDS-related deaths; and
- competition for land between cash and food crops among farmers who have holdings of two acres or less.
In Gwanda increased intercropping of cassava, sweet potatoes and yams, along with some beans, in coffee plantations reflects a combination of the effects of land shortage on some households as well as labour shortages, low prices and poor marketing arrangements.
Maize. White maize is one of the staple crops which has replaced matooke in Nakyerira. Today, each household ensures it has a plot of maize, often inter-cropped with cassava and beans or groundnuts. Households which produce a surplus or are short of money also sell some of the maize they produce. A review of the case histories in the area indicates a decline in maize production over the last decade. Several factors account for this decline:
- inadequate labour supply resulting in poor and often delayed land preparation, late planting and weeding. In the more severely affected households, secondary tillage operations and weeding are simply abandoned;
- crop pests and diseases, especially the maize stalk borer and maize streak virus;
- the lack of extension service advice;
- the lack of capital inputs; and
- unreliable climatic conditions.
Cassava and sweet potatoes. These two crops are important in the agricultural production system. Together with maize, they are now two of the main food crops which have compensated for the decline in matooke. Almost all families in Nakyerira have their largest cultivated area under cassava (usually inter-cropped with maize and groundnuts or beans) followed by sweet potatoes. Under conditions of labour depletion associated with HIV/AIDS, even cassava and sweet potato production may now be abandoned by some households.
Relish crops. A popular relish for people in both Gwanda and Nakyerira is a sauce made of either beans or groundnuts. But there is now insufficient labour available for many households to be able to cultivate plots devoted to these crops. In Gwanda, beans are now more usually inter-cropped among bananas, and are eaten fresh rather than dried - another indication of a decline in food security in this community - average household production having declined to a level where there is insufficient surplus to store and certainly not enough to sell, both of which had been common practices in the past. There has been a similar decline in the cultivation of groundnuts. In the case of both crops, deaths of women together with epidemic-related pressures on women's time have contributed to the declining importance of what were traditionally women's crops.
Many farmers produce between two and ten sacks of unshelled groundnuts and about one sack of beans annually. These require considerable time and labour to shell and this is not readily available. Consequently such producers now receive lower prices for their produce from middlemen who can reap the value-added through their ability to employ processing labour.
Both crops are also vulnerable to disease - groundnuts to rosette and beans to occasional attack by blight. They are also sensitive to the timeliness of planting. Thus HIV/AIDS-associated morbidity and mortality affects production with fewer labourers available to carry out seed-bed preparation, timely planting, weeding and harvesting.
Irish potatoes. Although traditionally grown as a secondary crop and often inter-cropped within the banana plantations, Irish potatoes are now a major cash and food crop. As a quick maturing food crop, the potatoes often protect households against food shortages. Timely planting, proper seed-bed preparation and the selection of varieties that are drought and disease resistant are key considerations towards ensuring a good harvest. In some cases the crop has already suffered from the loss of labour due to HIV/AIDS with whole seasons being foregone due to the lack of labour.
Other produce. Many types of fruit trees and other minor crops were once more popular than they are at present in Nakyerira. On most farms such tree crops as mangoes, pineapples, avocadoes, passion fruit, pears and jackfruit may still be grown but they receive little care from householders since they are not considered part of the normal diet. In recent years these have either been abandoned or largely overlooked and are no longer regarded as everyday crops for cultivation.
Horticultural and root crops, especially vegetables like tomatoes, pumpkin, cabbage and egg plant used to be more widely planted than they are today. Few farmers continue to grow these vegetables owing to pests and plant diseases, especially fungal diseases, which attack tomatoes and cabbages. Fungicides are generally too expensive for poor farmers to afford.
Another reason for the low priority given to these crops may be that there is a lack of understanding by farmers about the importance of fruit and vegetables both as food and cash crops. At the same time, it may be perceived that the growing of these, ostensibly less important crops, entails competition for labour with other subsistence crops like maize, sweet potato and cassava.
