Case of Nemele Women group

The Nemele women's group is among the Uluguru Spice Project (USP) II farmer groups mobilized by a farmer facilitator called Richard Simon of the Numbini Vanilla group in Lugeni village. The Nemele Women's group is in Tandari village, Mtombozi Ward. The group was first established in 2015 with 22 members. Their joint formation was due to their willingness to have a poultry project, and they started the project by supplying chickens within and outside the village.

The secretary of the Nemele Women's group explained how she understands the intervention back in 2020 when Richard Simon met with them for the first time during the mobilization of the new farmer groups in 2020 through the F2F approach as follows:

"In 2020, Richard came to our village to mobilize different groups which later will be in the spice project (USP). He described how agro-ecological spice cultivation in the Uluguru mountains will help many people in the production of organic spices. Also, he added that although the groups would receive technical instruction on the production of organic spices, they will also receive assistance with farming inputs including the right kind of equipment and seeds."

As a group, we had two days of brainstorming meetings on the opportunity that was ahead of us through the spice project. One of the driving forces that made them want to be involved in spice production is that they had few spices on thief farms and solely food crops like paddy and cassava predominated. For most of them, only own two to three spice trees and were ignorant about organic spice production and this was a perfect opportunity to learn more and further about organic agriculture.

The group began receiving facilitation and technical training on the organic spice modules as well as farming equipment and seeds after voluntarily deciding to join SAT under Uluguru Spice Project II through Richard Simon as the farmer facilitator.

The Nemele women group received cloves and cinnamon seedlings in 2020 just after joining SAT under the USP II project, therefore currently they have 1438 cloves seedlings and 200 cinnamon seedlings in their nurseries. They expect to distribute equally to each member of the group and each member will plant on his/her farm as per the technical training they received about organic agriculture. The group sees an opportunity in the market of their spice produce which is cinnamon, ginger, and cloves through the spice cooperative (CHAUWAVIMU), so through the techniques, they have learned like intercropping, application of compost manure, mulching, and use of biopesticides they expect to increase production in these crops.

"We are really appreciative of the Uluguru Spice Project since it gave us the information we needed to produce organic spices."

The group secretary added

They believe with technical backstopping and other facilitation from SAT facilitators and Richard they still have a good position in spices production.

“KILIMO HAI !!!!!, VIUNGO NI DHAHABU ILIYOJIFICHA!!!!”

Spices are gold in their hidden form

The USP Project is kindly supported by Austrian Development Agency, Land Voralberg, and Fester Foundation.