Farming and Family Projects in Madagascar
In Madagascar, 80% of the people live in rural areas and are therefore involved in agriculture and animal husbandry. Much of the land is still unexploited or poorly used (slash and burn). Food security is becoming increasingly difficult and will get worse in the coming years with climate change, political instability and economic uncertainty. In order to help our nation we decided to focus on agro-ecology projects and model what people could do in the field of agriculture, livestock and fish farming. In the long term we hope to see people working together through cooperatives that will help them to get train, sell their product at a fair price and enable them to have easier access to basic education for their children, quality health care and a better standard of living for their community. In Madagascar most families are broken therefore parent training programs are essential to see family relationships restored and improve healthy resource management.
In order to achieve these goals, we see that we need to work on:
- Develop a model farm, so that people can see what works in our region and how to replicate it.
- Raise awareness of this model with different people around us who can go into the bush and follow the target people, or target community.
- Put in place practical training on the technical level so that people learn to use practices that will be more effective and appropriate to their situation but also equip parents on the relational and management level so that relationships within the family and community are strengthened.
- Providing good quality seeds to ensure better yields for farmers.
- Follow-up and support for individuals or communities practicing the model.
- Help them to organize themselves in cooperatives and have common structures in order to protect the harvest and sell it at a better price.