3.4.4 The advantages of crop diversification
The example of Teta community in Zambia is also relevant since the diversity of this labour intensive system carries both benefits and trade-offs. In Teta there are four types of production system with most households employing at least three of the four cultivation types. These are:
- upland flat production of maize, millet, possibly sorghum and groundnuts;
- upland mount (or ridge) production of sweet potatoes, beans and cassava;
- citemene production of finger millet and pumpkins; and
- dambo cultivation of maize/beans, cucurbits and Irish potatoes.
The benefits of the Teta farming system derive from the use of residual moisture in dambos to plant food crops in September and the use of composting mounts to plant beans and cassava in March. This system means that the planting season lasts for seven months. This is in marked contrast to the situation in Mpongwe, where the planting period is only two-and-a-half months before the onset of rains (usually November to January).
The advantage of the lengthy planting season lies in the diversity of food crops it is possible to grow and the alternative sources of income so derived which make it possible to supplement income from maize alone. However, one trade-off is that less maize is grown. Maize, which is a main staple may also attract less labour during the weeding months of January and February, since people tend to be busy constructing mounds and planting sweet potatoes. As a result, in 1992-93 yields were slightly lower in Teta than amongst farmers in Mpongwe. Production outputs and sales were significantly lower amongst all types of farmer. But in compensation for the reduced maize and cash outputs, other food and cash crops were able to be substituted as alternative sources of income available to the farmers.
In terms of overall livelihood and food security, the gains of diversification have to be measured against the loss of opportunities to gain a single income from one major activity.
3.5 The impact on livestock production
3.5.1 Changes in livestock raising practices: coping mechanisms
3.5.2 The impact on pastoralists
In some of the communities which were studied, changes in livestock raising practices have occurred in recent years. The direct impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been felt in several ways. Firstly, cattle are frequently sold to pay medical bills and funeral expenses. Secondly, both AIDS-related death and sickness result in decreases in labour availability, as already noted, further resulting in lower levels of livestock husbandry. In Uganda, partially as a result of the latter, there appears to be a parallel trend towards the keeping of smaller stock, most notably pigs and poultry, which are less labour demanding.
At the same time, there is evidence that some households in Nakyerira, which in the past concentrated on crop production, have begun to turn to livestock production as soils become infertile and previously widespread crop management practices have become difficult to follow or are completely abandoned.
In the same village, for example, more than 50 percent of households keep some cattle and about 30 percent breed pigs. About 80 percent of households were reported to be raising poultry. Goats and sheep are also kept by some farmers. In all cases only a very few animals are held, due to the shortage of land and the incidence of animal diseases. Farmers also recognise that in an area of poor soils, animal manure is an important input for crop production and yet they are restricted in the number of animals they can keep.
Cattle. In Nakyerira, cattle used to be predominantly in the hands of settlers who had migrated to work in the coffee and tea plantations. They started by keeping small herds (8 -15 cows per household) in the 1960s. Today, however, the herds are very small, perhaps 2 - 3 cows for each household. This change is attributed by the people to:
- land shortages and a reduction in farm size per farmer (from about 7.5 hectares in 1960 to an average of approximately 1.5 hectares today);
- an increase in the price of cattle arising out of the sudden realization that cow dung is important in restoring soil fertility to the banana plantations, as well as for other cattle products such as milk and ghee;
- expanded markets for meat in the rural and growing urban centres of Mityana and Kampala which have encouraged many farmers to sell off their large herds;
- diseases such as worms, East Coast Fever, Anaplasmosis, water-borne diseases and Nagana due to tse-tse flies;
- it was also observed that grazing was poorly managed. There was no rotational grazing using paddocks which might have improved the pasture and discouraged the build-up of disease and pests. Water supply, especially during periods of prolonged drought is another major problem requiring arduous labour for water carrying, work which is mainly performed by women.
Goats. Goat raising used to be an important activity in Nakyerira with a significant number of farmers keeping as many as 10 goats up to the early 1980s. Today, the herd size among those who still keep these animals has declined to 6-7 goats. Lack of grazing land and insufficient people look after the animals are given as the reasons for the decline.
