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Cruise ship passengers visit Ukraine farm project

More than a hundred passengers from the Mennonite Heritage Cruise took time out from exploring historic sites in Ukraine to see a current initiative that is helping local farmers, some of them tilling land once owned by Mennonites.

In early October the passengers visited clients of the Ukraine Horticultural Development Project (UHDP) being carried out by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA). The five-year $10 million project, supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), aims to help 5,000 smallholder farmers create successful ventures on former collectivized farms.

While the project is not directly related to the Mennonite Heritage Cruise, both share roots in the historic region.

Since 1995 the annual cruise has given more than 3,000 visitors a chance to travel the Dnieper River and immerse themselves in the history of Mennonites who developed major settlements in Ukraine and Crimea from 1789 until after the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 20th century.

More recently, cruise organizers have included special visits to local service efforts supported by Mennonites. This year they invited staff of MEDA’s Ukraine project to participate in the final cruise, which ran from Sept. 30 to Oct. 16.

UHDP field manager Steve Wright and two other staff members joined passengers for several days and escorted more than 100 of them to meet farmer clients and see how MEDA is helping them grow better crops and improve marketing.

They visited Crimean farmer Roman Pospelovksy, who grows strawberries, cucumbers and tomatoes in his two greenhouses. He explained how technical assistance has helped bolster production and has encouraged him to plan additional crops, such as table grapes.

For local Ukrainians, the assistance of MEDA and other Mennonite groups is seen as an act of forgiveness and reconciliation, given that many Mennonites were driven out of the area following the Bolshevik Revolution nearly a century ago.

A focal point for today’s Mennonite presence in ancestral regions is the Mennonite Centre in Molochansk (formerly called Halbstadt), housed in a refurbished Mennonite girls school. It grew out of the vision of people who started visiting the area following Ukraine’s independence in the early 1990s, explains George Dyck of Vineland, Ont., a Centre official. “They were amazed by the squalor, poverty and low standard of living in the area, and decided to establish the Centre in 2001 in memory of their ancestors and to help the local people,” he says. The Centre carries on numerous activities, including medical assistance to impoverished pensioners and the handicapped, educational and youth outreach, and informational services about the region and its Mennonite past.

Dyck developed a “Mennonite Return and Outreach” theme for the cruise itinerary so that passengers could see the work and institutions served by the Centre and related Mennonite initiatives.

Walter Unger of Toronto, the cruise organizer, notes that the return and outreach theme derives from the third of a series of shipboard lectures by historian Paul Toews of Fresno, Calif. The lecture, titled “Paradox and Irony in the Russian Mennonite Story,” ends with a section on “Irony of Rebirth” — how the Mennonites have

Passengers stream into the greenhouse farm of MEDA client Roman Pospelovsky.

returned to Ukraine in various roles. “Toews points out that 20 years ago everyone thought the Mennonite story in Ukraine was dead, gone forever, but not so, remarkably not so,” says Unger. “The recent MEDA initiative graphically shows how Mennonites care about their former neighbors.” ◆

Will cookstoves be the next big thing?

First it was malaria nets, then vaccines. Could cooking stoves be the next big player in the business of health?

The application of market know-how to a seemingly non-business commodity like insecticide-treated mosquito nets has become the stuff of legend in the development community.

The premise (as discovered and promoted by MEDA) is simple — rather than merely give nets away, why not offer them at a discount, making the customer pay a little. That way local retailers can make a buck, giving them an incentive to keep a supply on hand and thus ensuring a steady source for tomorrow’s customer. The ploy has a subtle additional benefit — it taps into the truism that people tend to value something more if they pay for it.

Now there is talk of extending the idea to cookstoves, and saving many lives of those who succumb to smoky pollution.

“Makeshift cookers also catch fire easily, maiming and killing,” says The Economist. “And lives are not the only things wasted. Women and girls in rural villages lose time and energy walking around collecting dirty solid fuels, ranging from crop waste to cow dung (better used as Continued on page 23

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$12 million project to boost rice and textiles in Ethiopia

A new five-year $12 million project has been launched by MEDA to help rice farmers and home-based textile producers in Ethiopia.

It aims to help 10,000 small producers increase their income by improving production and moving into higher value markets.

Some 75 percent of the project will be assistance to rice producers, both floodplain and dryland, says Jerry Quigley, senior vice-president of market linkages for MEDA. The rest will be with textiles.

Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa (80 million people), is among the poorest countries in the world, though the number of people living in poverty has been falling.

The agricultural sector employs more than 80 percent of the population, a great many of them small farmers who till a few acres. Many people are also involved in textile production and weaving. In both sectors, production is hampered by lack of access to information, appropriate technologies and input supplies, and inefficient market linkages.

Rice is emerging as a major food and cash crop. Consumption is growing faster than any other food staple, and it is now classified as a national food security crop along with teff, wheat and maize.

But productivity has been declining and local rice has trouble competing with more expensive imports. Farmers are unaware of simple post-harvest handling techniques that could greatly improve quality. Sometimes untrained hulling and polishing processors produce rice with a high percentage of broken grains. Lack of proper storage leads to spoilage.

Increasing agricultural productivity is critical, say project officials, but for families’ incomes to rise agronomic improvements must be complemented with strategies to integrate rice farmers into expanding markets.

Tens of thousands of Ethiopian families are also engaged in weaving, spinning and embroidery of traditional cotton products. A growing middle class has increased demand not only for traditional clothing but also for more up-scale designs featuring Ethiopian fabrics.

But many spinners, weavers and embroiderers work in isolated communities with limited access to contemporary markets and little exposure to changing customer demands. Opportunities exist for relatively low-cost upgrading and production efficiencies, but rural producers need stronger links to emerging markets.

MEDA’s project will assist both sectors. In rice, this includes improved modern techniques, appropriate technologies, input supplies, quality support services (including finance and credit), and better irrigation, storage, processing and transportation.

In the textile sector the focus will be on awareness of market trends, improved supplies and equipment, credit, and improved designs for specialized market segments.

MEDA will partner with local organizations to implement strategy and build financial

Continued from page 22

fertilizer).”

Development experts are promoting new improved stoves that burn cleaner and cook better (at $30 or more, still out of reach for many). A lot of research is underway to test the concept and possible schemes to finance them. “But the best reason for hope,” the magazine says, “may lie in the new-found awareness of market forces among governments and the United Nations crowd.”

A big push behind the new cookstove initiative is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has been speaking out against give-aways. “As with anti malarial bed nets, she argues, charging a little makes people value and use them properly,” says The Economist. services capacity.

The project will work in three regions: the Lake Tana area in the northwestern highlands, an emerging center of rice production; the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR), a traditional center of spinning and weaving; and the capital, Addis Ababa, a central marketing hub.

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) is contributing nearly $10 million with the rest coming from MEDA and other local partners.

An inception mission for the project was completed this summer, with start-up planned for January. ◆

Another business solution to poverty

Making funeral garments in Ghana. Ray Dirks watercolor titled, “She can laugh at the days to come” (Prov. 31:25).