Pigs. Pig husbandry became popular in the late 1960s. It expanded in the 1970s and 1980s when women began taking up the activity in response to the increased local market associated with local beer selling establishments and at which roasted pork and beer are sold together.
Poultry. In Nakyerira it was estimated that over 80 percent of households kept poultry. As with livestock, the numbers per household have declined in recent years due to diseases such as coccidiosis and chicken worm.
3.5.1 Changes in livestock raising practices: coping mechanisms
In Gwanda, it was observed that poultry numbers have increased in AlDS-afflicted households and especially in households with orphans. Previously, the free-range system of rearing chickens did not allow farmers to keep many birds at a time, because the banana plantations used to be properly mulched and the chicken would scratch the mulch and damage the beans grown in the plantation. This generated serious conflicts where a neighbour's banana plot was involved. Therefore most households owned only 3 - 5 chicken. Nowadays however, the banana plantations are no longer mulched due to labour constraints, and more chickens are able to forage in the plantations. It was noted that orphans, in particular, tended to keep chickens as a relatively easily available income source. The hens and eggs are usually not for home consumption; they are sold to raise some income, since the orphans' guardians are often too poor to buy the clothes and pay the school fees. Sometimes even the eggs are not sold, but reserved for hatching to produce more chicken.
However, the impact of AIDS has also had a negative side effect on poultry raising. Wild cats are the main predators for poultry. Their numbers are rising because a considerable number of banana plantations and fields have reverted to bush due to the high AIDS mortality in the community.
Pig rearing is another activity which has only been adopted recently in this community. It seemed to be especially attractive as an income-generating activity for widows. Pigs are not very labour demanding and the market price seems to be attractive. Since farmers tend gradually to substitute the production of matooke with cassava and sweet potatoes they soon have enough feed for I - 3 pigs. However, most farmers still lack marketing experience with pigs, pork or piglets.
Farmers, especially young men, also show a keen interest in taking up bee-keeping as a new income-generating activity. Honey, a nontraditional export product of Uganda, presently offers a good price.
One positive impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on livestock raising generally, according to the District Veterinary Officer in Rakai District in Uganda, is that farmers are becoming more open to innovations and have expressed an interest in dairy farming and cattle rearing using the "zero-grazing" method.
3.5.2 The impact on pastoralists
In Rakai, the Bahima, who are predominantly pastoralists, have close relationships with the settled farmers and have some traditions, such as the levirate, which are known to increase exposure to HIV/AIDS infection. Even before the HIV/AIDS epidemic, a high rate of tuberculosis was found in this community due to the consumption of unboilt, unboiled milk. This risk is increased insofar as the local Ankole cattle have been reported as very susceptible to bovine tuberculosis.
Among these pastoralists, there has been a tendency for herd sizes to become smaller. One of the reasons given was due to an outbreak of the disease, Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia. Another reason is due to HIV/AIDS. As with sedentary cattle keepers, people who fall sick sell their animals to pay for drugs and hospitalization. One example was cited in Rakai, of a farming household which had owned 15 cattle. When the parents fell sick and eventually died, five animals were sold. After the deaths of both parents, the children were forced to sell the remaining cattle, one by one in order to survive.
In Tanzania, due to the fact that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is only gradually being felt, while no specific data were available, it is believed that the situation among pastoralists of the Usangu plains in Mbeya rural district, is highly conducive to the spread of the disease. In the past, the nomadic Maasai were considered to be a closed society. However today, the Maasai mix freely with other ethnic groups as they roam through much of the country in search of pastures indeed, in the course of the research project some were seen in northern Zambia. Because of their relative wealth, as they own large herds of livestock and have been introduced to, and accepted the cash economy, the men frequently visit bars and patronise prostitutes.
The mixed population of the plains provides opportunities for the sharing of ideas and customs. For example, in the Usangu plains, there are five irrigation projects belonging to parastatal organisations. These projects employ a large number of workers, hence enhancing further contacts between the pastoralists and the settled population. The rice projects are close to major truck stops on the Dar Es Salaam - Zambia highway. According to local AIDS coordinators, Chimala is one of these settlements, Chimala has a high incidence of HIV/AIDS.
3.6 The impact on the agricultural extension services
In Rakai District in Uganda, HIV/AIDS is reported to have a marked impact on the local extension service. The District Agricultural Officer for Rakai noted that with regard to staff of the Extension Service, between 20 and 50 percent of all working time is lost due to the disease. Staff members were frequently absent from work attending funerals and caring for sick relatives. At the same time, a number of staff members at all levels had fallen sick and some had died. The problem was compounded by the fact that it is difficult to find trained people to replace former staff, both because the area is remote and also because it has the reputation of being a highly HIV/AIDS-affected area.
The epidemic had also made it more difficult for extension staff to meet the farmers. If a meeting coincides with a funeral, the meeting normally has to be rescheduled. In a community such as Gwanda where there were as many as 10 - 15 deaths a month such meetings with extensionists were thus difficult to organize.
It is also becoming apparent that, in some cases extension messages will have to be revised to take into account the impact of the disease on agricultural systems. For example, the European Union's Farming Systems Support Programme has been considering reviving coffee production and consequently promotes a high yielding, pest resistant and early maturing coffee variety. Despite the early maturity of the new variety (18 months) many young farmers do not appear interested in the crop, seeing it as a long term investment and fearing that they may fall sick or die before they reap any benefit from their investment.
3.7 The impact on the fisheries sector
In several communities where fishing constitutes an important primary or secondary activity, it appears that the sector provides a vital source of off-farm employment, in particular for rural youth. In Ndaiga village in Uganda's southern Iganga District, it was noted that for youth from fishing families, fishing is the main source of livelihood. Some of the fish is consumed or traded locally, through a cash or barter system with farmers, while the major portion is sold to local traders or exported further afield.
In both Gwanda and Ndaiga it was noted that young men preferred to work as fishermen than as farmers. In some cases this meant that young adults working away from their families remitted money back to their homes. In other cases, however, it appears that they actually deprived households of vital farm labour. This may have implications for particularly marginalized communities where incentives may be needed to encourage young adults to take on more term work. possibly through the provision of incentives.
One non-governmental organization (NGO), ActionAid in Mityana district in Uganda is reported to have had some success in persuading the youth in some sub-counties to become farmers. This was achieved partly by introducing them to the advantages of cultivating high-value crops.
3.8 HIV/AIDS and the loss of agricultural knowledge and management skills
3.8.1 The loss of other traditional skills
3.8.2 Loss of skills and the division of labour
Although more difficult to quantify, multiple references were made by respondents in the case studies to the loss of traditional knowledge and cultural practices. This was attributed in part to HIV/AIDS-related morbidity and mortality. When one or both parents die or are seriously ill, their skills may not be able to be transferred to their children or other relatives. This may have far-reaching implications in terms of the continuity of agricultural and livestock production as well as for other areas of life (such as craft production) which depend on the continuity of skills and knowledge.
In Eastern Africa, where growing coffee and bananas has been a traditional feature of the farming system, cultural practices associated with coffee and banana tree cultivation may be essential to ensure the system's survival.
As observed earlier in this chapter, the correct mulching, weeding and pruning of plantations is a fair guarantee of reasonable yields. However, in areas where there is a high incidence of HIV/AIDS, plots have become neglected or abandoned, with yields proving correspondingly poor as a result of some or all of the following: insufficient labour to carry out the work; inadequate understanding of the correct agricultural practices; and lack of knowledge about marketing aspects. In several Ugandan villages studied, many successful farmers with a variety of skills had died of AIDS and this had often led to the neglect of crops and livestock, as their surviving relatives have lacked sufficient knowledge of the correct farming practices.
In several Ugandan villages surveyed, many successful farmers, with a variety of skills had died of AIDS and this has often led to the neglect of crops and livestock, as their surviving relatives have lacked sufficient knowledge of the correct farming practices.
In one case study, a group of older men reported that a number of nutritious crops that used to be grown in the past, including certain exotic bean varieties have now been abandoned, mainly because they would require surplus labour which is not available. Groundnut production which used to be the pride and source of income of many households is also declining as middle-aged women, combining strength and knowledge for the preparation of fields; timing of ploughing, planting, weeding, and pest control, are dying, and not being replaced by younger women (among whom the number of deaths is even higher). Added to this, the changing emphasis on the production of foodstuffs, which were formerly regarded as produce of last resort, notably cassava and sweet potatoes, at the expense of other crops is leading to the loss of skills in such areas as banana weevil control, mulching, pruning and the control of stinging insects in coffee shambas.
Evidence that knowledge of cultivation techniques and cultivars is in danger of being lost, particularly among children of families in which one or both parents had died of AIDS, is available from a consideration of new coping strategies. For example, in some cases the local community was reputedly responding to orphaning by neighbours and family members specifically undertaking the agricultural training of orphaned children. Local groups were also beginning to undertake this work, especially women's groups. These might well provide a basis for future development of agricultural training among the young and in particular among those who have been orphaned. This would have a dual effect, notably it would allow for the preservation of local knowledge, while providing activities for rural youths who might otherwise be unemployed.
One example of loss of knowledge is the decline of cattle husbandry in Gwanda. Even if the cattle are not sold during the sickness or after the death of a household member, the remaining family often does not have the management skills and knowledge to care for livestock. This was observed in cases where the head of household, usually the man, died. The wife and the children did not have the time, the knowledge or the financial resources to care adequately for the cattle. The wife often did not have the same access to extension services and other ways of acquiring knowledge as her late husband. Therefore numerous cases were found in the studied communities where cattle had died soon after the death of the head of household.
3.8.1 The loss of other traditional skills
In communities like that of Gwanda where there has been a high incidence of HIV/AIDS, there is also evidence of the loss of knowledge of traditional crafts and skills. While some 5 - 10 percent of the houses in the community were built out of stone, mud and cement, the technique of stone laying has all but disappeared for a number of reasons. These included: the fact that the artisans who knew this skill have died and have not been replaced by younger men; the wealthier farmers and traders who used to provide a market for such building skills have either died of AIDS or are unwilling to invest in such costly ventures knowing that sooner, rather than later, they may be faced with dependent grand-children and other relatives to look after. And finally, apart from skills, such work requires a lot of cheap human labour, and the available labour is, of course, now insufficient for the activity (considering that many have died of AIDS and others are engaged in activities such as trading or fishing).
The demise of the indigenous art of bark cloth making in the community, represents yet another example of how AIDS is leading to the loss of a basic local skill. In a focus group discussion with elderly men in Gwanda, and at a community self appraisal exercise, it was pointed out that now - as opposed to in the past - bark cloth making was strictly the domain of older men, and despite increasing prices for this product.
Two explanations were offered for this phenomenon. First, young men are unwilling to plant the ficus trees, the source of the bark, fearing that they might die before the trees mature. Second, such youths now prefer fishing and trading to bark cloth making. While it is the case that even in the past the men who took-up the profession were mainly middle-aged, since a significant proportion of these have died due to AIDS, it is not surprising that there are few younger people taking up this occupation even though it is perhaps more rewarding than in the past. Thus it appears that some local crafts, like bark cloth making, may be disappearing in the absence of a link between the older and younger generations.
An important finding from all three countries is the significance that the loss of male household members has for the management of the household economy, and for the marketing of agricultural produce. With respect to this last, the deaths of men who were conversant with marketing, has meant that many households have had to rely on selling their produce to unscrupulous middlemen. These middlemen exploit the farmers. In so doing, farmers frequently become demoralized, sometimes to the extent that they have abandoned farming as unprofitable.
In Gwanda, there has traditionally been a marked gender division of labour, between crops, agricultural tasks and above all between domestic and other work. This has significant implications for the way in which the epidemic affects the lives of women. Most women are overburdened with housework, taking care of babies and now, in many cases, orphaned children, collecting firewood and fetching water. School children contribute little in terms of labour since most are away at school all day.
The women complained that they have to walk long distances to collect water and firewood and that it took about two hours just to fetch water, while the collection of firewood took even longer. These tasks greatly reduce the time women have to participate in agricultural activities. When a household is then confronted with the additional burden of caring for the sick, for members of related families, in mourning ceremonies, women are faced with major problems of managing their own labour and that of others in the household. It is important to note that it is not only the additional tasks which take up their time (and energy), it is also the increased management demands of the household and farm which require additional thought, worry and effort.
In addition to this problem, it is also knowledge of domestic and farm management skills, as well as the skills themselves which are threatened by the loss of mature women from the community. In Uganda, it was found that more women aged between 13 and 44 died in a two-year study period than men. Since it is the women in this age group who are primarily engaged in full-time agricultural production throughout most of the country, the rapid progression to death of this group allows little time for adjustment and coping in the household's farming practices. This inevitably has serious consequences for the affected households.
In Gwanda, the study has already noted that the rural farming system was in a stage of transition from a banana-based system to one composed primarily of what were once considered secondary crops such as cassava. Cassava, like sweet potato and to a lesser degree yam and sorghum, used to be produced by women rather than by men. Some men who have lost their wives, and who are unfamiliar with the crop varieties and cultivation methods, have found it hard to take over the cultivation of these crops. However, it was also observed in all three countries, that widowers usually remarry fairly quickly and therefore solve the problem in that way.
In Teta community, in Zambia, there are significant differences in the role and position of women within the diversified farming system, as compared, for example, with the maize-based system in Mpongwe District. In an analysis of labour and labour management in one area of Mpongwe, it was shown that the more food secure households are those in which both husband and wife are involved in agricultural production, and among these, the most efficient were those households where men were organising timely ploughing arrangements, either through tractor or oxen hire, or through labour-zpooling arrangements. This situation is due to the necessity of planting as large an area of maize as possible to ensure a surplus, and the fact that maize tends to be a crop controlled by men - since they have greater access to credit and usually control the marketing arrangements.
In Teta the situation is different. The area planted to maize and other crops grown in ploughed fields is much smaller than in Mpongwe. It is therefore easier for women themselves to manage this operation, and even to hire oxen to cultivate this smaller area. The diversity in the production system thus also gives women more independence. Dambo cultivation of local maize and beans are largely women's activities; it is only with the advent of Irish potatoes, that women have become involved with the techniques of wetland production.
3.9 Coping mechanisms: the role of NGOs and self-help groups
Given the fact that deaths from AIDS and other diseases are affecting the transfer of skills and knowledge in East African farming systems, certain coping strategies are emerging which may help to counteract the negative effects of these impacts.
At the level of the farming system, coping responses have already been touched upon. What needs to be emphasised is that these responses are not uniform and that there is a clear gradient in ability to cope in relation to the wealth of a particular household.
At the level of the community as a whole, the most important response has been the formation of self-help groups, some spontaneous and some under the aegis of an NGO. This is in itself an important development in some societies, particularly in southern Uganda, where inter-household cooperation has not been the norm. It suggests that here the traditional response may provide a firm base for future efforts to cope not only with the impact of the epidemic, but also with the wider problems of low incomes and poverty which form the background to that impact.
However, it should also be noted that in some cases the impact of the epidemic has been so severe that the limits of traditional cooperative resilience and response have now been reached and exceeded. In such circumstances, the supporting role of NGOs may be crucial in working to provide advice to farmers and extension staff in animal and crop husbandry practices. Agencies currently working in this way include, ActionAid, InterAid and World Vision International, whose activities are described below. Already, and often with the assistance of NGOs, special interest and other self-help groups have come into being with members pooling their knowledge and giving each other confidence in undertaking on-farm as well as income-generating activities.
In Gwanda, for example, World Vision International has encouraged the formation of small self-help groups primarily engaged in agriculture and handicraft making. The NGO has been instrumental in providing vocational training for groups in the field of carpentry, tailoring and construction. These are aside from the NGO's other activities like providing complete packages of school assistance to orphaned children and giving counselling and care to AIDS patients.
Box 7: Self-help group 1. Kayunga United
Gwanda Community
Kayunga United started operating in March 1992 and was aimed at improving the morale of unemployed youths by encouraging them to grow cassava cooperatively. The 1 2-member group has since offered considerable assistance to orphans, widows and the needy including house construction and repair as well as offering food.:
Recently, World Vision International gave them a donation of hoes, herbicides, pesticides and vegetable seeds. Training has been given to the group in bee-keeping and they are also expecting to receive/modern bee hives from the NGO.
In addition, the group has benefitted from the technical training sponsored and offered by World Vision International.
Action Aid is also highly active in Uganda mainly in the district of Mubende. Under its General Community Support Programme the NGO has built schools, assisted farmers in agricultural production through the provision of inputs, and through assistance to the health sector, by means of an immunization and treatment programme. Other activities have included: awareness and sensitization programmes; assistance with farm-management; and assistance in improving animal husbandry practices. In the past, farmers would only be interested in owning large herds of cattle, irrespective of how they were looked after. Recently, many farmers are adopting the practice of improved animal husbandry incorporating tick control, farm fencing and supplementary feeding of cattle. The result has been improved milk production and increased farm incomes which are reflected in a higher standard of living of farmers to the extent that households have graduated from grass thatched houses to houses roofed with iron sheets; finally, the area under various crops has increased, for example some young people are forming cooperative farming groups and are now able to cultivate large areas.
However, AIDS is likely to affect the progress of the NGO's work in the community. Some youths have already died and many are infected. Those that are sick are unable to work effectively. Once they die, their activities are not usually taken up by survivors who are often their elderly parents or younger siblings. In some of the more affected areas, ActionAid is launching an anti-AIDS campaign through such measures as video shows, condom supply and demonstration, as well as the care of AIDS patients.
As a result of increased deaths due to AIDS, the number of orphans has risen in the area. ActionAid is now supporting local group efforts to care for these orphans.
Box 8: Self-help Group 2. Agaliawamu (Unity is strength)
Gwanda community
Agaliawamu is regarded as one of the most successful groups. It was started in 1992 for school girls to provide them with basic training in tailoring and farming. By 1993, 10 members had graduated in skills development. The group is currently also helping to look after the sick.
Agaliawamu was given a donation of US $17.00 to buy handicraft materials, and assistance in purchasing the materials. The group has also received pesticides, fungicides, vegetable seeds, implements and technical training in nursery-bed preparation from World Vision International. It is, nevertheless, experiencing similar problems as Abagalanyi, see above, i.e. a shortage of agricultural inputs especially tools and equipment and proper marketing awareness for their products.
3.10 The personal and community trauma of HIV/AIDS
In a heavily affected community such as Gwanda, the social impact of HIV-AIDS on the population has been enormous. Gwanda was one of the first communities in that country to experience the HIV-AIDS pandemic. Since little was known about the disease when it struck, few if any precautions were taken with the result that the community lost many able-bodied people, young men, women and young children. Almost every household in Gwanda is HIV-affected, afflicted or both. A walk round the community provides adequate evidence of the impact. The presence in almost every homestead of graves of people who have died of AIDS, and the incidence of AIDS-related sickness in many households bear witness to the widespread trauma. As a result, many aspects of social life and behaviour have been affected and most of the women's and youth groups are concerned with providing assistance to widows and orphans.
Given the above, it is even more surprising that many of the youth in the most afflicted communities continue to have indiscriminate sex; even having sex with widows and widowers of people who are widely known to have died of AIDS, according to discussions held with groups of local villagers. This behaviour is attributed to the fatalistic attitude most youths have towards the epidemic generally. Many of them believe that they are already infected and consequently see no reason why they should not have normal sexual lives and maximise their pleasures before they die. This may also have something to do with the nature of life in many rural areas. For example, in the Mpongwe area of Zambia where local people reported that pre-marital sex was very common, it was simultaneously pointed out that in rural areas such as these, there is no entertainment, as such, apart from beer and sexual relations.
By contrast, discussions with several groups of teenage girls in Gwanda revealed that the girls are truly frightened of contracting AIDS. Many of them believe that one can only be safe through sexual abstinence. The girls lamented that it is material poverty which compels them into early marriages or to have premarital sex. They claimed that if they had financial support, mainly in the form of access to income-earning activities, they would abstain from premarital sex and early marriages to much older men, both of which increase their exposure to infection. Widows in the same community likewise believed that if they were given financial support, they would abstain from sex or avoid remarrying and therefore stop the spread of the disease.
Nonetheless, village group discussions and individual interviews also made it clear that many adults in Gwanda have, in fact, significantly changed their social and sexual behaviour. Most were said to have stopped indulging in indiscriminate sexual intercourse preferring to remain with their spouses. At the same time, the groups also reported that many families are additionally burdened with the responsibilities of fostering orphans of their deceased relatives and the only way of fulfilling this responsibility was to stay alive (i.e. by avoiding HIV-infection).
In general, the extended family system is still said to be strong. As in all societies in Uganda, however, this system is being undermined by social change. Associated increased individualism has had implications for the fostering of orphans in the AIDS-afflicted communities. In several AIDS-affected and afflicted households in Gwanda, the extended family system has been further over-burdened with the problem of large numbers of orphans and many surviving households have found it increasingly difficult to cope. This situation is being alleviated by some NGOs like World Vision and InterAid which are paying school fees for the orphans in addition to providing them with clothing, blankets and a few other basic commodities like agricultural implements, and water containers.
In Zambia, the social impact of the disease is also observable. On the one hand, in the case of divorce which seems to be a growing phenomenon in a number of the villages studied, a mother moves back to the village of her own mother, usually with most or all of her children. In the event of death of the mother, it is possible that the children will be subsequently split up and sent to different relatives.
Box 9: Self-help group 3. Abagalanyi (Those who love each other)
Gwanda community
This women's group was formed early in 1993 with an initial membership of 75 persons, although currently it has only 11 active members. The group's aim is to improve the standard of living of women in the community and to take care of orphaned children as well as the sick by giving them emotional support and providing them with the basic necessities.
The group undertakes communal farming and meets at least twice a week. Having secured a piece of land, members are growing tomatoes and potatoes which they hope to sell and thereby: generate sufficient income to enable them to expand their operations. The women also meet to discuss e problems encountered and to mane plans :for the week ahead
The group has plans for extending the farm and starting up handicraft production with the aim of making and selling mats and baskets. The group has also benefitted from training in bee keeping with World Vision International providing the members with beehives. In addition, the NGO has also provided the group with vegetables seeds as well as pesticides and fungicides. At present the group: faces a number of problems, the most crucial being a lack of agricultural tools. Another problem is in the marketing of produce. The women are worried about middlemen who usually travel to rural areas and exploit farmers by offering them abnormally low prices. Considering the perishability of the vegetables they produce, the women are certainly vulnerable to exploitation. This is particularly unfortunate given that :these women already require as much assistance as possible in order to be able to assist orphans and the sick.
In one village in Zambia, a woman farmer complained that her production had deteriorated because she had been nursing one of her daughters who eventually died from HIV/AIDS. Apart from the time spent in caring for her sick daughter, the emotional cost of seeing her children decline, having to care for them but being helpless to arrest the progress of the disease, must also be taken into account. Since 1990, of this particular woman's three daughters, two had died from HIV/AIDS, as did a daughter-in-law. Another farmer, a former council worker, from Teta in Zambia is another example of the emotional cost of the disease having been high. The farmer's daughter died in 1991 after he and his wife had nursed her for some time, and in 1993. just before the interview another daughter had committed suicide, inexplicably.
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